G B Saxe
Biographic Data
| ID | 9329 |
|---|---|
| NAME | G B Saxe |
| GIVEN NAMES | G B |
| FAMILY NAME | Saxe |
| SIGNATURE | SAXE G B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7605-7463 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Embodiment in Human Activity
For over a century, research on mind, body, and culture has proceeded along largely independent trajectories. Traditional cognitive psychology isolated cognitive processes within tightly controlled laboratory paradigms, while cultural anthropologists documented rich cultural practices without capturing participants’ moment-by-moment cognitive processes. Developmental psychologists, meanwhile, often oscillated between cross-sectional studies and l…
Introduction to Methodological Frameworks
The Sociogenesis of Representations and Ideas
Relationships between individual development and historical change are understudied, and yet an understanding of these relationships is foundational to understanding human development. The chapter provides a case study model for investigating individual-historical relations that coordinates archival, ethnographic, interview, and experimental methods. The methodological approach is illustrated in studies on numerical cognition conducted in Papua N…
Mathematics Learning in Language Inclusive Classrooms
National and state assessments show that English language learners (ELs) in elementary and secondary grades score lower in mathematics compared with their matched English proficient peers (EPs). To provide information on strategies for enhancing learning opportunities for ELs in language inclusive classrooms, we analyze the efficacy of Learning Mathematics Through Representations (LMR), a curriculum unit on integers and fractions designed to supp…
Analyzing the Evolution of a Digital Technology Intervention
This article offers an ethnographic account of the evolution of a One Laptop per Child intervention program in Oksapmin communities (Papua New Guinea). The analysis examines the intervention's evolution as historically contingent, revealing how interdependent actions of multiple stakeholders create and partially resolve perceived threats to the program's continuation under changing circumstances. The approach contrasts with those that explain the…
Contents Vol. 60, 2017
Conceptual change
My approach to understanding concepts and conceptual change focuses on forms of representation, like a number system, and the shifting functions to which individuals use those forms in collective practices of daily life. I pose questions about the micro-, socio-, and ontogenesis of form-function relations, the regulative processes that constrain and enable their developments, as well as the interaction between them. I illustrate the approach thro…
Studying Cognition through Time in a Classroom Community
This paper presents an analytic approach for understanding the interplay through time between “scientific” and “everyday concepts” in a mathematics classroom community. To illustrate the approach, we focus on an elementary classroom implementing an integers and fractions lesson sequence that makes use of the number line as a principal representational context. In our analysis of the community's emerging collective practices (recurring structures …
Using Geometrical Representations as Cognitive Technologies
In this article we provide a treatment of geometric diagrams as a semiotic ‘technology’ in mathematics education. To this end, we review two classroom observations and one experimental study that illuminate the potential for communicative breakdown in the use of this technology, as well as possibilities for mitigating the breakdown. In the classroom observations, we show that rather than ‘seeing through’ the diagrams to the idealized mathematical…
Approaches to Reduction in Treatments of Culture-Cognition Relations
Gauvain and Munroe take on a provocative question when they ask: how is cultural change related to the cognitive development of individuals? To address the question, they report an ambitious project that contrasts the cognitive development of people from two small-scale traditional societies (in Kenya and Nepal) with those from two industrial societies (in American Samoa and Belize) [Gauvain & Munroe, 2009]. The findings produced are consistent w…
Reflections on J.V. Wertsch’s ‘From Social Interaction to Higher Psychological Processes,’ Human Development, 1979
In his 1979 Human Development article reprinted in this anniversary issue, James Wertsch presented an approach to genetic analysis of the shifting regulation of problem-solving behavior in early childhood. In my reflections on Wertsch’s seminal contribution, I discuss ways that subsequent inquiry built upon ideas he elaborated in the 1979 article, using my own work as an illustrative case. One strand of my discussion focuses on method. Wertsch’s …
Conceptual Growth in Children and in the Learning Sciences
In Giyoo Hatano’s passing, we have lost an esteemed colleague and a treasured friend. Among his many contributions to our field, our work, and our lives, we honor and build on his and his colleagues’ work on conceptual growth. We liken the view developed by Hatano and his colleagues to Toulmin’s evolutionary scheme for understanding conceptual growth in intellectual disciplines, and we briefly sketch recent studies and discussions in which our me…
Contents Vol. 49, 2006
Acknowlegment
The End of Our Term
Response
Studying Cognition in Flux
Genetic Method and Empirical Techniques
Articles
This article extends a framework for the study of culture-cognition relations to problems of historical research and diachronic analysis. As an illustrative case, we focus on mathematics in Oksapmin communities located in a remote highland area in central New Guinea. The Oksapmin, like their neighboring Mountain-Ok groups to the West, traditionally use a 27-body-part counting system for number, and there is no evidence that Oksapmin used arithmet…
Making Change in Oksapmin Tradestores
We report two studies about shifting practices of quantification in tradestores in Oksapmin communities (Papua New Guinea). In Study 1, we enlisted 7 local tradestore clerks to collect information about customers' language practices of quantification, age cohort, schooling level, and cost of purchase. Analyses of 305 exchanges revealed that older cohorts tended to use indigenous practices and extensions of the indigenous language. Younger cohorts…
When Teachers Know What Students Know
The premise of this article is that excellent teaching requires ongoing assessment of student understanding—a commitment to knowing what students know. The Integrating Mathematics Assessment (IMA) program provides a well-researched example of professional development that helps teachers interpret children's mathematical thinking and guide children toward deeper understanding. The authors describe the features of the program, and provide evidence …
Notes on the Review and Publication Process
Ethnic and Academic Identities
Youth from minority groups often manage a tension between ethnic and academic identities as they are positioned and position themselves in relation to cultural practices in school and out. We argue that a framework involving three strands of analysis is necessary to understand these emerging tensions and their management in the lives of minority youth. The strands include analyses of shifts in (a) positioning that take form in face-to-face intera…
Obituaries
Notes from the Next Editor
Ethnic and Academic Identities
Youth from minority groups often manage a tension between ethnic and academic identities as they are positioned and position themselves in relation to cultural practices in school and out. We argue that a framework involving three strands of analysis is necessary to understand these emerging tensions and their management in the lives of minority youth. The strands include analyses of shifts in (a) positioning that take form in face-to-face intera…
Candy Selling and Math Learning
An overview of accumulating research on children's out-of-school mathematics raises critical questions about how children come to form mathematical understandings in their out-of-school activities and about the interplay between informal and school mathematics learning. The author investigates these questions in an illustrative multimethod study on Brazilian child candy sellers. Findings show that sellers with little or no schooling develop in th…
Articles
This article extends a framework for the study of culture-cognition relations to problems of historical research and diachronic analysis. As an illustrative case, we focus on mathematics in Oksapmin communities located in a remote highland area in central New Guinea. The Oksapmin, like their neighboring Mountain-Ok groups to the West, traditionally use a 27-body-part counting system for number, and there is no evidence that Oksapmin used arithmet…
Developing forms of arithmetical thought among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea
Making Change in Oksapmin Tradestores
We report two studies about shifting practices of quantification in tradestores in Oksapmin communities (Papua New Guinea). In Study 1, we enlisted 7 local tradestore clerks to collect information about customers' language practices of quantification, age cohort, schooling level, and cost of purchase. Analyses of 305 exchanges revealed that older cohorts tended to use indigenous practices and extensions of the indigenous language. Younger cohorts…
When Teachers Know What Students Know
The premise of this article is that excellent teaching requires ongoing assessment of student understanding—a commitment to knowing what students know. The Integrating Mathematics Assessment (IMA) program provides a well-researched example of professional development that helps teachers interpret children's mathematical thinking and guide children toward deeper understanding. The authors describe the features of the program, and provide evidence …
Teachers’ shifting assessment practices in the context of educational reform in mathematics
When Fourth can Precede Second
This article presents a developmental analysis of children's understanding of an indigenous birth-order naming system used in a remote Papua New Guinea island community (Ponam Island). The naming system is organized such that boys are given one set of names depending upon their birth-order relation to other boys of a family, and girls are given a separate set of names depending upon their birth-order relation to other girls of a family. The names…
Mathematics Learning in Language Inclusive Classrooms
National and state assessments show that English language learners (ELs) in elementary and secondary grades score lower in mathematics compared with their matched English proficient peers (EPs). To provide information on strategies for enhancing learning opportunities for ELs in language inclusive classrooms, we analyze the efficacy of Learning Mathematics Through Representations (LMR), a curriculum unit on integers and fractions designed to supp…
Obituaries
Children's counting
Children's counting is more complex than first meets the eye; this chapter takes a close look at the young child's use of counting and how the child turns counting names into a symbol system for number in the course of development
When Fourth can Precede Second
This article presents a developmental analysis of children's understanding of an indigenous birth-order naming system used in a remote Papua New Guinea island community (Ponam Island). The naming system is organized such that boys are given one set of names depending upon their birth-order relation to other boys of a family, and girls are given a separate set of names depending upon their birth-order relation to other girls of a family. The names…
Developing forms of arithmetical thought among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea
The social organization of early number development
Our number system is a legacy of our culture. The study of how mothers teach their children about number provides important insights into the way in which children come to interweave their own developing understandings with achievements that have occurred in our culture's social history
Social Processes in Early Number Development
Candy Selling and Math Learning
An overview of accumulating research on children's out-of-school mathematics raises critical questions about how children come to form mathematical understandings in their out-of-school activities and about the interplay between informal and school mathematics learning. The author investigates these questions in an illustrative multimethod study on Brazilian child candy sellers. Findings show that sellers with little or no schooling develop in th…
What is profitable for (examining) cognitive development
Inspecting Everyday Mathematics
Studying cognitive development in sociocultural context
This paper sketches the development of a research framework for analyzing the interplay between culture and cognitive development in cultural practices and the methodological tensions that gave rise to the framework. The framework consists of three components geared for analyzing intrinsic relations between culture and cognitive development. The first focuses on the analysis of individuals' goals as they take form in everyday practices. The secon…
Cognition, development, and cultural practices
Teachers’ shifting assessment practices in the context of educational reform in mathematics
Mathematical Problems and Goals in Children's Play of an Educational Game
In his development of activity theory, Leontiev explained that the emergence of divisions of labor in society necessarily leads to collaborative activity in which individuals, with their own goals and actions, contribute to collective achievements. In this article, we describe emergent "divisions of labor" that are common in children's collective problem solving. Parallel to Leontiev's argument, we show that when labor becomes divided, children o…
Notes from the Next Editor
Notes on the Review and Publication Process
Ethnic and Academic Identities
Youth from minority groups often manage a tension between ethnic and academic identities as they are positioned and position themselves in relation to cultural practices in school and out. We argue that a framework involving three strands of analysis is necessary to understand these emerging tensions and their management in the lives of minority youth. The strands include analyses of shifts in (a) positioning that take form in face-to-face intera…
Obituaries
Making Change in Oksapmin Tradestores
We report two studies about shifting practices of quantification in tradestores in Oksapmin communities (Papua New Guinea). In Study 1, we enlisted 7 local tradestore clerks to collect information about customers' language practices of quantification, age cohort, schooling level, and cost of purchase. Analyses of 305 exchanges revealed that older cohorts tended to use indigenous practices and extensions of the indigenous language. Younger cohorts…
When Teachers Know What Students Know
The premise of this article is that excellent teaching requires ongoing assessment of student understanding—a commitment to knowing what students know. The Integrating Mathematics Assessment (IMA) program provides a well-researched example of professional development that helps teachers interpret children's mathematical thinking and guide children toward deeper understanding. The authors describe the features of the program, and provide evidence …
Response
Studying Cognition in Flux
Genetic Method and Empirical Techniques
Articles
This article extends a framework for the study of culture-cognition relations to problems of historical research and diachronic analysis. As an illustrative case, we focus on mathematics in Oksapmin communities located in a remote highland area in central New Guinea. The Oksapmin, like their neighboring Mountain-Ok groups to the West, traditionally use a 27-body-part counting system for number, and there is no evidence that Oksapmin used arithmet…
Contents Vol. 49, 2006
Acknowlegment
The End of Our Term
Psychology (34 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques (13 works) · Cognition (12 works) · Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills (12 works) · Cognitive science (11 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Mathematics education (11 works) · Developmental psychology (9 works)