More on individuals
Graham Nuthall (G.Nuthall who-is-at educ.canterbury.ac.nz)
Mon, 13 Nov 1995 17:12:33 +1300
Following Gordon, Bill, an others on the role of the individual in an
activity system, I wonder if the distinctions between the individual and
the social are like the distinctions between sleep and waking. As I
understand the research in this area, the problem of accounting for sleep
was not solved until it was conceptualized as the problem of accounting for
being awake. I recently spent some hours (over several days) watching a 2
year-old apparently struggling to find/identify his sense of self and
personal agency from the normally absorbing flow of interactions with his
two older siblings and parents. From time to time he would make
announcements about who he was, what he was doing, what he planned to do
next (in 2-3 word sentences, to the world at large), as though by doing
this, he was claiming an identity. Recordings of students working in groups
in clasrooms contain similar statements, as though students sense a danger
of some kind in losing themselves in the group. It is as though the group
activity is something against which a personal identity needs to be
defended, preserved or constructed. Children can, as it were, lose
themselves in the activity. This suggests that the social or interactive
activity is somehow prior. The concept or sense of being individual needs
to be constructed out of that. And presumably is constructed using
culturally appropriate templates.
Maybe I am going over old ground here. It seems a central issue in
understanding how/what students learn in classrooms, as it does in
understanding language acquisition.
Graham
Graham Nuthall
Education Department
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone 64 03 3642255
Fax 64 03 3642418