> But something bothers me here: we are back to defining learning and
> education as something unobservable that goes on inside people's heads;
> we present material, and hope that something will happen to the listener
> in the process of presentation. Where is the "social" aspect of this
> model of learning? It seems to be already internalized: the listener
> dialogues inside his or her head as he or she hears a lecture.
I think one perhaps needs to take a longer-term view. The change in the
student's participation in the activity does not have to be manifested
immediately in observable behavior to be real, though I agree that one
would expect some "externalization" to occur at some point.
I don't think the social nature of learning depends on whether it is "in
the head" or externalized in overt participation (I believe both sorts of
change are involved, though I don't think we have yet managed to explain
this very satisfactorily). Rather, what makes it social is that the
change takes place in and through the participation in joint activity and
involves the appropriation of modes of acting and thinking that are enacted
in the interaction and mediated by artifacts that have an interpersonal,
cultural - and not simply an individual - function.
Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca
OISE, Toronto.