Reconstructing educational psychology: Situated cognition and Deweyian pragmatism

Abstract

The symbol-processing approach to cognition has been the dominant one in both psychology and education. It has only recently been challenged by those advocating a situated approach based on the everyday practices of "just plain folk." This article attempts to clarify this debate by considering the assumptions of each approach with respect to presumed relations between language and reality, mind and body, and individual and society. It also attempts to place the whole debate in context by relating the current situation in which it occurs to the analogous situation faced by Dewey at the beginning of the century. It concludes with some implications for the desirable relation between formal theory and everyday practice.