Thinking as communicating : human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing / Anna Sfard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sfard, Anna, author.

Series:

Learning in doing.

Learning in doing : social, cognitive and computational perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics--Language.

Mathematics.

Thought and thinking.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiii, 324 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Puzzling about (mathematical) thinking

Objectification

Commognition : thinking as communicating

Thinking in language

Mathematics as a form of communication

Objects of mathematical discourse : what mathematizing is all about

Routines : how we mathematize

Explorations, deeds, and rituals : what we mathematize for

Looking back and ahead : solving old quandaries and facing new ones.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-317) and indexes.

ISBN:

1-107-17911-4

1-281-24340-X

9786611243401

0-511-37797-5

0-511-37707-X

0-511-37613-8

0-511-37462-3

0-511-49994-9

0-511-37886-6

OCLC:

437197086