People --- I wasn't trying to start a debate on whether there IS an
"objective, actual world". I was trying to summarize the chapter.
Peter Jones' guide to the chapter was too dense for me to use it as a map
right away; I had to read the chapter first and steam over it and think "how
does this help me in understanding my students, the situations and lives we
lead," etc -- and THEN write what I thought of as a cliff notes version, and
then go back to Peter's guide.
So me saying:
"There is the "objective" actual world: Then there is also the individual's
expected, imagined, anticipated world. (At this point I looked back at Peter
Smagorinsky's paper on reading -- what really happens when people read -- and
felt that he and Leont'ev were
on the same track.)"
.... was meant to be a paraphrase of Leont'ev which ought to match about the
same point as Peter Jones saying:
"....activity being guided and directed towards a product 'which does not yet
exist. For this reason it can direct activity only if it is presented to the
subject in a form that allows it to be compared with the original material
(the object of work) and its intermediate
transformations'."
And I think it would be worth at least checking in with Peter Smagorinsky
(later, maybe, I don't mean now) about his reading paper, which takes the
activity of reading comprehension and works out what is really happening
inside the reader in quite some elegant detail.
Helena Worthen
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