Mental Development

Mental Development Piaget and Vygotsky’s Developmental Theories Education Foundations, Week 3

Overview • Piaget: • Bio and context • Developmental stages • The learning process • Piaget’s classroom • Vygotsky: • Bio and context • Development and social relation • ZPD • The role of language • Vygotsky’s classroom

Piaget: Bio and Context(1896-1980) • Started as a zoologist • Worked with Binet on standardising IQ tests • Clinical method

Developmental stages • Sensori-motor thinking • Preoperational thinking • Concrete operational thinking • Formal operation thinking • Universal stages • Invariant sequence • Individual differences in age limits

Sensori-motor thinking (Birth – 2 years) • Developmental milestones: • Object permanence • Goal-directed actions • Immediate and deferred imitation • Emergence of pretend play

Preoperational thinking (2-7 yrs) • Developmental milestones: • Acquisition of language • Emergence of symbolic thought • Blossoming of pretend play

Deficits of preoperational stage • Animism • Centration (lack of conservation) • Precausal reasoning “I haven’t had a nap, so it’s not afternoon yet” • Egocentricism

Concrete operational thinking (7-11 yrs) • Developmental milestone -- conservation • Identity; • reversibility; • compensation; • seriation; • classfication

Deficit of concrete operational thinking • Concrete specificity rather than abstract reasoning

Formal operational thinking (>11/12 yrs) • Developmental milestones: • Propositional thinking • Hypothetical-deductive reasoning • Not every individual reaches this stage • Context matters • Formal schooling plays a key role

Piaget: the learning process • Schemes: a cluster or structure of ideas organising existing knowledge to make sense of new experiences • Disequilibrium • Adaptation: 1) assimilation 2) accommodation

Piaget’s classroom • Students as ‘solitary scientists’ • Constructivism; discovery learning; inquiry-based learning • Peers as thought provokers • Teachers as assessors and experience providers

Criticisms of Piaget • Research methods • Later research findings • Stage-like development • Tendencies rather than potentials • Universal vs differences

Vygotsky: Bio and context(1896-1934) • Born in Orsha and raised in Gomel, Russia • Superior intellect shown in early schooling • Entered university through Jewish lottery • Philosophy, art, psychology • Oppressed by the Stalin regime, his publications were prohibited till 50 years after his death

Developmental process • Teaching and learning lead development; teaching cannot lag behind development • From lower (first-order) to higher (mediated) mental functions • "The central fact about our psychology is the fact of mediation”

Development and social relation • "We can formulate the genetic law of cultural development in the following way... Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an inter-psychological category and then within the individual child as an intra-psychological category... but it goes without saying that internalisation transforms the process itself and changes its structure and functions. Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships”. (Vygotsky 1978) • Interpsychology -- intrapsychology • The meaning of ‘Hello’ • The origin of the indicative function of finger pointing

The Role of Language • Enabling thinking development and transformation • The ‘square bamboo’ story • Realising the knowledge potential in apparently wrong, illogical and nonsensical remarks

Zone of Proximal Development • Distance between what students can do independently and what they can do with others • Measuring the size of the child’s mind by the shadow it casts vs. understanding the child’s mind by the assisted light it emits

Vygotsky’s classroom • Role of teacher Guide and mentor • Role of peers Guide and mentor • Dynamic assessment

Mental Development