[Xmca-l] Re: xmca-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 3

Tue Aug 23 04:04:47 PDT 2016

Hello everyone,

Again, thank you for your replies. I have not had internet for a few days,
hence my delayed reply.

Dear Martin,

Thank you for the advice. I have taken a few days away from that part of
the writing, going through the data again, and revisiting the interactions.
This has helped put me back on track. The data is very complicated, to set
up and follow the trail of interaction between students as well as identify
the changes made from step to step has been very enlightening. For the
moment I have eliminated all AT theory from my mind and going through the
data once more.

Message: 24
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2016 02:53:03 +0000
From: Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: 3rd generation activity theory
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <452899F5-04C3-4BA1-992D-E247EFF3D97C@uniandes.edu.co>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Mark,

I think what Greg and I are each pointing towards is that a line-by-line
analysis, *guided* by theory, is going to provide more insight into what is
going on than an attempt to ?prove? that it is one or another theoretical
?category' of dialogue.

Martin

Mike,

Thank you for the article. I'm sure the mistake lies on my end, and as
Martin has pointed out, I think I should revisit the data line by line to
see what it is telling me. The discussions here have certainly put me along
a different track, and I think much better train of thought and action. 3rd
generation activity theory does appear to be a bit of overkill, I think I
need to revisit not what is happening, but why is it happening? as a
different approach. The idea that dynamic assessment is occurring between
learners is not far-fetched, so I still think there is some sort of
activity system.

Mark --
>
> I take "third generation activity theory" to involve interactions between
> activity systems in addition to the principles you enumerate. Perhaps I am
> mistaken. A brief paper by Harry Daniels contains a summary that accords
> with my understanding.
>
> It can be confusing to ask for advice on xmca when you get a lot of it form
> disparate people!
>
> mike
>
> http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/liw/resources/Models%
> 20and%20principles%20of%20Activity%20Theory.pdf
>
>
>

>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 31
> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:32:59 -0600
> From: HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: 3rd generation activity theory
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Message-ID: <18E7486D-60E0-404A-87B4-DB40703EFC67@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=utf-8
>
> Mike,
> Figure 3 of Daniels, with its two triangles, depicts VISUALLY what you
> call ?interactions between activity systems??t Yet, if I am not mistaken,
> from that figure to the the final paragraph he describes IN WRITING
> interactions almost entirely within only ONE activity system at a time.
> Does this touch in any way on your qualifier: ?Perhaps I am mistaken.??
>
> I ask this not only for theoretical reasons, but because in my life my own
> commitments to projects have been very much affected by ?contending?
> projects. A prime example is the push and pull of what might be called
> neoliberal and more collectivist solutions to economic problems. In the
> 60s, as a grad student in economics at UC Berkeley, I was much more
> convinced of collectivist, centralized approaches than I am today. On the
> other hand, even Milton Friedman thought that some problems, education in
> particular, cannot be solved purely by market forces.
>
> I look at my previous paragraph and I realize that I am construing my
> journey (and Friedman?s?) as individual. The final paragraph of Daniels
> construes the journey as collective:  "A full cycle of expansive
> transformation may be understood as a collective journey through the zone
> of proximal development of the activity.? It seems to me that the
> contending projects that students bring into the classroom, not ignorance,
> make or break dialog in the classroom.
>
> Henry
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 18, 2016, at 11:20 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Mark --
> >
> > I take "third generation activity theory" to involve interactions between
> > activity systems in addition to the principles you enumerate. Perhaps I
> am
> > mistaken. A brief paper by Harry Daniels contains a summary that accords
> > with my understanding.
> >
> > It can be confusing to ask for advice on xmca when you get a lot of it
> form
> > disparate people!
> >
> > mike
> >
> > http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/liw/resources/Models%
> 20and%20principles%20of%20Activity%20Theory.pdf
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 10:00 PM, Mark de Boer <mark.yomogi@gmail.com>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 32
> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:07:30 -0700
> From: mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: 3rd generation activity theory
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Message-ID:
>         <CAHCnM0ArY-UkPa5DUYXM7VgeyzM3qmG9eHGvtRaW
> OCnmrKWoXg@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Perhaps, Henry.
>
> I thought that Mark was concentrating on the joint activity within a single
> activity system. Perfectly fine. I was uncertain why he needed the
> additional apparatus.
>
> mike
>
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:32 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Mike,
> > Figure 3 of Daniels, with its two triangles, depicts VISUALLY what you
> > call ?interactions between activity systems??t Yet, if I am not mistaken,
> > from that figure to the the final paragraph he describes IN WRITING
> > interactions almost entirely within only ONE activity system at a time.
> > Does this touch in any way on your qualifier: ?Perhaps I am mistaken.??
> >
> > I ask this not only for theoretical reasons, but because in my life my
> own
> > commitments to projects have been very much affected by ?contending?
> > projects. A prime example is the push and pull of what might be called
> > neoliberal and more collectivist solutions to economic problems. In the
> > 60s, as a grad student in economics at UC Berkeley, I was much more
> > convinced of collectivist, centralized approaches than I am today. On the
> > other hand, even Milton Friedman thought that some problems, education in
> > particular, cannot be solved purely by market forces.
> >
> > I look at my previous paragraph and I realize that I am construing my
> > journey (and Friedman?s?) as individual. The final paragraph of Daniels
> > construes the journey as collective:  "A full cycle of expansive
> > transformation may be understood as a collective journey through the zone
> > of proximal development of the activity.? It seems to me that the
> > contending projects that students bring into the classroom, not
> ignorance,
> > make or break dialog in the classroom.
> >
> > Henry
> >
> >
>
> --
>
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
> that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 33
> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 16:25:11 -0400
> From: Christopher Schuck <schuckthemonkey@gmail.com>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: 3rd generation activity theory
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Message-ID:
>         <CAA5aoDvEYM77APZUT0DUnu6V01+DCQ2oy+rLL=RK+bX3=YqZhQ@mail.
> gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Would the fact that Mark has been seeking help from a community whose work
> partly involves understanding activity systems, and that we have been
> discussing and becoming involved in his project, constitute the
> introduction of an additional activity system and interaction with it? Or
> would this be trivializing what it means for something to be an "activity
> system?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
Dear Greg,

The level of the students is very low, although your comments certainly
point out that some of the utterances should be easy enough to produce.

Asynchronous dialogue provides (or should provide) the students with the
opportunities to think about what they write before uploading. There is
research that points to this, but the research tends to be on the
question/answer, focus on form exercises with word count being one
parameter. Although in this case, what I have been discovering is that the
focus is no longer on the text in the forum, but instead on the object
(files, speech script, data). The forum is the medium in which the basic
message is relayed, and the object is the real focus. Looking at your text
below, 1b or even 2 seem to be the most obvious in the data. The example I
gave was not copied directly from the student data, the example was just an
example, a framework so to speak of what the data was doing.

> Message: 35
> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 17:03:18 -0600
> From: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: 3rd generation activity theory
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Message-ID:
>         <CAHH++PmGoJSB7j6ghyNGup=myeYZC-T0DpKnKG-ZaHtybG3oWw@mail.
> gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Small point here Mark about the 5/6 transition, but as an American English
> speaker, and given the further clarification that you just provided, I feel
> like Student C's comment in 6 is lacking something about how to connect it
> to what came before. I would have expected some kind of linking clause or
> transition like "[to student B] that's a great idea. I am attaching a
> poster..."
>
> I would suggest two possibilities for why this didn't happen:
> 1a. this is a metapragmatic difference between their native tongue and
> English.
> 1b. they don't have the linguistic resources to accomplish this kind of
> bridging (although "that's a great idea seems grammatically and
> semantically simple enough that I would assume that, based on their other
> utterances, would have been easy enough to produce).
> 2. It is unnecessary given the medium in which they are working (i.e., the
> collaborative nature of Student C's comment in 6 is obvious given what has
> come before).
>
> Of course there may be others, but each of these options point to how
> collaboration is mediated by the means of communication (whether the means
> are metapragmatics, linguistic resources, or the medium of communication).
> That doesn't get you to 3rd gen activity theory but it seems to be
> something that is old school activity theory. It seems to be clearly there
> in the data. What's more, it is this aspect of collaboration that is
> entirely left out of many models of collaboration (see the virtual
> communication system that Mike sent an email about shortly ago).
>
> Just one thought among many.
>
> -greg
>
>
>