Psychologys Contributions to Education

Jean Piaget contributed to how we understand learning by developing four

stages of cognitive development. Piaget's four stages of intellectual (or cognitive)
development are: Sensorimotor which is birth through ages 18-24 months,
Preoperational which is toddlerhood (18-24 months) through early childhood (age
7), Concrete operational which is ages 7 to 12, and Formal operational which is
adolescence through adulthood.
-During the Sensormotor stage infants are learning based on what they see and
feel, later they learn goal oriented behavior, physical abilities, and the beginnings of
language development.
-During the Preoperational stage young children are able to think in symbolic terms,
language matures, and they also develop memory and imagination.
-During the Concrete Operational stage children demonstrate logical, concrete
reasoning, but most still can't think abstractly or hypothetically.
-During Piagets final stage, the Formal Operational stage, adolescents are able to
logically use symbols related to abstract concepts and that continued intellectual
development in adults depends on the accumulation of knowledge.

Jerome Bruner also created stages of learning similar to Piaget, but he went a
step further with fewer stages. He believed that cognitive growth involves an
interaction between basic human capabilities and culturally invented technologies
that serve as amplifiers of these capabilities." Bruners 3 stages are: Enactive stage
from 0 - 1 year old consisting of action based information like muscle memory, the
Iconic stage from 1 - 6 years old consisting of information is stored visually in the
form of images, and the Symbolic stage from 7 years and on consisting of
information is stored in the form of a code or symbol, such as language. Bruner
believed in the constructivist approach to teaching and learning with the concepts
of discovery learning and the spiral curriculum.

Lev Vygotskys theory of development was called tools of the mind. Vygotsky
believed the idea that child development is the result of interactions between
children and their social environment.
The history and the culture of the society in which a child grows up and the
events making up a childs personal history determine much more than what
that child knows or likesit also determines which mental tools the child will
learn and how these tools will shape the childs mind.
Vygotsky gave us the Zone of Proximal Development, defined it is a distance
between the actual developmental level determined by individual problem solving
and the level of development as determined through problem solving under
guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. He also gave us the idea of
teacher Scaffolding which is a learning situation in which there is a gradual release
of responsibility to the learner, as the learner becomes more responsible for his/her
own learning and able to maintain a new skill. The Zone of Proximal Development
and Scaffolding ideas can easily be some of the most important contributions to
teaching and learning ever made.