Pyschology- Piaget and Vygotsky

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Piaget was interested in how intelligence itself changes as children grow which he called genetic epistemology. Genetic epistemology was based on the 19th century biological concept of recapitulation (Piaget was a biologist first whom later trained as a psychologist). It was thought before piaget’s studies that children were merely less competent thinkers than adults. However, through his findings, Piaget showed that children think completely different than adults. According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based. Piaget based his theory on two major aspects; stages in cognitive development and mechanisms of cognitive development.
Piaget believed that intellectual development only happens when a child interacts of innate capacities with environmental and progresses through series of hierarchical qualitatively different stages. As a child grows his understanding of the world becomes more complex. This frame work is one that all children will pass through in the same sequence. Piaget theory is one that puts the child charge of their learning, he or she is an active participant of their learning rather than a passive receipt of biological or environment input. Therefore they learn from their own experiences.
Schemas are the way in which the mind mentally structures and organise past experiences (specific mental or physical action) to provide understanding of future experiences. It is the building block of intelligence. He believed that children are born with a few schemas. These are adapted and further developed through assimilation. By altering the child’s schema the child incorporates new information into a situation from what they already know (a child given a sippy/drinks cup will use their experience from suckling a breast or milk bottle in order to conquer a