ARTICLE ANALYSIS

Conventional activities of student, practitioners, and just plain folks

The idea that most school activity exist in a culture of its own in central to understanding many of the difficulties of learning in school. Jean Lave's ethnograpic studies of learning and everyday activity (1988) reveal how different schooling is form the activities and culture that give meaning and purpose to what students learn elsewhere. Lave focuses on the behavior of JPFs (Just plain Folks) and records that the ways learn are quite distinct from what students are asked to do.

Authentic activity, as we have argued, is important for learners, because it is the only way they gain access to the standpoint that enables practitioners to act meaningfully and purposefully. It is activity that shapes or hones their tools. How and why remain to be explained. Activity also provides experience, which is plainly important for subsequent action. Here, we try to explain some of the products of activity in terms of idiosyncratic "indexicalized" representations.