ABSTRACT
Broadly speaking, the field of developmental psychology has been dominated by two schools of thought: one, the cognitivists, have emphasized the role of cognition and knowledge construction, while the other, the cultural psychologists, have emphasized the role of culture and mediation. Recently, there has been a movement to bridge these different theoretical perspectives by assigning equal importance to individual cognition and to culture. In the following chapter, I will briefly outline these different theoretical approaches and then review research on children’s literacy acquisition and metalinguistic awareness. The research, I argue, provides evidence for the way in which knowledge is constructed and culture mediates: It supports an approach to cognitive development in which the child is characterized as an active constructor of knowledge who is, at the same time, embedded in a culture that transforms her development.
