I find myself very interested in the
development of children. Piaget, born in Switzerland in 1896 and Vygotsky, born
in Russia in 1896 both expressed their ideas of development. Piaget’s idea is
centered on age groups and four stages of cognitive development; sensorimotor, preoperational,
concrete operational, and formal operational. Vygotsky’s ideas are centered
around a child’s learning environment, putting emphasis on learning rather than
development. To be honest, I take a little bit of both ideas with me when I am
working with a child. I honestly believe that children learn behaviors and
thinking abilities from their environment. I also believe that Piaget’s stages
are somewhat accurate based on my experiences so far in teaching. I do not have
children of my own but I am the oldest grandchild of eighteen with a seven year
gap between I and the next child and I have witnessed many of the concepts
stated in Piaget’s stages such as the object permanence with babies.
To be completely honest, I’ve known
the work of Piaget and Vygotsky since taking Psychology in
high school but for some reason I always emphasized Piaget when teaching. After
the readings and connecting them to my experiences with my gifted students, I
was able to see the benefit of embracing Vygotsky’s idea as well. Slavin (2012)
says, “He believed that development depends on the sign systems that
individuals grow up with: the symbols that cultures create to help people
think, communicate, and solve problems-for example, a culture’s language,
writing system, or counting system” (p.41). For example, my students who did
not attend pre-kindergarten or who did not practice writing their names and
letters at a young age now have trouble with the concept of writing. The concepts
presented in chapter two are critical to any educator and his or her classroom
because it is important to understand the children’s decisions and rationales.
According to Piaget, I cannot expect that my second grade students will be able
to analyze a topic as well as the high school students that I tutor. But, in
contrast, I also teach the gifted cluster of second graders and some of them
can actually think abstractly. Like Shelly Hodges said in her discussion post, “Well as educators, having an understanding of
Piaget’s theories or contributions to education, we can better plan lessons for
our students that take into account their cognitive development.” By knowing
each student’s cognitive ability we will be able to properly accommodate to the
needs of that particular child.
In having my gifted endorsement I do know that a person’s ability to be
gifted can be partially because of their learning environment at home. Based on
my learning, I know that I am now more aware of why my students act the way
that they do while participating in certain activities in class. Knowing these concepts will help me become a better teacher because I also realize that I
have to be more aware of their home environment. If I have a student who is not
succeeding then their development can be negatively impacted by the lack of
support at home. Knowing their home environment will help me reach out to the
parents more and will help me provide them with mini workshops and materials
that can better help their child. It is great to be learning more about these concepts
while in the summer semester because as I prepare for the next school year I
can definitely keep them in mind when creating new activities for my students
and when communicating with my parents.
References
Slavin, R. E. (2012). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
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