Jean Piaget Symposium Series: Volume 20
DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEXT
Acting and Thinking in Specific Environments
edited by
Robert H. Wozniak
Bryn Mawr College
Kurt W. Fischer
Harvard University
"The content of this volume has broad-based appeal both within psychology
and across disciplines."
—Child Development Abstracts & Bibliography
In this volume leading developmentalists address the question of how
children's thinking develops in context by drawing on the theories of
Vygotsky, Gibson, and Piaget. Analyses of the ecology and the dynamics
of behavior have become popular, emphasizing the particulars of people
acting in specific environments and the many complex factors of human
body and mind that contribute to action and thought. This volume brings
together many of the current efforts to deal with development in this
richly ecological, dynamic way. The research reported demonstrates that
recent years have produced major shifts in approach. Activities are studied
as they naturally occur in everyday contexts. Children's active construction
of the world around them is treated as fundamentally social in nature,
occurring in families, with peers, and in cultures. Behavior is studied
not as something disembodied but within a rich matrix of body, emotion,
belief, value, and physical world. Behavior is analyzed as changing dynamically,
not only over seconds and minutes, but over hours, days, and years.
Contents: R.H. Wozniak, K.W. Fischer, Development in Context:
An Introduction. Part I: Ecosystems, Affordances, Transactions,
and Skills: Theories of Person/Situation Interaction. U. Bronfenbrenner,
The Ecology of Cognitive Development: Research Models and Fugitive Findings.
E.S. Reed, The Intention to Use a Specific Affordance: A Conceptual
Framework for Psychology. R.H. Wozniak, Co-Constructive Metatheory
for Psychology: Implications for an Analysis of Families as Specific Social
Contexts for Development. K.W. Fischer, D.H. Bullock, E.J. Rotenberg,
P. Raya, The Dynamics of Competence: How Context Contributes Directly
to Skill. Part II: Context and the Acquisition of Sociocultural
Knowledge. B. Rogoff, Children's Guided Participation and Participatory
Appropriation in Sociocultural Activity. R.M. Downs, L.S. Liben,
Mediating the Environment: Communicating, Appropriating, and Developing
Graphic Representations of Place. N. Granott, Patterns of Interaction
in the Co-Construction of Knowledge: Separate Minds, Joint Effort, and
Weird Creatures. Part III: Social Systems as Specific Contexts
for Development. I.E. Sigel, E.T. Stinson, M-I. Kim, Socialization
of Cognition: The Distancing Model. D.H. Feldman, Cultural Organisms
in the Development of Great Potential: Referees, Termites, and the Aspen
Music Festival. Part IV: Commentaries. J.A. Meacham,
Where Is the Social Environment? A Commentary on Reed. W. Kessen,
Rumble or Revolution: A Commentary.
0-8058-0769-1 [cloth] / 1993 / 304pp. / $69.95
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