This book is an attempt to change our thinking about thinking. Anna Sfard undertakes this task convinced that many long-standing, seemingly irresolvable quandaries regarding human development originate in ambiguities of the existing discourses on thinking. Standing on the shoulders of Vygotsky and Wittgenstein, the author defines thinking as a form of communication. The disappearance of the time-honoured thinking-communicating dichotomy is epitomised by Sfard's term, commognition, which combines communication with cognition. The commognitive tenet implies that verbal communication with its distinctive property of recursive self-reference may be the primary source of humans' unique ability to accumulate the complexity of their action from one generation to another. The explanatory power of the commognitive framework and the manner in which it contributes to our understanding of human development is illustrated through commognitive analysis of mathematical discourse accompanied by
This book is an attempt to change our thinking about thinking. Anna Sfard undertakes this task convinced that many long-standing, seemingly irresolvable quandaries regarding human development originate in ambiguities of the existing discourses on thinking. Standing on the shoulders of Vygotsky and Wittgenstein, the author defines thinking as a form of communication. The disappearance of the time-honoured thinking-communicating dichotomy is epitomised by Sfard's term, commognition, which combines communication with cognition. The commognitive tenet implies that verbal communication with its distinctive property of recursive self-reference may be the primary source of humans' unique ability to accumulate the complexity of their action from one generation to another. The explanatory power of the commognitive framework and the manner in which it contributes to our understanding of human development is illustrated through commognitive analysis of mathematical discourse accompanied by
A Guide to Leadership and Management in Higher Education shares an innovative approach to supervision, leadership, and management in the higher education workplace. Drawing from humanism and positive
The authors of this volume claim that mathematics can be usefully re-conceptualized as a special form of communication. As a result, the familiar discussion of mental schemes, misconceptions, and cogn
Research for Educational Change presents ways in which educational research can fulfil its commitments to educational practice. Focussing its discussion within the context of mathematics education, it
This volume sets out ideas, developed by Paul Cobb and his colleagues, which have greatly influenced the field of mathematics education in the past three decades. This overview enables readers to trac
Our objective is to publish a book that lays out the theoretical constructs and research methodologies within mathematics education that have been developed by Paul Cobb and explains the process of th
