backup:adfs::0.$.chap4
25th October 1993
CHAPTER 4: COLLABORATIVE INTERACTIONS *WITH* COMPUTERS
So far, I have identified some controversies arising from the
increasing use of computers to support learning (Chapter 1); and I
have identified some traditions of psychological theory that might
help us think more clearly about these issues (Chapters 2 and 3). In
the present chapter, I shall start to discuss particular
configurations whereby computers enter into learning activities,
developing the term "collaboration" as an organizing concept. I
believe the term is central to the cultural approach in the sense that
"computation" or "construction" are central to other relevant
theoretical traditions in Psychology. However, in the end, the term
serves as a device to think with. I do not claim there is any
widely-shared commitment to "collaboration" as the key concept in
socio-cultural thinking.
Each of the remaining chapters in this book concern social
configurations for computer-based learning. In this and the following
chapters, I am concerned with the most orthodox of situations: that
involving organized asymmetry of expertise (expert and novice; teacher
and pupil). I wish to look at very general arrangements for
incorporating new technology into the teacher-pupil exchange. I have
already claimed that there are some who hope computers might actually
*become* the teacher in this interaction. That possibility is the
first to be considered: it will be discussed in the present
chapter.
In the first Section below I raise the prospect of computers
simulating social processes in the tutorial sense. It must be decided
whether interactions *with* computers can capture the social quality
of traditional guided instruction. There is a kind of educational
software that is written to do this. We shall find that it is
interesting but modest in its "social" achievements. So, from the
user's point of view, computer-based instructional dialogue typically
feels limited in its reach. It is brittle and inflexible. I shall
apply the framework of cultural psychology to make sense of why this
should be so. This will require presenting the cultural analysis of
just what does constitute effective instructional dialogue - as it
occurs in those interpersonal contexts of teaching and learning that
we are familiar with. It will become clear that comprehensive
computer-based modelling of such interactions is not a realistic
enterprise.
In the course of considering computers and instruction in these ways,
one important theoretical concept will surface. That is the concept
of "intersubjectivity" or, briefly, shared understanding that is
mutually recognized. I suggest that intersubjectivity is central to
what occurs within instructional communication. The following
discussion of how such talk is typically organized will draw attention
to one aspect of what instruction involves. However, I will suggest
that the cultural approach to cognition has not taken real advantage
of the intersubjectivity concept. The approach could mobilise
the concept in order to extend its theoretical resources for
interpreting the management of learning. My own discussion here will
converge on a particular conceptualisation of what the act
of instruction involves: a powerful form of collaboration arising when
the human capacity for intersubjectivity is explicitly deployed to
achieve guidance within arenas of joint activity.
THE SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE OF TUTORING SYSTEMS
One response to the fear that computers will undermine the social
quality of education is to argue that such concerns will inevitably
evaporate: the present tension will be resolved and the problem will
go away. The argument proposes that what we value in the social
experience of learning will be preserved: it will merely, in some way,
be taken over by the technology. Such visions aim to respect what we
wish to retain in the current system - by supposing that it can be
simulated and not remain dependent upon the interventions of other
people (in particular, teachers). This does not seem likely to
happen in the near future but enthusiasts will simply plead for more
time. Given a few more technical developments, it is argued,
computers will engage in instructional conversations just like the
ones pupils already enjoy with human teachers. With varying degrees
of confidence, this view is voiced by those working in the tradition I
have identified as computer-as-tutor. The idea is to incorporate
whatever is important in novice-expert dialogue into the design of
computer programmes. This is often the sense of "intelligence" that
is appealed to in so-called "intelligent tutoring systems"
This approach has its enthusiasts (Quere, 1986). Appealing to certain
recent technical advances, Henderson (1986) comments:
In effect, we believe that an instructional system comprised of a
videodisc player interfaced with a microcomputer should be able to
simulate a coach or the master/apprentice relationship quite
effectively (p. 430).
Of course, it is accepted that any such enterprise must be founded on
much basic research concerning just what gets done by "coaches" or
"masters" as they interact with learners. In Lepper and Gurtner's
(1989) overview of educational computing, this is identified as one
important priority for future research: learning about conventional
instructional processes in ways that will help us to model them.
The goal of simulating tutorial exchanges has been pursued for some
time by educational software authors. Collins (1977) reports an early
and influential exploration of the problems. His work includes an
intriguing systematisation of the Socratic form of teaching dialogue
as gleaned from transcripts of authentic instruction. The aim was to
extract principles that might be modelled in an intelligent tutoring
system. Yet, 15 years on, the promise of this analysis, and others
like it, does not seem to be visible in any strong tradition of
dialogue-based teaching software. In fact, Collins himself appears to
have adopted a different approach to the design issues (eg., Collins,
1988; Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989) - as it happens, an approach
more in tune with cultural psychological ideas.
Moreover, other authors working under the rubric of intelligent
tutoring systems have proposed a switch of focus away from the literal
simulation of tutorial dialogue. For example, in Chapter 1, I
referred to the work of Schank and others on tutoring systems designed
to support case-based forms of reasoning: styles of problem solving
that, it is supposed, are more natural for us (eg. Riesbeck and
Schank, 1991). Such systems expose learners to a range of problem
"cases" (typically as simulations) - supposing that solutions to novel
problems are naturally made with reference to private accumulations of
case-based experience. This is certainly an alternative to
traditional intelligent tutoring systems, with their stress on
modelling tutorial dialogues. However, it does not challenge the
principle of reproducing socially-organized instruction. It merely
challenges the typical conception of what tutorial interventions
attempt to do: in particular, the idea that they equip learners with
repertoires of rules of the "if x then y" variety. In the end, a
tutoring system built around theories of case-based reasoning may
still fall short as a comprehensive system of instruction. For
example, it may turn out that human tutorial intervention is an
important feature of how the learner is helped to index and retrieve
this case-based knowledge (a form of social support that we may
suppose will remain particularly hard to simulate).
For whatever reason, no species of intelligent tutoring system has
found a firm place within academic education. This mode of
computer-supported learning is found more in situations that we might
usually refer to as "training" - perhaps where circumscribed technical
skills are being developed. Thus, military and industrial
applications have been well documented. However, evaluation studies
tend to indicate their potential in these settings is also limited
(cf. Schlechter, 1986). My discussion in the sections below is, in
part, an effort to interpret this lack of success. I argue that many
difficulties arise from failing to appreciate the subtle nature of
instructional talk. Yet, I do not wish boldly to legislate against
simulation of such dialogue - as if it inevitably led to applications
of no value. It seems to me that such simulation can be attempted for
some portion of what teachers and learners might normally talk about.
Indeed, there are examples of interesting and effective applications
that appear to achieve this. However, such circumscribed successes
provide no basis for predicting the wholesale replacement of
traditional tutorial exchange - if that is part of any educational
vision. Generally, the possibility of computers reproducing the role
of teachers by supporting a genuine interpersonal experience is based
on some unlikely suppositions. I shall identify them in the sections
below. As other critics have expressed it, the idea supposes 'that
the teacher's understanding of both the subject being taught and of
the profession of teaching consists in knowing facts and rules..'
(Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1986, p.132). If such knowledge was all that
was needed to be reproduced, then the possibility of programming a
computer simulation might be credible. But teaching surely does
involve more than dealing only in tidy rules - either rules pertaining
to domains of knowledge or (interpersonal) rules governing the
effective performance of instructional talk.
Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1983) consider the danger of conceptualizing
learning as the mastery of sets of rules defined for various
knowledge domains. I shall not rehearse their persuasive arguments
here but focus instead on the other part of what tutoring systems
typically aim to simulate: the expertise that is involved in the
social act of instruction itself. Early innovators felt able to write
papers with such titles as 'The computer that talks like a teacher'
(Feurzieg, 1964). But is this extraordinary interpersonal achievement
one that might be expressed in the rule-based formats that the
programmers of computers demand? I suspect not; and, 25 years later,
some of the same early innovators are now writing articles on
computer-based learning with such words as "apprentice" and
"practitioner" in their title (Feurzieg, 1988). However, to help
decide about these matters, we need to consider the psychological
processes that underly effective instructional exchanges. I shall do
this next. I shall then return later in the chapter to consider
again the prospects of creating pupil-computer interactions that are
supposedly "social" in character: instructional interactions *with*
computers.
CONCEPTIONS OF INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE
In this Section I review the analysis of instructional talk that has
been emerging within cultural psychological theory. As it happens,
this is the theoretical tradition that has devoted most attention to
such matters. The discussion returns us to a consideration of
Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, a concept introduced in
Chapter 2. Cultural psychologists have various formulations of what
goes on in effective instructional exchanges: these ideas arise from
empirical observations of social events within ZPDs. I believe that
their analysis has been helpful in clarifying what is precious within
socially-organized instruction. Although, in the next Chapter I shall
suggest that the distinctions developed below reflect too great a
preoccupation with exchanges that are intense and intimate in nature -
one-to-one interactions between experts and novices, teachers and
pupils. In the end, a full understanding of the social nature of
instruction requires us to inquire beyond such a narrow focus. It
requires us to consider a wider range of interpersonal interactions
that can arise in classrooms.
Supportive encounters in the ZPD: (i) internalization
Consider a child solving a jigsaw puzzle by herself. This simple
task demands a variety of strategic problem solving activities. There
are helpful ways for the child to go about arranging pieces (say,
right side up, grouping by visual features, picking out corner pieces
or pieces with a straight edge). A pattern of attention needs to be
organized between the pieces on the table and the picture of the
completed puzzle. The child needs to remember juxtapositions that
have already been attempted...and so on.
If the child is young - say of preschool age - and if the puzzle
comprises more than a handful of pieces, we can predict that progress
will be limited. Very generally, we will always risk provoking
disengagement where a problem-solving task is set just beyond a young
child's expertise. Yet, for a good learning experience, the task must
be challenging. So, a flexible way must be found to support children
in the discovery of solutions to more complex tasks - particularly
tasks where trial and error explorations are likely to be inefficient
and tedious.
Cultural theories of cognitive development argue that humankind has
evolved a solution to this problem: one that involves cultivating
forums of joint activity. In particular, we have evolved practices
whereby individuals who are expert in some domain will collaborate in
distinctive ways with novices and, thereby, communicate their
expertise. At their most effective, these are occasions in
which experts go beyond simply *showing* the novice what is to be
done. These are occasions which are potent because expert and novice
join to construct a joint "cognitive system". It is useful to think
of such a system as having a unitary nature, although it is actually
comprised of (at least) two thinking individuals. However, although
there may be two people involved, their work need not be partitioned
and individually allocated. In an effectively organized ZPD, the
novice is assumed to be doing it along with the expert, who may be
judiciously steering or prompting. Rather than being driven by
showing and explaining, these encounters encourage the novice's full
"participation" in the problem solving act; they are conducted in the
spirit of collaboration.
The management of an encounter like the one described above, one
involving children with their mothers solving a jigsaw, has been
described by Wertsch, McNamee, McLane and Budwig (1980). Joint
activity in this case is shown to take on the quality of a
unitary cognitive system. It does this by virtue of how
responsibility is distributed for the various strategic activities
involved. The adult in this situation will take responsibility for
some of those strategic moves that seem to be currently beyond the
reach of the child - although with both participants remaining
focussed on the same goals. At other moments, the adult might do and
say things to prompt the mobilization of a strategy that is within the
child's repertoire but not spontaneously elicited by the situation
alone.
Encounters of this kind are typical of those that children may
experience in the everyday world of solving problems. Tharp and
Gallimore (1988) cite the example of an parent intervening as a child
searches for her shoes. The intervention acts at a level of
supporting the cognitive activity of remembering; it creates a
cognitive system:
...the father asks several questions ("Did you take them into the
kitchen? Did you have them while playing in your room?") The child
has some of the information stored in memory ("not in the kitchen; I
think in my room"); the father has an interrogation strategy for
organising retrieval of isolated bits of information in order to
narrow the possibilities to a reasonable search strategy. The child
does not know how to organize an effective recall strategy; the
father knows the strategy, but he does not have the information needed
to locate the shoes. Through collaboration, they produce a
satisfactory solution.
This is a mundane example from domestic life. Tharp and Gallimore
endorse a typically socio-cultural analysis by presuming such
exchanges are richly produced within formal instruction. Thereby, the
child is able to participate in substantial (but meaningfully
complete) problem solving exercises: tasks that it might be impossible
for that child to pursue alone.
This conception of joint activity underpinning instruction is
appealing precisely because it seems to describe expert-novice
interactions in a wide variety of learning situations. Thus, it does
refer to classroom exchanges (eg., Palinscar and Brown, 1984; Tharp
and Gallimore, 1988) as well as more everyday and informal joint
encounters (Greenfield, 1984; Rogoff, 1990). Further, it offers a
basis for characterising variation in instructional success: for
example, it may assist the optimising of learning opportunities for
groups of people with special educational needs (Wood's research
(1989) is an example of this in relation to deaf people). Wood also
demonstrates that when tutors instruct in the manner outlined here,
children may regard them more warmly (after the teaching sessions)
than than they regard other tutors who adopt a more directive or
didactic strategy.
So, to summarise, it is argued that in this zone of proximal
development social interaction may serve to create a unified cognitive
system. Then it is supposed that the public nature of constituent
moves within this system (the various talk and action) can promote a
process of internalization by the novice participant. What is
performed in the arena of joint action gets internalized into the
private world of the novice's own mental life. Under such
circumstances, individual cognitive resources are first experienced on
this public plane of collaboration; they are then adopted as private.
It is tempting to suppose that this traffic from inter- to intra-
mental functioning simply implicates a process of "modelling". This
may be part of the story. In a busy zone of proximal development, the
learner is exposed to exemplars of strategic problem solving.
Questions are asked, directives are issued, remembering is invoked,
summarising classifications are deployed, and so forth. Simply being
witness to such activities may sometimes be enough to make new
resources available to the onlooker. However, it is widely argued
that simply modelling such processes for learners is rarely enough.
The possibility of internalization is claimed to depend upon active
participation within such encounters (Wertsch and Bivens, 1992).
Rogoff (1990) captures the spirit of this idea by referring to
successful tuition within a ZPD in terms of "guided participation".
The concept of internalization has been much appealed to by
researchers sympathetic to cultural theorising or - more generally -
seeking some socially-grounded account of cognitive change. However,
I believe that unless the definition of "internalization" is made very
broad (and, thus, not very useful), this emphasis leads us to neglect
other socially-distributed processes associated with instructional
talk. I shall illustrate these in the following two sections.
Supportive encounters in the ZPD: (ii) semiotic mediation
There is something accessible and appealing about the internalization
concept as reviewed above. Our private cognition is traced to public
events: activities in relation to which we were witnesses or
participants. Other theorists have enjoyed similar approval with
related formulations: notably, Mead (1934) with a conception of
thought as something derived from public discourse - conversation with
'the generalized other'. However, it has proved hard to study this
internalization through a fine-grained analysis: hard to trace
convincingly the origins of cognitive change in a manner that Vygotsky
characterised as demanding 'microgenetic analysis'.
Perhaps for such reasons, there has emerged a further (complementary)
perspective on how we may characterise the formative nature of these
(ZPD) social interactions. It is one that less readily suggests the
notion of internalization. Moreover, it suggests "provocation";
rather than the "assistance" of Tharp and Gallimore's (1988) 'assisted
performance'. Indeed, it might be viewed as a more cognitive account
in the traditional sense. For, it gives emphasis to the elicitation
of private cognitive processes: but processes that are prompted by
social participation.
Stone and Wertsch (1984) fix the relevant idea as follows. They draw
attention to the manner in which instructional dialogues are often
characterised by prolepsis. This term refers to communication in
which interpretation of the message requires some grasp of the
speaker's presuppositions - understandings which are left unstated.
Such messages may be termed underspecified or richly presupposing.
Consider a casual example involving parent and child:
C: Where did you put my shoes?
P: Over by the animals
C: (Pause) Oh...by my Heavy Metal poster, you mean.
The parent's underspecified answer here forces the child to pause and
seek reflective clarification. So, the child's participation in this
brief exchange effectively prompts a resolving inference regarding the
parent's opinion of musicians on a rock band poster. If the child had
not "calculated" the meaning of her parent's answer through this
route, then the adult might have gone on to supply more of the context
to his reply - although necessarily *after* its original utterance.
Prolepsis illustrates a species of dialogue typically of interest to
conversational analysts. Our talk is normally saturated with it.
However, in the special cases I am considering here, it is being used
in a contrived way: deployed just at the thresholds of mutual
understanding. In my parent-child example (and within encounters that
will arise in the course of formal instruction), shared understanding
that normally supports the comfortable continuity of talk seems to
have been violated. The violation causes tension; the tension demands
repair, and work gets done by the listener to achieve this.
Note that such instructional devices are quite compatible with the
strategic management of problem solving discussed above under
"internalization". The point is that internalization focuses
on the *content* of strategic interventions (eg., questions that
mobilise organized recall). There is room for variation in the way
that these strategic interventions are verbally realized. Exploiting
prolepsis may serve to make the point of the intervention more vivid
for the learner. Thus, Stone (1985) uses an example to illustrate
prolepsis that echoes situations discussed in the last section. A
teacher gives an instruction in relation to solving a jigsaw puzzle:
"put in the next piece". Stone comments: 'This directive presupposes
an understanding of the task's overarching goal, that is to use the
model as a guide for defining the location of the pieces' (p.135).
Perhaps the learner has been verbally prompted to generate this idea
(in order to create some options for reacting to what the tutor has
just said). In doing so, the learner has participated in a (modest)
strategic move appropriate to making progress with this kind of puzzle
at this kind of juncture. The link to Vygotsky's ZPD, supposes that
dialogues conceived for instructional purposes are particularly rich
in such disruptions. Moreover, dealing with the disruptions is a
potent experience for the learner.
Rommetveit (1979b) offers a fuller argument for identifying processes
of this kind as central to human communication. I have cited an
example drawn from speech, but he notes that these processes are
frequently invoked in fiction and drama. Members of an audience may
realize that they have understood more than actually has been said.
The author has taken contextual information for granted, but prompted
its recovery within the audience's effort of interpretation. The idea
that listeners (and readers) are active in this sense - spontaneously
making inferences about discourse and text - is a familiar one to
cognitive psychologists (eg., Bransford, Vye, Adams, and Perfetto,
1989; Sperber and Wilson, 1986). However, the idea that instructional
processes might involve the organized mobilization of such devices is
more novel.
In a recent paper, Wertsch and Bevins (1992) pursue Rommetveit's
interest in identifying prolepsis as a basic communicative resource.
They suggest that the effects noted here for the verbal devices of
discourse have parallels within a wider range of communicative media.
Specifically, they propose a relation between (proleptic) talk of the
kind illustrated above and our experiences with certain expository
text: particularly with that property of text that allows it
sometimes to serve as a "thinking device". Thus, these authors are
considering the manner in which cognitive work is generated within
interaction - but from a broader definition of what can constitute an
interactional context. For them, it is not restricted to the
prototypical ZPD of two or more people in problem solving discourse.
It might embrace interacting with written materials.
Influenced by the semiotician Lotman, they refer to the 'dialogic
function' of such thinking devices. This function of text is more
provocative towards the reader; it demands the construction of shared
meanings. The contrast is with univocal texts: they are more
like receptacles and communicate more in the mode of passive
transmission. Both texts and talk may be too easily thought of as
merely narrowly univocal in this sense. Often they may entail more
dynamic communicative properties: devices that allow both the spoken
and written word to mediate *interaction* - to precipitate new
meanings through active engagement. So, a close analysis of
instructional texts and instructional discourse may be helpful if it
serves to reveal a potential dialogic function.
The dialogic presupposition and exploitation of shared understandings
is a necessary basis for human communication. Moreover, this
manipulation of shared understanding applies beyond the arena of
instructional language. A culture's various communication media offer
a whole range of dialogic devices with which individuals may manage
their interactions with others. So, prolepsis may well be apparent in
the talk of a teacher, but it is also evident in the text of an
author, or even the advertising images of a graphic designer.
The case of advertising illustrates well the reach of semiotic
mediation as an explanatory concept. A concrete example may be
useful. At the time of writing, passengers using Edinburgh station
may be intrigued by one large poster among the various promotional
hoardings in the station concourse. Three sets of (real) objects are
attached to the poster backcloth: a tangle of red trouser braces, a
jumbled group of traditional black telephones and an empty gilt
picture frame. Underneath is the legally required health warning that
implies a tobacco product. I have an idea about what specific product
is being advertised. But that idea emerged only after a period of
reflection - during which time the product was necessarily drawn into
the foreground of my consciousness. Perhaps this is the designer's
purpose. There is just enough presupposition to evoke active
cognitive work on the images and their associations. The viewer is
led to a precipice of understanding and, thus, some reflective
engagement with the product has been achieved. At least, it was
achieved in my own case; it might not always be so. The danger with
this device, as applied to advertising, is that the "precipice" may be
very different for different consumers. Care is needed in
identifying the background knowledge necessary for an image to
precipitate successful engagement. The knowledge presupposed by a
given image may not be widely shared. To be engaging in the present
sense, the image may need to be conceived differently for different
consumers.
This problem faced by the advertising designer is usually less keenly
felt by the teacher - who, I am suggesting, may sometimes be doing
similar things. In most educational contexts, teachers have more
privileged access to what their pupils already know. They also have
situational access to the focus of a pupil's attention, and to the
extent of that pupil's motivation as it stands at the moment of
instruction. So, communicative devices of the kind discussed above
may be more finely judged. The central point is that in text, in
images and in talk, the effective deployment of semiotic mediation
entails judicious reference to shared understandings. For it is the
successful matching of a message to this existing mutual knowledge
that is important. That matching is what allows the message to elicit
cognitive work in the reader, the viewer or the listener. These
encounters thereby provoke reflective engagement of a kind sought by
the agent of communication. Indeed, the broad scope of this idea
should warn us that, as described thus far, it can do no more than
orient us to a significant phenomena within communication. Much
research must be done to clarify exactly how particular dialogic
devices may achieve distinctive effects of this kind. In terms of our
present interest in schooled learning, we would want particularly to
pursue this in respect of the context and character of talk that is
instructional. In summary, then, this conception of "semiotic
mediation" must become a further ingredient of any cultural
characterisation of effective instructional dialogue - along with the
idea of internalization.
Supportive encounters in the ZPD: (iii) appropriation
Appropriation is yet a third concept that cultural theorists have
deployed to help think about instructional discourse. It is taken
from the work of Leont'ev (1981). Appropriation arises from the
sense-making efforts of both teachers and pupils as they engage within
the contexts of learning. As such, it has recently been very fully
exemplified by Newman, Griffin and Cole (1989) who report an empirical
study of teaching in an elementary school. I will take their work as
a basis for introducing the concept.
First, Newman et al locate their study of instructional processes
within the theoretical framework of the zone of proximal development.
So, they define this conception in terms familiar enough:
The concept of ZPD was developed within a theory that assumes that
higher, distinctively human, psychological functions have
socio-cultural origins. The activities that constitute a zone *are*
the social origins referred to; when cognitive change occurs not only
*what* is carried out among participants, but *how* they carry it out
appears again as an independent psychological function that can be
attributed to the novice (1989, p. 61).
Appropriation is included in the 'activities that constitute a zone'.
Two common features of instructional strategy are identified by these
authors as underpinning it. The first refers to that quality of
indeterminacy characterising a great deal of instructional talk -
indeed, characterising a great deal of interpersonal social life more
generally. The participants may be approaching their interaction from
different positions of understanding, but they are temporarily caught
up going along with each other - trying to create some stable and
common ground. This open nature of such social situations is seen by
Newman et al as a positive force: it invites a variety of negotiable
options to be pursued within the interaction. It is the very thing
that allows the participant's differing starting points to be
addressed.
The second feature of such situations that is important arises from
the first: from the fact that the participants may not initially
understand each other at all well. In this situation, a meeting may
nevertheless be achieved if the partners are prepared to appropriate
from each others activities: to behave *as if* there were more common
ground than, in reality, there is. Encounters of this kind are
central to early psychological development. As Vygotsky (1978)
comments: 'From the very first days of the child's development his
activities acquire a meaning of their own in a system of social
behaviour..' (p.30). The point is that this meaning is often
something to be negotiated in a collaborative way. So, Newsom (1978)
notes the manner in which the parents of infants will be actively
interpretative in their reaction to a child's behaviour. Parents
ascribe meaning and intent to a degree that exceeds the child's actual
capabilities. There is a compelling tendency towards such creative
attribution of meaning and intent. In a sense, the infant's behaviour
is thereby "appropriated" to the purposes and frameworks of the adult.
Newman et al suggest this is a common state of affairs between expert
and novice in the ZPD; a common characteristic of organized
instruction.
The analysis is partly inspired by an earlier account of interactions
in a preschool setting by Gearhart and Newman (1980). These observers
were impressed by how teachers would often interpret what a child was
doing in a manner that presupposed the teacher's own perspective. The
child is scribbling: the teacher asks "What is it?" Such a question
presupposes a planful activity on the part of the child - an
interpretation of the activity from the teacher's point of view. In
terminology developed in the previous chapter, the pupil comes to this
situation with established functional cognitive systems: including,
say, one concerned with making scribbled marks. The pupil's progress
depends on the prior existence of such systems and upon the interest
of other people in elaborating them through appropriation: for
example, by them reacting to scribbles as an effort at
representational drawing. Finally, the pupil's experience of social
communication prompts retrospective sense-making along just such
intended lines.
It is this overarching *contextualising* feature of appropriation that
distinguishes it from the other two categories of instructional talk
discussed above: those were more motivated by assisting strategic
control of activity at the moment-by-moment level. Newman et al
regard the appropriation process as 'a "stand-in" for the child's
self-discovery' (p.142). This indicates the shift of balance in
cultural theorising away from more pupil-focussed models of learning
characteristic of constructivist perspectives. Now it is assumed that
socially-organized practices are central to the learning process.
However, this is not to undermine the creative dimension of
intellectual development. Creativity exists within the appropriating
social interactions themselves, and the new functional systems that
result do equip the learner for self-discovering opportunities - as
might well be the case for the example of drawing.
Modest exchanges of the kind illustrated in this section are widely
reproduced within classroom encounters. They depend upon both
partners appropriating the activities of the other - acting as if they
were all "somewhere else". The somewhere else, of course, is generally
some approximation to that place where instruction is carefully
leading. Newman et al note an intriguing paradox in this process:
'for a lesson to be needed, in say, division, it must be presumed that
the children cannot do division; but, for the lesson to work, the
presumption is that whatever the children are doing can become a way
of doing division!' (op. cit., 64).
SYNTHESIS: INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY
I have sketched here three varieties of instructional talk that have
been identified by Psychologists of a socio-cultural persuasion.
These ways of talking support three possible kinds of instructional
influence. Firstly, *internalization* is associated with the
creation of joint problem solving formats, or cognitive systems.
These allow the novice to witness and participate in more advanced
strategic cognition on a public, inter-individual plane. Secondly,
prolepsis illustrates a form of *semiotic mediation* available as a
conversational device to prompt the novice into private cognitive
reflection. Thirdly, *appropriation* is a related device whereby
(perhaps over a more extensive section of talk) a collaborator will
act "as if" a partner's intentions and motivations matched their own.
This 'strategic fiction' (Newman et al, 1989) allows them each to act
as if their partner's behaviour was locatable within their own goal
structure; thereby achieving more effective direction and coordination
of purposes.
Of course, these distinctions do not exhaust the possibilities
for instructional talk. Direct explanation, or exchanges that
encourage passive modelling may well be adequate to promote learning -
although, perhaps learning of more modest scope. The point is that
talk of the kind identified above comprises what is typically found
when local circumstances have been chosen that are most favourable for
full concentration on the business of "teaching" (cf. Edwards and
Mercer, 1987). The effects of such talk on pupil achievements is hard
to evaluate cleanly (Schaffer, 1992). However, there is empirical
evidence that, when variation is studied, the features discussed above
are indeed a powerful basis for supporting learning (Freund, 1990;
Rogoff, 1990; Smagorinsky and Fly, 1993; Wood, 1988).
So. three cultural approaches to systematising instructional talk have
been summarised here. Commentators may differ in which they stress.
I believe that the three are mutually compatible and that the
distinctions are necessary. But it would be valuable to attempt some
integration: to show that they share a common conceptual core. I
shall explore this possibility in the remainder of the present
section; suggesting that integration is possible through an appeal to
the peculiarly human capacity for *intersubjectivity*. This is a
concept of great topical interest to psychologists; it may identify an
inter-individual achievement that is uniquely human (Humphrey, 1976).
Particular interest is apparent among developmental psychologists who
are concerned to trace its ontogeny (Astington, Harris and Olson,
1988), as well as the consequences of its disturbance (Frith, 1989).
A parallel interest is shared by linguists, who are concerned to
understand how it is maintained within routine conversation.
The nature of intersubjectivity
I shall use the work of a linguist to introduce the idea here. In a
series of influential articles, Rommetveit has discussed
intersubjectivity in the course of characterising the management of
everyday communication. He expresses it in relation to the
interpersonal business of creating shared reference:
A state of intersubjectivity with respect to some state of affairs "S"
is attained at a given stage of dyadic interaction if and only if some
aspect "A(i)" of "S" at that stage is brought into focus by one
participant and jointly attended to by both of them (Rommetveit,
1979a, p.187)
This identifies the concept with a state of mutual understanding
and encourages us to regard cognition as something that may be studied
as "socially shared" (see Resnick, Levine and Teasly (1991) for a
cross section of reactions to such an idea). However, Rommetveit's
definition is not entirely satisfactory here. It orients us in one
particular direction - towards a kind of common object that can be the
shared reference point of communication. The object metaphor is
slightly mysterious, although useful for some purposes. I shall
return to it later in this chapter. What I prefer to stress here are
the social psychological processes through which we create and sustain
such common objects of attention. Rommetveit implicates them in
defining a state of 'perfectly-shared social reality'. Such a state
exists at a point of communication:
...if and only if both participants at that stage take it for granted
that "S" is "A(i)" and each of them assumes the other to hold that
belief (op. cit., p.187).
This mutual recognition of a partner's understandings is more what I
wish to highlight here: the registration by one person that
particular mental states (particular beliefs or intentions etc.) exist
within another person. This registration has a recursive character.
I may acknowledge that you have certain understandings; you may
acknowledge that I have made that acknowledgement, and so forth. Such
mutual projection of mental states may be exploited to finely tune the
communication between us. As Davidson (1992) puts it:
Sociality and rationality combine to produce curiosity about what is
in others' minds and motivation to formulate a *fit* between one's own
thoughts and the thoughts of respected others - in other words, to
create intersubjectivity (p.31).
This human concern for mutual recognition of mental states offers the
basis for integrating our three categories of instructional talk. I
believe that each of them depends upon an ability (and inclination) of
both teachers and pupils actively to mobilise intersubjectivity. Of
course, the 'motivation to formulate a fit' in this spirit may
sometimes have to be skilfully provoked and encouraged. In any case,
on this analysis what "instruction" turns out to involve is the
skilful deployment and organization of human intersubjective
capabilities.
This claims more than the simple truth that instruction should take
into account the current (cumulative) state of a learner's knowledge.
Making such a static characterisation of what-is-known is very much
the kind of achievement that computer-based tutoring systems might
attempt - rather as if knowledge was merely a commodity to
be inventoried. The claim for intersubjectivity within instruction
refers to efforts that go beyond this. In particular, it identifies a
capacity for interpreting mental states that will arise during the
dynamic of the tutorial exchange itself. Teachers will need to be
good at this; for the investigative activities of their pupils are not
always transparent for interpretation - not always predictably
strategic. Instead, what pupils are seen to do may often appear
uncertain, volatile and improvisatory. Thus, interpreting learners'
momentary psychological states can be inherently difficult; and it
does need to be sustained "on-line", in the course of evolving,
situated interactions.
Moreover, interpreting a learner's situated intentions, beliefs and
motives is only the first part of an effective instructional
intervention. For, on the present analysis, the act of instruction
that follows such an interpretation is not always some
straightforward, interjection: some inevitable consequence of the
learner's situation as it has been evaluated. Effective instructional
support is not always a question of teachers successfully formulating
their interpretations of what learners are doing and, then, delivering
efficient, unambiguous direction. Such a forumula-derived approach to
interventions (optimising them) might be the very strategy adopted by
a programmed tutor. Yet, as illustrated above, the most effective
interventions may not be those that are optimised. The best thing
for a teacher to say at some chosen moment may not be the thing that
is maximally informative. Instead, the remarks that may be most
helpful are those that are studiously chosen to be incomplete or
otherwise imperfect; chosen because they are provocative of further
engagement by the learner. Such cultivated imprecision seems to be
exactly what is found by researchers who have closely observed
tutorial discourse under ideal conditions. The apparently laudable
and precise patterns of feedback, correction, diagnosis and
demonstration that ITS designers strive to achieve do not seem to
characterise what expert tutors actually do (Lepper, Wolverton, Mumme
and Gurtner, 1993).
Human tutors seem to do something slightly different and, I suggest,
their achievements that result depend upon an inherent capacity for
intersubjective understanding. So, successful practice must depend
upon a *motivation* to mobilise this human capacity and upon some
capacity to deploy it skilfully. Such skill will derive from
histories of interacting with learners in various domains of
knowledge. It may also derive from a teacher's own experiences, at
other times, of being a pupil. The whole process can be said to
depend upon the 'projective work of the imagination' (Harris, 1991).
At the root of all that might be achieved is a distinctive mutuality:
the engaged pupil will complement what the motivated tutor does in the
course of some supportive intervention. That is, the pupil is active
in recognizing and reacting to the tutor's interpretative attitude and
efforts.
Each of the three modes of instructional interaction described above
may now be examined within this framework. Take the case of
interventions in support of cognitive internalization. A sensitivity
(in both partners) to ongoing events will be necessary to create joint
activity that captures the interplay of a genuine "cognitive system".
From the tutor's viewpoint, the demands of the task and the timing of
support must be set to generate real collaboration; thereby, affording
the novice opportunities for internalization. So, judgement will be
exercised by the more expert collaborator; judgement will define the
exact points at which strategic intervention would help. Sensitivity
to the longer-range history of what the pupil knows may certainly be
relevant. But so also will be sensitivity to the task-in-progress: to
what the novice has experienced and attempted, to what they know of
the task "at that moment". At the same time, the pupil must interpret
the tutor's interventions as, somehow, being about what they
collaboratively are trying to achieve (perhaps resolving feelings that
an intervention may not seem in harmony with those shared intentions
as they are inferred at the given moment).
A similar analysis applies to the process of semiotic mediation as it
occurs within instruction. The underspecified, presupposing talk that
characterises prolepsis will work when judged well enough to bring
novice partners to a sort of "precipice" of understanding - where it
is possible for the necessary cognitive reflection to be successfully
precipitated within them. This is surely embraced by Rommetveit's
(1984) remarks on speaking and listening (in the context of defining
intersubjectivity):
...encoding and decoding are complementary processes. Encoding
contains always a component of anticipatory decoding and decoding
takes the form of reconstructing fragments of an intended message
(p.25)
The teacher's trick here is to encode in a way that enriches the
learner's work of decoding - the trick of effective *anticipatory*
decoding. Note, again, this is not necessarily a question of being
maximally clear and informative: a degree of opaqueness may be what is
important in stimulating decoding work that is creative. In sum,
there is a distinct sensitivity that must be mobilized during this
kind of instructional exchange - a social commitment that lifts the
exchange above more didactic forms of instruction to become something
more like a "collaboration". It is a sensitivity that depends upon
mutual recognition of intention, motive, belief and understandings.
Finally, the concept of appropriation clearly indicates the necessity
of intersubjective relations within instruction. Appropriation
involves a conspiracy: the strategic fiction of a coordinated task is
created before the learner actually has an authentic sense of that
task. As Newman et al (1989) put it:
..children can learn new goals and ways of doing things when their
responses are appropriated into a system of which they were not
previously aware. Because the teacher interacts with the child...the
child can learn retrospectively what his response means in the system
as understood by the teacher (p.142)
This detective work evidently presupposes an active curiosity about
the intentions and understandings of the other. Discussing the
origins of intersubjectivity in infancy, Newsom (1978) appears to be
discussing the very same phenomenon of appropriation (although,
without identifying it as such):
..only because mothers impute meaning to 'behaviours' elicited
from the infants, is it that these eventually do come to
constitute meaningful actions so far as the child is concerned
(p.37)
So, I am suggesting that the various ideas from cultural psychology
regarding instructional dialogue can be usefully synthesised by
reference to the notion of intersubjectivity. This may now help us in
relation to the topic addressed at the start of this chapter: the
viability of reproducing within computer-based learning the
traditionally social processes of instruction. By this I mean the
ambition to program a computer to simulate a particular form of
dialogue: the potential for talk that bears some resemblance to what
learners normally enjoy with their human teachers.
Intersubjectivity and computer-based tutoring
I have been discussing the ways in which intersubjectivity saturates
orthodox instructional talk. I believe that this feature of such talk
undermines the possibility of comprehensively simulating it on
machines. This is not to deny that sometimes we find parallels
between achievements inspired by engagement with a computer, and
achievements prompted by human tutors. So, sometimes it might be
helpful to claim that a computer is acting as a "scaffold" for a
pupil's learning (cf. Hoyles and Noss, 1987). The discussion of
semiotic mediation above predicts this possibility: it leads us to
expect that the programmed structure of a computer activity could be
provocative or supportive of a pupil's constructive efforts during
independent learning. Such a computer program could therefore be said
to scaffold the learning. However, while such piecemeal (and,
perhaps, teacher-orchestrated) impacts are real enough, they are not
unique to this particular technology: other structured problem solving
environments may be provocative in a similar fashion. Thus, while
such computer-based contributions to the support of learning are
important, they do not correspond to the simulation of an authentic
instructional intervention.
The hope for such simulation probably springs from a certain way of
conceptualising human communication. For example, a pioneer of
intelligent tutoring remarks: '..man-computer interaction is basically
a communication between two information structures' (Carbonell, 1970,
p.194). The problem is not that this is inherently mistaken - it
depends on our particular reading of key terms - but it is a way of
framing communication that easily encourages certain other
perspectives that do seem wrong. So, it might suggest that the task
of a cognitive science is to implement data structures that correspond
to the configuration of any given human "information system". Then,
on this view of things, communication between that person and any
other such "system" (including a computer) might be readily handled by
a set of rules governing interaction (rules for information transfer).
Clancey has summarised the important theoretical contrast that this
implies:
The view that knowledge is stored suggests that interactions between
people are structured and controlled by pre-exisiting structures
stored in the head. The opposing view is that neural and social
structures coordinating our behavior come into being during our
interactions. (Clancey, 1992, p.148)
It is intriguing that the information-storage metaphors of the first
view are so appealing to us as ways of characterising communication
and instruction. Even the most distinguished of cognitive
psychologists may feel compelled to capture an exasperation about
teaching and learning by deploying this mechanical imagery: 'I find
it terribly frustrating, trying to transfer my knowledge and skill to
another human head. I'd like to open the lid and stuff the program
in' (Simon, 1983, p.27). Perhaps our exposure to means of
transferring material in the physical world encourages such imagery.
Moreover, the movement of data within information technology is
readily expressed in the language of "stuffing it in". Yet this will
not do: the currency of education is different. Knowledge is not so
neatly circumscribed as to allow complete and unambiguous stuffing
under some human lid. The problem has been discussed at some length
in an influential thesis by Suchman (1987). She comments about the
meanings we exchange (within any act of verbal communication):
..the communicative significance of a linguistic expression is always
dependent upon the circumstances of its use...the significance of an
expression always exceeds the meaning of what actually gets said, the
interpretation of an expression turns not only on its conventional or
definitional meaning nor on that plus some body of presuppositions,
but on the unspoken situation of its use (p.60).
This "situated" nature of human communication is fully explored by
Suchman. She argues that action's *inherent* uncertainty requires
that we turn from simply explaining it away 'to identifying the
resources by which the inevitable uncertainty is managed' (p.69). A
significant claim is that these resources 'are not only cognitive, but
interactional' (p.69). However, just what are these 'interactional'
resources that must be mobilized during routine communication?
They are resources that arise from the dyadic, *in situ* character of
communication. Suchman includes the prosodic and temporal structures
of talk that give it an ensemble quality; also the informal
understandings that define specialised rights and agendas within the
conversational ritual. However, she also refers to the 'local
coherence' or relevance that conversational partners invariably create
within the sequential organization of their talk. Less is said about
the mechanisms for controlling this coherence, but I suggest it is
only made possible by the "intersubjective attitude" that has been
discussed in this section. Again, in terms of the conceptual
vocabulary developed here, Suchman's account of communication is one
in which 'interpreting the significance of action is an essentially
*collaborative* achievement' (p.69, my emphasis). In terms of the
purposes of education (creating shared knowledge), and the tutorial
methods employed (instructional discourse), Davidson (1992) expresses
the position we are reaching here:
...different individuals invent similar answers to a given problem.
The intersubjective attitude supports this inventive process because
it enlivens curiosity about possible discrepancies between one's
beliefs and those of others (p.34)
My analysis implies that interactions *with* computers can not
reproduce an at-that-moment richness of dialogue that characterises
teacher-led instruction. Debating the possibility of such simulation
brings into focus a deeply-rooted theoretical difference. On the one
hand, we find developments guided by traditional cognitive
psychological perspectives: that is, conceptions of knowledge as
stored representations, with thinking as involving their manipulation.
On the other hand, we find the sobering influence of socio-cultural or
situated theories championing an opposing view.
..all processes of behaving, including speech, problem-solving, and
physical skills, are generated on the spot, not by mechanical
application of scripts or rules previously stored in the brain.
(Clancey, 1991, 110).
In cases that are being increasingly studied, knowledge and the
structures of situations are so tightly bound together that it seems
best to characterize knowledge as a relation between the knowing agent
and the situation, rather than as something that the agent has inside
of himself or herself. (Greeno, 1989, p.313)
My own discussion here has concentrated on the implications of
this opposing position for the goal of reproducing instructional
discourse. Earlier in this Chapter, I catalogued distinctive features
of such talk. These features surely draw our attention towards an
imbalance in the interactional resources available to a human pupil and
a tutoring computer. Investigating this asymmetry underpins the
agenda of situated theories in this area: '(to) locate the limits of
that sense-making ability for machines in the limits on their access
to relevant social and material resources, and [to] identify the
resulting asymmetry as the central problem for human-machine
communication' (Suchman, 1993, p.73).
So, I have stressed that instructional talk seems to be a
collaborative, situated achievement: one founded upon human
intersubjectivity. My view is that this excludes its comprehensive
simulation within tutoring systems. However, the challenge to
machine-based tuition runs deeper than this issue of reproducing
instructional dialogue. For, the underlying theoretical tension I
have explored above is also relevant to other assumptions guiding the
design of computer-based tutoring.
The ITS designer traditionally has focused on three problems. How to
model tutorial dialogue is certainly one. The others concern how to
model some domain of knowledge (i.e., what experts know), and how to
model what is currently known by a given learner. The idea that
either novice or expert knowledge might be captured in this
computational form is evidently encouraged by traditional cognitive
psychology. So, ITS researchers will express the target of their
modelling thus: 'Much of what constitutes domain-specific
problem-solving expertise has never been articulated. It resides in
the heads of tutors, getting there through experience, abstracted but
not necessarily accessible in an articulatable form' (Sleeman and
Brown, 1982, p.9). This characterisation surely exemplifies the
influence of certain cognitive psychological theories: theorising of a
kind (sceptically) characterised by Winograd and Flores as supposing:
'Knowledge is a storehouse of representations, which can be called
upon for use in reasoning and which can be translated into language.
Thinking is a process of manipulating representations' (Winograd and
Flores, 1986, p.73).
The alternative to this has thinking as situated activity.
Individuals are constantly responding to a dynamic environment:
engaged in a dialectic with the material and social world.
"Knowledge" thereby becomes an activity, not a storehouse to be
replicated. It is always a creative construction within the
here-and-now: guided by past interactions, but shaped by demands of
the moment. The situated approach does not thereby deny the
possibility of cognitive modelling - the ambitions of creating
artificial intelligence. However, the methods appropriate for
creating certain circumscribed *artificial* intelligence may not be
the same methods appropriate to modelling *human* intelligence itself
(Norman, 1991). So, the achievements of AI to date - while often of
real practical value - are typically brittle and inflexible. A
situated theory predicts limitations within any design enterprise
where symbol structures are created to describe functional relations
in only a narrow domain. Instead, it encourages modelling of the
intelligence manifest in behaviour that is *adaptive* towards the
environment: the capacity for responding to circumstances as they
arise - simply "dealing with" the world (Sterling, Beer and Chiel,
1991). If we must strive to construct artificial intelligences,
then this might imply starting with such "open systems" as those
required merely to get around physical space: computational insects
perhaps (Beer, 1990).
Such an alternative perspective, when adopted for intelligent tutoring
machines, does not encourage designs-for-learning grounded only in
computed databases of knowledge in catalogue form (although such
inventories may be a real resource to refer to within a broader
learning context). Neither, as was argued above, does it encourage
attempting to reproduce the social interactions that constitute
instruction. In short, it does not encourage pursuit of comprehensive
computer-based tuition.
This more situated view of cognition can claim some converts. Certain
early researchers in the ITS tradition recently have altered their
approach towards marrying up computers and education. For example,
Brown, Collins and Duguid, (1989) have sought new inspiration from
studying learning within informal settings: out-of-school learning.
Some software developers are particularly interested in the conditions
of learning from apprenticeship relationships - such as have recently
been documented by culturally-oriented researchers (eg. Rogoff, 1991;
Rogoff and Lave, 1984). Attention to these out-of-school achievements
encouraged Brown et al (1989) to pursue a new approach to the
deployment of new technology *in* school. Their basic idea is that
the versatility of computer-based environments (particularly
simulations and microworlds) can offer a rich repertoire of authentic
situations in which pupils' thinking can flourish and develop. This
approach is guided by the cultural tradition of theorising both
because it emphasises access to mediational means, and because it
views that access as a situated achievement. These researchers remain
concerned to cultivate the abstract modes of thinking that schooling
has always pursued, but they challenge any notion that this must be
cultivated within relatively context-free tasks. Thus, they promote a
strategy whereby the power of new technology can be directed towards
furnishing a rich variety of contexts - situations - in which the
learner can interact.
Yet, the role of social interactional processes within this so-called
"cognitive apprenticeship" strategy remains neglected. Where it has
been addressed, it seems to invite a retreat to former traditions of
ITS design that focus on computer-based dialogue. So some researchers
in this tradition are now considering how a computer can be programmed
to prompt and intervene - but as an apprenticeship master rather than
a tutor (cf. Katz and Lesgold, 1993). There may be a place for such
initiatives. But the arguments above apply: the social nature
of tutorial dialogue will not be reproduced wholesale. Certainly,
there should be no implication that such social interactional
encounters do not arise within the out-of-school settings of cognitive
apprenticeships. It should not be supposed that processes of
intersubjectivity are irrelevant to these informal learning
arrangements - just because there is no "teaching" going on. Far from
it: an untutored achievement such as mastering one's native language
may be so very impressive simply because it *is* organized within a
rich framework of intersubjectivity (Bruner, 1983; Bernstein, 1981)
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
These various doubts about prospects for replacing the interpersonal
basis of learning should not be read as part of another sweeping
rejection of computers in education. For one thing, existing ITS
programs can remain a useful and proven resource (Anderson, Boyle,
Corbett and Lewis, 1990). There is no reason to doubt that they have
a valuable niche within in a broader context of instructional support.
So, situated theorists themselves may continue to be architects of
such systems (eg., Clancey, 1988). The point is to question whether
they represent truly comprehensive alternatives to traditional,
socially-grounded structures for learning.
More generally, the value of designing sophisticated computer-based
learning environments is certainly not in question here. However, we
do need to be clear about where the most significant increases in
sophistication can be achieved. The cultural analysis of cognition
has implications for where the creative effort of design might be best
concentrated. Reproducing tutorial dialogue may be an area where some
progress can be made but, I suggest, progress will be limited and
striving for it may not be the most cost-effective way forward. What,
then, is a better way? In trying to respect the social character of
educational experience, we should not suppose that creating
opportunities for interaction *with* a computer is the only option.
Given the central place of these social processes in instruction and
given their subtle nature, I would encourage a move away from design
strategies based exclusively upon interacting *with* computers,
towards solutions that consider computers as a *context* for social
interaction. Our aims then would be different. They would no longer
be directed towards displacing instructional interactions. They would
be more concerned to establish how computer activities can serve as an
*occasion* for classroom discourse: a setting in which certain kinds
of potent socially-organized experience can be arranged. We would be
turning our attention towards the social interactional possibilities
that the physical presence of this technology affords.
In the remainder of this book, I wish to review this possibilitiby in
respect of various configurations of interaction that the technology
may support. The first concerns interactions involving both teachers
(experts) and pupils (novices). Possibilities considered in later
chapters concern interactions between pupils themselves (novices with
novices). In all cases, I will refer back to the central place of
intersubjectivity and socially-shared understanding as introduced
here.
The theme of the next Chapter concerns socially-based instruction as
it might exist in harmony with computer-based activity - rather than
being supplanted by it. This harmony entails social interactions
occurring *in relation to* computers (rather than, in some contrived
sense, *with* them). On such occasions, the exchange between teacher
and learner is retained as central to the educational activity.
However, it is an exchange that is not governed by computers, but
catalysed or mediated by them. The underlying computer-based
experience may still involve forms of pupil-machine dialogue. But now
the technology becomes a focus for a parallel interaction: joint
activity that teacher and pupil organize between themselves. An
encounter with the computer is, thus, assimilated into the broader
social fabric of educational activity. This may seem a
straightforward arrangement, but I shall argue that attending to what
needs to be done (within social interaction) under these common
circumstances is easily neglected - given the dis-located style of
working that computers naturally encourage.