Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper considers whether a sociocultural theory of cognition can supply a suitable perspective for analyzing the nature of interdisciplinary collaboration within groups in the National Institute for Science Education (NISE). We discuss the metaphors of apprenticeship and voice in conversation to identify relevant elements of analysis in group discourse. The NISE group shows evidence of cognitive apprenticeship and of multiple voicedness, but the theories do not fully explain the impact of interdisciplinary interaction on group cognitive development. Although both the apprenticeship metaphor and the voice metaphor provide useful tools for analysis, it would be useful to have a metaphor that deals more directly with interaction among members of equal status from mature communities of practice.