Education in Turmoil: Piaget's and Vygotsky's Contributions to the Successes and Failures of Our Educational System

Our educational system is beset with difficulties despite constant efforts at reform. Suggestions and reforms abound but few turn back towards the past to look for a solution to our current predicament. Vygotsky and Piaget were two of a short list of major contributors to our modern educational theories but the writings of both men are largely unknown to the general public. Both Vygotsky and Piaget lived and worked in the early part of the last century though Piaget's career extended far past the brief but brilliant life of Vygotsky. However, despite living in similar time periods, both men had radically different viewpoints about childhood speech and learning; "Vygotsky placed more emphasis than Piaget on the role of learning and language in cognitive development..." (Woolfolk, 2005). How can the casual reader grasp the varying ideas and underlying importance of both theorists?

First, Piaget and Vygotsky had different paradigms for learning. One of Piaget's most recent works, 'Genetic Epistemology' was written in 1968 in an effort to summarize Piaget's thoughts concerning the development of knowledge in terms of science and history. Overall, the work is tersely written but the precise style offers glimpses into Piaget's views of the process of thought development; "I am convinced that all epistemology brings up factual problems as well as formal ones, and once factual problems are encountered, psychological findings become relevant and should be taken into account..."(Piaget, 1968). Piaget frequently stressed that psychological theories were of importance to the field of learning and that the "first principle of genetic epistemology, then, is this - to take psychology seriously" (Piaget, 1968).

Reviewing Piaget's Ideas

However, Piaget did not completely rely on the field psychology but rather regarded the field as a useful tool in understanding the development of thought; "...I do not want to give the impression that genetic epistemology is based exclusively on psychology...Our hypothesis is that there will be a correspondence between the psychological formation on the one hand, and the formalization on the other..." (Piaget, 1968). Generally, Piaget seems to be balancing an ongoing experimental dialog to the development of knowledge on the one hand and a practical utilization of the theory of knowledge on the other hand; "It is with children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth..."(Piaget, 1968). Studying and retaining a focus on the understanding of the development of knowledge remains consistent with Piaget's central principles; " the basic principle underlying Piaget's theory is the principle of equilibration: all cognitive development (including both intellectual and affective development) progresses towards increasingly complex and stable levels of organization..." (Teaching Resource Center, 2005).

Piaget freely admitted that his theories simply brought up more questions. His goal was to offer new pathways into exploring educational concepts and goals. "In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning. We can never get back to the point where we can say, "Here is the very beginning of logical structures" (Piaget, 1968). Piaget was a theoretical researcher who realized that educational research into intelligence and learning was an explorative theory rather than a defined field. "Intelligence progresses from a state in which accommodation to the environment is undifferentiated from the assimilation of things to the subject's schemata to a state in which the accommodation of multiple schemata is distinguished from their respective and reciprocal assimilation" (Piaget, 1955).

The Genius of Vygotsky

Vygotsky is traditionally seen as more straightforward than Piaget in his approach to learning theory and application. He viewed learning as a process but a process that could be transmitted from one being to another. "In contrast, Vygotsky believed that learning was an active process that does not have to wait for readiness..." (Woolfolk, 2005). Of course, it can be argued that Vygotsky's more direct approach to education and his reliance on mentoring stemmed from the fact that he lived during a difficulty period in Russian history. A short article written by his daughter in 1994 entitled "His Life' paints a vivid picture of the realities of Vygotsky life; "Toward the end of 1917 Lev ended his education..., and in December returned to Gomel. At that time the city was occupied by German Forces (...)...It was impossible to find a permanent job..." (Vygodskaya, 1994). Despite hardship, ' Vygotsky never let up in his psychological research, focusing mainly on the deliberating problems of psychology of normal and abnormal child...." (Vygodskaya,1994).

Few teachers read more than a few of Vygotsky's concepts during graduate school but most acknowledge that Vygotsky focused on application rather than theory. "Vygotsky (1987) discusses learning as a process that occurs through social interaction with a more competent other during participation in culturally meaningful, productive activity" (Rueda and Monzo, 2000). However, most teachers in the everyday classroom are unfamiliar with Vygotsky's ideas and do not see a way to use them in the classroom. Many of his thoughts have largely been ignored by educators in the classroom. "Further, Vygotsky (1978, 1987) contends that such participation must occur at a level that produces learning and stimulates development. He defines this particular level of participation as falling within the learner's zone of proximal development, or the range between the level of difficulty at which an individual can perform independently and the highest level at which he can perform with assistance" (Rueda and Mozo, 2000).

Inevitable Comparison: Piaget and Vygotsky

Comparing both men by reviewing their respective writings and theories is a difficult task. Andy Blunden wrote an article entitled 'Vygotsky and the Dialectical Method' shortly after Vygotsky's death in which he compared some of the viewpoints of the two theorists; "According to Vygotsky, Piaget fails to see the transition from "egocentric speech" (when a child talks aloud to him/herself while alone) to "inner speech"...'(Blunden, 1980). Blunden goes on to point that Vygotsky thought that Piaget missed the point when he focused on the individuals struggle to learn. "Human thought develops NOT from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual" (Blunden, 1980). This difference in viewpoint between Vygotsky and Piaget has been the subject of many heated debates with some researchers giving a broader viewpoint of Piaget's ideas. "For Vygotsky, like Piaget, the relationship between the individual and the social is necessarily relational. However, by placing cultural mediation at the center of adult cognition and the process of cognitive development, social origins take on a special importance in Vygotsky's theories that is less symmetrical than Piaget's notion of social equilibration as 'resulting from the interplay of the operations that enter into all cooperation'" (Cole and Wertsch, 1995).

Another example can be found by understanding the ideas describing how children explore their world. Parents and teachers sometimes that young children are randomly and almost nonsensically exploring their surroundings. The term for this seemingly randomized exploration is syncretism. "Syncretism" means the mental activity characteristic of early childhood, in which objects are joined quite arbitrarily or senselessly. According to Piaget, this syncretism dies out under the impact of learned thought patterns. But Vygotsky demonstrates that syncretism constitutes a kind of hypotheses for experiment in which the child learns through experience the nature of the objective world. Again Vygotsky conceives of the opposites not as fixed mutually exclusive antitheses but as a unity in which, for example, intelligence arises out of senselessness and senselessness forms the pre-condition and ground of intelligence - "there's a method in the madness" as the saying goes" (Blunden, 1980).

In conclusion, a reader can only wonder the possible outcomes if Vygotsky had lived a bit longer. Both Piaget and Vygotsky contributed heavily toward modern educational thought but Piaget had the time to embed his concepts into our public educational structure. Still, his largely theoretical orientation has kept him from being widely acknowledged today. In contrast, Vygotsky's practical approach offered insight into a more tangible system of learning that has been sadly relegated to the past due in part to Vygotsky's all too brief life.

References:

Blunden, A. (1980). Vygotsky and the Dialectical Method retrieved May 12, 2007 from

http://web.archive.org/web/19990502065118/http://werple.net.au/~andy/txt/vygotsk1.htm

Cole, M. and Wertsch, J. (1996). Beyond the Individual-Social Antimony of Piaget and Vygotsky retrieved June 11, 2007 from ANTIMONY IN DISCUSSIONS OF PIAGET AND VYGOTSKY
http://www.robertexto.com/archivo13/beyond_piaget_vigotsky.htm/

Piaget, J. (1968). Teaching Resource Center Genetic Epistemology retrieved May 12, 2007 from

http://gsi.berkeley.edu/resources/learning/piaget.html

Piaget, J. (1955). The Construction of Reality within the Child retrieved June 11, 2007 from
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Teaching resource Center (2005). Theories of Learning Menu Jean Piaget retrieved May 12,

2007 from http://gsi.berkeley.edu/resources/learning/piaget.html

Rueda, R and Monzo, L. (2000). Apprenticeship for teaching retrieved June 11, 2007 from http://www.cal.org/crede/pubs/research/rr8.htm

The Vygotsky Project (2005). The Vygotsky Project The Man and His Ideas retrieved May 12,

2007 from http://nateweb.info/vygotsky/

Vygodskaya, G. (1994). The Vygotsky Project: His Life retrieved May 12, 2007 from

http://nateweb.info/vygotsky/gita.htmWoolfolk, A. (2005). Educational Psychology Ninth Edition Boston: Allyn and Bacon