Thinking as Communicating
Human Development, the Growth of Discourses, and Mathematizing

This book looks to change our thinking about thinking by looking at communication and cognition, or commognition.

Anna Sfard (Author)

9780521161541, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 February 2010

352 pages, 21 b/w illus. 12 tables
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'Sfard has provided us with one of the most impressive, unified, homogenous theories of learning …' Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning

This book is an attempt to change our thinking about thinking. Anna Sfard undertakes this task convinced that many long-standing, seemingly irresolvable quandaries regarding human development originate in ambiguities of the existing discourses on thinking. Standing on the shoulders of Vygotsky and Wittgenstein, the author defines thinking as a form of communication. The disappearance of the time-honoured thinking-communicating dichotomy is epitomised by Sfard's term, commognition, which combines communication with cognition. The commognitive tenet implies that verbal communication with its distinctive property of recursive self-reference may be the primary source of humans' unique ability to accumulate the complexity of their action from one generation to another. The explanatory power of the commognitive framework and the manner in which it contributes to our understanding of human development is illustrated through commognitive analysis of mathematical discourse accompanied by vignettes from mathematics classrooms.

Introduction
Part I. Discourse on Thinking: 1. Puzzling about (mathematical) thinking
2. Objectification
3. Commognition: thinking as communicating
4. Thinking in language
Part II. Mathematics as Discourse: 5. Mathematics as a form of communication
6. Objects of mathematical discourse: what mathematizing is all about
7. Routines: how we mathematize
8. Explorations, deeds, and rituals: what we mathematize for
9. Looking back and ahead: solving old quandaries and facing new ones.

Subject Areas: Educational psychology [JNC], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR]