Skill in Peer Learning Discourse: What Develops?

In recent years, the significance of children’s experiences with one another has been taken increasingly seriously by social scientists. Once focused on parent-child (especially mother-child) and teacher-child interactions as the key mode of socialization, scholars are now actively documenting the contribution children make to one another’s development, not just in the traditionally studied areas of sex and aggression, but also in cognitive and moral domains of development as well (Hartup, 1983). In post-Piagetian times, it is fashionable to focus on the degree to which we have underestimated the competence of the younger child, and in the discussion of peer learning it is also tempting to make claims that children can offer one another the equivalent or at least the analogue of what adults offer. However, this chapter examines the nature of children’s peer learning discourse, including the ways that it changes across development, in order to consider the changing contributions of children’s peer experiences to their development. Our central argument is that understanding developmental and within-age differences in peer learning involves understanding development in several distinct categories of capacity.