Jean Piaget
(1896-1980)

Lev Vygotsky 
(1896-1934)

Piaget was a Swiss psychologist credited for his  theory of cognitive development which suggests that children build their understanding of the world by actively exploring and engaging with their environment. Therefore, they play an active role in their own cognitive development. 

He introduced the concept of schemas. Schemas are conceptual frameworks used to organize and interpret incoming information. They develop from simple to complex as the child ages.

He describes this process of acquiring knowledge as adaptations (adjustments) to the world. Adaptations can happen by any one of four means: assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium, and disequilibrium. 

Piaget believed that children proceed through four universal stages of cognitive development, Each stage distinct and increasing in complexity from the one before it. (McLeod, 2024)

Connections to Teaching & Learning 

• Active learning is important for successful learning to take place. This is preferred to early models of rote learning and corporal punishment. 

• Keeping in mind the characteristics of each stage of cognitive development, prekindergarten and K-12 instructors  must design instruction that is appropriate to the cognitive abilities of their students. 

• Discovery learning involving concrete, hands-on, experiential activities, and the use of manipulatives in the classroom are important, especially for the youngest of learners. 

Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist credited for his sociocultural theory. He emphasized the importance of social interaction in cognitive development. One key concept of his theory is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Imagine learning occurring along a scale, where there is knowledge you can learn on your own and on the other end, knowledge beyond your reach. The ZPD is the area in between, where through your interactions with and support from more knowledgeable others (MKO), you can bridge the gap between actual and potential learning. (McLeod, 2024)

Connections to Teaching & Learning 

• Collaboration is important  for learning to take place. So allow for students to interact, problem-solve, and to build on knowledge together. 

• Instructors must present material that is just above a student's developmental level for learning to be meaningful and productive. This obviously points to the importance of knowing where a student is in the learning process.

• Allow for heterogenous groupings where more advanced peers can help their less advanced peers progress further. 

• There are several ways that instructors (as MKOs) can scaffold learning in students. Some examples are as follows:
  a) Engage and maintaining the student's interest,
  b) Keep student frustration levels under control by adapting the activity and making it more accessible.
  c) Demonstrating the task in a simple but clear way.

Jerome Bruner
(1915-2016)

Albert Bandura
(1925-2021)

Bruner was an American psychologist whose research on child cognitive development led him to propose that knowledge is represented and organized in three modes of representation or stages of thinking: enactive (action-based), iconic (image-based), and symbolic (language-based). Bruner's idea of learning readiness differs from Piaget in that he believed that a child was capable of learning any subject matter at any age if the material was organized and presented to them in an appropriate and accessible form and mode of representation. 

In his idea of spiral curriculum, Bruner explained how just like a spiral staircase, concepts are revisited by the child at every age, and each time acquiring further complexity and abstraction. Bruner believed that the aim of education is to create autonomous learners who problem-solve through actively organizing the information given them. Along with Wood and Ross, Bruner added onto Vygotsky's work regarding the zones of proximal development (ZPD) by introducing the term of scaffolding. Scaffolding describes how the more knowledgeable other (MKO) helps the learner progress through the ZPD (McLeod, 2024).

Connections to Teaching & Learning 

1. The teacher's role is to help students "learn how to learn": i.e., to know how to independently organize and construct knowledge from given material.
   Guided discovery learning is an instructional approach where the teacher acts as a facilitator in the above process. 

2. There are several ways that instructors (as MKOs) can scaffold learning in students. Some examples are as follows:
   a) Engage and maintaining the student's interest,
   b) Keep student frustration levels under control by adapting the activity and making it more accessible.
   c) Demonstrating the task in a simple but clear way, or modeling strategies that could assist the learner in simplifying the task for themselves. 

Bandura was a Canadian-American psychologist credited for his social learning theory (later on termed as the social cognitive theory).  His theory emphasizes the importance of observational learning, which states that individuals acquire knowledge, skills, behaviors, and beliefs through observing models. 

There are three primary models of observational learning: (1) Live models (i.e., an actual person), (2) verbal instruction models (i.e., listening to a description of the behavior), (3) symbolic models (i.e., learning through media/technology such as books, television, movies, and online media)  

Bandura further posited that a mediational process occurs after the learner observes the behavior.  The process determines whether the behavior will be imitated or not. He described the  four components involved: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Factors pertaining to any one of these components can increase or decrease the likelihood that a learner imitate an observed behavior. For instance, increased likelihood of behavior imitation will occur if the learner identifies with the model or sees similarities between the model and themselves. Observing the positive and negative consequences of another's behavior can also affect the likelihood of imitation (i.e., what is termed as vicarious reinforcement). Learners are more likely to imitate rewarded behaviors than punished behaviors. 

He also introduced the theory of self-efficacy, which is a learner's belief in his/her ability to accomplish a task. (McLeod, 2024)

Connections to Teaching & Learning 

1. Role models should be relatable and identifiable to the learner. 

2. Positive role models in education, are especially important in breaking the negative stereotypes faced by historically disadvantaged populations (such as women and people of color). 

3. Praising students for the effort they put into a project, more than praising their intelligence, increases self-efficacy. 

4. Learning about the challenges overcome by others in similar situations will help bolster the learner's own performance.

John Sweller
(1946-)

Richard Mayer
(1947-)

Sweller is an Australian educational psychologist credited for the Cognitive Load Theory. Building on Atkinson & Shiffrin's (1968) model of information processing theory and George Miller's research that the human brain is limited in how many chunks of information it can process at one time, Sweller's theory posits that long term memory acquisition happens best when the learner's working memory is not overly tasked. Therefore, instructional techniques must focus on reducing working load memory (Spencer, 2022; Soloman, H., n.d.).

Connections to Teaching & Learning 

Keep cognitive load of learners to a minimum during the learning process. Some ways include:

1. Provide clear instructions

2. Reduce redundant information

3. Allow for multi-modal presentation of material (i.e., visually, auditory, kinesthetically)

4. Present information in chunks that students can learn separately

5. Demonstrate problem solving

6. Allowing advanced students the option to skip over more elementary material.

Mayer is an American educational psychologist most known for his Cognitive Theory of Multi-media learning. He describes three assumptions that have applications in the world of e-learning (McGraw-Hill, Canada, 2019):

Connections to Teaching & Learning 

1. Limited-Capacity Assumption--People have limited capacity to process information, therefore use less pictures and words to bring the point across. 

2. Active-Processing Assumption--Learners actively engage with the material by constructing mental models that allow them to integrate new information with their existing knowledge. Mayer describes five such model structures: 

   • Process structure (i.e., a cause-and-effect chain)

   • Comparison structure (i.e., a matrix comparing multiple points between two or more items)

   • Generalization structure (i.e., a branching tree organizing main ideas and subordinate ideas)

   • Enumeration structure (i.e., a list of items of equal value) 

   • Classification structure (i.e., hierarchies) 

3. Dual-Channel Assumption--People have two separate channels to process auditory and visual information. It is best to keep text and visuals close to each other when presenting information.