Things That Make Kids Smart: A Vygotskian Perspective on Concrete Tool Use in Primary Literacy Classroomsa

Abstract

In this study, writing and reading workshops are viewed as sites for the employment of tools, for learning what to do with concrete objects, where even material things with no language in them can make one smarter and able to do new things. This ethnographic study of a multi-age primary classroom in the USA (with children aged five to eight) yielded data that included field notes and videotape. Data were analyzed within a Vygotskian framework to determine the affordances, both intended and unintended, of the varied concrete tools the teacher placed in the classroom. Emphasis is placed upon the ways these tools are designed to mediate culturally-sanctioned states of mind. Complications arise when children import motives from other contexts and use the tools for interactions and activities not sanctioned by the teacher and school. Consistent with activity theory, tools are examined as being situated within actions, discourses, and activity systems.