Over the past centuries psychologists, educators and philosophers have pursued general theories of learning. Some theories strive to make sense of cognitive and intellectual development, others focus on social, emotional and personality development. These theories frequently differ in their answers to the principle question of learning and development.

One theorist, Jean Piaget, is one of the most widely acknowledged. Piaget’s theory, more so known as Piaget’s cognitive development theory, had a dramatic impact in the field of child development. Piaget, born in Switzerland in 1886, created a theory based around the development of mental structures called schemas. Schemas form the basis of how we understand the world. For example, a young child’s schema would be ‘grasping an object’, whereas an older persons schema might be ‘doing the shopping’. As children grow, they develop and refine their schemas. For example, a child might have a general schema of a ‘dog’, which with development, the schema would involve new features such as ‘it runs’, ‘it bites’ etc. As a child creates new schemas, Piaget believed this information is assim

Piaget’s stage theory has also been heavily criticized. The sequence of stages might not progress in the orderly fashion as Piaget believed. He was mistaken about the timing of when children first do certain things, such as conservation, as researchers such as Bruner have uncovered that five and six year olds can be taught to conserve if they are encouraged to think things through for themselves. Piaget did not make clear what makes one stage end and another begin. Why should there be any stages if apparently, children are constantly adapting to new information – assimilating and accommodating it? Some researchers suggest that development does not occur in stages gut is gradual and continuous.

Unlike Piaget, Vygotski considered language to be key to development. Although Piaget acknowledged language with development with terms such as ‘egocentric speech’, he did not believe it predominant, saying it was due to the child’s inability to think from another perspective. Vygotski however, believed talking out loud gives the child a way to organize their thoughts and guide their actions. Research has shown, children who use ‘egocentric’ or ‘private speech’ show greater improvement on problem solving tasks than others who do not use or less private speech. Investigations into this subject, has also shown that Vygotski’s opinion on children’s speech is a much better description than Piagets.

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