Piaget's development theory holds that learning should be subordinate to children's development level, otherwise it is difficult for children to assimilate new knowledge and achieve teaching purposes. If educators do not follow the law of children's development, blindly pursue the transmission of value and knowledge and try to accelerate children's development, it will inevitably make it difficult for children to build their proper cognitive structure, cause learning difficulties and stifle their creativity. Vygotsky believes that "teaching should be ahead of development", and teaching in a broad sense is the source of children's development. He believes that there are two levels of children's development, one is the current actual development level, and the other is the possible development level, that is, the "nearest development area". The value of teaching lies in promoting children's transition from the current level to the nearest development zone. After the success of teaching, the original zone of proximal development has become a new level of existence for children, and the new level of existence has its zone of proximal development. At this time, teaching plays a role again, and the development level of children is constantly improving. Therefore, only when teaching is ahead of children's current level can children's development be promoted in the nearest development area.
The two views seem to be tit for tat, but after careful analysis, it is found that there are many similarities. Because from the starting point, both of them think that teaching should start from the actual psychological development level of children. The reason why their conclusions are quite different is that they have different understandings of the level of psychological development. Vygotsky's psychological development level includes children's current level and recent development area, and Piaget's subjective development level refers to a stage in which children live. Since the existing level generally refers to reaching the level recognized by certain standards, it should be a point in the whole development process, and the nearest development zone is the highest threshold from this point to possible development. Of course, the stage of the development level of Yingyajie discipline includes the ability that children have achieved at this stage and the ability that children have not achieved at this stage. Therefore, the "development" in Piaget's "teaching should obey development" is not the existing development level in development as Vygotsky said, but the development stage that intersects with the existing development level and the recent development area. Although Piaget's criteria for dividing stages are different from Vygotsky's criteria for establishing the nearest development zone, their understanding of the relationship between teaching and development is essentially the same, but their expressions are different. Piaget explained: "For example, only when children are close to the level of operation, that is, they can understand the quantitative relationship, can they reach the concept of conservation in turn in learning." Children's development is close to the operational level, doesn't it mean that the operational level is the closest development area for children's existing level?
Since there is no essential difference between the two viewpoints and Vygotsky's statement is clear, we can draw a conclusion about the relationship between teaching and development: good teaching should be ahead of children's current development level and within the recent development zone.
The relationship between teaching and development in preschool education is also discussed. "Teaching and development don't meet for the first time at school age, but in fact, they are interrelated from the first day of a child's birth." The teaching here is not the teaching of various subjects in a narrow sense, but in a broad sense, including all activities of children consciously acquiring knowledge in the social environment. Therefore, the teaching of preschool education should also be ahead of children's current development level and in the nearest development area.
The teaching of preschool education is divided into two stages. The first stage is the education of children aged 0 ~ 3, with self-teaching as the main part. At this time, the teaching task is mainly to provide children with rich environmental stimuli, so that children can have as much demand for knowledge and skills as possible in contact with the surrounding environment, thus providing conditions for children to further acquire knowledge and skills. The second stage is 3-6 years old preschool education, which is between spontaneous teaching and reactive teaching. The teaching task at this time is mainly to promote children to change from "learning according to their own syllabus" to "learning according to the teacher's syllabus". The former is the current level, and the latter is the recently developed area. The main purpose of teaching is to gradually guide children's interests to meet the requirements of society (that is, curriculum content).