My reaction is twofold. First, I think we may often mislead ourselves by
talking as if an activity only involves one tool, and so we have to
choose whether language is the preeminent one. In fact, almost all
activities involve an orchestration of many tools and practices
according to a score that is jointly constructed and emergent in the
situation.
Take, for example, the activity of going shopping in a supermarket -
seen from the perspective of the one making the purchases. Her or his
shopping activity is made up of a sequence of actions involving shopping
trolley, negotiating the planned layout of the aisles, consulting a
written shopping list, handling packets to compare and select, reading
labels, asking advice from a salesperson, discussing purchases with
partner, packing purchases in boxes or plastic bags, handing over money.
And all this can be seen from the perspective of the cashier, or the
staff who plan and arrange the displays, etc.
The same sort of account could be given of activities in the classroom,
if one takes a larger view than that of a single lesson. Spoken and
written discourse may be preeminent in the planning of the teacher and
in the observations of a researcher. But many nonverbal actions and
material tools enter into the activity as a whole. For example, in a
curricular unit in science or history in which students engage in some
form of inquiry, reading and writing, as actions, and written texts-
as-artifacts are used in conjunction with other tools and actions
(such as observing, experimenting, making models, drawing, etc.) and with
many genres of talk. In activity theory terms, writing, talking and
acting are complementary, mutually reinforcing "operations" by means of
which the participants attempt to achieve (and at the same time develop)
the goal of the activity in which they are used.
The second point I would raise - as a question - is whether the
formulation "activity drives thinking" is adequate. It seems to me that
thinking is an integral part of participation in the activity, in rather the
same way that Lave and Wenger argue that learning is. Certainly, the
available tools and practices mediate the ways in which participants
engage in the activity (activity drives thinking) but, at the same time,
participants' judgments about which operations to use and evaluation of the
outcomes of actions performed and of the current state of affairs
influence how the activity proceeds (thinking drives activity). Put
differently, don't we need to think of activity as a complex, constantly
emerging, interplay between the affordances of the available tools, both
material and conceptual, the intelligent utilisation and adaptation of
these tools in participation, the object(s) on which they are brought to
bear, and the goal(s) to which participants are (diversely) orienting?
Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca
OISE, Toronto.