The project is a collaborative partnership between two public schools
systems and Lesley College. The goals of the partnership (as defined
through funding, and therefore also linking the funding institution) are
to facilitate the integration of technology into the elementary curriculum
and, in the process, strengthen the leadership capacities in schools for
applying technology relevant to schools' goals and needs in science and
mathematics. First and second grade teachers, school administrators and
college faculty are involved in the project. Specifically and
historically, the project was orignally intended to bring together two
school systems and Lesley college in the service of providing professional
development of teachers, with "training" occuring more or less in the
traditional way of people grouping together around the curriculum that a
professor "delivers".
The project was having difficulties, and when I joined Lesley last year, I
was invited to take it over. The idea that we are now pursuing for adult
professional development is one in which learning occurs in the context of
developing (actually a process of adaptation) and teaching new curricula
for elementary school classrooms. Teachers collaborate in their school
system, with another school system, and together with college faculty. The
idea I'm interested in is to step outside of traditional professional
development, to a model closer to Dewey's description of an intimate
connection between experience and learning -- for adults. Where does the
professional development occur? Well it occurs whenever someone is trying
to accomplish a task related to improving the students learning, such as
through adapting lessons, communicating with collaborators, etc.. and they
need to learn something in order to accomplish the task. You can then
infer that learning does then occur between and in everyone involved.
Apart from connecting with Dewey's ideal, this model is also interesting
because it might be scaled to larger dimensions - many schools
collaborating in heterogeneous ways. Sounds crazy? Perhaps so. And the
model is also interesting because in some ways it is similar to Senge's
notions of learning organizations. The five disciplines that Senge writes
about can be reinterpreted through activity theory. For example, the
notion of "shared vision" is one that is emerging as a critical achievement
for this organization that spans and interpenetrates several institutions.
Shared vision relates to the idea of "shared objects" in the transient
activity systems that we practically call "meetings" between participants
of the institutions. Of course, we are trying to build a shared vision for
a learning organization that will be sustainable - i.e. a more permanent,
well developed, activity system with a well defined ensemble of objects
(activity theory sense) that interpenetrate the schools and lesley college.
Which brings me to the first recognition. I find the association between
an activity system and a single shared object too simplistic. As we go
through our growing pains several objects appear in activity systems that
span over different scales of time, and each is unequally shared among
participants. And objects are complex, displaying 'internal structure',
which can be practically thought of as a dynamic admixture of meeting
agenda and goals, and individual goals. For example, let's unpack a
meeting slightly - a transient activity system formed temporarily for (1)
carrying out the grant, (2) the building of the learning organization. The
short-term object of the next meeting is to coordinate the actions of
participants over the spring, and, in the process, coordinate the actions
of participants to facilitate collaboration over the long-term existance of
the project, including the writing of a follow-on proposal, thereby
coordinating to ensure its long term existance.
Think of the oft-quoted example of a tribe beating the brush to hunt for
food. In the short term the shared object is getting something to eat, but
thinking over a longer timescale, an object is the preservation of the
tribe and its members. It is useful to think across different scales of
time to understand activity. I claim it is necessary in the case of
transient, ill-formed systems, such as in our attempts to build a learning
organization that interpenetrates institutions. These institutions I
recognize as other well developed and interpenetrating ensembles of well
developed activity systems.
In these transient activity systems qua meetings, people come together with
a variety of personal interests and goals. The shared objects are ill
defined. Senge's mental models become apparent in the disparate operations
qua habits, beliefs, and assumptions that emerge into salience as goals
and tasks are negotiated during these meetings. The negotiation in turn
leads to the development, to the better definition, of objects and future
activity. Further transient activity is planned, often adaptations of
those ported from well formed systems, such as a 'field trip', in which the
children explore their local ecosystem (a pond near the schoolyard) and the
expert (from Audubon) comes to them to help them make observations. This
latter transient system, having a basis in common, although not necesssaily
shared, experience between the two schools, accompanies a much better
formed object than the meeting does. The common experience being the more
traditional field trip in which the children travel to some remote natural
site and observe with the aid of the expert. (This latter example is also
interesting to interpret through an innovation diffusion framework, as it
previously had become a well formed activity in one school system before
the grant, and it was something that was subsequently shared with the two
other institutions.)
So there are lots of boundaries if you think of activity systems in
juxtaposition, but I prefer to think of them as interpenetrating, with the
intersections not only in the shared subjects and shared artifacts, but
also in the shared transient activities, hence shared objects. The
development of a well formed activity system that interpenetrates other
systems seems to occur through the formation of an increasing number of
shared activities; subjects, objects, artifacts, that become ongoing and
recursive practices. (It is also interesting to interpret this development
through the creation of setttings framework.)
I find translating between lay terms, CHAT terms, and the terms from other
frameworks such as Senge's, Sarasons, etc. to be necessary and to require
care. I'd like to advocate similar care in developing new terms for
describing activity which may otherwise invite confusion.
Thanks,
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]