Theories Of Piaget And Vygotsky, The Theory Of Multiple Intelligences?

Introduction
It is postulated that education has been around since the dawn of mankind. This cannot be reliably verified, since mankind relied on oral history until writing systems developed around 3,500 B.C. Some of the earliest written records show that formal education began in Egypt sometime between 3,000 and 500 B.C. Until a few hundred years ago, education was limited to a select group of people. As education became more formal, and more people started to learn, the need to understand learning became more prominent. When put into this context it is easy to see that pedagogy, or the art of teaching, is a modern construct.
For the purpose of this essay we will look at the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, the theory of multiple intelligences,
The main influences he identified were maturation, activity and social transmission. His theories allow educators to understand cognitive development, keep students active and provide social interaction (Edgar, 2012). While Piaget’s theory does work in most cases, learners differ and do not always reach the stages when Piaget predicted, while some may never reach the later stages at all.
Vygotsky expanded Piaget’s theory by looking at the influence of language and the ‘effects of social, cultural and personal factors towards learning.’ (Edgar, 2012). He posited that language initially develops separately from thought, but ‘starts to overlap with thought more and more as the child grows up.’ (Muijs, 2012). In contrast with Piaget’s focus on maturation, Vygotsky believed that children’s interaction with others through language influenced their level of cognitive understanding. Vygotsky postulated that cooperation lies at the base of learning. He believed that scaffolding in the zone of proximal development (ZPD) allowed learners to learn from
They are ‘confirming theories … but they are also offering us important new insights.’ (Muijs, 2012). An understanding of how memory works should influence the way educators plan and present lessons. Learning tasks should not overload the working memory and collaborative work is more appropriate than individual work when processing new information. Working memory processing speeds improve when information about a specific area or skill increases. This suggests that in-depths topic work may improve students’ learning as well as processing speed. The fact that the human brain has a capacity for finding patterns implies that ‘presenting a learner with random and unordered information provides the maximum opportunity for the brain to order this information and form meaningful patterns that will be remembered.’ (Muijs, 2012). It follows that the learning environment should be set up in a way that reflects real life, and that learning activities should be connected to real life experiences. This also implies that the educator should create an environment of total immersion with interactive experiences that may include traditional instruction methods as part thereof. The brain is modular and flexible in nature. The adaptability of the brain implies that learners are unique and that they can learn in several different