CULTIVATING SPACE   
Lauren Sexton      
How can the design of the classroom support
learning and improve the well-being of students?

I am a recent graduate of the Yale School of Architecture and have been investigating this question through the lense of neuroscience and design. My study has led to the production of a teacher's manual that offers information, research and strategies for creating enriched learning environments that support the well-being of students. I believe that educators should have easy access to this type of research in a digestible and engaging format and hope the manual I create empowers and inspires teachers to make the most of the resources they have, but also advocate for the importance of the classroom environment on student well-being and success. This spring, I am continuing the research and hope to develop the manual to a level that it can be published. I plan to update this site with weekly posts related to the current research discoveries and questions I am working on. If you are interested in getting in touch, viewing more of my work, or supporting the research by completing a teachers survey, please refer to the links below!


 
link to teacher survey

03 Educational Theorists II
02.05.25

How do educational theorists from the 20th century discuss the cognitive development of the child? What are the core values found in the work of Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, & Loris Malaguzzi, and do they address the role of the environment?

Lev Vygotsky
(1896-1934)
Jean Piaget 
(1896-1980)
Loris Malaguzzi
(1920-1994)

 Lev Vygotsky  was a psychologist that focused much of his research on the cognitive development of children. In his book, Mind in Society 01, Vygotsky discusses various developmental theories of the time that tend to separate concepts of learning from the independent development of children. Throughout his book, he explains his own theory that joins the two:

“Development in children never follows school learning the way a shadow follows the object that casts it. In actuality, there are highly complex dynamic relations between developmental and learning processes that cannot be encompassed by an unchanging hypothetical formulation.” 01

Vygotsky’s theory relies on his concept of ZPD, the zone of proximal development. ZPD refers to the space between what a child can learn independently and what they can learn through a teacher’s guidance or collaboration with others. Vygotsky argues that this zone is where optimal development occurs.



Vygotsky 9
I actually found a lot of similarities between the way Vygotsky advocates for the education of young children and the way Maria Montessori or John Dewey acknowledge that the experience of young children is foundational to their development. All three believe that experiences in a child’s life begin building their knowledge and humanity at the earliest age. You can read more about their theories in the previous posts, Early Educational Theorists. I’ll end the Vygotsky section with another quote from his book that sums this up:

“Any learning a child encounters in school has a previous history. For example, children begin to study arithmetic in school, but long beforehand they have had some experience with quantity… but even when, in the period of her first questions, a child assimilates the names of objects in her environment, she is learning.” 01

Jean Piaget  © Bill Anderson 10
 Jean Piaget  spent his life researching child psychology and development. Although he worked at the same time as Lev Vygotsky, their theories were very different. While Vygotsky believed that interaction with others played a crucial role in the development of a child, Piaget argued that a child could develop independently. 

In one of his many published books, Origins of Intelligence in Children02, Piaget supports his theory by including a series of observations he made while watching children of different ages interact with their environment. It is clear in his constant use of words and phrases like “impulse” or “primitive behavior patterns” that Piaget believes children have an innate ability to develop through individual exploration and discovery. If described in Vygotsky’s terms, I think Piaget believed that development is independent of learning and social interaction.

Although Piaget mentions the importance of children interacting with their environment to aid in cognitive development, he doesn’t describe qualities of an ideal environment like Maria Montessori did in support of her method. While I see some similarities to Piaget and Montessori’s approach and am certain Piaget’s theories have been influential to child development research, I don’t feel that it is as relevant to my research on the impact of the classroom environment. However, Loris Malaguzzi offers a lot of thought on the subject!

 Loris Malaguzzi  was an educator and philosopher who helped develop the Reggio Emilia approach, named after the Italian city of Reggio Emilia. The first municipal preschool in Reggio Emilia opened in 1963, operating under Malaguzzi’s direction, where his approach was developed with the city, educators, and parents. The Reggio Emilia approach acknowledges children’s various ways of learning and thus prioritizes student-led activities and collaboration. Malaguzzi often referred to the environment as the third teacher and believed that relationships between peers and the environment were crucial to development. I would strongly encourage reading Malaguzzi’s poem, 100 Languages, which beautifully describes his beliefs. More of his writings and speeches were translated to english and further reveal his approach. I was particularly drawn to this one:


Loris Malaguzzi (1990) 11
“At two months old they smile. This smile is conditioned by a choice and is dedicated to the mother’s breast. This first act of intelligence is permeated with affect, emotion guides the choice and stimulates the movement. In early psychological manifestations of emotion, intelligence and movement are in close symbiosis. However this does not happen, and will not happen later, on the moon. Physical and social environments, mothers, fathers, relationships established, how they are formed and then consolidated, all play a decisive role.” 03


Reggio Emilia early learning centre 12
Although Maria Montessori was one of the first educational theorists to speculate the impact of the environment on a child’s developing brain, Malaguzzi worked during a period of very relevant neuroscientific discovery that affected his approach. In the mid-1900s, neuroscience proved that children’s brains are most receptive in the first 5 years of their life and enriched environments have a significant effect on children’s ability to absorb information. Montessori was just ahead of her time. On this topic, Malaguzzi is quoted in 1988 saying:

“Well, if this elasticity exists above all at the very start of life, at about four, five, six and seven years old; if this flexibility is there and if this possibility of environmental stimulus is genuinely capable of becoming inscribed in the quantity and quality of connections – in synapses on a cerebral level, the most significant parts, which will have a primary role in the different behaviours we will have – if all this is true, then we must make haste and work, and not wait for children to reach a certain stage before we begin.” 03

In concluding this series on educational theorists, it is clear that there is a lot of debate on how children develop and the role of education in their development. Can children develop without the aid of a teacher or a prepared environment, do they need an educational setting to develop, or should learning and development be considered separately at all? In these discussions, the role of socialization and the classroom environment become important themes - especially in the work of Maria Montessori and Loris Malaguzzi who I feel have the most evidence in support of their positive effect. As I move forward to next week where I will be looking at the current conditions of the U.S. public education system, I plan to keep these more theoretical and philosophical debates in mind to compare with the realistic barriers teachers are facing in the classrom. 
image and reference links

  1. Vygotsky, L.S., et al. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press, 1978
  2. Piaget, Jean. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. New York :International Universities Press, 1952
  3. Malaguzzi, Loris. Loris Malaguzzi and the Schools of Reggio Emilia: A Selection of His Writings and Speeches, 1945-1993. Taylor & Francis, 2016
  4. https://www.tetonscience.org/building-a-reggio-emilia-classroom-a-teachers-perspective/
  5. https://images.app.goo.gl/4dKgCyX15pFZn4Tf8
  6. https://images.app.goo.gl/J2Gx2YXxAkTXDkjB9
  7. https://images.app.goo.gl/hPV9dAK6rsPYdrvD9
  8. https://images.app.goo.gl/sThu9hyp2RKoB66i6
  9. https://isreview.org/issue/93/vygotskys-revolutionary-theory-psychological-development/index.html
  10. https://prints.sciencesource.com/featured/jean-piaget-bill-anderson.html
  11. https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/
  12. https://reggioemilia.com.au/blog/the-reggio-emilia-approach-how-is-it-different/



YSOA SP25 Independent Study