Bill,
I took a few minutes this morning to dig your previous messages
(Connecting and co-construction) out of my discard directory. I should
mention that I was not watching xmca for the last two months due to job
pressures and medical issues. Now that I have caught up at least this part
of the preceding discussion, I think I have a better idea what you have
been puzzling about concerning Engestrom's model.
You wrote:
"I have been using the term 'interpenetrating activity systems' to try to
capture the sense in which activity systems can share several elements, but
not all -- these might be rules, community, etc. , but without complete
overlap. Sometimes there are triadic interactions. When Bill, Bob, and
Susan get together, they are embassadors of their respective institutions,
their collective day-to-day activity systems, and the three form their
interactions together in yet another emergent-system, that is subordinate
to their day-to-day systems, as are many of our dyadic interactions. It is
unclear how to represent these interactions well, except as juxtaposed
systems in which the subjects are re-presented at an individual level, with
different rules and community re-presented by their embassadorship, and so
in some ways our investigations are similar. I cannot well describe the
interactions as one system, because that system is not well formed -- the
interactions seem better described as three interpenetrating systems
(insofar as we share the same object -- sometimes)".
(Jan 2, Re: More on activity systems)
I couldn't figure out why you were saying this, until I ran across your
earlier posting:
"There are some aspects of bringing these institutions together that have
been driving me nuts, leaving me to draw triangles on top of triangles,
changing the triangles to irregular hexagons and trying to overlap them as
I think about interpenetrating activity systems and become sorely tempted
to cry "Am I mad?" with Wittgensteinen intensity. So this is where it gets
up close and personal as I draw the boundaries of the 'grand system' around
myself." (Connecting and Co-construction, part 5; Dec. 16)
It occurred to me that you may have been following up the diagramming
technique in the Cole/Engestrom article in Solomon's book (1993, pp. 22
ff.). That provided me with one of those "Aha!" moments. I was then
going to suggest this morning that you might not be able to use Engestrom
to diagram all of the interactions between these different activity systems
as a single grand activity system. At the very least, to do so would
probably distort a theoretically consistent perception of the systems you
were studying (consistent in terms of Engestrom's model). I was going to
offer the idea that you diagram one system as the "central activity" (the
system you are studying) and diagram in the influencing activity systems as
satellite systems, using lines from appropriate corners of the satellite
triangles to show exactly where the influences intersect the appropriate
corners on the central activity. The effect would be similar to the
diagram on (eg.) p. 89 of Engestrom's (1987) __Learning by expanding__.
And then . . .I received the back channel note this morning that you had
reread Engestrom and "it helped greatly -- I now can create a triangles
diagram that will stand in relation to his neighboring triangles
diagram.". So, it sounds as if you had already gone along the direction I
was going to suggest.
I think I will not comment here on the "between-ness" issue which you
mentioned in response to my question. Partly because I do not have the
earlier messages (aside from Mike's quote from Arne) which discussed
this. Partly, also, because this issue may have been resolved by your
decision to use the "satellite" activity system diagramming/analysis pattern.
So, where does the conversation go from here? I note that you are
interested in Engestrom's model and may be interested in discussing some of
the specific writings in __Learning by expanding__. Something that would
interest me also, since I do get tired of puzzling through the intricacies
of the model on my own. You mentioned some dissatisfaction with p. 127 of
__Learning by expanding__? One of your back channel comments noted a
certain uneasiness with Engestrom's definition of "subject" as both
individual and collective. That issue speaks, I think, of the tendency of
Leontiev's framework, and the general CHAT perspective, to eliminate the
Cartesian distinction between "mind" and "body" and thereby eliminate the
distinction between the "psychological" and the "social", much along the
lines of the notion of distributed cognition in Solomon's book and the
Cole/Engestrom article therein.
I also note that your earlier comments (Connecting and co-construction)
about ecological validity relate to the concept of change which is built
into Engestrom's model -- even in activity systems which appear to be
relatively enduring. The entire purpose, it seems to me, of Engestrom's
model is to explore the processes through which activity systems change,
i.e. how learning occurs. For Engestrom, "learning" seems to be defined as
activity system change -- rather than as some sort of mysterious Cartesian
process that takes place inside the head.
Consequently, I don't think one can use Engestrom's model (or even , an
activity theory perspective, or a CHAT perspective) to maintain a
positivistic view of stability whereby a researcher does not alter the
system under study. At the very least, a detached researcher who does
"nothing more" than interview correspondents to discover their cultural
knowledge constructs with the correspondent a personal culture encompassing
researcher and correspondent, a level of articulate understanding, the
correspondent may not previously have had -- and thereby changes the system
under study to that extent.
I am a teacher whose entire purpose is to stimulate learning. In
Engestrom's terms I manipulate activity systems, creating and changing
them. Consequently, in my own work, I have adopted the process of action
research where my purpose is to change, and simultaneously study the
resulting process and effects of that change. For me changing the system I
am studying is not a problem: it is a mandate. From your earlier notes, I
would say that you are in much the same situation. I think the notion of
validity needs to be rethought in such circumstances. Maybe along the
lines suggested by Guba and Lincoln (1985) in their discussion of
naturalistic research -- something else I should probably brush up one of
these days.
Bill, you have asked me twice for further information about what I am
working on, whether I have anything that can be posted. As a teacher, I
find it hard to respond satisfactorily to this request, since teachers
create curricula and patterns of action in the classroom rather than
research papers through the process of their daily work. My experience
over 31 years as a teacher, doing graduate work on the side as a
professional development project, is that reflective writing of the kind
that goes to conferences is an aberration inspired by the university
culture of research writing as it occurs in teacher education courses. I
believe that is almost impossible to be a teacher-researcher writer in most
of our North American school boards at the moment -- certainly in mine in
Ontario, Canada. Boards will not support or even reward that kind of
activity in our current political climate. However, having voiced that
rather pessimistic personal prejudice, I do have two kinds of writing:
drafts of my thesis chapters written to date, and the instructional
materials written when I created the program (the activity system) that
thesis writing is attempting to study. I will try to find some short
sample that gives you an inkling what I am doing, and will send it to your
personal e-mail address. In the next couple of days.
--glenn
Glenn D. Humphreys
glenhump@soonet.ca
P.O. Box 11,
Echo Bay, Ontario,
Canada, P0S 1C0
Home: (705) 248-1226
Office: (705 942-7423
Fax: (705) 248-1226 (Prearrange please)
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