Re: RE: peter's april discussion paper

From: Gordon Wells (gwells@oise.utoronto.ca)
Date: Thu Apr 13 2000 - 11:16:44 PDT


Nate wrote:

>I guess what I am questioning is if meaning or anything for that matter
>can
>be meaningfully described out of Activity itself? The text of course
>ocurred
>in one particular activity, directed at a specific audience, yet for it
>have
>meaning it must become part of the activity (new one)itself. Vygotsky
>statement about a word with out thought is a dead thing comes to mind. Am
>using it here in the sense that a text is a product of activity and if it
>does not become tranformed (as well as transforming) in a new activity it
>is
>simply a reified artifact, and not desireable in my mind.
>
>So, for me, saying meaning is in the text or meaning is in the individual
>(or group) misses the point that meaning is in the Activity itself. Where
>sense and meaning become joined, where the objective and subjective become
>joined, where the individual and the collective become joined etc.

This is what I have been thinking about 'knowledge' too. It is remade
through knowing in a situated activity. Otherwise - whether 'stored' in
memory or in a printed text - it is inert and of little use. On this
basis, I would argue that the efforts of educational institutions to get
students to amass knowledge (in preparation for showing how much they've
acquired when responding to test questions) is missing the point. Both
'knowing' and 'meaning' are mediated actions performed for some purpose by
specific individuals with other individuals in a situated activity. The
artifacts produced in the process - said to 'contain' knowledge and
meanings - only come alive when they mediate some further action in a
similar or different activity system.
What d'you think?

Gordon Wells
OISE/University of Toronto



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