ABSTRACT
Language sharpens perception and understanding of experience, but it simultaneously distorts and obscures. Most of our everyday and scientific languages fragment social activity, including schooling, into the separate and distinct categories of consciousness (for example, values, beliefs, attitudes, motives, personality traits, etc.), observable behavior, and social context (for example, socio-economic status, classroom climate). These separations in our languages make it extraordinarily difficult to talk and think about schooling as a continuing social process wherein context and consciousness are joined in the acting moment.
