Context and Cognition: Implications for Educational Innovators and Anthropologists

Abstract

The dismal track record of educational innovations in “everyday” classrooms can be understood, at least in part, by the separation of context and cognition in the development, dissemination, and implementation of such efforts. Recent work in the cultural‐historical tradition, which elaborates aspects of context in relation to cognition, provides a way for both educational innovators and educational anthropologists to develop approaches to educational innovation that explicitly take context into account.