Perspectival understanding of conceptions and conceptual growth in interaction

We propose a bridge between cognitive and sociocultural approaches that is anchored on the sociocultural side by distributed cognition and participation, and on the cognitive side by information structures. We interpret information structures as the contents of distributed knowing and interaction in activity systems. Conceptual understanding is considered as achievement of discourse in activity systems, and conceptual growth is change in discourse practice that supports more effective conceptual understanding. We also introduce a concept of perspectival understanding, in which accounts of cognition, including conceptual understanding, include points of view. This concept generalizes the concept of schema by hypothesizing that a perspectival understanding can be constructed by constraint satisfaction when a sufficient schema is not known or recognized. We provide an example in which perspectival understanding was jointly constructed, illustrating an interactional process we call "constructive listening."