FORMS OF DISCOURSE AND SHARED THINKING

The need to reexamine cognitive and constructivist approaches to devel opment and learning, while taking social and cultural factors into acc ount, is now widely recognized. Different research fields-represented by studies on language and social development, reasoning, thinking, an d cultural development-converge, inasmuch as they am oriented toward a nalyzing and understanding how interactional settings and pragmatic pa tterns of speech affect forms of arguing, thinking, and learning, thro ugh the mediation of various cultural tools. Mediation tools include t he semiotic systems pertaining to different languages and domains in w hich diverse practices of discourse and reasoning have to be negotiate d. In this Vygotskian-enriched view, the individual functioning of the mind is part of a larger social functioning that is situated in a cul tural environment, dermed by the active presence of others, and distri buted among the participants and among the technological devices they use. Giving acknowledgment to the deeply social nature of individual f unctioning involves questioning classical methodologies of cognitive, developmental, and social psychology. This issue offers different meth odological choices and different settings for studying human activity and discourse that help to enrich our present view of how development and learning are affected by social interaction.