ABSTRACT
It is this chapter, perhaps more than any other in the book, which demonstrates the interrelationship of thinking and understanding to all aspects of children’s experience. Children’s thinking and understanding occurs in, and is conditioned by, the social and cultural contexts in which it takes place. Those contexts embody particular constructs of childhood and what are seen as appropriate ways of inducting children into a culture and ‘bringing them up’. In addition, the ways in which children see themselves as thinkers and learners is dependent upon their self-image, self-esteem and view of themselves as part of their surrounding social world. It is a reciprocal process in which the socio-affective domain impacts upon children’s cognitive development and vice versa. Meadows suggests that there is ‘good reason to believe that the social and interpersonal context is particularly important in the development of complex cognitive skills’ (1993:367). The importance of this area is reflected in the emphasis placed upon it in policy documents, for example, DfEE (2000), Ministry of Education New Zealand (1996) and practitioner-focused books such as Dowling (2000) and Roberts (2002). Dunn (1993) outlines the growth of interest in this area:
Cognitive development was formerly conceptualized chiefly in terms of an individual actively exploring and acting on his or her environment in an autonomous fashion. Now, however, the social interactions and relationships within which children grow up are widely accepted as important in their cognitive development, both in fundamental cognitive advances and influencing cognitive performance.
