We have come to believe that our initial views have been too based upon individualistic ideas about inquiry and cognitive views of "theme." Our original ideal of creating freedom for individual children to explore within the constraints of a conceptual terrain mapped out by us has been challenged, from both the angles of "theme" and individual agency. Wertsch and Rupert's critique of neo-Vygotskian work, and its over-emphasis upon cognition, is a telling critique of our original views:
The result is a kind of individualistic reductionism. Instead of beginning with an analysis of social processes and seeking to determine how they might give rise individual mental functioning, we tend to treat social processes as if they were a copy of individual functioning. (Wertsch & Rupert, 1993, p. 229)

Or, to rephrase this statement for our own concerns, instead of beginning by asking how the social processes of working in a classroom function for the purposes of thematic inquiry, we began by imagining the classroom functioning as more or less a group of individuals engaged in their own inquiries, guided by a common idea.

Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian perspectives have been most useful to us in developing our views of inquiry learning as a social process that is shaped by and through social, material, and discursive resources (Vygotsky, 1979; Wertsch, 1985). Classwork is not simply pre-established and determined by the teacher, but is achieved collaboratively and interactionally among all participants. Activities in the classroom are also shaped by typified ways of working, genres that prompt more or less stable discursive activity (Bakhtin, 1981). Further, materials are highly significant in ways of working, being shaped by and giving shape to the discursive terrain.

Soviet activity theory emphasizes the importance of understanding how individual agency is always mediated agency, or "individuals-operating-with-mediational-means" (Wertsch, Tulviste, & Hagstrom, 1993). Thinking and working of any type always happens within and through such means that precede us:

An inherent property of mediational means is that they are culturally, historically, and institutionally situated. They virtually never emerge for the first time on the basis of an individual's reflection. (Wertsch & Rupert, 1993, p. 230)

Engestrom's (1990) model of an Activity System is helpful to us here (Attachment 1). In this model, the subject's relation to any outcome is mediated by her relation to a community as well as to cultural rules of practice. Additionally, the achievement of goals is mediated through diverse tools, including discourses. Outcomes are created within a community of practice, which is also shaped by these outcomes, and within which divisions of labor are constructed. Significant in Engestrom is also that the multiple relationships established through and activity system are not simply stable, but are flexible and re-construct one another through time in various ways: "An activity system is not only a persistent formation; it is also a creative, novelty-producing formation" (1990, p. 80). Developing our story-analysis of inquiry learning as a mediated activity for us has meant reflecting on the mediational means that are part of the classroom system that we have helped to construct. We have also tried to observe how children are restricted, directed, and aided in their inquires by such mediational tools. Finally, we have considered how through their use, children reshape and develop the meanings of the tools themselves.

In attempting to consider the classroom we have studied as a social (activity) system, where inquiry is re-conceived as mediated activity, we have reshaped our interests around three questions/issues that have emerged of key significance. These issues emphasize some of the social, discursive, and material resources and arrangements through which inquiry mediated in the classroom we have studied:
1. How did group dynamics shape the nature and possibilities of inquiry for participants?
2. How do stories (as generic activity) function as a way of working and understanding in an inquiry environment?
3. What "themes" did students construct from their work, and how do these align with teacher-directed themes? (How might we understand these lines of inquiry in their multiple intersections with discourses, activities and materials?)

Description of the Project

A total of fifteen third-grade students in a self-contained classroom participated in this study. Presently living in a rural community, most of them are from the lower-middle and working class. In addition, a majority of them were Caucasians, while one was African-American, and another was Arabic. These participants were divided into four groups: two groups read a book that related to the subsequent activity and two other groups read a book that did not relate to the follow-up activity.

Our research group consisted of three members. One of the three was Becky, the teacher of the student participants in the study. The remaining two members, Eunah and Kevin, who served as collaborating researchers, were graduate students from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In the beginning stage of our project, we sought out resources that were relevant to the topic of our interest. More specifically, we searched for materials that integrated science with literature. Some of the resource books suggested several titles among children's literature and offered guidelines on how to go about in integrating books/stories with science. In addition to those recommendations, our group members also perused multiple copies of other children's books. We then discussed the criteria for choosing books, the ones we thought would work well with the implementation of our project. Among the criteria were: interest of the students, appropriateness of the material (e.g. level of difficulty & length of the book), and open-endedness of the content.

Upon choosing Chipmunk Song (Ryder, 1987), our group members accomplished the following. First, we drew a concept map of the important elements of the book. Some of the concepts that were presented in the book were survival and adaptation skills of the chipmunk, such as gathering and storing of food, hiding from various predators, and building its shelter. This book also included a wealth of information about animal habitats, not just for the chipmunk but also for the other animals that were part of the story.

Project Implementation

On the first day of implementation, two members served as facilitators of the students while one videotaped the interactions that took place. Each of the two teachers asked their groups to brainstorm "what they know" about chipmunks/deafness prior to the exposure of the books. The reading of the stories then followed with encouragement of questions and close observations during the process. When the reading aloud was finished, teachers gave students copies of the book in pairs and asked them to look through them and continue to add ideas of questions or knowledge on the topic that the books prompted.

On the second day, we continued to build inquiry-based kind of learning environment. After showing a picture of an imaginary animal called a "zoon," we requested that students brainstorm qualities about their animal to build its habitat. A general guideline was provided for the students to follow:

1. Build the animal's home.
2. Build the area around the home--its surrounding.
3. Provide safety for animal from predators.
4. Provide shelter for the animal from weather.

The third day plus a portion of the fourth day were dedicated to the building of the animal habitat. We provided the students with a variety of materials that we had collected from our neighborhoods: pine needles and cones, wood chips, leaves, sand, pebbles/rocks, clay, and large boxes. After the students completed their constructions, they made presentations of their projects to the rest of the class. A few days later, students were given time and opportunity to reflect back on their work and write stories about all that they had accomplished.

During the entire process of our research project, we made efforts to collect as much information that related to inquiry-learning. We recorded students asking questions, exploring ideas, building the habitat, and constructing knowledge through the use of audio and video tapes. Additionally, we collected students' work and their artifacts (e.g. presentation material, individual stories). We then assembled as a group to analyze all of the above material that we had collected. Among the four groups, we chose to focus on two groups and study them in-depth, and to be able to contrast them to one another.