Activity Settings, Discourse Modes and Ways of Understanding: On the Heterogeneity of Verbal Thinking

Abstract

Various authors in the tradition of cultural psychology have analysed the idea of the existence of different ways of thinking. Several classifications about ways of thinking have been proposed, all of them referring to similar ideas. Bruner distinguishes between narrative and propositional thinking, while Scribner distinguish between theoretical and empirical or functional argumentation. Vygotsky also assumed the existence of different ways of thinking. Once the cognitive plurality and the existence of different ways of thinking has been accepted, we are left with two questions: what changes in the different ways of thinking, and why does it change? With regard to the first question, we must consider the differences in the means employed to mediate mental processes. As for the second issue, we refer to the activity settings and practices in which individuals participate. The empirical analysis is applied in the context of adult education. Individuals in the sample belong to two different levels of adult education: basic literacy and advanced literacy levels. Two different tasks are proposed: the first consists of preparing menus and the second is a classification task. Results related to the different ways of solving these tasks show a plurality of ways of thinking in individuals in the advanced group. Our data show how school experience allows the development of new ways of thinking and the adjustment of mental functioning to task demands. Heterogeneity of verbal thinking is here interpreted and discussed as a heterogeneity despite genetic hierarchy, instead of a non-genetic one or as a hierarchy of power. From this, it appears that development is not the replacement of one mode of discourse-thinking by another, but the differentiation and co-existence of different ways of thinking connected to different practices.