Forgive me for writing with a train of thought ... it has been deflected by
Nate's and Pauls comments though and I see the next part coming up as
differnt than when I booted the computer up this morning.
What I was worrying about next was how one treats what bronfenbrenner
describes as the developmental validity -- to demonstrate that learning has
occured one must demonstrate a change in... [the activity system of the
subject(s)]
the phase in brackets is my insert cause it integrates bronfenbrenners
ideas into the activity theory framework: it's material -- treating
artifacts and what people do, say, etc. and avoids
insidetheheadblackboxconceptions. And furthermore because I now take an
activity system to being something stable on some long time frame (to be
determined) it forces me to think often of whether the interventions I am
involved in are *sustainable*. If these interventions cause a change in
an activity system so conceived i.e. AS--->AS' then if developmentally
valid, AS' will continue for some long time, on it's own, and
sustainability will have been approached well. the qualification "on its
own" is something that I have been tossing and turning over. More on that
later.
Aside: Here is why I think the definition of AS includes stability. I took
a workshop from Yrjö this summer on the change laboratory [that certainly
changed a lot of things for me] and I asked about the definition of an
activity system -- I think the question went like this: Here we are in
this room, in this workshop, in this conference. Is this workshop or the
conference an activity system? The reply was 'No". The workshop is not
an activity system, neither is the conference, although EARLI, the
organization that is of the object of putting on conferences is an acivity
system. (here is where I may stumble on the explanation) My take is that
because the expanded AS includes such things as division of labor,
routines, community, and rules means that to talk about an activity system,
one must be able to articulate (to bound them) these elements in some way
-- you can only do that welll for a system that is not 'rapidly changing'
-- so traditionally an activity system is something that has been around
for a while and is not rapidly changing. Obviously this limits what you
can study in the world and again my take is that Yrjö is addressing this
facet of the theory through his studies such as knotworking.
I think what Paul is describing with students coming in to the community
college and exploring courses over a couple years is an interesting
contrast as although the students are in and out of it over a short time,
the community college is something well formed -- reminds me of Hutchins
study of learning ship navigation in the navy.
But I have to continue on with this thread, 'cause my primary purpose is to
build up the theoretical treatment of this project. Paul's description of
plurality, like Eva's iscrat paper is part of what I must think about in
drawing the boundaries.
"Drawing the boundary of the system" is directly related to the definition
of developmental validity as I have put it above. This project spans
several traditional systems - college, schools, env. org, and the subjects
of my primary interest are the adults working in the schools. The
description does focus mostly at the collective level, but it is useful to
address developmental validity for individuals -- It is revealing to be
able to 'zoom in' (using Catalina Laserna's turn of phrase) to the
individual description. It is also useful to be able to zoom in to the
childrens' participation (more on that later).
Focussing on adult development creates a constant tension I must deal with,
in that i think there are some very interesting aspects of childrens
learning I'd like to explore, but the focus of lesley college is teacher
education and preparation, so seeking institutional support, that is the
direction I am pursuing. I am thinking about the activity systems that
the adult is participating in as I am interested in whether the project
influences any changes in those systems. Most of the time, for the
teachers, the system can be limited to the school. The curriculum
coordinators also spend a lot of time involved in the state curriculum
frameworks, running their own professional development activities for the
school, interfacing with the community (politicians and parents), etcetera,
and so the changes can appear in any number of 'places'.
The reason the boundaries become so broad is because of competing effects
(I see this writing is going to go on for a long time) . Ecologically, I
am interested in what effect the project has on the school activity system,
and this is effected by other things that perturb the system and alter the
uptake of the project activities, as well as altering the project design
per se. A particular example of this is what happened when state testing
influenced how one district's leadership decided to
investigate/make-changes in the bussing program for inner-city kids (they
scored low on the test), that caused an uproar over racial diversity (with
national broadcasts), that (1) caused leadership in Lesley college (with
its initiative this year on diversity) to question the project and (2)
rippled through changes in the school district. With web-like percolation
of influences several changes in project activities resulted, as all of us
wanted to address issues of diversity -- apart from changes in the school
systems, the existence of the project was also threatened. This example
can be further unpacked in a separate email.
The ecological design is comparative, but difficult to carry out for one
investigator -- so I consider this pilot, exploratory work. A more
comprehensive study needs more participant/researchers. The comparative
aspects of the ecological study are (sort of) built in -- we have one
project that is working with 2 school districts -- one school in one
district and two schools in another district. In a perfect design, the
changes in the activity systems/schools could be placed in juxtaposition.
Here is where the division of labor comes in to mess up the perfect design
in two related ways. (1) the design of the experiment is distributed
across most of the participants in the study -- teachers, curriculum
coordinators, consultants, parents, and me, and as a result (2) our study
of pond ecology is an appropriation of one districts activities, the focus
on macroinvertebrates is the influence of the folks from the MA Audubon
society, the community studies and participation in 'the journey north'
internet project were an adaptation of the other districts learning
activities. That each district adapted some of the other districts
activities and integrated it into their own means I have to draw a
different comparison than if both districts newly adopted the same new
activities.
And so in this design, with the one district I can spend the most time
with, I have to now include in the analysis at some level not only the
state doe, the innercity bussing collaborative, lesley college, but also
the other school system, and MA Audubon, because the design per se was
influenced by these systems. Once having done that in the description of
hte project design, I can then 'lump them' together to consider them
together as "the project's" influence on people within the school district
activity system. That the design for each district included aspects from
the other district means I cannot draw a clean comparison, subsequently
this puts bounds on what conclusions I can make, should I ever try to make
any.
gotta go to the recycling center....
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
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."]
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