Outline and Evaluate Practical Applications to Education

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Outline and Evaluate practical applications to education from Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory of Cognitive Development. Piaget believed that education should be an individual process. Whereas Vygotsky believed that learning is a social process that requires interaction with one or more people. Vygotsky has had high influence on the application of education in the real world. Another Psychologist researched into the 3 types of peer tutoring that Vygotsky put forward. Firstly, Reciprocal teaching. This is when each child takes responsibility for finding out particular information and teaching the rest of a group. It was found by Palinscar that student’s reading and comprehension improved 50% with reciprocal teaching. One negative of this is children may not learn from this method, it’s very dependent on group learning. Another peer interaction method is collaborative learning. This is when children work together in small groups, benefitting one another. Nichols found that children are more motivated working together than working alone. Furthermore, Forman concluded that a variety of methods are needed for concentration. The third peer interaction is Peer Tutoring. this is when more advanced learners teach material to less advanced individuals. Brainerd shows traditional learning is often more effective with student compared with individual learning. It has been found that peer tutoring is often best when the tutor is only slightly older than the student, as the material will be fresher in the tutors mind and the student will not feel so intimidated by their tutor. However, there are cultural differences, tutoring styles vary. In each of these strategies children or older learners provide scaffolding to one another and helps them through ZPD. Durkin stated scaffolding is better for some tasks such as practical compared to academic. Solomon suggested that too much
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