Well, I think this gets indirectly at some of my confusion.
I was trying to imagine: Let's say I'm standing in my kitchen
making dinner by myself. WHile I'm making dinner, I think
my various thoughts and engage in various dialogues in my head
with various people and various aspects of my life. As I'm
understanding it, this would be an example of "joint activity"--
as would any activity I engage in. (I may not understand this yet...)
I understand that Vygotsky believes that mind is socially
embedded. At the same time, he has a great deal to say about
how children learn. Now, it's all getting muddled in my head
in the following manner: Children learn in socially mediated
or joint activity; but any activity (including solitary activity)
is in reality socially mediated; there is therefore no inherent
superiority in one form of learning as opposed to another.
Lectures, discussions, seminars, "hands-on" experience--they
are all equally examples of socially mediated or joint activity
in which students have opportunities to learn. (I may be
completely off the mark here; this is simply what I've construed
at this point.)
Yet, Jay, your point about trivializing the notion of dialogue
suggests that in fact certain types of participation or
certain ways of being jointly engaged are somehow better than
others. So, I'm back to my original questions, perhaps better
formulated: How do we best engage students in meaningful
learning activities? What constitutes a meaningful learning
activity? How do we know whether or not our students are so
engaged? How do these questions relate to traditional forms
of teaching (lecture courses) and traditional modes of evaluating
student progress (tests)?
Robin