ABSTRACT
Discursive Psychology uses conversation analysis and as such shares a primary interest in the production and organisation of social action. Edwards's paper makes multiple contributions, on the level of topic, methodology, and theory. Edwards outlines an alternative conception of cognition and talk, with implications for studies of children's development, learning and education, social interaction, and social and cultural worlds. This chapter shows how Edwards's approach to children's talk as social action can be used to explore the production and use of understanding in interactions between peers in a classroom, and in play between a young child and her mother at home. Edwards sets out a critique of the psychological focus on cognition, and the status of children's talk within developmental psychology. Children's cognitions are social accomplishments, done in, as part of, the messiness of everyday life interaction. In discourse analysis and conceptual content in children's talk, Edwards presents an empirical, theoretical and methodological recasting of the preoccupation within developmental psychology.
