Collective Agency and Objective/Normative Representations

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides a review and novel analysis of the literature of preschoolers’ shared cognition based on the principles of collective agency and objective/normative representations. As preschool youngsters are becoming ever more competent and independent as individual agents, they are at the same time becoming ever more dependent on the social group in which they live. To find their way in the group children must not only make many of their own decisions, but they must also conform to the way things are conventionally and normatively done in the group—such that they are able to collaborate and communicate effectively with all its members, including those they have never met before. Preschool youngsters are gradually coming to identify with a collective “we,” encompassing not just collaborative partners of the moment but everyone who identifies with “our” ways of doing things.