Group Cognition

Group cognition is the theory that human thinking and learning is at root interactional. We acquire our ability to think and learn through adopting practices that arise in small-group interactions, such as in our family, work teams or circles of friends. Group cognition is an alternative to psychological theories of mental phenomena in individual minds. The theory emerged from study of student discourse in CSCL settings. The theory is aligned with Vygotsky, Lave, Bereiter, Koschmann, Engeström, Hutchins and socio-cultural, distributed cognition and embodied cognition approaches generally, but with a focus on the small-group unit of analysis. It is also in keeping with 21st century post-cognitive philosophy, such as Marx, Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

The theory was introduced in Group Cognition (Stahl, 2006, MIT Press). Aspects of the VMT research project and technology were described in Studying Virtual Math Teams (Stahl, 2009, Springer). Various perspectives on the research were explicated in Translating Euclid (Stahl, 2013, Morgan & Claypool). A detailed longitudinal study of a team of students engaged in successful collaborative learning of dynamic geometry was presented in Constructing Dynamic Triangles Together (Stahl, 2016, Cambridge). Theoretical Investigations (Stahl, 2018, Springer) brings together many papers related to group cognition. All of Stahl’s writings are collected in his e-library at http://gerrystahl.net/elibrary.

The theory of group cognition has strong implications for methodology of the learning sciences and for educational practice, as well as for CSCL technology design and design-based research. These are all discussed in the listed publications.