A Child’s view on Sunscreen

Hi Everyone!

As some of you may know I am a full time online student. With that being said,  it is my overall goal to become a counselor for children and families. Currently I hold my roles. I am a student, mother and caseworker for my community. The last year or so I have been MIA in with my blog. I am hoping to change this. I love to write and document my life. So I am thinking what better way to share some of my learning journey with all of you. After all, it may just help some and teach me some things in the process. So feel free to comment and share your thoughts and views.

            To start, this week I learned both Piaget and Vygotsky were intelligent developmental theorist. In fact, Stantrock (2018) describes Piaget as a genius when it came to observing children. While on the other hand, “Vygotsky’s theory has been embraced by many teachers and has been successfully applied to education” (Clara, 2017; Gauvain & Perez, 2015). Although Piaget and Vygotsky have differences in each of their theories, they also have similarities. Overall, each theorist share intriguing information based children’s cognitive developmental factors.

            Piaget and Vygotsky have notable different views on education and a child’s development.  Piaget believes children develop knowledge by transforming, organizing, and reorganizing previous knowledge (Stantrock, 2018, p.203). For example, my five year old son easily sun burns. With that being said, when he starts to feel as if he’s getting warm in the sun he will notify me that he needs more sunscreen applied. Piaget would suggest my son has felt hot before which ultimately resulted in a sun burn and has taught him to associate the feeling of heat on his skin to sunscreen, to prevent the pain he suffered from the sun burn. Whereas, Vygotsky theorizes children conduct knowledge primary through social communication (Stantrock, 2018, p.203). With that being said, Vygotsky would associate my child’s urge to apply sunscreen to come from previous guidance and communication by applying sunscreen on him after I ask if he’s feeling hot while outside.

            Lastly I would like to point out although Piaget and Vygotsky share many differences, one similarity stands out most for me. According to Stantrock (2018)  “In both Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories, teachers serve as a facilitators and guides, rather than as directors and molders of learning” (p.202). In other words, they both agree teachers are viewed as an opportunity of guidance. For example, both theorist would believe it beneficial to explain to my young son the reasoning behind applying sunscreen. Ultimately, this will provide the knowledge and consequences of not applying sunscreen to his skin. What theorist do you guys believe to be most accurate?

  Thanks for reading! I hope you all have a great weekend!

-Britt

References

Stantrock, W. J. (2018). A topical approach to life-span development (9^th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Clara, M. (2017) How instruction influences conceptual development: Vygotsky’s theory revisited.Educational Psychologist, 52, 50-62.

Gauvain, M., & Perez, S. (2015) Cognitive development in the context of culture. In R.M. Lerner (ED.),Handbook of child psychology and developmental science (7^th ed.). New York: Wiley.