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Primary School Project that is in progress in my research group (Bartolini
Bussi, 1991). Background ideas came from Piaget, who still exerts the ma-
jor influence on pedagogics in Italy. Later, more and more ideas from activ-
ity theory crept over the research group: Their adaptation for classroom
work was (and still is) tested continuously. For instance, we used the
concept of semiotic mediation to model (either design or analyze) the
process of inhibiting the student's reaction by means of a cultural tool
(Bartolini Bussi, in press a). The concept of internalization was used to
model some special aspects of long-term teaching experiments on the
coordination of spatial perspectives, when the teacher directly proposes a
dialogical model for the solution of a drawing task that is gradually
transferred from the interpsychological to the intrapsychological plane
(Bartolini Bussi, in press b). Last, but not least, activity theory by Leont'ev
(1977) offered a powerful tool to model long-term studies (Bartolini Bussi,
in press a). Our project is not an application of activity theory, but an
example of progressive interaction between theory and practice, by means
of appropriating existing theoretical tools. Besides, the reference to original
papers (rather than to subsequent applications) is a defence against
radicalization. Yet, our work has also retained some ideas inherited from the
Piagetian framework. Not only cooperation but also cognitive conflicts are
focused. The concept of epistemological obstacle, inherited from Bachelard
and Piaget via Brousseau (1986), has been used to model a teaching
experiment on Cartesian graphs (Bartolini Bussi, 1992) and is the object of
a permanent activity carried on with students (the reconstruction of a
personal as well as a collective history of solution for a class of problems).
Moreover, the collection of students' conceptions is always performed by
MARIA G. BARTOLINI BUSSI

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APPROACHES TO CLASSROOM INTERACTION
teachers by means of collective discussions that act as the basis for the
following activity.
Actually, if we had to decide whether to be considered Vygotskyan or
Piagetian, we would say Vygotskyan, but our perspective could be better
described by referring to complementarity: We allow ourselves to refer to
approaches that are even theoretically incompatible. Maybe it is not
possible to be simultaneously Piagetian and Vygotskyan, to encourage
students to express their own conceptions while introducing a sign for
semiotic mediation. Yet, in the design of long-term studies, it is possible to
alternate phases influenced by either a Piagetian or Vygotskyan perspective.
The acceptance of alternating phases does not result in an equidistant
position from Piagetian and Vygotskyan perspectives: The will to renounce
theoretical coherence in favor of relevance to problems of action is deeply
Vygotskyan, as Vygotsky, unlike Piaget, was not a theoretician, but a
protagonist of the great social and cultural struggles of the 1920s and the
1930s in Russia (Mecacci, in Vygotsky, 1990 p. ix). A similar (even if not
identical) position on complementarity seems to be shared by the teams of
other innovation projects (see Bartolini Bussi 1991).
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4. TWO EXAMPLES TO THINK OVER
4.1. When the Child Is Speechless
Teacher: That's fine! What is it?
(on the table, there is a three-dimensional small cat of folded and stapled paper,
built by the teacher in advance)
Child: . . . (silence)
Teacher: Do you know what it is?
Child: Paper.
Teacher: Look at it well, what is it?
Child: Eyes. . . . that's an eye.
Teacher: An eye.
Child: Nose, mouth.
Teacher: And what is this?
Child: The other small eye, that is whiskers.
Teacher: And that . . . (she points at the body)
Child: Legs.
Teacher: This part all together, what is it?
Child: . . . (silence)
Teacher: Okay. There are the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the whiskers.
(she points at each one)