Book Review: Exploring Sfard's Commognitive Framework: A Review of Thinking as Communicating: Human Development, the Growth of Discourses, and Mathematizing

Abstract

Discourse as a medium of learning and instruction has gained tremendous ground among educational researchers and cognitive scientists. Yet earlier notions of cognition as computation have not been reconciled with views of knowing and learning as socially mediated processes. In Thinking as Communicating: Human Development, the Growth of Discourses, and Mathematizing, Anna Sfard asks us to re-imagine thinking as communication, with the hopes that this will resolve many of the current dilemmas facing research on thinking in general, and in mathematics education in particular. In doing so, she argues that we should move beyond the metaphor of learning as acquiring knowledge—for example, treating knowledge of something like counting as an object that is “held” by the mind and applied when needed—to conceptualizing learning as participating in discourse—for instance, participating in a discourse that engages in counting when asked “which box has more?” Sfard begins with five quandaries facing paradigms that treat learning metaphorically as acquisition—such as, if a child “possesses” counting, then why would he or she not count when asked “which box has more?” Sfard then provides a thorough yet accessible review of previous learning paradigms, and lands finally on a redefinition of thinking as internalized communication. To break out of older modes of talking about thinking, she coins the term commognition as a mix of cognition and communication. By the end of the book, the new perspective of commognition is offered as a way to avoid the quandaries facing paradigms that treat learning as acquisition.