ABSTRACTS
Vol.
11, No. 1 Mind, Culture, & Activity
The
Complex of School Change:
Personal and Systemic Co-development
William
Barowy
Cindy Jouper
This
article describes the mutual development of a school system in a poor rural
county with one of its teachers. We recount the conditions leading to the
coordination and writing of a Technology Literacy Challenge Fund proposal to
ameliorate inadequate computer technology and initiate pedagogical change. We
apply the expansive methodology of Cultural Historical Activity Theory to
explicate personal and systemic developments. We examine the concept of
activity identity by relating it to movement and action across activity
systems, and by contrasting it to the notion of self-efficacy. We find a theoretical problem emerging with the delineation
of people's activity into separate systems and scales of time.
Using
Activity Theory to Conceptualize Online Community and
Using
Online Community to Conceptualize Activity Theory
Sasha Barab, Steve Schatz, and Rebecca Scheckler
In
this paper we describe the evolving structure of the Inquiry Learning Forum
(ILF), a socio-technical interaction network designed to support a web-based
community of in-service and pre-service mathematics and science teachers
sharing, improving, and creating inquiry based pedagogical practices.
Specifically, we apply activity theory as an analytical lens for characterizing
the process of designing and supporting the implementation of this online
community. Our findings lend support for three implications. First, activity
theory can provide a useful analytical tool for characterizing design activity,
especially in terms of illuminating the challenges of designing something like
community. Second, as one moves toward trying to design a community,
particularly one in which the members will be expected to engage in new
practices that challenge their current culture, many tensions emerge. Third,
consideration of the ILF as a socio-technical interaction network (STIN) was a
necessary conceptual step in our understanding of the ILF and the transactional
nature of people and tools. It is our conception that activity theory and STIN
are synergistic theoretical frameworks that when taken together can provide a
richer view of design activity and community functioning than either can offer
in isolation.
Wolff-Michael Roth http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/test/Identity112.doc
Kenneth Tobin,
Rowhea Elmesky, Cristobal Carambo,
Ya-Meer McKnight, and Jennifer Beers
In cultural historical activity theory,
the entities that make a system are not conceived as independent but as aspects
of mediated relations. Consequently, an individual, a tool, or a community
cannot be theorized in an independent manner but must be understood in terms of
the historically changing, mediated relations in which they are integral and
constitutive parts. Drawing on a case study that focuses on the identities of
two of the authors, we show how, by participating in the activity system of
schooling, the identities of students and teachers are continuously made and
remade. A teacher changes from being “someone unable to control the
class” to being a respected and successful school staff member; a student
changes from being a street fighter to being an A student. Identity, we argue,
should therefore not be thought of as a stable characteristic of individuals
but as a contingent achievement of situated activity. Our case study suggests
that cogenerative dialogues involving students and their teachers provide
contexts for the reflexive elaboration of mutual understanding of the
identities of individuals who occupy different social locations in the activity
system.