Dear Ahmet Aykan

Thank you for raising an interesting question whose answer has given rise to many and different responses. What follows is a short answer to your question. A long answer is beyond the scope of this post. Piaget and Yygotsky share many similarities, for example, both believe that in the beginning is the action and, because of this, they are thought to be constructive developmental psychologists. But they have a different approach to both learning and development. To put it simply, Piaget subordinates learning to development and Vygotsky subordinates development to learning. Accordingly, Piaget's theory is often judged to be an inside-out theory in the sense that knowledge is first constructed at the intra-personal level and then at the interpersonal level. In contradistinction, Vygotsky's theory is often judged to be an outside-in theory in the sense that knowledge is first acquired at the interpersonal level and then at the intra-personal level. More to another occasion.

Kind regards.

Orlando

Dear Ahmet Aykan

Thank you for raising an interesting question whose answer has given rise to many and different responses. What follows is a short answer to your question. A long answer is beyond the scope of this post. Piaget and Yygotsky share many similarities, for example, both believe that in the beginning is the action and, because of this, they are thought to be constructive developmental psychologists. But they have a different approach to both learning and development. To put it simply, Piaget subordinates learning to development and Vygotsky subordinates development to learning. Accordingly, Piaget's theory is often judged to be an inside-out theory in the sense that knowledge is first constructed at the intra-personal level and then at the interpersonal level. In contradistinction, Vygotsky's theory is often judged to be an outside-in theory in the sense that knowledge is first acquired at the interpersonal level and then at the intra-personal level. More to another occasion.

Kind regards.

Orlando

Dear Orlando,

You have summed up the opinions of Piaget and Vygotsky very well.

I agree with your thoughts ..

Thank you so much :)

Dear Ahmet Aykan,

due to his early death Wygotski could only deal with Piaget's early work - the two never had any personal contact. The much-invoked conflict between Piaget and Wygotski never existed in this form. I'm also not sure whether either of them can be "right" - in my opinion, the concepts are too different (and the different approaches of Wygotski and Piaget are therefore almost complementary): In my opinion, Wygotski's central interest was in the social function of language and thought. On a purely objective level, it is undisputed that Wygotski's assumption of the child's original sociality is correct, because in fact the child is in social relations from the very beginning (without necessarily recognizing this itself). Piaget, on the other hand, is interested in the development of the child's cognition and consequently adopts a much more subjective perspective (= that of the child). This should be considered when comparing both thinkers and their theses.

The following work is quite interesting to read:

Michael Shayer, Not just Piaget; not just Vygotsky, and certainly not Vygotsky as alternative to Piaget, Learning and Instruction, Volume 13, Issue 5, 2003, Pages 465-485, ISSN 0959-4752, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-4752(03)00092-6. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475203000926)

Dear Till Johannes Bugaj

In fact, whether Piaget's thought of Vygosty is more correct, I am not investigating it.

As you said, both of them put forward very correct theories.

I will read your proposed work as soon as possible.

Thank you so much :)

The divide between Piaget and Vygotsky has been highly debated. The idea that the Piagetian subject is an individual subject and the Vygotskian subject is a collective subject does not go without problems. As Piaget and Vygotsky never meet each other they never could clarify their respective position. Be that as it may, I think Piaget's theory is more concerned with the phenomenon of development and Vygotsk's theory is more concerned with the phenomenon of learning. But the two theories are to be see as complementary, not as two opposites. I have published a paper on the resemblances and differences between both. Due to copyright reason a cannot attach it to this message. But it can be read is my profile in Research Gate.

Kind regards,

Orlando

Dear Orlando,

Vygotsky died in 1934. Piaget died in 1980. The two couldn't meet while alive.

We actually compare the ideas of two scientists.

I will read your article:)

Thank you so much.

I was I student of Piaget is Geneva, but never met Vygostsky. Both were giants and much ahead of their. My paper has become a kind of a "must" in the field of development. May be you like reading it.

Kind regards.

Dear Orlando

I am sure reading the article of Piaget's student will add a lot to me

what do you think about of this sentence

In terms of education, Piaget is described as a cognitive constructivist and Vygotsky as a social constructivist.

Both of them are right. When we were children we started our life learning from our social relationship than when we grow up we start to learn from books in colleges then transfer this information into actions. So, actually, both are right but at different periods of time in our life.

Nice question, I'm so interested in it.

I appreciate Vygotsky's idea that we become ourselves through others because we are social animals from the very beginning, and Piaget's idea that children are not adults in miniature in the sense that children's way of thinking is qualitatively differently from that of both adolescents and adults.

Dear Jaafar,

I agree with you,

what Piaget and Vygotsky say is in our life that is valid from birth to death.

thank you very much for your contribution :)

Dear Ahmet Aykan

I think your question (as you describe it a bit) grossly mis-characterizes Piaget; he believed that thinking begins as orderly responses to aspects of the environment; I do admit that his descriptions of his later stages seems quite formal and in-the-mind, but still FROM acting (broad sense) on aspects of the environment; THAT is still (supposedly) central. In my neo-Piagetian theory, I MAKE THIS MUCH MORE CLEAR (and drop some formalities -- WHICH ARE NOT NECESSARY).

Now, about Vygosky . His social bent is not what a neo-Piagetian or an ethologist would consider basic. Psychology likes "the social" (social things or supposed social things) overly much because it appears to be a plausible explanation for A LOT; but, most of this is not established by good findings. It simply is a plausible "explanation" and SEEMS self-explanatory -- a perfect sort of explanation for concepts not grounded or founded on strict empiricism; or, to say it another way: concepts not base on systematic observations of behavior PATTERNS, with organismically related findings (findings of the organism's true and actual systems of responding (i.e. demonstrated behavior PATTERNS); these concepts are not anchored in good sets of DIRECTLY OBSERVABLE OVERT PHENOMENA (as every concept in a real science should be) -- or, equivalently: the poor concepts are not shown to be stemming from DIRECTLY OBSERVABLE OVERT PHENOMENA , AS THEY MUST BE.

Nothing psychological begins solely with the mind (not even a knee reflex, much less other things). The from "within" or "from the outside" is a false and crude and greatly damaging dualism which is entirely inappropriate and stems from Western historical (and present) philosophical outlooks which are the bane of good science.

Dear Brad Jesness,

In fact, my question consists of what is spoken in the world. I am not characterizing Piaget or Vygotsky wrong. I am just trying to get the most accurate information from you.

Dear Orlando,

I agree with your this sentence,

“I appreciate Vygotsky's idea that we become ourselves through others “

Dear Ahmet Aykan,

Vygotsky's idea that we become ourselves through others says much and spends little ink. As is often said, simplicity is the best form of sophistication. This aspect can be also seen in Piaget's ideas that logic is the morality of thought and morality is the logic of action,

Dear Orlando,

Thank you your answer

According to Piaget, as the individual grows social, Vygotsky

According to the individual, does it become more individualized?

dear Orlando,

i agree with Vygotsky's ideas because when learners interact with teachers or peers using their target language or their native language , their learning is co-constructed. there is myriad of researches that have proved the usefulness of vygotskian perspective. vygotskian ideas are quite simple and not complicated every one can understand and apply them easily

In fact, Vygotsky emphasizes social relationships, and Piaget emphasizes mental processes. Researchers can synthesize these two views and make them more meaningful.

Yes, I totally agree with your opinion.thank you

Ahmet Aykan

This is an intriguing thread!

Against the grain of much of North American social science which typically starts with the individual, I appreciate Vygotsky's starting point with all that is social, relational, interactional. In my Social Psychiatry Manifesto (see link below), I argue for turning the Western tradition on its head and argue from the social to the personal.

That said, ultimately, we need both perspectives - outside in and inside out to understand all the aspects of human beings.

Warm regards,

Vincenzo Di Nicola

University of Montreal &

The George Washington University

Reference: Article “A person is a person through other persons”: A social psych...

Dear Orlando M Lourenço

" simplicity is the best form of sophistication " is only true given the proper (correct and organismic) proximal bases of a science (here, of behavior [PATTERNS], aka [supposed] Psychology). Otherwise, just a well-written fairy tale -- which surely seems simple and sophisticated.

Dear Ahmet Aykan thank you very much for your interesting question, I have found my reading complement to my weekend baseball game... ;-)

Orlando M Lourenço, Brad Jesness, Vincenzo Di Nicola, Till Johannes Bugaj posted very interesting contributions, as well as others.

Only two additions to this very informative thread:

-As far as I can understand, the difference between Piaget's and Vygotsky's is in the genetic (in the sense of genesis) plane, it means, it has sense in the ontogenesis.

-Before reading these comments, I was almost sure that Piaget and Vygotsky had met in Moscow. That information I read (or I believe I have read, now I can't be so sure) in the Introduction to the last work of A. N. Leontiev, written by his son and grandson (BTW, the last one is on Researchgate, Dmitri Leontiev, it would be good if he could clarify this question), and then it was stated that the main principles of Activity Theory was based on the argumentation used by Vygotsky in his discussion with Piaget (and that was never used by Vygotsky). As I don't remember where are those last Leontiev's lessons, among my almost infinite archives, I did my search over Internet, and I found this:

Jean Piaget, “Commentary on the critical remarks of Vygotsky concerning the “Language and Thought in the Child” and “Judgment and Reasoning in the Child”

Where, among other stuff, was written:

"Why didn’t Vygotsky and Piaget meet in Moscow in 1931, when Vygotsky was Piaget’s Russian editor and Piaget visited Moscow for a conference?

If Piaget knew about Vygotsky from Luria early on (and also, as Rene van der Veer pointed out, because Vygotsky was his Russian editor) why didn’t he bother to read him until the 1960s? Why didn’t Piaget obtain the whole book from Luria, who had published it in Russian in 1956, and have it translated?

Rene van der Veer argues that Piaget’s usual response to criticisms of his work was to ignore or to avoid them. As we shall see, that is also what he does here."

Well, I stop here, expecting for further comments.

Thanks a lot again...

Dear Piaget and Vygotsky community.

I liked reading all previous posts. As our dear friend Vincenzo Di Nicola states, we need both perspectives - outside in (Vygotsky's theory) and inside out (Piaget's approach) to understand all the aspects of human beings. They are complementary.

Right now, I wanted only to stress three ideas.

1) North American psychologists have grossly misunderstood Piaget's theory. First, they never understood that Piaget became a psychologist to test, say, his main epistemological assumptions (e.g., consctructivism and structuralism -- please do not equate constructivism to constructionism). Second, many North American psychologists cannot read French and many of Piaget's seminal books were not yet translated into English.

2) The widespread idea that the Piagetian subject is individual and the Vygotskian subject is social relies on the above mentioned misunderstandings of Piaget's oeuvre. The following Piagetian statement speaks in favor of Piaget's focus also on the social: "Society is the supreme unit and the individual can achieve his inventions and intellectual constructions only to the extent that he is seat of collective interactions whose value depends obviously on society as a whole" (see Piaget's book on The psychology of intelligence). Dear Ahmet (and also Kater Meriem), with all respect, your idea that Vygotsky emphasizes social relationships, and Piaget emphasizes mental processes does not go without problems. First, both were more interested in mental processes than in external outcomes. It is because of this that none resorted to mental tests to evaluate the individual's psychological development. Second, both were interested in social relationships and interactions. Piaget, for example, always differentiated social interactions between peers (horizontal relations) and social interactions between adults and children (vertical interactions). In his famous notion of proximal development (ZDP), Vygotsky alludes to both types of interaction as, say, forms of scaffolding, but does distinguish them.

3) Piaget was more interested in necessary knowledge (what is the case and has to be the case because it could not be otherwise) than in true knowledge (what is the case but could not be the case). I may be wrong, but I see no Vygotsky's concern with necessary knowledge. It seems that according to Vygotsky, if appropriate scaffolding were provided, then a child would be able to understand, for example, the proportionality concept. According to Piaget, such an attempt would be a pure waste of time.

PS. It may be the case that someone is interested in reading a coauthored paper I published and that can be seen in my profile in RG: In defense of Piaget's theory: A reply to 10 common criticisms . In this paper A. Machado and I elaborate at length on the gross misunderstandings of Piaget's theory by many of his critics.

Dear Rey Segundo Guerrero-Proenza, thank you very much for the information provided I was not aware of.

As I see, both Piaget and Vygotsky espouse a genetic or developmental approach. As for this issue, it seems that psychogenesis is to Piaget's theory as sociogenesis is to Vygotsky's aproach. This means, as I have mentioned that Piaget's theory is more an inside-out than an outside-in theory, the opposite being the case of Vygotsky's approach.

I could not send you the requested paper, but you can read it in my profile on RG. I hope that my previous post be useful.

I believe reading the Piaget's comments on Vygotsky’s critical remarks, is highly relevant to this discussion:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/piaget.htm

Dear Orlando, Rey Segundo Guerrero,

Thank you very much for your contributions to Vincenzo Di Nicola, Brad Jesness, Kater Meriem, Till Johannes Bugaj .. I am learning something from all of you in this discussion ..

I have started to understand the ideas of Piaget and Vygotsky much better.

Dear Ahmet Aykan,

It is my pleasure to participate in this thread. Until now I am liking all the posts,

Dear Brad Jesness,

In this question, I wanted to ask a case that exists in the literature, rather than my own opinion.

In fact, I expressed an existing qualification rather than my thoughts on Piaget and Vygtsky.

Dear Rey Segundo Guerrero-Proenza ,

Thank you very much this suggestion,

I would like everyone to read this article

Hello

Wadsworth, B. J. (1996). Piaget's theory of cognitive and affective development: Foundations of constructivism. Longman Publishing.

Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Educational psychology interactive, 3(2), 1-5.

Brown, J. S., Heath, C., & Pea, R. (2003). Vygotsky's educational theory in cultural context. Cambridge University Press.

Ingrid Garcia

Dear Ingrid Del Valle García Carreño,

First of all, thank you very much for your contribution. The publications you recommend will be very useful to me and other participants.

Best regards

Dear Piaget and Vygotsky community.

What follows refers to some similarities between Piaget's and Vygotsky's approaches to both learning and development. Besides other similarities, Piaget and Vygotsky share the following:

1) a genetic, i.e., developmental, perspective;

2) a dialectical approach;

3) a non-reductionist view;

4) a non- dualistic thesis;

5) an emphasis on action;

6) a primacy of processes over external contents or outcomes; and

7) a focus on the qualitative changes over the quantitative ones.

It is beyond the scope of this post to elaborate on each of these issues. Those interested in such elaboration can read, among other things, may paper on Piaget and Vygotsky in my profile in Research Gate.

Thank you very much dear Orlando M Lourenço because of your valuable contribution :)

Dear Ahmet Aykan,

You are welcome. It is my pleasure to participate in your interesting thread.

Dear Ahmet Aykan,

I may be wrong, but as I see it, Vygotsky's is more a theory of learning (e.g., we become ourselves through others) than, say, "spontaneous" development. In contradistinction, Piaget's approach is more a theory of "spontaneous" development than a theory of learning. Also, there is a Marxist dimension in Vygotsky's theory than is not visible in Piaget's approach to learning and development.

Dear Orlando M Lourenço ,

Can you open up the Marxist dimension in Vygotsky's theory a little more? Who was Piaget influenced in his theory?

Dear Ahmet, it is my pleasure to elaborate a little on the Marxist dimension in Vygotsky's theory.

As I see it, the dominant orientation of Vygotsky’s thinking to heteronomy rather than to autonomy is one of the reasons why Vygotsky (1962, pp. 9–24, 1978, pp. 79–91) always distanced from Piaget’s thinking, a thinking wherein Vygotsky saw a clear inclination to individualism. Needless to say that Piaget’s orientation to the individual subject was, for Vygotsky, incompatible with a Marxist framework which pervades all his work. In Cole and Scribner’s (1978, p. 6) words, “.Vygotsky clearly viewed Marxist thought as a valuable scientific resource from very early in his career. ‘A psychologically relevant application of dialectical and historical materialism’ would be one accurate summary of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of higher mental processes.” (see also Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1985). It is also feasible that the prohibition for several years of Vygotsky’s work in his own country has to do with some of his concessions to the individual’s autonomy in relation to external and social contexts. In this vein, we might even think that, because of his frequent orientation to a heteronomous individual and to Marxist ideology, Vygotsky was not comfortable with the idea of an autonomous individual and Piaget’s theory, and that because of some of his concessions to the idea of autonomy (see above) Vygotsky had some problems with Marxist ideology (e.g., to have his work censured for several years in his own country).

Dear Orlando,

Your explain is very sufficient for me and other participant

Thank you very mech.