The study of cognitive development in children has moved from a focus on the intellectual processes of the individual studied in relative isolation, as in the classic work of Jean Piaget, to a concern in the 1970s and 1980s with social cognition characterized by Vygotsky's views. In even more recent years, the trend toward an understanding of the situated nature of cognition has evolved even further and the extent to which thinking and knowing are inextricably linked to contextual constraints is at last being defined. Experts of international repute, the authors of this important book examine the recent literature on situated cognition in children. They explain contextual sensitivity in relation to ecological theories of cognition, and contrast intuitive reasoning in mathematical and other scientific domains with the failure of such reasoning in formal school contexts. Centrally concerned with the question of generalizability and transfer of knowledge from one situation to another, the contributors point to practical implications for understanding how intellectual competence can be made to generalize between "informal" and "formal" situations.

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Product Description: Hardbound. Human learning, reasoning and thinking, and the different sites in which these activities take place, are the focus of this book. It presents the results of research into the nature of learning and the influence of different contexts and factors within the context of learning, the constraints that contexts place on reasoning and learning, and the nature of learning when using the tools and artefacts...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Analyses the shift in thinking from seeing the child as a solitary thinker to one in which learning is seen as being embedded in social relationships. This can come through close cultural understandings with parents and teachers.

Product Description: The final reader in the "Child Development in Social Context" series shows how the study of child development is inevitably bound up in more ephemeral cultural ideas about the nature and needs of children and in the educational practices that rise from these ideas...read more

Product Description: First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: This first volume of readings for the "Child Development in Social Context" series concentrates on the development of infants. While not neglecting the discoveries of laboratory research in recent years, it emphasizes the growing concern of the discipline with naturalistic observations of everyday life, and shows how analysis of these can enrich our understanding of the relation between the behaviour of the caregiver and the emerging competencies of the child...read more

Product Description: Researchers in child development often study children in isolation--apart from the environmental influences that shape, nurture, or harm them. In Children of Social Worlds, leading social scientists show how much is lost by this approach...read more

Describes the recent Social Security crisis, explains how leaders in Washington moved outside normal channels in order to solve it, and examines the dangerous problems Medicare faces in the future