Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life

by Jean Lave

Overview

In this innovative study, Jean Lave moves the analysis of one particular form of cognitive activity—arithmetic problem-solving—out of the laboratory and into the domain of everyday life. In so doing, she shows how mathematics in the "real world", such as that entailed in grocery shopping or dieting, is, like all thinking, shaped by the dynamic encounter between the culturally-endowed mind and its total context, a subtle interaction that shapes both the human subject and the world within which it acts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521357340
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/29/1988
Series:	Learning in Doing
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.51(d)

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; 1. Introduction: psychology and anthropology I; Part I. Theory in Practice: 2. Missionaries and cannibals (indoors); 3. Life after school; 4. Psychology and anthropology II; Part II. Practice in Theory: 5. Inside the supermarket (outdoors) and from the veranda; 6. Out of trees of knowledge into fields for activity; 7. Through the supermarket; 8. Outdoors: a social anthropology of cognition in practice; Notes; References.

Editorial Reviews

"...a new, improved view of cognition.." Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

"Narrowly construed, Cognition in Practice is a study of the use of arithmetic outside of school. This research should be read by anyone interested in education. Jean Lave's aims are much broader, however. She is interested not just in one form of cognition or practice, but in the relations among cognition, practice, culture, and society generally. Her work is written for and deserves a wide audience of social scientists." Contemporary Sociology

From the Publisher