Recent developments in the application of Activity Theory

1. Recent developments in the application of Activity Theory Harry Daniels The Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research h.r.j.daniels@bath.ac.uk

12. Argument 1Social world structures thinking Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice or on two planes… It appears first between people as an intermental category, and then within the child as an intramental category

13. Argument 2Scientific and spontaneous concepts Concept Scientific concepts • Impose on child logically defined concepts • Scientific concepts move ‘downwards’ towards greater concreteness • Evolve in highly structured and specialized activity of classroom instruction Mature concepts Spontaneous Concepts • Concepts emerge from the child’s own • reflections of everyday experience • Spontaneous concepts move upwards towards greater abstractness • Develops in child’s everyday learningenvironment Object

14. Vygotsky the methodologist • Anyone who attempts to skip this problem, to jump over methodology in order to build some special psychological science right away, will inevitably jump over his horse while trying to sit on it. (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 329)

15. Mediating Artefacts: Tools and Signs Object Sense Meaning Subject Outcome Object oriented activity

16. Mediating Artefacts: Tools and Signs Object Sense Meaning Subject Outcome Division of Labour The structure of a human activity system Engestrom 1987 p. 78

17. Mediating Artefacts: Tools and Signs Object Sense Meaning Subject Outcome Community Division of Labour The structure of a human activity system Engestrom 1987 p. 78

18. Mediating Artefacts: Tools and Signs Object Sense Meaning Subject Outcome Rules Community Division of Labour The structure of a human activity system Engestrom 1987 p. 78

19. Two interacting activity systems as minimal model for third generation of activity theory -- Engestrom 1999 Mediating Artefact Mediating Artefact Object 2 Object 2 Object 1 Object 1 Rules Community Division of Labour Rules Community Division of Labour Object 3

20. Contradictions, tensions, conflicts, breakdowns

21. 4 levels of contradiction

22. expansive (cycles) transformations in activity systems • object and motive of the activity are reconceptualized to embrace a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in the previous mode of the activity

23. Strengths • object oriented activity • multi-voicedness of activity systems • historicity. • contradictions as sources of change and development. • expansive (cycles) transformations in activity systems

24. Argument 1Social world structures thinking Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice or on two planes… It appears first between people as an intermental category, and then within the child as an intramental category

25. Argument 2Scientific and spontaneous concepts Concept Scientific concepts • Impose on child logically defined concepts • Scientific concepts move ‘downwards’ towards greater concreteness • Evolve in highly structured and specialized activity of classroom instruction Mature concepts Spontaneous Concepts • Concepts emerge from the child’s own • reflections of everyday experience • Spontaneous concepts move upwards towards greater abstractness • Develops in child’s everyday learningenvironment Object

26. Argument 3theories of learning • subject (traditionally an individual, more recently possibly also an organization) • acquires some identifiable knowledge or skills in such a way that a • corresponding, relatively lasting change in the behaviour of the subject may be observed. • knowledge or skill to be acquired is itself stable and reasonably well defined. • There is a competent ‘teacher’ who knows what is to be learned.

27. People and organizations are all the time learning something that is not stable, not even defined or understood ahead of time. • important transformations -- literally learned as they are being created. • There is no competent teacher.

28. Bateson’s (1972) theory of learning – 3 levels • Learning I refers to conditioning, acquisition of the responses deemed correct in the given context – for instance, the learning of correct answers in a classroom • Learning II people acquire the deep-seated rules and patterns of behaviour characteristic to the context itself

29. Learning II creates as double bind -- context -> contradictory demands • Learning III where a person or a group begins to radically question the sense and meaning of the context and to construct a wider alternative context

30. Learning III • learning activity which has its own typical actions and tools • The object of expansive learning activity is the entire activity system in which the learners are engaged. • Expansive learning activity produces culturally new patterns of activity. • Expansive learning at work produces new forms of work activity.

31. VYGOTSKY’S METHOD OF DOUBLE STIMULATION

32. “The task facing the child in the experimental context is, as a rule, beyond his present capabilities and cannot be solved by existing skills. In such cases a neutral object is placed near the child, and frequently we are able to observe how the neutral stimulus is drawn into the situation and takes on the function of a sign. Thus, the child actively incorporates these neutral objects into the task of problem solving. We might say that when difficulties arise, neutral stimuli take on the function of a sign and from that point on the operation’s structure assumes an essentially different character.” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 74; italics added)

33. Melucci-- Challenging Codes • “What we must recognize is that actors themselves can make sense out of what they are doing, autonomously of any evangelical or manipulative interventions of the researcher. (...) • Secondly, we need to recognize that the researcher-actor relation is itself an object of observation, that it is itself part of the field of action, and thus subject to explicit negotiation and to a contract stipulated between the parties. (...) • Lastly, we must recognize that every research practice which involves intervention in the field of action creates an artificial situation which must be explicitly acknowledged. (...) a capability of metacommunication on the relationship between the observer and the observed must therefore be incorporated into the research framework.” • (Melucci, 1996, p. 388-389)

35. lacks a sophisticated account of the regulation of subject – subject relations (and thus social positioning). • and of the production, and to some extent the structure and function of the cultural artefacts (such as discourse) which mediate subject – object relations.   . “the integration of discourse into the theory of activity has only begun” Engeström and Miettinen (1999) p.7.  .

36. Words in institutions • ‘The instruction of the child in systems of scientific knowledge in school involves a unique form of communication in which the word assumes a function which is quite different from that characteristic of other forms of communication ... • The child learns word meanings in certain forms of school instruction not as a means of communication but as part of a system of knowledge. • This learning occurs not through direct experience with things or phenomena but through other words’. • Vygotsky (1987) p27

37. Overall Model of Description Horizontal Vertical Horizontal Staff Subjects School Organisation Parents Employers Colleges Mainstream Schools Theory of Instruction External Relations Instructional Practice Instructional Context Regulative Practice Classroom Practice

38. P = I/R

39. Coding of Classroom PracticeContext -- Classification

40. Coding of Classroom PracticeFRAMING

41. Coding of Classroom PracticeRegulative Practice

42. Coding of Classroom Practice in I/R format

43. Correctly judged discriminations by both of two observers

44. Average number of words uttered – n=100 (ten children ten tasks)