The popular policeman and other cases: psychological perspectives on legal evidence. Willem A. Wagenaar and Hans Crombag. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2005. No. of pages 287. ISBN 90 5356763 1 Paperback; 90 5356770 4 Hardcover

✍ Scribed by Graham Davies

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 40 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0888-4080
• DOI: 10.1002/acp.1227

✦ Synopsis

But perhaps the book's most admirable strength lies in its cross-disciplinary-ness. Contributors consist of researchers from departments of both Psychology and Education, two fields that have traditionally had a surprisingly difficult time building what would seem to be straightforward bridges. In this edited book, the authors not only present various models of cognitive processes while discussing dynamic systems of thought over time, but they also each successfully address the questions of how cognitive research fits into real-world learning. As Griffin puts it in her chapter, Piaget has proposed a decent intuitive understanding of cognitive change, 'but in terms of shaping educational practice, its value has been limited ' (p. 266).

Throughout many of the chapters, investigations of cognitive developmental change take place in the context of educationally relevant tasks. The reader will see, for instance, that Piaget's famous balance scale task is used to guide Van der Maas, Jansen and Raijmakers in defining developmental categories of analysis, both empirically and through simulations. Schwartz and Fischer encourage the reader in their very first sentence to 'spend a few minutes . . . figuring out how to light a bulb with only one length of wire and a battery' (p. 157), and describe an experiment where children are told to build bridges out of marshmallows and toothpicks, after which they give a nice assessment tool for helping educators evaluate the complexity of such activities. Torbeyns, Arnaud, Lemaire and Verschaffel's chapter discusses strategy change when working with addition problems-do children calculate the answer or do they retrieve the answer from memory? Saxe devotes his chapter to a much-needed examination of cognitive development in mathematics and quantification, using a cultural perspective. Griffin's chapter, focuses mainly on the bridge between science and education, beginning with a brief description of Robbie Chase, to whom the book is dedicated and the notable forerunner of developmental research in the classroom.

In short, this edited volume summarizes recent research on cognitive developmental change from several different points of view. It addresses the what, how and why of change, and it fits current theories and models into pieces that complement the educational field effectively. But most importantly, it makes an exceptional effort to include the conscious aspect of change. In one chapter, Torbeyns, Arnaud, Lemaire and Verschaffel write frankly that 'although the metacognitive system plays an important role . . . it should be acknowledged that . . . these computer models do not give us a very clear and convincing response as to what is exactly the role of these metacognitive processes, how they are activated, and how they work and develop themselves'. However, the simple fact that the book allows the authors, and the reader, to metacognize about 'how we know' makes the idea of developmental change an exciting one. Piaget, J. (1972). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.

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