Chapter Two Learning Log

What?

There were two different philosophers who studies how children or people develop and learn throughout their life's Piaget and Vygotsky. They had different perspectives on how people develop and how their surroundings played a role into an individuals development. The philosophers Piaget believed that individuals developed in stages. In his writings he discussed how children learn from observations, biological maturation, and active exploration of the physical environment which they were in. He also believed that children learn best when they are in disequilibrium. Disequilibrium is when students feel uncomfortable about new information and to fit that new information into their brains. Piaget had four stages of development that children went through as they aged. The first is sensorimotor which is from birth to two years of age. In this stage they have an egocentric perspective, they lack class inclusion, lack or conservation, irreversibility, and transductive reasoning. They enter the next stage of concrete operations at age six to seven and it lasts until the age of eleven or twelve. In this stage children can understand peoples perspectives, there is class inclusion, conservation, deductive reasoning, and they depend on concret reality. They lack the ability to test or formulate hypothosis as well as proportional reasoning. Then as chilren moved from their adolecsence into adulthood they entered into formal operations stage. In this stage Piaget believed they had the ability to reason abstractly and to have hypothetical and contrary facts to ideas. They would be able to formulate an idea and to test that idea. They were also able to have proportional reasoning. The other philosopher Vygotsky's ideas were that children did not have a set stage or time frame that they would enter into. He had the idea of the Zone of Proximal Distance which involved a range of tasks a student can perform with the help of others but cannot yet perform those tasks independently yet. He also had the idea that children learned from adults about how society worked and where they formed all of their ideas from. He also believed that knowledge was created by society not by one specific individual. He had an idea that children have self talk which guides them through tasks, then children go through internalization which is a process which a learner gradually incorporates socially based activities into his or her internal cognitive processes, then they make that idea their own. Vygotsky believed in the power of play, peer interactions, guided participation, and socio-culture learning.

So what?
Although neither one has the answers to how specifically children learn they both have interesting ideas and concepts which seem to be correct. By following and taking ideas from both philosophers people can have a better understanding of how children do learn. Teachers, parents, and society can help children learn and grow through using ideas from both philosophers. I have had experiences while I was young of how teachers believed I should be in a particular learning level when I really was not. The example I have was of both Piaget and Vygotsky. I was thirteen years old and I had been move to a higher level of math, because the teacher suggested I was above my other peers. I entered into an algebra class and everything seemed to be going well until we reached equations which dealt with numbers, letters, and negative signs. I should have been in the disequilibrium as Piaget thought would help me learn better, but I got lost. The ZPD which my other teacher had assumed I was in was much to high for me at that particular time. I cried and fought with my father every night I began to do my homework. I just could not figure out how these equations worked. After months of fighting and crying something just clicked in my head and I understood the equations. Through disequilibrium of being uncomfortable about these new ideas of mathematics I finally got to my ZPD. I had entered into my ZPD which helped me feel I had accomplished something and I was not completely behind all of my peers in that classroom.

Now What?

With this new information that I have acquired I hope it will give me a better understanding of how students formulate new ideas. I hope to encourage my future students learning through some disequilibrium. An example of how I might create a disequilibrium activity for my students to show or acquire growth would be to have students experience how someone with a disability might feel. In the future I hope to be a health teacher and we will be discussing different disabilities people in our society have. I could have a student put headphones to experience how someone feels if they are deaf. A student might be blindfolded and try to make his or her way through the classroom. This would make it an uncomfortable experience for them, because it may make them feel awkward, but they will have a better understanding for those who do have a disability. With all of this new information that I have learned there are still many things that I need to learn. I need to better understand Vygoksty's idea of ZPD and how to understand where students are at in his or her learning stage. I need to learn more about both philosophers ideas of how students learn and internalize that information to help me make a mixture of many ideas and learning styles in my future classroom.