Piaget's Theory and the Understanding of Reality

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Construction of reality
Over the years, contentious debates have surfaced on the idea of reality. As such, different models have been developed to explain how human beings grow and achieve real knowledge of the world. For example, the rationalist group has emphasized the powers of mind and the ideologies of the right reason. In contrast, empiricists have looked into the interaction of mind with the external world (Bruner, 2). For instance, Piaget argued that cognitive development is a process connected to the biological growth of a man as well as the interaction with the environment while Vygotsky has looked into cultural aspects. Although different elements inform these models, research shows that reality is different for each individual.
In his study, Jerome Burner argues that humans understand reality by mediation and cultural products such as language and symbolic systems. Further, he describes that an individual working intelligence depends on the environment he interacts with and can be best understood by taking into account his reference materials such as books, notes and computer programs, friends and mentors whom one leans for help and advice (Bruner, 4). As such, he focuses on the idea of narrative as one of the cultural products that explain cognitive development. He describes how humans organize their experience and memory through descriptions such as excuses, stories, and myths (Bruner, 4). Besides, he explains how man creates and constructs knowledge through stories they narrate about lived experiences and the meaning they create in them.
Research shows that human mental development has been significantly influenced by majoritarian rationalism and empiricism, especially the work of Piaget (Bruner, 2). In reality, Piaget's work has received the most considerable attention among sociologists and psychologists. In this respect, Piaget's theory has been considered to be pivotal in expressing classic rationalism (Bruner, 2). As such, Piaget's theory has described assimilation of actual knowledge as a series of invariant developmental stages, with each step comprising essential rational procedures that continually and inevitably help a human construct a mental model of the social world (Bruner, 3). Piaget differs from the notion that intelligence is a fixed trait but instead points out that it to be a process that occurs as people grow and interact more with the environment.
Piaget's theory emphasizes the nature of knowledge, and the ability of man to gain, hypothesize and apply it. He describes the acquisition of knowledge to be a progressive restructuring of mental processes informed by biological growth and experience from the surroundings (Huitt & John, 3). As such, children develop a better understanding of the world by reconciling previous and new skills. For instance, as a child shifts from teenage to adulthood, he adjusts to the new life of an adult and discards the adolescent experience. Therefore, to ...