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16 - Dialogue for Reasoning: Promoting Exploratory Talk and Problem Solving in the Primary Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2009

Sylvia Rojas-Drummond
Affiliation:
Faculty of Psychology Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
Laura Gómez
Affiliation:
Faculty of Psychology Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
Maricela Vélez
Affiliation:
National Pedagogical University, Tlalpan, Mexico
Bert van Oers
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Wim Wardekker
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Ed Elbers
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
René van der Veer
Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we present a study based on previous investigations carried out through a nine-year collaboration between the Open University, in the United Kingdom, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In this endeavour, we seek to understand as well as to promote diverse cognitive, discursive, and cultural processes involved in the social construction of knowledge in Mexican and British primary school children. The data reported here address the development and promotion of a particularly effective type of talk, called “exploratory talk,” as a discursive tool to facilitate social and individual reasoning in Mexican children.

Our research follows a sociocultural perspective, whose fundamentals are rooted on the seminal ideas of Lev S. Vygotsky (e.g., 1962, 1978), and which have given rise to several and varied developments that can be included in this approach, in spite of their heterogeneity (e.g., Brown and Reeve, 1987; Cole, 1985, 1996; Coll, 1990; Coll, Palacios, & Marchesi, 2001; Elbers et al., 1992; Lave, 1991; Light & Butterworth, 1992; Mercer, 1995, 2000; Newman, Griffin, & Coll, 1989; Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch, 1985a, 1985b, 1991). This perspective has produced a great number of theoretical and methodological contributions, including particularly fruitful applications to understanding development and learning, as well as promoting social and educational processes.

The sociocultural perspective assumes that cognition and other psychological phenomena are situated in and take their meaning from the social and cultural practices in which individuals participate.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Transformation of Learning
Advances in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
, pp. 319 - 341
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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