Piaget's Multicultural Development Theory

Piaget based his theory around cognitive development and states that the needs of the whole child must satisfied. He focuses on studies of mental processes which include how people perceive, think, learn and remember. He focused on the constructive perspective, in which, he sees learning as a construction (Dahl, 1996, P.2). Piaget saw children as little scientists and he stated that an active child requires knowledge through self-evaluation and they use what they have previously learnt to form new resources of knowledge (Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006, p. 174). Research has been completed around rational constructivism by Fei Xu and Tamar Kushnir (2013). They state that children learn from prior beliefs and knowledge which explains why infants learn so quickly. This is because learning is rational, inferential and statistical which supports Piagets theory of child development. …show more content…
He states that culture is central to how we learn (Forgarty, 1999).
Vygotsky created the independent zone in which he called the Zone of Actual Development (ZAD) which is where the individual can complete tasks independently. Whereas the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the idea that adults provide assistance to the students if they cannot complete the assigned task without any guidance (Palmer, 2001, p. 35). It appears that both theorists understand and consider that learning development takes place in stages. Both theorists believe that learning leads to the development of higher order thinking. These theories have been implemented in classrooms and have both led to increased student achievement (Black & Green,