MCA Abstracts Vol. 9, No 2

Sasha A. Barab, Michael Barnett, Lisa Yamagata-Lynch, Kurt Squire, Thomas Keating
"Using Activity Theory to Understand The Systemic Tensions Characterizing a Technology-Rich Introductory Astronomy Course"

In this report of our research on a computer-based three-dimensional (3-D) modeling course for learning astronomy, we use the central tenets of Activity Theory to analyze participation by undergraduate students and instructors, illuminating the instances of activity that characterized course dynamics. Specifically, we focus on the relations of subject (student) and object (3-D models and astronomy understandings) and how, in our course, object transformations leading to scientific understandings are mediated by tools (both technological and human), the overall classroom microculture (emergent norms), division of labor (group dynamics and student/instructor roles), and rules (informal, formal, and technical). Through analysis of the data we interpreted and then focused on two systemic tensions as illuminative of classroom activity. With respect to the first systemic tension, we examined the interplay between learning astronomy and building 3-D models. Results suggested that instead of detracting from the emergence of an activity system that supported learning astronomy, model-building actions frequently co-evolved with (was the same as) astronomy-learning actions. With respect to the second tension, we examined the interplay between pre-specified, teacher-directed instruction versus emergent, student-directed learning. Our results indicated that it was rarely teacher-imposed nor student-initiated constraints that directed learning; rather, rules, norms, and divisions of labor arose from the requirements of building and sharing 3-D models.

Wolff-Michael Roth, Kenneth Tobin
"Redesigning an ‘Urban’ Teacher Education Program: An Activity Theory Perspective"

In this article, we use activity theory to frame the redesign of an urban teacher education program. Some of the contradictions that we had to deal with are endemic to traditional teacher education programs while others were particular to this program, which has as its goal to prepare teachers to work in urban (inner city) schools. Our intervention consisted of a change to coteaching, a collective form of teaching, and cogenerative dialoguing, a process of creating local theory involving coteachers and student representatives. Our coteaching/cogenerative-dialoguing paradigm makes salient the social, collective, rather than individual, psychological dimensions of learning to teach. As a result of the redesign process, new forms of relations between new teachers, cooperating (in-service) teachers, and supervisors emerged that are more participatory and democratic than they had been in the past.

Kirsten Foot
"Pursuing an Evolving Object: A Case Study in Object Formation and Identification"

The notion of object is a central, but frequently misunderstood, element of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). From what, where, and when does the object of an activity system come? How does an activity theorist identify an activity’s multifaceted, evolving object? This article presents a rearticulation of object in CHAT perspective, illustrated by a case study of object formation in a network of conflict monitors in the post-Soviet sphere—the Network for Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning (EAWARN). Through participant-observation fieldnotes, transcripts of recorded discussions among EAWARN participants and of interviews with Network members and directors, and postings to the EAWARN listserv, the author demonstrates how an activity system’s object can be identified through the varying perspectives of multiple participants in an activity system.