A tabular comparison of Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories of cognitive development. This will illustrates the similar factors and non-similar factors between both the theories.
SN
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Educational Issue
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Piaget’s
Cognitive-
Developmental
Perspective
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Vygotsky’s
Socio-cognitive
Developmental
Perspective
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1
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What
does during cognitive development?
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Domain-general mental operations that can be used to solve
problems in various contexts.
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Domain specific skill knowledge and expertise that is specific to
a culturally valued problem.
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2
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How
does learning occur?
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Through discovery, invention. Learning is internal process of
making sense of the external World.
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Through social transmission. Learning is cognitive apprenticeship
in which knowledge is passed from more able members of the culture to less
able ones.
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3
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Is
cognitive development universal or is it culturally specific?
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Universal cognitive development unfolds in an invariant
sequence.
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Culturally-specific. Students develop skills and understandings
that are valued by the culture but do not develop skills and understandings
in non-valued domains.
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4
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What
is the source of gains in cognitive development?
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Rich, stimulating, challenging and responsive environments. Given
these conditions and active, independent exploration, students construct knowledge.
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Social interaction and guidance from highly competent members of the culture. Students
co-construct knowledge with competent partners through a process of guided
participation
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5
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What
is the role of the teacher?
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To provide students with rich, stimulating, challenging, and
responsive environments. Create cognitive conflicts.
Ask questions about relationships (same? different?).
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To select culturally valued problems to solve, introduce the tools
of the culture, provide scaffolding within the student’s zone of proximal
development, probe-question-scaffolding students’ thinking during dialogue.
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6
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What
is the role of peers?
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To stimulate cognitive conflict so act as to create
disequilibrium.
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To act as a mentor and guide, in much the same ways as the
teacher.
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7
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How
important is language development to cognitive development?
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Largely unimportant.
Language is a by-product of thought.
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Crucial. Language is the
most important tool of thought.
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8
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Recommended
instructional
strategies
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Discovery-based learning;
Montessori classrooms; interest areas; project-based learning;
curiosity-inducing strategies.
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Scaffolding in the zone of proximal development
(model—coach—fade); dialogue within an instructional conversation;
cooperative learning.
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Conclusion
One theory is cognitive developmental perspective while the other one is social cognitive perspective. In Piaget's the learning process occur through identification or finding out the subject matter, more on research work. but in Vygotsky's theory leaning process depends on social transmission, where knowledge is passed from more able members to less able members of the culture.
In the first theory the role of the teacher is to provide a well designed suitable learning environment to stimulate the response to learning matters. However in the second theory the teacher play a mediator role to introduce cultural tools and valued problems related to the culture. So teacher provide maximum support to the students to gain their cognitive development. The role of the students (peers) is to develop discussions, negotiation to learn the subject matter thoroughly. Meanwhile in the Vygotsky's theory the students (peers) acts as mentors and guide the instruction by the teacher.
Therefore in the Piaget's theory students learning process depend on the findings, observations, creativity etc. While in the Vygotsky's theory students learning process depend on scaffolding (support) in the zone of proximal development.