Footholds and Handholds
Footholds and Handholds
Scaffolding Cognition and Career
Cognition is both developmentally and socially scaffolded. I focus on the social aspects of cognition, whose development occurs through a dynamic coordination and integration by individuals of social resources afforded or sought by them over time. In the often open-ended development of expertise, we see vital handholds, or encouragement by mentors and significant others, and footholds or foundational steps such as crucial decisions, commitment to a training program, access to salient information or other key resources. I consider the early scientific careers of Craig Venter and Charles Darwin, and the many ways in which they were scaffolded both emotively and cognitively. For Darwin, I focus mostly on the development of his theory through multifarious social interactions. This also shows the intertwining of career and intellectual development. Other cases I discuss of medical trainees suggest that that factors such as gender may affect availability of career resources.
Keywords: Social cognition, Handholds, Footholds, Expertise, Scaffolding, Problem-solving trajectory
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