Piaget, Vygotsky Constructivism

As a Steiner early childhood teacher considering computer use in primary education it is reassuring that we are starting our assignment by looking at Jean Piaget and Vygotsky. Both theorists share certain similarities with Rudolf Steiner’s view of child development.
Piaget realised that children were not miniature adults and that they go through four stages of development. The Rudolf Steiner curriculum is also based on fourc stages of development that shares real similarities with Piaget. Steiner pedagogy is based on the assumption that the child must be allowed to behave and to learn in ways appropriate to the child’s developmental stage. Learning can occur in Piagetian terms only when the inner structures mature. Then children can assimilate what the environment presents to them.
Piaget’s stage of preoperational representation (4-7 years) corresponds roughly to Steiner’s stage of imitation. Piaget’s stage of concrete operation covers a similar period to Steiner’s stage of imagination. Both theorists recognize that during the latter stage the child only gradually develops the capacity to acquire reversibility, conservation and the ability to reason about concrete matters.
Both Piaget and Steiner emphasise the importance of play in children’s learning. They both maintain that play enables children to develop their perceptual ability and intelligence and provides them with opportunity for socialization and experimentation with everyday reality.
Vygotsky was born the same year as Piaget however his cultural background was very different. He was guided by Marxist principles, particularly with respect to the influence of social history and culture on development. Vygostsky sociocultural theory of cognitive development focuses on how the culture of a social group, its shared beliefs, values, knowledge, skills and customs is transmitted to the next generation because children actively construct their knowledge through social interaction. Children “grow into the intellectual life of those around them”. (Vygotsky, 1978, p.88).
Through one’s experience in teaching, that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition as indicated by Vygotsky is visible daily as they learn together in social play with both their peers and adults. Steiner, using a different terminology for the “zone of proximal development”, also taught that the range of skills that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone. The adult guidance should be non intrusive. This structured intervention, referred to as scaffolding, allows the child to build on what they already know to reach a higher level of knowledge.
We take into consideration Howard Gardner’s theory of “Multiple Intelligences” which recognizes the various ways of learning are so varied that “no two people will think in exactly the same way”.
Each of the theorists studied here leads the educator toward the conclusion that the teacher’s role is, in von Glasersfeld’s words, that of “a midwife in the birth of understanding.”
New knowledge, such as an Einstein offered to the world, could not be taught by a teacher that failed to give the space for the student’s discovery. Today’s educator must guide the student along a technological path that due to its breadth they themselves cannot fully assimilate and therefore cannot predict what learning outcomes their students will create for themselves.
To be this guide we must strive to understand what this technology offers our students while at the same time retaining an ethical responsibility to truly serve the child’s needs through an understanding of their development. In the modern context it is too easy to let the technology guide us and possibly rush the younger child away from the physical play.