Toward a Process-Centered Account of Literate Activity in the Classroom

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to conceptualizing classroom activities that views teachers, students, and classroom objects as participating in continuous, cyclical processes of “reengaging” and “disengaging.” As an illustration, six episodes in a U.S. preschool classroom of a teacher, nine 4- to 5-year-olds, and a box (which held objects related to a featured letter of the week) were analyzed through a relational-process lens. The box, classroom members, and objects that children brought from home moved through cycles of coming together and moving apart physically and attentionally. Furthermore, these processes metaphorically pulled in other activities across time and space.