Cognitive Theory: Vygotsky & Piaget's Impact on Child Development - Essay Sample

Introduction

Cognitive theory offers a general rationale to assess and modify cognitions to change how people think, behave and feel (Ting et al., 2019). The most common cognitive theory is that of Vygotsky and Piaget that have addressed the development of children. Vygotsky believed that children are social beings, and the cognitive development is enhanced by social interactions. On the other hand, Piaget felt that children were independent beings and hence their development would be guided by focused activities (DeRubeis, Keefe & Beck, 2019).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The main aim of school education is to build individuals who can perform new tasks and not just repeating activities that have been performed by other generations. The Piaget's cognitive theory of development corresponds to what education purposes should fulfil. Therefore, this theory can be used to design a classroom activity. For instance, children can learn to operate stores. Children can learn how the different operations of small businesses through developing a store within the classroom setting. The children can rotate on who should be given the role of operating the stores on various days. On the other hand, teachers can give students the assignment of monitoring inventory, ordering supplies, balancing the collected funds against the sold inventories and any other aspect that applies to managing a small enterprise (Carugati, 1999). In order to succeed on this project, children will need to work with Piaget's third level of concrete operations.

In addition, another activity entails that of writing a newspaper. Children should use concrete operations most particularly in regards to language during newspaper writing and publishing newspaper. Students will have to exhibit various techniques of journalism to cover stories, editing copy and even writing. When students take responsibility for this task, they are able to learn the real-world skills. Besides, through the theory, students can engage in the activity such as that of building a village (McLeod, 2018). A construction activity, for instance, building villages by making use of interlocking blocks is one of the class projects utilizing the student's cognitive design abilities. Students can be grouped into teams whereby each of the teams will be responsible for building a village segment. Afterwards, the groups should be assigned to develop a design of how their segment will look like and finally assemble their structures. With such activities, students will rely on their learning by discovering education on developing their interests. This building activity will surely enable children to embrace discovery and might even spark interest in the field, such as that of design and construction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cognitive theories are very significant because they play a role of developing the cognitive skills of children. In this regard, the mentioned activities can be used to improve the children's thinking abilities by engaging them in creative stuffs.

References

Carugati, F. (1999). From Piaget and Vygotsky to learning activities: A long journey and an inescapable issue. Learning activity and development, ed. Mariane Hedegaard, and Joachim Lompscher, 211-234.

DeRubeis, R. J., Keefe, J. R., & Beck, A. T. (2019). Cognitive therapy.

McLeod, S. (2018). Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Simply Psychology.

Ting, F., Dawkins, M. B., Stavans, M., Baillargeon, R., & Decety, J. (2019). Principles and concepts in early moral cognition.