I also agree with those who have argued that solo activity is "deeply
social" in the ways that Jay and Bill have suggested. At the same time,
the individual's participation in both solo and jointly-with-others
activity frequently - or always - has a personal quality, as a result of
his or her particular experiential trajectory.
These observations lead me to feel that, in our emphasis on the
"jointness" and "deeply social" nature of the individual's participation,
we are ignoring the question of how the individual comes to participate
in a recognizably individual manner. Or to put it differently, what is
the nature and status of the individual resources that he or she draws on
in participation?
Leont'ev (in Wertsch (ed.) 1981) seems to be grappling with this issue
when he writes:
"Human psychology is concerned with the activity of concrete individuals,
which takes place either in a collective, i.e. jointly with other people
- or in a situation in which the subject deals diretly with the
surrounding world of objects ... It turns out that the activity of
separate individuals depends on their place in society, on the conditions
that fall to their lot, and on idiosyncratic, individual factors" (p.47).
An awful lot is being subsumed in "depends on" in that last sentence.
Just how do these "individual factors" enter into the individual's
activity on particular occasions?
Again, while agreeing with what McNamara is reported to have said about
the interactive nature of all forms of assessment and with the political
implications of this recognition, it still seems to me to be the case
that, in any particular activity setting, different individuals differ in
their potential for participation as a result of their previous experience.
So, even if we refuse to call this potential "competence", it needs some
other form of characterization. It is the attempt to provide this
characterization that seems to me to be missing from the discussion so far.
Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca
OISE, Toronto.