RE: late lbe2 (what is an elemntary activity system)

From: Phillip Capper (phillip.capper@webresearch.co.nz)
Date: Wed Apr 25 2001 - 12:21:44 PDT


Unfortunately I am on the road for the next two days, but I must grab the
time to comment on this, from Paul:

"Community' for example, is it the community that is generated within the
activity system itself? Is it restricted to all those who have a role in
the division of labor or does it consist of those who occupy only one role;
e.g., in an educational activity system, do we consider all those involved:
secretaries, janitors, in addition to fellow teachers, or just the teachers
themselves."

This question is at the heart of our work in schools. When we go into a
school we ask to meet all the 'staff', and we don't specify what we mean,
unless asked by the school. 90% of the time we get the teachers, 8% of the
time we get teachers plus teacher aides, and 2% of the time we get
everybody, including janitors, etc.

But when we ask kids about their experience in the school they almost always
describe as part of that experience their interactions with non teaching
staff. They are also clearly learning from those experiences (e.g. in
dealing with front office staff they are learning about what you do when you
stand in a welfare office line). Kids are often quite explicit about this as
'learning'. Even more interesting are those schools where many children
actually believe that the office staff are the guidance staff, and that
guidance teachers are disciplinary staff! Sometimes office staff are
explicit about performing a counselling role when talking to the external
observer, but would not ever say so within the school - even when they go
into the staff room to give information to teachers about kids they have had
dealings with. (I also guess that these examples are more likely to occur in
a New Zealand school than in an American one).

Now all this gives me considerable difficulty in defining the boundaries of
the activity system which is concerned with the learning of the children in
the school. For teachers this is not even tacitly part of their cultural
historical baggage. So when there is an insititution like a school, what
defines the boundaries of the activity system concerned with student
learning? The formal institutional descriptors? The actual explicit, but
informal roles that people play? Or what is actually learned by the students
while at school, regardless of how it was acquired?

when we proceed to help make visible the ACTUAL experience of students as
learners this is invariably a shock for all concerned, except the students.

Off to the airport - no time for my thoughts on motive here

Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand

Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Thursday, 26 April 2001 03:26
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: late lbe2 (what is an elemntary activity system)

Phil,

I agree with you that "it is not our right to lead them to a predetermined
understanding" and that isn't my intention but I think that we have to
recognize that those of us who are working with different groups have a
discourse that we carry out among ourselves that proceeds at a theoretical
level that isn't necessarily directly and mechanically translatable back
into all the spaces we work. It's sort of like working from a plan --
modifications are always necessary. There is a very important
political/ethical question here about our relationship to others but that's
for another discussion. In any event I agree with you about not imposing
predetermined understandings, its not a question of molding but of gardening
or nurturing. But i don't think "right" has much to do with it. It simply
doesn't work.

> I agree, but I also suggest that the terms 'tool', 'rule', 'community',
and
> so on, are not static. We may find a phenomenon about which it is
legitimate
> to say "this phenomenon has all the functional characteristics of a tool,
> but we never quite thought of a tool that way before. Perhaps we need to
> expand our understanding of the term in order to embrace the phenomenon."

I also agree with you but that still leagves the problem of the initial
agreement as to what those characterist are, what those functions are.
'Community' for example, is it the community that is generated within the
activity system itself? Is it restricted to all those who have a role in
the division of labor or does it consist of those who occupy only one role;
e.g., in an educational activity system, do we consider all those involved:
secretaries, janitors, in addition to fellow teachers, or just the teachers
themselves. Clearly there are questions of community the pertain to the
teachers amongst themselves, but if we start talking about different levels
of community then it seems we're back into a check list approach such as
Helena Worthen mentioned.

>
> I would also argue that there is a qualitative difference that needs to be
> made (through the concepts of 'nesting' on the one hand, and 'linking' on
> the other) between systems which exist only because of the existence of
> another (e.g. a soecific classroom in a school exists only because the
> school exists), and systems which are interdependent in respect of their
> essential nature, but not for their very existence (e.g. between two
> different classrooms within a school).

This is a very interesting point. Very reminiscent of Durkheim's
distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity and this also plays
back into the question of community in activity system.

Paul H. Dillon



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