This study was designed to investigate the question of what goes on in a reader's mind as she transacts with extended text. It was a case study with one respondent, a ten year old girl. She reported, in writing, her thoughts during teacher read aloud, subsequent silent reading of the same text, and group discussions about the text. The findings support and flesh out Rosenblatt.s transactional theory, Vygotsky.s Zone of Proximal Development theory, and Lipman.s Philosophy for Children theory. Conclusions were that there are numerous sociocultural influences on a reader's transaction with text and that these influences must be taken into account in the classroom.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / Our basic assumption for this work is that the abilities to appraise and to categorize are closely related, leading us to the conclusion that they are part of a single process: that of knowledge organization. In this paper, we will discuss specifically some topics involving knowledge organization as far as concept formation is concerned, searching to understand its nature. For this purpose, we have used as theoretical background the works on concept formation by Vygotsky ([1934] 2000) and Nelson (1998; 1986). We believe that Nelsonâs views on young children cognitive processing, centered on the action context and on the childrenâs daily experiences can provide a more significant contribution for an extended vision of the nature of the process of concept formation than the ideas presented by Vygotsky who, in spite of stressing the importance of the context in concept formation, carried out his experiments based on artificial concepts. To check if the concepts become more abstract as time goes by or if they show to be limited to the individualâs context, connected to their memory (thus contextualized), we carry out a study with Elementary, Junior High and High School students as subjects, whose main purpose was to understand the nature of the participantsâ concepts. The students were asked to define the terms âplantâ and âanimalâ and took part in two classification activities using a set of cards, adapted from Panofsky, John-Steiner and Blackwell (1996), which consisted of twenty and one (21) pictures (07 belonging to the âplantâ category and 14 to the âanimalâ category). From the analysis of the definitions obtained and of the justifications for grouping the items into categories, we could observe that there is not a single, exclusive base for the participantsâ conceptualizations, that is, none of the categories has shown to be predominant. On the contrary, the category concepts are formed from internalized pieces of information about the world, no matter if these pieces of information are of a daily or of a more formal nature. / Neste trabalho partimos da premissa de que as habilidades de conceituar e de categorizar estÃo intimamente relacionadas, levando-nos a concluir que elas fazem parte de um Ãnico processo: o de organizaÃÃo do conhecimento. Especificamente, abordaremos questÃes concernentes à organizaÃÃo do conhecimento no tocante à formaÃÃo de conceitos buscando compreender a sua natureza. Para isso, utilizamos como base teÃrica os trabalhos sobre formaÃÃo de conceitos de Vygotsky ([1934] 2000) e de Nelson (1998; 1986). Defendemos que a proposta de Nelson sobre o processamento cognitivo de crianÃas jovens, centrada no contexto de aÃÃo, nas experiÃncias cotidianas das crianÃas, pode contribuir para uma visÃo mais ampliada da natureza do processo de formaÃÃo de conceitos que a visÃo apresentada por Vygotsky que, mesmo defendendo a importÃncia do contexto na formaÃÃo dos conceitos, realizou seus experimentos utilizando-se de conceitos artificiais. Para verificarmos se os conceitos com o passar do tempo vÃo se tornando mais abstratos ou se, ainda, mostram-se, presos ao contexto do indivÃduo, ligados à memÃria de eventos (contextualizado), realizamos uma pesquisa com alunos do Ensino Fundamental e do Ensino MÃdio com o objetivo de compreender a natureza dos conceitos dos participantes. A tarefa experimental consistiu de uma atividade de definiÃÃo para os termos planta e animal e duas atividades de classificaÃÃo usando um conjunto de cartÃes, adaptado de Panofsky, John-Steiner e Blackwell (1996) que constou de vinte e uma (21) figuras (07 da categoria plantas e 14 da categoria animais). AtravÃs da anÃlise das definiÃÃes e justificativas para os agrupamentos de itens em categorias, pudemos verificar que nÃo hà uma Ãnica e exclusiva base para as conceitualizaÃÃes dos participantes, ou seja, nÃo hà predominÃncia de uma ou de outra categoria, e sim que seus conceitos sÃo formados a partir de pedaÃos de informaÃÃes internalizadas sobre o mundo quer sejam cotidianas quer sejam mais formais.