ABSTRACTS

MCA Abstracts -Vol. 12 (2)

In Search of Sensitive Ethnography of Change: Tracing the Invisible Hand-Offs from Technology Developers to Users
Mervi Hasu, University of Helsinki

Abstract
It is suggested that the prevailing form of technology adoption and stabilization through the “handing-off” of technologies across multiple, discontinuous worlds relies upon articulation work that is largely invisible. In this paper I discuss the possibilities of opening the black box, that is, finding out how the “invisible” in technology production and use can be traced. I suggest a research methodology that is sensitive not only to the processes of exclusion, but also to the emerging interactions and expansive efforts among technology developers and users. The challenge of such dynamic methodology is to trace on-line the emerging new pattern of activity when it does not have any center or clear material entity as yet. The context of my doctoral research, the early implementation of an innovation, is a clear example of such an activity. It is a collaborative and potentially expansive endeavor in which both the innovation and the user activity are transformed as the innovation is adopted into use. I call this research practice, which follows activity theory, the “ethnography of change”. I will elaborate upon part of my doctoral research in which the ethnographer’s sensitiveness to the subjects’ marginality enriched the activity-theoretical analysis and demonstrated a need for reflecting upon the methodological strategies used in activity-theoretical research on work and organizations. I suggest that if the activity-theoretical analysis of work practices is further developed as an ethnography of change, able to reveal the multi-voicedness that exceeds the expected or hypothetical categories, more attention needs to be paid to the sensitivity of ethnography and the interactive processes of the data collection.

Artifacts, Tools, and Classrooms

Geraldine McDonald, Wellington College of Education
Huong Le, Hue College of Sciences, Hue University
Joanna Higgins, Wellington College of Education
Valerie Podmore, Victoria University of Wellington

Abstract
Although schools contain many material artifacts, studies in classrooms have tended to focus on discourse and quality of social interaction even when artifacts are being used. Responding to Engström’s (1999) invitation to take artifacts seriously, three studies are described in which a material object was essential to a classroom activity. The first artifact was an enlarged text which had been transferred to a flip chart for the purpose of shared reading. The second was a jigsaw used in a mathematics session. The third was a textbook used by Vietnamese university students who were learning English. The three material objects central to the events are explored from the viewpoint of human functioning and in relation to Wartofsky’s three categories of artifact.

The Systemic-Structural Theory of Activity: Applications to the Study of Human Work

Gregory Z. Bedny, Essex County College
Steven Robert Harris, University of Glamorgan, Wales, UK

Abstract
This paper offers an introduction to the central concepts and principles of the Systemic-Structural Theory of Activity (SSTA), an activity-theoretical approach specifically tailored to the analysis and design of human work. In activity theory, cognition is understood both as a process and as a structured system of actions. Building on the general theory of activity, SSTA’s use of structurally organized analytical units makes it possible to develop taxonomies and theoretical models of human activity which provide a scientific basis for ergonomic design, education, and industrial-organizational psychology. The primary focus of this paper is on design problems in ergonomics. Whereas cognitive psychology has shown a tendency to reduce design problem-solving to experimental procedures, systemic-structural activity analyses focus on the interrelationship between the structure of work activity and the configuration of the material components of work. SSTA presents methods for the classification and description of human work activity, identifying activity during task performance as the primary object of study, using action as one of the major unit of analysis. We outline some applications of SSTA to the study of human work processes, and define and discuss some basic concepts and principles of activity theory.