alternatives in research on the social aspects of cognitive development

The terms “social” and “cultural” are ambiguous and can be used with different meanings. This paper tries to clarify the prevailing conceptions of the social factors that intervene in cognitive development, as found in developmental psychology. These conceptions are grouped into five main approaches, based on their theoretical commitments and the corresponding methodological strategies: 1) some theories treat the social world as an object of knowledge; 2) other theories see social life as consisting in a collection of symbolic interactions; 3) some approaches tend to consider socio-cultural variables as constituting an environment that influences individual subjects; 4) still other approaches interpret this symbolic context in a technical way, as made-up of means-ends relationships; 5) finally, there remains the possibility of studying the social subject as an institutional actor. This article evaluates the virtues and limitations of some of the approaches already followed by researchers, and explores others, which appear as promising but still untried.