Key initial theorists

Personal constructivism: Piaget

Beginning in the 1920s, Jean Piaget began to develop a cognitive theory of development. Cognitive theorists believe that learning is based on cognitive schemata or mental structures by which people organise their perceptions of their environment. Learning takes place through learners’ active participation in problem solving and critical thinking around a learning activity that they find relevant and engaging. They construct their schemata by testing new information against their prior knowledge, applying this information to a new situation, and then integrating the new knowledge with their pre-existing intellectual constructs. Piaget suggested that these cognitive structures develop through three inborn, interrelated principles of development:

• organisation: people’s tendency to create systems through which they can make sense of their world;
• adaptation: the way a person deals with new information, which takes place through the processes of assimilation and accommodation:
  • assimilation involves interpreting events in terms of the person’s existing cognitive structure
  • accommodation involves changing the cognitive structure to make sense of the environment;
• equilibration: the tendency for a person to strive for a state of mental balance between him- or herself and the outside world and among the cognitive elements within him- or herself.

Piaget’s careful observations of children led him to conclude that they go through distinct stages in cognitive development and that each stage provides them with a new set of mental tools with which to process information. According to his cognitive-stage learning theory, there are four stages: sensorimotor, pre-operations, concrete operations, and formal operations.

Social constructivism: Vygotsky and Bruner

Contemporary notions of social constructivism derive from the work of Vygotsky and Bruner. Where Piaget emphasised learning as an internal process, Lev Vygotsky stressed environmental, social, and cultural influences. His social development theory is based on the ideas that human learning is dependent on the learner’s interaction with his or her social and cultural environment and that learners are active participants in their own learning. He theorised that a person’s level of learning is more accurately reflected by what they can do with help and that, in fact, learning leads development. He introduced the concept of the zone of proximal development – the level at which learners can almost – but not quite – complete a task on their own. Vygotsky claimed that learning occurs through interactions between a learner and an expert within this zone. An associated concept is that of the more knowledgeable other. This is a person who has more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does. Often this person will be a teacher or another older adult but it may also be a peer or a younger person.

Jerome Bruner applied the metaphor of scaffolds to Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development to develop the concept of scaffolding – the temporary support that a more knowledgeable other gives a learner to construct and extend his or her skills. As the learner gains competence, the support is gradually removed.

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