Everyday life is characterized by conscious purpose. From reaching for food to designing an experiment, our actions are directed at goals. This purpose reveals itself partly in our conscious awareness and partly in the organization of our thoughts and actions. Cognition is the process involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and problem solving. Much past and present theory has marked the match between the significant structure of language and the structure of an internal code or “language of thought” (Langer, 1969).

There are those that say that Jean Piaget was the first to take children’s thinking seriously. Although Piaget never thought of himself as a child psychologist, his real interest was epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which, like physics, was considered a branch of philosophy until Piaget came along and made it a science (Lavatelli, 1985). Children and their reasoning process fascinated Piaget. He began to suspect that observing how the child’s mind develops might discover the key to human knowledge. Piaget’s insight opened a new window into the inner workings of the mind. Jean Piaget has made major theoretical a

Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist and philosopher in the 1930’s, is most often associated with the social constructivist theory. He emphasizes the influences of cultural and social contexts in learning and supports a discovery model of learning (Wertsch, 1985). This type of model places the teacher in an active role while the students’ mental abilities develop naturally through various paths of discovery. He argued for the inclusion within psychology of the study of consciousness, however he rejected introspection as a method (Lavatelli, 60). He maintained that a study of the mind, as opposed to just behavior, was necessary to distinguish human beings from lower animals. There are some interesting facts about Vygotsky. One fact is that he was one of the earliest critics of Piaget's theory. Another fact is that he died at age thirty-three from tuberculosis cutting his career short. And finally, his works were banned in Russia until after his death because of his refer!

plan the solution path and is capable of metal-cognition (Encarta).

In Thought and Language, Vygotsky analyzed Piaget's work (MIT). Vygotsky believed that Piaget had developed a clinical method that revolutionized the study of children's language and thought. However, Vygotsky also asserted that there were some flaws in Piaget's methods (MIT). Piaget combined psychology and philosophy even though he tried to avoid theorizing. He overlooked the role of the child's activity with relation to thought processes. Vygotsky also disagreed with Piaget's assumption that development could not be impeded or accelerated through instruction (MIT). In summary, Vygotsky was critical of Piaget's assumption that developmental growth was independent of experience and based on a universal characteristic of stages. Vygotsky believed that intellectual development was continually evolving without an end point and not completed in stages as Piaget theorized. Although Vygotsky was critical of Piaget, he realized the importance of the information that Piaget gathered. In spite of his criticisms, Vygotsky built his educational theories on the strengths of Piaget's (MIT).

ges 2 to 7, the child is preoccupied with verbal skills. At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively. Piaget has divided this stage into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. In the preoperational phase children use language and try to make sense of the world but have a much less sophisticated mode of thought than adults (Piaget, 1985). They need to test thoughts with reality on a daily basis and do not appear to be able to learn from generalizations made by adults. In the intuitive phase the child slowly moves away from drawing conclusions based solely on con

Some topics in this essay:
Encarta Piaget, Vygotsky’s ZPD, Jean Piaget, Brehm Cohen, Vygotsky Russian, Encarta Assimilation, MIT Piaget, Development Everyday, Proximal Development, MIT Vygotsky, wertsch 1985, piaget 1985, egocentric speech, formal operational, assimilation accommodation, cognitive development, children learn, wertsch 1985 egocentric, piaget's mit, language vygotsky, zone proximal development, zone proximal, child wertsch 1985, 1985 egocentric speech, formal operational thinker,