Piaget vs. Vygotsky Cognitive Constructivism and Social Constructivism are both theories in the field of Cognitive Development which focuses on the development of how people attain knowledge about their surroundings and come to understand their world throughout their life span. Both psychologists, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, came up with their own theories on cognitive development. Piaget came up with the idea of Cognitive Constructivism, while Vygotsky came up with Social Constructivism, both of which have become the most studied theories in this branch of psychology.

Piaget focused on categorizing children's cognitive development into stages and made note of the different approaches that children at a given stage and age has toward acquiring new knowledge. Vygotsky's focus was on a more social perspective and suggested that children's ability to learn comes from their social and daily interactions with their surroundings and culture. It is this that helps them think and understand something (Martin & Sugarman, 1997). Throughout this essay, theoretical principles and concepts, learning objectives, and instructional strategies affecting both theories will be expanded on.

To begin with, Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Constructivism entails the child's complete interaction with the environment to be the main source of their learning, but only when a certain stage or milestone is reached, will a child be fully able to comprehend what is actually going on around them. He coined up the term the "active child" as he saw children being the ones who will actively seek knowledge and that they are always learning, not just waiting around for experiences that they could learn from, to come to them (Davies, 2004). He disagreed with this idea that it was social and cultural influences that enabled a child to learn. He thought that children-based what they knew and learned from their own experiences...

Everyone stage is accompanied by learning objectives that a child reached before being able to successfully go on to the next stage of development (Kall & Cavanaugh, 2010). The first stage was the sensorimotor stage in which children from birth to two years old learned from observing that idea of object permanence, that is when a child is aware that an item still exists even after it has been taken away from them. The pre-operational period, ages two to seven, children realize that no matter how much an object is altered, it still remains being the same object, demonstrating a higher level of thought and processing. Between seven and eleven years old, mental operations of hierarchy are achievable, but children at this age tend to be very egocentric, without fully understanding how everything affects other people, only themselves. From the age of eleven on, thinking beyond the obvious is possible. Children are able to reason why things are the way they are, and could make inferences from that (Davies, 2004).
Based on Piaget's Cognitive Constructivism, instructional methods should actually be the opposite of what is quite common in classrooms across the country. The act of a child just sitting down behind a desk for eight hours a day listening to a teacher giving them instructions would not be something that Piaget would think was a beneficial instructional method. Instead teaching methods that could go along with his theory would be child-centered, discovery-based, and very hands on (Martin & Sugarman, 1997). Educators should tailor instructional methods to be in a way that would be easily understood and comprehended from a child's perspective, not from an adult's. Instead of just telling a child why things are…