The voice of rationality in a sociocultural approach to mind

Abstract

Over the past decade there has been a growing tendency among cognitive, developmental, and educational psychologists to view human mental functioning in terms of an aggregate of skills or an aggregate of contextually situated processes. This contrasts with the dominant tendency toward viewing mental functioning as some kind of unified entity, a tendency clearly manifested in notions of general intelligence or in the metaphor of a central processor. Some of the impetus for this change has come from new theoretical orientations such as Leont'ev's (1981) ideas about activity (e.g., LCHC, 1983), but it also stems from a host of other factors such as a general dissatisfaction with standard measures of intelligence (e.g., Gardner, 1983).