ABSTRACT
The view that cognition is inherently situated—linked to the cultural practices in which individuals function—is common to recent sociocultural treatments of cognition (e.g., Cole, 1990; Greeno, 1991; Hutchins, 1991; Lave, 1991; Wertsch, 1991). From the sociocultural perspective, cognition—whether the mathematics of candy sellers in urban Brazil (Saxe, 1988, 1991), the blueprint/scale knowledge of construction foremen (Carraher, Schliemann, & Carraher, 1988), or the engineering knowledge of electrical technicians (Janvier, Baril, & Mary, 1993)—takes form in relation to a range of social and cultural processes, including the particular artifacts and tools that are valued in practices, power and role relations that emerge and become institutionalized in practices, and social interactions with others. From the sociocultural perspective, knowledge as manifested in practices is culturally mediated and socially shared (Cole, 1991).
