THE PLACE OF COGNITION IN EXPLANATIONS OF TEACHING - A DIALOG OF INTERPRETIVE AND COGNITIVE APPROACHES

This debate contrasts interpretive and cognitive approaches to explain ing teachers' thoughts and actions, exploring epistemological and onto logical assumptions that broadly underlie research on teaching. Fundam ental to the discussion is whether cognition should be construed as in dividual mental processing of privately held information structures or as a social event in which thinking is situated, shared, intersubject ive, and practical. Also addressed is whether an effective explanation of teaching can rest mainly on an account of a teacher's cognition or whether it must attend equally to an examination of the place in whic h the teaching occurs and, if the latter, how place exerts its influen ce.