Abstract
In 1990, we were asked by the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO1 to organize a conference on situated cognition and technologies of learning. In planning the conference, held in Lucca, Italy, in November, 1993, and in recruiting participants, we sought to bring together people from several scholarly disciplines, some of whom might not yet have known each other’s work. We needed to explain to them-and, by extension, to the several scholarly communities of which they were members-what we had in mind and why we thought the effort was worthwhile. The terms in which we did so were these:
Recent theories of situated cognition are questioning the view that cognition can be understood independently of the social, organizational, and material context in which it is practiced. Sharing with Soviet-origin activity theory an antifunctionalist point of view in which intentionality and affect are viewed as components of activity, Western European and North American theories of situated cognition challenge the dominant view in cognitive science that assumes a cognitive core can be found that is independent of context and intention. Instead, these theorists argue, every cognitive act must be viewed as a specific response to a specific set of circumstances, and only by taking into account the participants’ construal of the situation can a valid interpretation of the cognitive activity be made.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1991). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. (Ed. by M. Holquist, Trans, by C. Emerson & M. Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Billig, M. (1987). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cole, M. (1985) The zone of proximal development: Where culture and cognition create each other. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 146–161). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper and Row.
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Greenfield, P. (1984). A theory of the teacher in the learning activities of everyday life. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds.), Everyday cognition (pp. 117–138). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hill, J., & Irvine, J. (Eds.). (1993). Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Jacoby, S., & Ochs, E. (1995). Co-construction: An introduction. Research on language and social interaction, 28(3), 171–183.
John-Steiner, V. (1995). Cognitive pluralism: A sociocultural approach. Mind, Culture and Activity, 2(1), 2–11.
Keller, C., & Keller, J. D. (1993). Thinking and acting with iron. In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 125 – 143). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 63–82). Washington DC: American Psychological Association.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Middleton, D., & Edwards, D. (1990). Collective remembering. London: Sage.
Nunes, T., Schliemann, A. D., & Carraher, D. W. (1993). Street mathematics and school mathematics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ochs, E. (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: 1Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 276–320). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Perriault, J. (1989). La logique de l’usage. Essai sur les machines à communiquer [The logic of use. An essay on communication machinery]. Paris: Flammarion.
Pontecorvo, C., Cesareni, D., & Romanelli, P. (1995). Apprendere esplorando [Learning by exploring]. In M. A. Garito (a cura di), Multimedia and distance learning for science and technology (pp. 217–237). Roma: Garamond.
Resnick, L. B. (1994). Situated rationalism: Biological and social preparation for learning. In L. Hirschfield & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 474–493). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Resnick, L. B., Salmon, M. H., Zeitz, C. M., Wathen, S. H., & Holowchak, M. (1993). Reasoning in conversation. Cognition and Instruction, 11, 347–364.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Vols. 1 & 2. (Edited by G. Jefferson.) Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Scribner, S. (1984). Studying working intelligence. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds.), Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Simon, H. A. (1990). The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Originally published in 1934.)
Vygotsky , L. (1987). Thinking and speech. (N. Minick, Trans.). New York: Plenum. (Originally published in 1934)
Vygotsky, L. (1990). Myslenie I rec’. Psichologiceskie issledovanija. [Pensiero e linguaggio Thought and language.] Bari, Italy: Laterza. (New Italian critical edition by L. Mecacci, based on the first Russian edition; originally published in 1934.)
Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1991a). A sociocultural approach to socially shared cognition. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 85–100). Washington DC: American Psychological Association.
Wertsch, J. V. (1991b). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
White, B. (1993). ThinkerTools: Causal models, conceptual change, and science education. Cognition and Instruction, 10, 1–100.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Resnick, L.B., Pontecorvo, C., Säljö, R. (1997). Discourse, Tools, and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition. In: Resnick, L.B., Säljö, R., Pontecorvo, C., Burge, B. (eds) Discourse, Tools and Reasoning. NATO ASI Series, vol 160. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03362-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03362-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-08337-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-03362-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive