Archie [Zariski, 1 May 96] makes some interesting points about the nature of learner activity.
I agree that reading does not have to be passive, and also that the expert typically is not at all passive while reading--I was indeed engaging in all the activities you listed as I read what you wrote! No denying it. But as you say, the student is not an expert. A better comparison for us, when we think about how our students will read an article, is to imagine how we would read an article on European Commission directives. Maybe that's a bit over the top, but you get the point. The language is difficult, you don't know which is the really important bit, you don't know why any of it is important or useful--how active a learner can you be in those circumstances? When Open University authors prepare study texts for students these issues are all attended to very carefully of course, but they also elicit activity by the student by the inclusion of "in-text activities" and "self-assessed questions." These are meant to promote the kind of activity while reading that Archie suggested is done. Students have to be enabled and encouraged to be active readers, otherwise they will merely attend, if that.
And yes, design of learning is still about "self-realization through structured learning experiences" (though I would substitute "self-in-relation-to-world" for "self"). But the nature of the experience we design is different when it is doing something in a program, from when it is doing pencil-and-paper exercises. It is very difficult for academics to think this through, because none of us have experienced learning through computers, nor even very much development of knowledge through computer-based activity, though that is increasing as IT changes research in all disciplines now. And investigating experts' learning processes reminds me too much of all those barren attempts by information processing and AI theorists to encapsulate expertise in semantic nets and the like--no, I know you don't mean that, it just conjured a strong reaction by association!
How to get experts/academics to be able to think through the kinds of learning activities a student needs to experience?--an interesting problem, as yet unsolved.