AM: for the shoot we can use that big rope over there

LE: not for that, that for that

AM: yeah

In this situation, “that” cannot be understood on its own, even if we look at the drawing that the indexical gesture (finger pointing) refers to at the moment. The “meaning” of “that” does not lie in the drawing or part of the drawing indexed. Rather, both index an entire conversation that the three had participated in the past, and the (different) traces this conversation has left in the different subjectivities.

The diagram is a historical document, associated with the work of designing, and not merely representing the design, the product. If anything, it is a metonymic representation of the shared history. At this particular moment, the participants are already aligned, and the language is used to articulate articulations already shared.

LE: that’s for the shoot, that’s for the incline plane and these have. Now, you know we have to build this I have wood over there to build it, so

The image and the indexical gestures refer to the envisioned outcome of their actions, the vision of the final artifact. This vision, they take as shared even though it may turn out in the future that in fact these visions had been different and their subjectivities had not been aligned.

Even so, they will then continue under the assumption that once identified and repaired, they now work with a shared vision. In the process, they forget any prior misalignment. They worked with different visions but under the impression that the vision was shared, that others had the same vision as they had individually. They view their individual vision as the collective one, though it turns out at time that the vision was individual rather than collective.

There is a dialectical tension between the individual and the collective vision. The individual vision is always a concrete realization of generalized possible visions, and, from the perspective of the individual subjectivity, this concrete (real) vision is also the one that others have realized. There are always more concrete real visions, depending on the number of individuals in the collective (with their own histories), the generalized possible visions constitute a universe of visions.

The history of the individual will be formative for his or her way of seeing, perceiving; this history is itself mediated by the socio-cultural context of the individual. A priori, the coparticipants in a group are not aligned, though they may take alignment as the default situation. The practically realized individual perception of the world is taken to be the one all other individuals are realizing.

When there is a common history, such as when a group works for a period of time, there are particular consequences. Now interpretations and actions are framed by a common horizon, the horizon of the commonly experienced situations.

Assertion: there is an important issue of shared history and history that has not been shared, and the relationship between those histories not shared but framed by common or similar socio-cultural contexts.

Question: What is the relationship between common history and the level of alignment in subjectivities and their visions?

Assertion: In collective practical action directed toward a common (collective) goal, cognition (subjectivities) become aligned. Any conversation they have can only be understood under the consideration of the shared history rather than from a (falsely) presumed relationship between word signs and their referents. In the process of collective practical actions, visions are transformed but in such a way that they become aligned. The driving forces are any perceived contradictions between individual visions and the desired collective vision, which is the one ultimately realized in the artifact.

Trace/s

“Memory” is a trace that practical action leaves the subject, including “experience”; traces of past practical actions can be found across the activity system, for example, in the form of artifacts, diagrams, and also in changed ways of doing things.

Traces are resources in practical activity, whatever their nature and wherever the participants find them.

Explicit traces, and traces not salient to the actors but embodied in their actions.

Learning

Learning, as commonly understood, relates to the situation where the physical body (idem-identity) moves from one activity system to another and produces, in situation that have family resemblance for someone (teacher, psychologist), actions that themselves have family resemblance with previous actions, that is, actions are reproduced in “structurally similar” situations.

Intersubjectivity

A number of things go on in this brief episode. First, Bella had her hands at the drawing, thereby aligning her peers to the fact that she was talking about not just some aspect but the particular one that her finger was indexing. Second, there are pauses that at least also have the function to allow Bella to engage in some physical action (moving the hand to the diagram, moving seat). Third, the gestures are integral part of the communication, constitute communication and ideas at the very moment that they are produced. Fourth, in order to understand this episode, the participants draw on the traces that their conversation on the previous day has left, that his, the vision (image) of the design that has taken shape. Intersubjectivity refers to the fact that this is already shared, it is a trace that they take to be common and therefore does no longer have to be articulated. If at all, it is the researcher/author that has to provide for the sense in which these students have to be heard.

01 B: * Or 02 (0.40)
03 * my brother (0.22) 04 A: Hhhm.
05 (1.55)
06 B: he has a parking lot * 07 (0.90) 08 L: uhhm 09 B: um: 10 (1.48) 11 [you can take this part out] 12 [((moves repeatedly up and down along “elevator” 13 (0.32)
14 then you pull like [this * 15 [((pulling motion along the tower part)) 16 (0.45)
17 * then put some [batteries in it] and it works. 18 L: [((nods repeatedly)) 19 () 20 L: Although we can’t do it

Description of the episode

The episode began just after Leanne had begun to articulate what they were going to do, and was locating the different tools, raw materials, and diagrams that they needed for taking the first steps in the construction of the prototype. Leanne had proposed to use a piece of wood that Amanda had apparently shown her as the “shoot,” but Amanda proposed some other piece (inaudible). At this point, Bella began to talk. She proposed that they could take a piece out of her brother’s parking lot.

Throughout her talk, Bella used gestures. Initially, she had rested her upper body on her right hand and arm (line 01). By line 03, her hand had moved from the table to the diagram pointing to it while she was talking about her brother. Her hand moved away, arranging the chair beneath her, and then moved back to the diagram as she came to the end of line 06. Her hand moved repeatedly up and down a tower-like part of the drawing while she uttered that the part could be taken out (line 10–11). She made a gesture to show what they would do with the part. Her final gesture was above the drawing, her arm rocked twice back and forth while her thumb and index made a gesture similar to the rubbing that is used to indicate “money” in everyday conversations (line 15).

With the “Or,” Bella announces an alternative. It is a contrast to what has been proposed before, when they had asked for the materials. Bella was responsible to bring a pulley, and this responsibility was inscribed into the diagram, at the bottom, where they noted the materials needed. Subsequently, Bella admitted that she did not bring one or have one. The two other girls talked about the shoot. The “or” sets up a difference, a contradiction with what they had done or were presently doing. In this episode, Bella then develops the different idea, it takes shape in her talk and action, but at the same time retains its ephemeral nature, for talk and gestures “vanish” as soon as they have been produced, they recede into the past, increasingly so, unless it is reproduced in subsequent actions and talk. Continuous reproduction can lead to a certain stability of an “idea,” a vision, even though it may not have taken a material form.

((Because of this ephemeral nature, I often stop while riding the bicycle to note some idea, or even only words, afraid that I may have forgotten it by the time I have returned. There, too, there is a trace, ephemeral, about something I am currently working on, analyzing, which I stabilize by materializing it into notes, by inscribing it in a more permanent form, more retrievable form.))

The three girls in fact are aligned twice both in the sense that they could draw on their personal traces of the conversation from the previous day but also from their (culturally) based understanding of “this part” of a parking garage. This part they could take out of her brother’s garage and put into their own design. There is a conflation in the sense that she already pointed to the diagram and said that they could take this part (in diagram) out of her brother’s garage. That is, this part in their design and the parking garage had a common element, and all three were aligned to the fact that in this case the diagram did not refer to their design but to the parking garage.

((Perhaps thinking in terms of reference is not a good way of proceeding here))

This moment Bella, had aligned her two partners to the parking lot, her hand was on the diagram. The diagram therefore did not represent their design; rather, Bella pointed to it while uttering the parking lot, thereby orienting the situation as being one about parking lots. “This part” is therefore not a part of the design or the drawing but a part in the parking lot. Furthermore, the three are attuned to the fact that Bella’s brother is similar in age and that “his parking lot” is therefore a toy parking lot. It is evident that this part could therefore be taken out. However, by the time she had completed the next utterance (line 13), her gesture that moved from the upward column to the shoot, she had realigned herself with the present design. ((Here the pause allowed for the change over between the two situations that were created and to which speaker and audience were aligned??))

Her repeated gesture up and down along the pulley and vertical column aligned listeners to the particular item that corresponded to “this part”; the gestures therefore aligned not only speech and perception, but also the three subjectivities.

The pauses coincide with major changeover in the situations created with talk, gesture, and diagram. In lines 12 and 14, the pauses coincide with the changeover from the parking lot (this part) to the diagram and the diagram back to the parking lot (batteries). During the pause in line 02, Bella moved her hand from resting on the table to the design. The first pause, too, moves the conversation from the design to her brother.

Bella’s pause from line 03 to line 06 was actually 2.03 s long; Amanda’s “Hhhm” is a confirmation that she was attending to Bella. During this pause, she scratched herself. There is another long pause between completing the word “lot” and the beginning of the next words. During this pause, Leanne indicated attention (line 08) and Bella used a filler (line 09), normally employed by a speaker who indicates wanting to continue to speak.

Here, we have a slow emergence of the idea, publicly constituted, of using a particular existing piece as a component in their prototype.

The first gesture (line 02) oriented the group to the diagram, and more specifically to the tower-part of the diagram. Bella was saying “my brother” but her hand indicated that the diagram (tower part) was the topic. ((Perhaps this double alignment made the subsequent, long pause necessary; in part it also appeared to be the time required for the scratching??)) The second gesture (line 06) again served as alignment between the utterance and the tower part, it was an indexical gesture. The iconic gesture accompanying “this part” served to make the tower figure; this movement actually turns out to be better than simple pointing, which is inherently underspecified in terms of its aim, and could be a general or specific pointing. The moving gesture, however, was taken by coparticipant to be iconic to whatever it is that it is to be salient. In fact, the gesture itself was a representation, pointing to some part of the diagram, but the diagram pointed to the gesture and makes it in turn salient. There was a dialectic of two images. The next gesture was iconic, a pulling motion involving hand and arm, thumb and index close to the “string,” holding and pulling it. It was a dynamic situation, whereby the gesture enacted the movement described, involving the particular objects, and consistent with the geometry displayed. The imagery pertaining to the final gesture is unknown to the analysts.

This situation cannot be understood on the basis of the resources present. Rather, it also draws on the traces in each of them left by the conversation that they have had to get the drawing to where it was. The particular elements, for example, tower, pulley, and shoot arose during the conversation, and their functions had been discussed. When they were now talking about “this part,” they not only meant whatever they could see on the diagram, but in fact to the conversation that they had talked about. In this sense, the diagram as outcome of one day’s activity was a metonymic trace that pointed back to and allowed them to make present again, the situation that had led to its being.

The diagram did not just refer to the day before, or the vision that each may have had for the ultimate design that was to emerge from their construction work, but also for something completely different, that had never been present itself. Bella managed to shift the conversational context in such a way that at least the tower part aligned those present with her brother’s parking lot, or at least with a particular aspect of it.

In this situation, we have several dialectics—including the one between image and image, image and speech, and between subjectivities. Coparticipants in a situation indicate alignment, through gaze, nodding, or sounds (hhm, um).

Signaling alignment

While Bella was developing the alternative design, or rather, the particular implementation of the “elevator” part, Amanda and Leanne provided her with evidence that they were attuned with the unfolding design. In fact, when there appeared to be evidence that Bella did not continue while attention appeared to be focused elsewhere, alignment was signaled. After uttering “brother” (line 03), Amanda had turned her gaze from the previous speaker Leanne to face Bella; Leanne was still looking down toward the drawing. Her gaze moved up to meet that of Bella only 0.97 seconds after Bella had completed; the pause may also have had the function to wait until alignment was signaled. By the time Bella had uttered “lot,” Leanne was gazing at the diagram as if following the pointing finger, but Amanda was still gazing at Bella. The latter’s continuation fell precisely together with the point in time when Amanda, too, had directed her gaze at the diagram. At “this part” both listeners were looking at the diagram until Bella had finished the explanation of what to do with the part from her brother’s garage. Both simultaneously moved their gaze to look Bella squarely into the face. Amanda continued to gaze at Bella, whereas Leanne nodded repeatedly. As soon as Bella had completed her utterance, Leanne, still facing Bella, began to talk and Amanda shifted her gaze to the next speaker after having briefly dropped it downward in the direction of the design.

In both the first and second pause, Amanda (line 04) and Leanne (line 08) provided verbal indications of alignment. The intonation of Amanda’s “Hhm” was downward in pitch, indicating agreement rather than question. Similar situation existed in Leanne’s case.

That is, by the time the students are in sixth or seventh grade, they already engage in practices that make conversation possible. These practices are not salient to the consciousness of most people, but they appear to attend to them nevertheless as part of normal, everyday conversation, making them in fact work.

Dialectics

In this situation, the object of the activity is the design. During the conversation, participants are aligned to the production of the design. In the present situation, however, Bella brought in a design element that is not immediately available as resource. In this contribution, speaker and audience needed to shift their attention repeatedly. These shifts required work to guarantee that the team continued to be aligned. These shifts were managed with pauses, gestures, and gaze directions.

In this situation, the traces both of the previous conversation and whatever the parking lot may be were aligned, at least to the extent necessary for moving on. As long as there is no evidence contrary, coparticipants work based on the assumption that they are in fact aligned.

ANTHROPOMORPHISM: Reasoning from the first person perspective and in the present tense, even for the analyst.

Learning

Leanne, Bella, and Amanda had already changed in the course of the previous day, for they created, through their actions, a(n) ephemeral trace that became a resource on the subsequent day. Inscribed in their body, as a change in their body, they now had an experience that they could refer to. This experience, their traces, they take as shared, even though it might turn out that they differ on this. Or it could be that the trace changes differently so that they, even though they might initially agree to have had the same experience, heard the same words, the same meanings, they subsequently will differ on this.

Each practical action both produces and reproduces the person, reproduces the learner and produces change. These changes may be slow, unnoticeable, certainly unnoticeable on the tests that teachers and psychologists might give to students, but they are noticeable in the conversations.

Engineering requires a large knowledge base to make choices and those choices are not made by chance, but logical reason based on previous experience... A building cannot be designed or constructed in real life without logical reasoning using basic engineering principles (Aerospace engineer, personal communication, June 12, 1994).

This is the typical stance taken by those in engineering education who want to teach the basics first and then have students begin to design. Some presumed knowledge of facts and principles is presupposed. It has to be learned and then students are thought to apply facts and principles in practice. But this approach begs the question about the relationship between some formal knowledge, manipulation of text, images, design elements and the practice of designing.

Children too design based on previous experience, though their experiences are different.

“Designing in the head”: When I have some ephemeral trace about what some designing entity will look like, it is neither highly specified (perhaps bodily limitations) nor elaborate or fixed. The design is truly taking shape when it is materialized into diagrams and prototype. At the same time, because of its ephemeral nature, the “mental” design can be changed, reconfigured, discussed, argued more easily than when students begin to “commit” themselves on paper, in material form. Material traces appear to have greater stability, more resistance—perhaps they even form the character of engineers, as SungWon says, engineers are honest, perhaps because they have to deal with the resistance of the artifacts on a continuous basis.

The ephemeral nature of the trace also gives a virtual character to the design, which could be like this or like that. But with the commitment to a pencil stroke on paper, the design begins to materialize, loose its ephemeral and virtual character. For the children, the design is also of a more general nature, they design—though there are changes in this—elements in general and then look for raw materials for a sedimentation of the ephemeral design into matter. The children are therefore very flexible when it comes the nature of the materials to be used. (Interpretive flexibility of the design elements in terms of the materials to be taken) They not only choose but also negotiate the material elements of the design.

This changes, such as in the situation where Don and Dan design, taking into account tools and raw materials. No longer do they design in general but with specific materials and tools “in mind”—just as the engineer said in my quote above. Students have to have design experience to enter this stage where existing tools and materials mediate the designing activity, and the more experience you have the more the design will be shaped by it, to the point that your design becomes perhaps overly constraint by the existing traces, especially when these are cultural.

Cultural traces (customs) provide both affordances and constraints, opportunities and limitations, because each idea once it has taken material form becomes normative for subsequent design moves. Radical re-design is perhaps less probable, so designers move on, always build on what they have already thought, and then make adjustments when they encounter resistance. Designing integrates over its own history, like a mathematical convolution, continuously feeding itself and its accomplishment in subsequent design process and design product.

((There is a dialectical tension between ideas, which are of similar nature as “visions”, and material form.))

There are constraints and resistances that do not come to a fore until the moment when the artifact is actually being built. That is, the material constraints and resistances often cannot be foreseen until there is a material trace that we can then use to think with. Designing becomes distributed across the setting, and first contradictions and constrain might emerge. As the designer builds up the diagram or prototype, more contradictions and constraints continuously emerge. In each act, the designer also changes; it is a design act that changes the designer, who thereby learns to design.

Vision as “internalized” practical action

At the outside, all action is practical, interaction with the material and social world. We interact or transact with our environment, and doing so repeatedly, we come to the point that we can replay the action in the absence of the worldly aspects, the material or social situation. For example, we learn to speak with and in the presence of others. Later, we come to have internal monologue.

How does this happen?

From a neural perspective, the same or related neurons are active in the two situations. But the second one, the internal monologue, the internal designing is (more) independent of the actual situation in which it was initially born. So there is an increasing independence of the action from the practical situation until the point that the subject runs through the action but now independent of the situation.

A similar thing must be at the origin of “transfer,” where something you are doing in one situation will be done in another situation, another activity system. That is, a particular practical action shares similarities across activity systems, and therefore, despite the differences in the situations because of the differences in the mediating elements.

“Transfer” does not normally occur because there is a change in context, activity or rather action system, so that the mediating elements change the practical action. It is through experience that different action systems come to be perceived as similar, and it is at this point that we begin to transfer an action from one setting to another, or recognize that in both action systems the “same” action is appropriate.

Designing in the head becomes possible when the subject has had sufficient experience to know what a particular design element will do once it has materialized. This cannot occur without experience, without the experience of having gone through the process of materializing ideas into diagrams and prototypes.

The body is the crucial element, it embodies action and perception, orients us with respect to and in the material and social world. It is the entity that moves across, and we rally traces to reproduce ourselves in different situations. We are not constant but continuously have to reproduce ourselves within situations and across situations.