describe the ideals that surrounded learning within team life and to capture—primarily through detailing the language of activities—manifestations of the environment of learning that the specialized domain of Little League baseball provided.

Although the aura of "learning to be like the experts" hung over the team, none of the members claimed that they wanted to play in the major leagues or grow up to become a professional ballplayer. Those interviewed said that, aside from giving them time to be with their friends, playing ball allowed them to get "the basics" and to be creative with these basics. They expected practice sessions to be devoted to learning about elements of certain types of action in the game and to assume a certain independently gained level of knowledge on their part. They often used their own knowledge of cases—of players, plays, and games—to ask questions, make a point, or challenge other players' analyses of certain plays.

Sociodramatic play presents, then, a special situation for conditionality in that it is made possible by a meta-awareness on the part of all participants that the call for the play is a call for pretense or imagination. Although both children and adults will sometimes introduce invitations to pretense by specific lexical markers, such as suppose, let's pretend. or imagine, it is more often the case that sociodramatic play is initiated simply by an announcement of counterfactual conditions (e.g., "Man on second, top of the eighth inning ..." said during practice drill on grounders).

Some boys studied the rules and talked with their fathers and the coach about specific rules that applied to Little League or that offered guidance on interpreting umpires' judgments. Others chose to alternate batting as a right-hander or left-hander, to deviate from expected styles of pitching, or to make the most of the lack of balance between their talents (e.g., boys who did not have the highest batting averages were sometimes best known as fast runners).

Often, after a sociodramatic play, he would ask the boys to analyze what had taken place within the action elicited from the set-up of the situation.

The town offers multiple types of neighborhood-based organizations, boasts more libraries per capita than any other city its size in California, and supports consistent news coverage of the athletic and artistic activities of its youth.

thin the season, the boys participated intensely in apprenticeship with an expert (

he weakest outfielder of the early season could move to catcher by mid-season; the smallest player who lagged behind all the other players in running time and batting power could become the team's strategist. The coach and players called attention to these differences often, both during practices and in interviews

Baseball, sometimes disparagingly characterized as a game in which sixteen people stand around and wait for two people to do something, provides abundant occasions for players to put their problem solving and creating of possible worlds into words—usually in the form of "what-if," "if-then," or "did-you-see" narratives

Baseball, sometimes disparagingly characterized as a game in which sixteen people stand around and wait for two people to do something, provides abundant occasions for players to put their problem solving and creating of possible worlds into words—usually in the form of "what-if," "if-then," or "did-you-see" narratives

The purpose of the fieldwork reported in this study was to describe the ideals that surrounded learning within team life and to capture—primarily through detailing the language of activities—manifestations of the environment of learning that the specialized domain

ge- and gender-related habits, institutional values, and situated meanings that are at once spontaneous, adaptive, and historically established.

or eventcasts to be interactive narratives, the boys and the coach had to be familiar with not only the syntax of SAT but also the technical vocabulary surrounding aspects of the game, from major league statistics (scats) to names of the catcher's equipment.

value of differences among learners

Learners assume prototypical identities as professionals

the coach gives cues to the boys to bring into place certain scenarios in which players take on certain roles, execute particular actions, and may meet with several outcomes. T

In baseball season, I look at the paper every day. I watch, like, the high-lights on the news, listen to the radio. and I hear different stuff, like what other players are doing and that lets me know, like, that's a new thing for me. I always keep learning new things about baseball, and it makes me do the same things on the field.

onsistent attention to monitoring by all members kept individuals from becoming isolated and spread positive evaluations as well as descriptive analyses of moves and actions across all team members. Monitoring was a consistent public activity; it held little value as a private indulgence. T

commitment to using sources of knowledge about the game other than those immediately at hand in their own practices. One player summarized his learning about baseball outside of practice as follows: In baseball season, I look at the paper every day. I watch, like, the high-lights on the news, listen to the radio. and I hear different stuff, like what other players are doing and that lets me know, like, that's a new thing for me. I always keep learning new things about baseball, and it makes me do the same things on the field

strict segregation of roles by agent and recipient of transmission. Moreover, learner progress, especially within formal education, is determined by the display capabilities of the learner, who must provide evidence of matching a path of development laid down by th

eachers need to move beyond the formal confines of the curriculum to parallel, build on, and expand the content and forms of everyday reasoning. H

oice into a more excited and proud-sounding par-ent voice, implicitly praising the boy and asking how he knew what the ob-ject was