MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 9(1), 43–66 Copyright © 2002, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
The Role of Dialogue in Activity Theory Gordon Wells Department of Education University of California at Santa Cruz
Activity Theory as formulated by Leont'ev and expanded by Engeström has tended to emphasize activity systems in which the objects to which subjects’ actions are directed are material in form. In such accounts, discourse—if considered at all—is treated as just one of the artifacts or practices that mediate the subject’s object-directed actions. As several scholars have pointed out, however, this model does not provide a satisfactory account of the dialogue in which such semiotic artifacts as accounts, explanations, and theories are the objects created and in which the co-construction of meaning by two or more participants actually constitutes the action. This article is intended as a contribution to the ongoing collaborative attempt to provide a more satisfactory account of the role of dialogue in activity, taking as example the dialogue in which two students negotiated a decision about the object of the activity in which they were engaged.
As a number of recent publications show (Beach, 1999; Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999; Nardi, 1996), Activity Theory is proving a useful tool for analyzing and theorizing about workplace activity settings, in which it is relatively easy to identify material objects that subjects transform through the use of artifacts of various kinds. It has also proved useful in realms of symbolic activity in which texts of various kinds function as object or mediating artifacts (Bazerman, 1994; Russell, 1995). However, Activity Theory has not been used to any great extent to address issues of classroom learning and teaching, in which the object is purportedly the understanding of events, concepts, and theoretical relationships, and the mediational means are the descriptions, narratives, and explanations—in speech as well as writing through which this understanding is achieved. Perhaps this is not so surprising. Activity Theory, as formulated by Leont'ev (1981), accounted primarily for material activity and its outcome in the form of transformed material objects; similarly, the artifacts that provided the mediational means tended to be material tools, such as spears, gearshifts, and computers.1 In more recent work, spoken and written discourse have begun to figure in the lists of mediating artifacts, although exactly how they function as such has not been explored in very much detail. The purpose of this paper, then, is to advance exploration of the role of dialogue in the activity of learning and teaching.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Gordon Wells, Department of Education, University of California at Santa Cruz, Crown College, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. E-mail:
[email protected] 1 However, summarizing Vygotsky’s (1981) key insights, he pointed out that: “it is impossible to transmit the means and methods needed to carry out a process in any way other than an external form—in the form of an action or external speech” (pp. 55–56).
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THE ACTIVITY SYSTEM OF SCHOOLING Schooling is by no means homogeneous, even within a particular country or local community, although through much of the 20th century the aim of curriculum planners and administrators has been to make it so. As I shall explain later, the reason for this variation is found in the unpredictable nature and outcome of any interaction that is co-constructed. Even with the most rigid teacher and the most passive and submissive students, there is no certainty about how the interaction between them will unfold nor about what meanings will be constructed (Lemke, 1985). Nevertheless, for much of the history of public schooling, it has been assumed, in practice as well as in theory, that given the same curriculum content as object, the same outcome should be achieved by all students in all comparable classrooms. And to ensure that this outcome does indeed result, schooling has been regularized by the creation of “grade-level-specific textbooks” that function as the principal means of homogenized curriculum delivery (Miettinen, 1999). However, as Engeström (1987) pointed out, this pedagogic tradition, referred to as “school-going,” or “doing school,” involves a “strange reversal of object and instrument.” Rather than textbooks serving to mediate the exploration of significant educational topics as the object of the activity of schooling In school-going text takes the role of the object. This object is molded by pupils in a curious manner: the outcome of their activity is above all the same text reproduced and modified orally or in written form. (p. 101; quoted in Miettinen, 1999, p. 326)
Engeström (1991) gives a clear example of this process in the way in which the phases of the moon are traditionally studied. Learning about this topic becomes essentially a matter of construing the two-dimensional representation of the relationship between the sun, the earth, and the moon that is shown in the textbook, and being able to reproduce this relationship in response to teacher questions or items in tests. Given the inadequacy of the textbook representation, it is not surprising that a substantial majority of students construct seriously misconceived versions of this relationship.2 Engeström’s point in presenting this example is to criticize what he calls the “encapsulation of schooling”—its separation from the real world of activities, to understand and prepare for which should be the purpose of schooling. And in the remainder of his article, he offers a number of superior alternative approaches to the same topic. However, while agreeing with this aspect of his argument, I believe that there is another feature of traditional schooling that, as Miettinen (1999) and others have pointed out, is equally responsible for the barrenness of schooling experienced by so many students. This is the mode of interaction through which lessons are typically conducted. Referred to as the “recitation script” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), the ubiquitous practice of conducting lessons through a succession of discourse exchanges in which teachers ask questions about the text or its topic, to which they already know the answer, and then evaluate the students’ responses and perhaps add comments of their own (Lemke, 1990; Mehan, 1979) is the antithesis of the way in which knowledge is co-constructed in settings in which knowing-in-action is consequential for the activity in progress. 2
This is particularly and forcefully demonstrated by the answers of graduating students from Harvard University to questions about the reasons for the moon’s changing appearance. Selected across majors from the sciences as well as the arts, these graduates of a prestigious university were almost uniformly unable to give a plausible explanation (ref).
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Drawing on Dewey’s (1938) emphasis on “learning by doing” and on Vygotsky’s (1934/1987) equal emphasis on “semiotic mediation,” I have recently proposed that education be approached as essentially an activity of “dialogic inquiry” (Wells, 1999). My suggestion is that schooling should be seen as fundamentally a form of “semiotic apprenticeship,” in which students engage in investigations of issues, problems and questions of personal as well as cultural concern, and, in addition to “acting into the world” of material objects (Freeman, 1995), represent the processes and results of their knowing-in-action in contributions to a multimodal dialogue that is principally aimed at increasing their individual and collective understanding of the issues and problems addressed. Although this dialogue is absolutely central to the desired outcome, I am equally convinced that it will be most “progressive”3 (Bereiter, 1994) when it is focused on an object that is to be constructed and improved. This object can take many forms. In a second-grade classroom that I observed, for example, the children started by constructing elastic-powered vehicles and, when these were functioning reasonably well, they investigated the relationship between the number of turns of the driving elastic band around the vehicle’s axle and the distance traveled on smooth as well as rough surfaces and with and without tires (Wells, 2000). In a sixth- and seventh-grade study of the Black Death, students identified issues they wished to investigate, and one group attempted to construct an explanation of why the physicians of that time wore a bird-like cape, in the belief that this would provide protection against infection (Haneda & Wells, 2000). In the first of these two examples, the dialogue was carried out in collaborative action as the students built and improved their vehicles and then subsequently in a whole class oral discussion in which they attempted to explain the results obtained by one of the students. In the second example, the dialogue was carried on in writing, as the students posted notes to the relevant section of the “Knowledge Wall” in their classroom and responded to the notes of others (Hume, 2001). In both cases, much informal spoken dialogue also occurred as the students worked on their vehicles and written notes, respectively. From these two examples, two points become clear. The first is that the “object” that is worked on may be either material or symbolic—although, as Cole (1996) pointed out, it is always both. In the case of the vehicle, it was both a model car and an embodiment-in-action of the principle of kinetic energy; in the case of the doctors’ clothing, the contributions to the Knowledge Wall were both hypothetical explanations and texts written on Post-it notes. This dual status of objects is very significant. The materiality of the object is critical in allowing it to become a focus of joint activity—something that can be sensually perceived, handled, and acted on. At the same time, it is the symbolic aspect of the object that allows it to participate in the students’ progressive attempts to increase their understanding of the phenomena under investigation. However, it is when the two modes are combined that the value of the “improvable object” is most evident because its material presence enables the teacher to mediate between the abstract curriculum devised by “experts” outside the classroom and the interests and competencies of the particular students for whose “educational progress” he or she is responsible. The question I address in this article, then, is: How should such events be represented within the framework of Activity Theory? 3
Bereiter characterizes discourse as “progressive” when it results in progress, in the sense that the sharing, questioning, and revising of opinions leads to “a new understanding that everyone involved agrees is superior to their own previous understanding” (Bereiter, 1994, p. 6).
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MODELS OF MEDIATED ACTION As already mentioned, Wertsch (1998) suggested that “agent-acting-with-mediational-means” is the basic unit in describing human activity. This is represented by the familiar Vygotskian triangular diagram shown in Figure 1. Whereas other species act directly upon the object of interest to them, humans on most occasions interpose a mediating artifact between themselves and the object of interest, thereby enabling them to act more effectively. What is missing from this representation, however, is the cultural and historical context within which action occurs. This is what Leont'ev (1981) emphasized with his tri-stratal account in terms of activity-motive, action-goal, operation-prevailing conditions. From his perspective, in order to account for actual behavior, the action in progress needs to be seen both as a (partial) instantiation of a cultural activity, with its driving motive, and also as realized through operations selected according to the relevant conditions in the situation. For example, in times long past, the activity of hunting involved the coordination of more than one action—one group driving the game toward a second group who killed the approaching animals. Those responsible for the second action, the goal of which was to kill the animals, might select as operation either throwing spears, using slings, or shooting arrows, depending on the artifacts available to the group and the relative likelihood of success with any of these missiles in the terrain and prevailing conditions. However, although the two groups’ operations differed, the actions of both were motivated by the same “object”—that of obtaining food by hunting. Or, to take a stereotypical example within the activity of Education, the goal of ensuring that students learn and remember the capitals of European countries (action) might be achieved either through the use of a quiz, in which students respond to specific questions and are evaluated on their responses, or by means of a worksheet on which they draw lines between the locations marked on a map and the matching entries on a list of the names of capital cities. Both of these mediational means of reinforcing the link between names and locations constitute operations, between which the teacher chooses according to his or her judgement as to which would be most effective with the particular group of students. In order to represent the way in which action is embedded within this more complex organizational structure of activity, Engeström (Cole & Engeström, 1993; Engeström, 1987) has created the expanded triangle shown in Figure 2. In this model, as Engeström explained
FIGURE 1 Artifact-mediated activity.
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FIGURE 2 The expanded triangle of activity.
the subject refers to the individual or sub-group whose agency is chosen as the point of view in the analysis. The object refers to the “raw material” or “problem space” at which the activity is directed and which is molded and transformed into outcomes with the help of physical and symbolic, external and internal mediating instruments, including both tools and signs. The community comprises multiple individuals and/or sub-groups who share the same general object and who construct themselves as distinct from other communities. The division of labor refers to both the horizontal division of tasks between the members of the community and to the vertical division of power and status. Finally the rules refer to the explicit and implicit regulations, norms and conventions that constrain actions and interactions within the activity system. (Engeström, 2002)
To return to the educational example referred to earlier, the class as a whole would be the community in question and the division of labor would clearly distinguish between the different responsibilities of teacher and students, whereas the rules and conventions would include positive and negative evaluations of student responses—including perhaps the assignment of marks to discriminate between individual performances—and the rule that students should not assist each other by supplying information to those who appear not be able to supply it by themselves. A further feature of this model of an activity system is the way in which it alerts one to possible sites of tension and potential breakdown. For example, in the kind of lesson carried out according to the “recitation script” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), the division of authority and labor between teacher and students, in which the teacher maintains the role of “primary knower” (Berry, 1981) throughout, casts the students in a purely responsive role and limits their active participation in the construction of knowledge. As a result, the outcome of the action from the students’ “subject” position is one of memorized information rather than the active appropriation and transformation of geographical knowledge that the curriculum designer presumably intended. Such tensions are the norm in any established activity system, with the result that, as Engeström (2002) pointed out, the system “is constantly working through contradictions within and between its elements. In this sense, an activity system is a virtual disturbance- and innovation-producing machine.” There is no question that, compared with the simple triangle of mediated action, Engeström’s representation of an activity system is much more comprehensive, particularly in the version that shows the relationships between related activity systems (2002, Figure 6). However, it still appears to prioritize a unidirectional form of artifact-mediated, object-oriented action, in which a subject, or group of subjects acting together, acts to transform an object and thereby produce a rec-
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ognizable outcome. Much more difficult to see is the reciprocal influences that participants in a dialogue have on each other through the (spoken) text that they coconstruct. Similarly, the above representation does not well capture the mutual adjustments that are involved in working in “the zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, pp. 208–213) and the concomitant transformation of identity experienced by one or more of the participants. It seems, therefore, that a rather different form of representation is needed to highlight the reciprocal relationship between the semiotic actions of subjects engaged in dialogue. As Penuel and Weitsch (1995) argued, the methodological frame selected shapes what we interpret or explain about human action.
TOOLS AND SIGNS AS MEDIATING MEANS This exploratory article is certainly not the first attempt to understand the relationship between artifact-mediated action and semiotically mediated interaction. Some years ago, on the “xpractice” branch of the “xlchc” listserv organized by Mike Cole from University of California, San Diego, this subject was discussed at some length. Arne Raeithel proposed that “the distinguishing mark of sign mediated action in comparison with tool mediated action (narrow sense) is precisely that the object of the activity is the subject itself. Subject acts on Subject via mediational means” (Raeithel, XLCHC, March 30, 1995). In the same message, he included two contrasting diagrams, which I reproduce (Figures 3 and 4) as accurately as I can with my different technology.4 Raeithel continues: “It is easy to redraw the same diagram for the case of the object being the subject itself or another participant of the same community.” This contrasting pair of diagrams certainly brings out some of the essential differences between object-oriented action and subject-oriented interaction, but Raeithel was not satisfied with it and, over the next few days, he developed a pyramidal representation (shown in two dimensions, of course) that I and others found very illuminating. To my knowledge, however, the proposal was unfortunately never developed into a published article. One reason for Raeithel’s dissatisfaction was a problem that he had himself pointed out in a slightly earlier message, when he commented on “Vygotsky’s deceptively beautiful equation of two triangles,” one a representation of tool-mediated action and the other of sign-mediated action. “A sign does not have the direct causal force of a tool, rather it must be ‘picked up’ by the second subject, accepted as meaningful and legitimate, and turned into some action by its/her/his ‘own’ force” (Raeithel, XLCHC, March 30, 1995). As Vygotsky never published the diagram, Raeithel surmised that Vygotsky, too, had some misgivings about the simple equation of tool and sign. This problem was spelled out in more detail in a subsequent message by Lemke (Raeithel, XLCHC, April 2, 1995): I do not believe that the Subject terms in these two different triads can be unproblematically identified with one another. The Subject of sign processes foregrounds different aspects of agency (namely semiotic agency, the agentive role in the semantics of verbal or otherwise semiotic processes), whereas the Subject of tool processes corresponds more to material agency and the agentive role in the semantic of material effective-action processes. One can make this argument either entirely in semantic terms, or in terms of some notionally “real” distinction between semiotic and material aspects of action. This is 4
The following diagrams and accompanying text were downloaded from XLCHC during this interchange and archived on my personal computer.
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FIGURE 3 Expanded triangle of cooperative production.
FIGURE 4 Expanded triangle of communication.
not to say that these two are separable in practice; every semiotic process is also a material one, every material process can be semioticized. But our notions, and discursive usages, about what a Subject is, are, I think, very different in the two cases.
As both Raeithel (Raeithel, XLCHC, March 30, 1995) and Lemke (Raeithel, XLCHC, April 2, 1995) made clear, material tools and semiotic signs play different roles in activity. Although they may both be directed in some sense to the same object, the agency of the users of signs and tools is of a different kind, as is the way in which they bring about their transformative effects. As the recipient of a semiotic action, the addressee is more likely to produce a rejoinder or to perform a relevant material action himself or herself than to be transformed in any significant material way. A sign can, therefore, be considered only metaphorically as a tool. But, as just suggested, there is a further distinction that needs to be considered with respect to signs. Some signs are used to “cause” another subject to perform an action, as in the case of verbal commands and traffic signals. It is in these cases that the sign most closely approximates a material tool in mediating action—although the action is typically performed through the agency of a subject other than the one who issues the sign. However, many signs are not intended to direct another subject’s action, or at least not immediately.5 Instead, their function is to contribute to the 5
But see Bakhtin’s (1986) account of comprehension in which, he argues, “Sooner or later what is heard and actively understood will find its response in the subsequent speech or behavior of the listener” (p. 69).
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construction and exploration of a “possible world” (Bruner, 1986) that is collaboratively undertaken through the successive contributions that the participants make to the emerging co-constructed text. Although ultimately anchored in the actual material world of the participants’ past and present experiences, the relationship between “words” and “world” can range from “directive” through “descriptive” to “hypothetical” or purely “imaginary” (cf. Wartofsky, 1979) and, in most forms of dialogue, is negotiated rather than unilaterally imposed. Dialogue, then, is different from tool-mediated action in a number of ways. First, although it requires the production and exchange of utterances in some material medium, the action that is performed is one of “meaning,” which is related to the material utterance acts only indirectly, through the semiotic conventions of the community. Second, it is not the coparticipants who are the object of the “speaker’s utterance act”—except in the sense that the utterance is directed to them; rather, the object is the issue, problem, or topic that is the focus of their joint consideration. And third, while a material artifact may be one intended outcome of their joint action, as, for example, in the case of a political communiqué, a film script, or the formulation of a theory, this is not necessarily the case. Much dialogue of significance to the participants yields no overt material artifact as outcome—unless a technological device is used to record the interaction; instead, the outcome to which the participants aim is an enriched understanding of the “object, ” both individually and collectively. However, it does not follow from these differences that dialogue, unlike tool-mediated action, has no impact on the material world. Much dialogue is intimately related to the “actual” world, either as planning for or reflecting on actions to be or already performed. And, even where the relationship is more tenuous, as in artistic, philosophical, or scientific discourse, the meanings made “can come to color and change our perception of the ‘actual’ world, as envisioning possibilities in it not presently recognized” (Wartofsky, 1979, p. 209). Thus, material and semiotic actions should not be thought of as mutually exclusive alternative forms of joint activity. Frequently, they occur simultaneously or alternate as phases in the same activity; in either case they are in important ways complementary. As well as distinguishing the different modes in which tools and signs mediate activity, therefore, it is equally important to try to understand what might be called their “intertextuality” (Lemke,1995). In the remainder of this article, I shall attempt to carry this program further through an exploration of a particular episode of interaction in a fourth- and fifth-grade classroom in Metro Toronto that was video-recorded some years ago. In fact, a copy of the initial transcript of this episode was what prompted some of Raeithel’s diagrammatic suggestions discussed above. While I have a somewhat different account to suggest, my proposal is essentially to make a further contribution to the dialogue that was carried on by e-mail at that time.
PLANNING TO MAKE A MODEL FROM JUNK MATERIAL Two girls, Linda and Janet (9 years old), worked together to carry out an assignment set by their teacher. Along with the other members of the class, they were to collaborate as a pair in making a “technology” object (i.e., something that serves or might serve a purpose), using collected junk materials that were to be found in the classroom. They were also to write individual entries in their learning logs about what they were doing. At the beginning of the episode, they had not yet decided
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what to make. Janet had already written some preliminary thoughts in her journal, which she read aloud to Linda to get the activity going. This prompted Linda to start writing her journal entry. While she did so, Janet picked up an illustrated book, An Early Start to Technology (Richards, 1990), and looked at the pictures. One of these pictures sparked her interest and she described it to Linda, who also looked at the book. Turning to the next page, they saw a picture of a model land yacht. As they discussed what materials they might use and how it would work, they gradually arrived at an agreement to make a “boat on wheels,” as they decided to call it. They then turned back to writing about this decision in their learning logs, complete with a rough drawing of the object to be made. Altogether, the episode lasted about 15 min and consisted of some 25 interactional sequences and over 125 “utterances.” The episode was of particular interest to me for two reasons. First, I was fascinated by the way in which the decision to make the model land yacht emerged from a combination of their talk and the entries they were writing in their learning logs; and second, the role of the illustrated book in the decision greatly intrigued me. There were other features of interest as well: the way in which the two girls negotiated their relationship with each other (although they had been in the same classroom all year, they had not worked together before) and also with a pair of twin girls, recently arrived from a non-English-speaking country, who were working at the same table; the large part played by nonverbal communication in their negotiations, particularly Janet’s dramatic gestures; and the way in which the teacher’s instructions affected the girls’ construal of the task. In fact, the episode is far too rich for me to do justice to all these issues here so, in what follows, I shall focus only on the first two, and then only in a summary fashion. My intention is to use this example of classroom interaction to illustrate an alternative way of conceptualizing and representing diagrammatically the interplay between tool- and sign-mediated action in the context of joint activity. As I wrote in my message to Raeithel, “My main question is: Is the interactional discourse between J and L best seen as a further ‘means, ’ or as the ‘activity’ itself? Or, putting it differently, is what’s going on best diagrammed as in the first of your two versions, as in the second, or in some combination of the two?” (G. Wells, personal communication, April 5, 1995).
CO-CONSTRUCTING ARTIFACTS AND MEANINGS At one level, the object of the activity, of which this episode is the first actional realization, is to construct a working model from junk materials (1). (In a subsequent episode several days later, the girls do, in fact, engage jointly in the material action of constructing the model and then in the action of propelling it with the air current produced by a hair dryer.) At a second level, the object is the construction of a specification (2) of the object (1) to be constructed according to the criteria specified by the teacher. And at a third level, the object—achieved during this episode—is to reach a decision (3) on what object (1) to make. In addition, there is a fourth object, to be worked on in parallel with all of the others, which is to make entries in their learning logs (4) describing and reflecting on the processes involved in (1) –(3). What is particularly interesting is that none of these objects exist in advance of the activity; each has to be co-constructed with the mediational means available.6 A second interesting feature of the activity is the relationship among the constitutive actions. Apart from the creation of log entries, which is supposed to be ongoing throughout the activity, these 6
Or, as Kress (1997) put it, with whatever means are “to hand.”
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actions form both a temporal sequence, each being dependent on the outcome of the one that preceded, and a sequence of a different kind, which might be described as the progressive externalization of an “idea.” Writing about writing, Smith (1982) described the somewhat similar process of externalizing an idea in the creation of a publishable text (although in most cases—unlike here—this is carried out as a solo activity). In his view, writing involves a progressive “specification” of what one wants to say, which is only fully discovered and achieved in engagement with the actual words on the page. That is to say, meaning is emergent; it does not preexist the activity, simply waiting to be given linguistic and material embodiment in the written text. In many respects, this applies also to Janet and Linda’s creation of the land yacht, including the decision to make such an object. In writing for publication, there are frequently external constraints that have to be accommodated and a wider community who may provide assistance and whose envisaged response provides a larger contextual purpose (motive) for the activity. There is also a wide variety of mediational means, including other examples of the genre (model texts), sources for ideas (reference books, suggestions from other people), and the dialogue (usually with self) in which these other material and semiotic artifacts are construed, evaluated, and transformed for use, if appropriate, for the action in progress. These features also apply to the land yacht activity as a whole and to varying degrees to each of its constitutive actions. In this context, it is instructive to consider the final action, that of making the material object so that it would actually “sail.” In putting together the land yacht, the two girls first gathered together the selected material parts—a block of wood, several lengths of dowel, the caps of four film canisters, a square piece of fabric, glue, and some small nails—and the tools they would need—a hammer, a ruler, and a saw. Then they began to assemble the parts though a process involving operations of cutting, gluing, and hammering. These operations involved a considerable amount of trial and error: The mast did not stand firmly on the first attempt and two of the wheels would not turn. These problems required both deliberation and modification of the initial operations, now consciously performed as stepped-up goal-directed actions (cf. Leont'ev’s, 1981, distinction between action and operation). In this constructional action, the girls acted jointly as subject: There was no fixed division of labor between them, although within the wider classroom community there was such a division, with the girls carrying out the material actions and the teacher and one or two peers offering advice, even when not requested to do so. The rule of using junk materials was carefully followed (glue and nails were permitted) and the requirement that their land yacht should be able to “sail” was always in the background. However, while the intended outcome was clear to all concerned, it is less easy to be certain about what functioned for the girls as either the immediate object or the mediational means. In one sense, the object was the collection of materials that was assembled. But from another, it was the envisaged outcome—or, alternatively, the specifications for the outcome artifact—that constituted the object that was transformed and given material realization through the constructional action. The mediational means certainly included the material operations with hammer and glue gun; they also included the intrapersonal (egocentric speech) and interpersonal discourse that selected and controlled the material operations. Furthermore, the illustration of a land yacht that originally caught the girls’ attention continued to play a mediating role, now as a visual representation of the genre of material artifact to be produced. Against this account, let us now set an account of the action of reaching a decision about what to make. The evidence on which this account will be based is drawn from the video recording, an
TABLE 1 Starting to Construct A ‘Boat on Wheels’
Ref.
Spk
Text
Gaze
Gest Seq Ex
M
Discourse Code
L brushes her hair back with her hand; J uses both hands to arrange her hair in a much more dramatic movement. J continues writing; L stares into space, her head supported by r hand, elbow on table. After 5 secs, she speaks
The two girls are sitting on two adjacent sides of an octoganal table. Both are busy writing in their science logs, though Janet seems to be writing more than Linda. They work in silence for about a minute. Then both pause and look up. An Early Start to Technology is open in front of them. Also at the same table, C and M are preparing to make a similar artifact. 01
L
02
J
03
What are we `planning on \making?
L
