Piaget or Vygotsky?

Today in class we were asked the question, "Of the two theorists of cognitive development discussed, Piaget and Vygotsky, which do you find to resonate more with your personal inclinations and preferences for teaching? Why?". I began thinking about this question and thinking about my previous experiences with teaching skating and about what kind of teach I want to be, and I feel as though I side more with Vygotsky's theory, though I still do incorporate Piaget too. I believe you need to have a balance of both theories, both these theorists were very intelligent people and they both know what they are talking about. I believe I can benefit my students the most if I incorporate both theories. With Piaget I believe that all people do have schema's where we store information for later use. His methods of assimilation and accommodation are very effective methods of getting new information into our schema's. Assimilation is relating new information to information you already possess, and accommodation is when we change our schema to make room for the new information. To me these two definitions make sense. The part of Piaget's theory that I am not too fond of is his stages of sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. These stages are too definite on their age groups; I believe that all children develop at different rates and putting an age to it seems to definite to me. When I look at Vygotsky's theory I can see myself adding some of his theory to my everyday classroom assignments and procedures. I also believe in developmental trajectory, children have to build on their knowledge in order to learn they have to take it step by step. When I am teaching my future students I am going to make sure I use apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is when the student is guided through learning by a teacher, coach or older peer. This seems very beneficial to me because I believe that in order to learn the student has to be taught by someone who is more knowledgeable than them. The teacher then can increase the difficulty of the students assignments to increase the students knowledge. This is known as scaffolding another of Vygotsky's theories. I will use this when I teach my future classes.