. . .
>
> If leading activity, which has often signified a set piece in a
> developmental narrative (first play, then school), is made fluid, dynamic,
> situated, embodied, and heterogeneous, would it be the equivalent of what
> you had in mind Kevin as a leading setting?
>
Yes. This made me realize that I had a kind of pragmatic distinction in
mind--where do we look first, as researchers and educators, when we are
looking for change, or working to construct change? I think we (I) tend
to associate the leading of activity with human activity, where I think
some projects, like the Fifth Dimension, could be seen as an argument of
materials and spaces being strong participants in the stream of activity,
leading the leading activity, so to speak. This can be too easily
glossed as just new spaces or materials creating motivation, when there
is a richer sense of the way in which they can help restructure activity.
Eva asked where the survival aspect of the thread went. I decided to
respond to that with brief account from some ethnographic
work in a high school last year--maybe others might care to play around
with it in terms of setting survival . . .
During a couple of class periods, a group of high school juniors were
sent outside to observe a man who was demostrating wood cutting with
tools that would have been used in the mid 19th Century. The
presentation took place on a piece of land that is technically off school
grounds, and the students sat and stood in the grass field for the
demonstration. During the presentation, several students were standing
on the edge of this same grass field and smoking, which is across the street
from the school, as this is the only area on school property (but not technically
schoool "grounds") where students can smoke. The smokers were cutting
class but still maintaining school rules by smoking in the
designated area. As they smoked, several of them observed the nearby wood
cutting, thus being distanced participants in school. When the bell
rang, which is audible from the outside of the building, those who wanted to
smoke and were part of the class having the demonstration, moved over from their
"demonstration space" to join the smokers, about ten yards away.
After the break and toward the end of the class, both the smoking
group and the class became involved in an interaction with a parent
or former student who drove by in her car and was yelling at some
students on the other side of the street, closer to the school
building. This third interaction temporarily broke up both smoking and
schooling spaces/activity, already somewhat blended but also
maintained as separate.