ABSTRACT
The desire to represent and communicate meaning is a fundamental feature of being human. We are not unique in taking this position. We align ourselves with a cadre of thinkers from art theoreticians and art educators (Thompson, 1990; Tickle, 1996a, 1967b) to anthropologists (Hall, 1976) linguists (Halliday & Hasan, 1989), psychologists and philosophers (e.g., Dewey, 1934; Langer, 1957), and literacy educators (e.g., Goodman, 1994; Harste et al., 1984). Like many of these thinkers, we argue that being human means not only struggling to make sense of our environment and our place in it, but sharing and elaborating on that struggle with others. Human beings strive to make sense of life. We seem to find solace, challenge, pleasure, and sociality in representing our sense-making to others and in considering and interpreting the sense-making of others.1
