Piaget Vygotsky And Beyond

This collection of original contributions by leading researchers celebrates the 1996 centenary of the births of the two most seminal figures in education and developmental psychology - Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Research in their footsteps continues worldwide and is growing. What are the implications for the future for this extensive programme? Which of the large body of findings has proved most important to current research? Based around five themes, these original contributions cover educational intervention and teaching, social collaboration and learning, cognitive skills and domains, the measurement of development and the development of modal understanding.

This book is the outcome of a long and passionate debate among world experts about two of the most pivotal figures of psychology: Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotksy. The occasion was a week-long advanced course held at the Jean Piaget Archives in Geneva. The most interesting outcome of the meeting is that, in spite of differences in aims and scopes (epistemogenesis versus psychogenesis), in units of analysis (events versus action) and in social contents (Swiss capitalism versus Soviet communism) both Piaget and Vygotsky reached a similar conclusion: knowledge is constructed within a specific material and social context. Moreover, their views complement each other perfectly: where Vygotsky insists on varieties of psychological experiences, Piaget shows how, out of diversity, grows universality, so much so that the most communist of the two is not necessarily the one who was so labelled. This book is not only of interest to developmental, social and learning psychologists, but also deals with issues pertinent to education, epistemology, language, thought and cognition, anthropology and philosophy. It is likely to shed some light on the state of affairs in psychology for the general reader too, because it is clear and precise, straightforward and uses virtually no jargon.

The book provides a comprehensive analyses of Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s theories implementation in modern preschool education. It analyzes the problem of the relationship between the natural and the cultural in the context of Vygotsky and Jean Piaget theories. Their discourses complemented each other: whereas Vygotsky developed his theory in the direction from society (culture) to the individual child, Piaget’s movement was the opposite: from individual child to society. These two approaches confront modern world with the need to analyze the problem of childhood: is childhood a period of cultural exploration or is it a special form of relationship in which both the egocentrism and consciousness of the child, and the egocentrism and consciousness of culture are represented? Readers will gain insight into the methodology that makes possible to unite up-to-date views based on Vygotsky and Piaget theories on child development and education.

Jean Piaget was one of the most significant contributors to our current understanding of how children think and learn, from birth through to adolescence. In this comprehensive and accessible new book, Ann Marie Halpenny and Jan Pettersen capture the key concepts and principles of Piaget’s fascinating work on children’s thinking, and explore how thinking evolves and develops from infancy through the early years and beyond. Areas covered in Introducing Piaget include: key milestones and achievements in children’s thinking; understanding the physical world through senses and movement in infancy; supporting the emergence of symbolic thought and language in the early years; understanding object permanence; implications of egocentric thinking in early childhood learning and development. Throughout the book, the consequences of these developments for children’s social, emotional and intellectual development are discussed. Updates on Piaget’s theory are also outlined with reference to more recent work on cognitive development in childhood. Each chapter provides a concise summary of material presented through a consideration of the implications for practice in working with children. A glossary of key Piagetian terms is also included. With a particular focus on how Piaget’s principles and concepts can be applied to children in early childhood, this exciting new book is an invaluable resource for teachers, practitioners and students with an interest in learning and development in the early years.

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Psychology - Animal Psychology, grade: 1, Egerton University, language: English, abstract: Child development appears to be one of the most studied phenomena of human development, especially with regard to cognitive and biopsychology. In the nineteenth century, child development attracted both philosophers and psychologists and, this can be attributed to the intrinsic nature of the topic because; it encompassed numerous mysteries and controversy. Ordinarily, childhood is usually accompanied by transient developmental changes, which are governed by the child’s inherent biological characteristics and the ambient social conditions in the neighborhood. As such, the phenomena of child’s development can be approached from diverse perspectives and this was the case in the early nineteenth century when a number of prominent scholars studied the issue and hypothesized different theories on child development. For instance, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky were among the most prominent scholars who contributed significantly to the advancement of studies on child development through postulating reliable theories although their principal postulates exhibit variations.

The first full-length study of Jean Piaget as a philosopher and evolutionist. Messerly traces Piaget's earliest conjectures about knowledge through its further developments to its mature formulation as 'genetic epistemology.' Messerly analyzes Piaget's constructivist theory of the evolution of human knowledge as continuous with, yet partially transcending, the biological process of adaptation to the environment. Messerly's study serves as an invitation to further explorations with Paiget's theory and will interest philosophers, biologists, and psychologists.