ABSTRACT
In this extract Mercer and Edwards draw upon the ideas of Bruner and Vygotsky to suggest a way forward in the primary classroom which draws upon cognitive psychology for a set of basic principles. They argue that teachers need to become much clearer about children’s interpretation and understanding of the expectations of the learning situation through the development of a set of shared meanings. Children need activities which are structured more carefully than ‘the discovery sandpit of the Piagetian classroom’. In the successful classroom, they suggest,
Talk between teachers and children helps build the scaffolding; children’s activity, even ‘discovery’, in the absence of such a communicative framework may, in cognitive terms, lead nowhere, (p. 167)
There are obvious similarities in this interpretation with the ideas expressed by Tamburrini (pp. 297-300) and Donaldson (pp. 306-11).
They go on to suggest that the study of cognitive development, especially as a result of the influence of Piaget, has emphasized how knowledge and thought are represented in the mind of the individual, a kind of decontextualized lone organism’ they suggest that the future emphasis should seek the essence of human thought in its cultural context, its communicability and our transactions with other people.
The process of education, as Vygotsky and Bruner have always recognized is at the heart of all that. (p. 165)
