I have found the recent exchange about Unit of Analysis rather interesting
and helpful, but alos a little confusing for a new comer to activity theory.
Let me try and explain my confusion and then perhaps someone can help me out
of it. I arrived at Activity Theory as a way of trying to make sense of
learning within a variety of school based activities, ranging from the
learning of science to the development of economic understanding. It seemed
to me that the constructivist "theories" of learning dominating science
education took the inidividual as the unit -of-analysis but when I went into
classrooms what I saw was a whole series of individuals trying to make sense
of, say, photosynthesis through a range of different sorts of processes -
including teacher exposition, small group discussion and practical work -
using a range of devices ands artifacts, in joint activity with each other
and their teacher (plus other adults in the classroom including me) - though
I think my use of the term of joint activity in this sentence is probably a
post hoc rationalisation of what I was seeing at the time. It seemed to me
that in order to understand what was going on here, including the supposed
learning that was going on, I needed to make sense of all of this "activity"
as well as what was happening to the individual child. Now, this seemed to
require multiple levels of analysis and I was, at that time, unaware of any
way of dealing with this problem except that it involved thinking about
context in a radically different way.
My confusion grew even further when working with extracurricular enterprise
projects involving young people running their own small enterprises - along
the lines of Junior Achievement in the US - and trying to fathom out what
the students were learning. What became obvious very early on in our year
long study was that, whatever else was going on, the young people involved
did not conceptualise the process as learning, but rather as "doing", and
yet what I saw as an outside observer was learning in terms of changes in
participation (again I am sure another post hoc rationalisation).
At this point I happened upon Activity Theory via "Yrjo's triangles". What I
thought this allowed me was a variety of different viewpoints, possibly
different levels of analysis, with which to explore the phenomena I was
interested in. I think, possibly incorrectly in the light of the recent
exchanges, that the activity system itself was the unit-of-analysis, but
that I could look at the unit from different perspectives, say from the
perspective of the rules as they developed through time, or at different
levels, say the level of the individual or the level of the group. But I am
no longer sure that this is justified given Paul's comments about Vygotsky's
conception of the unit of analysis. Advice please.
I think Paul is right in saying that we must not multiply units-of-analysis
otherwise the term loses its analytical power. Certainly, this seems to be
happening in the UK with the concept of "community-of-practice" which has
been appropriated by the business community and made synonymous with group,
so that any learning that takes place in a group is considered to be
learning within a "community-of-practice". The concept of "legitimate
peripheral participation" seems to get forgotten in these discourses. I
wonder why?
Geoff Hayward
Lecturer in Educational Studies and SKOPE Research Fellow
University of Oxford
Department of Educational Studies
15 Norham Gardens
Oxford
OX2 6PY
Phone: 01865 274007
Fax: 01865 274024
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: 09 August 2000 21:18 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: one what?
mike,
i think my question goes back to the thread out of which Nate's original
question emerged: that of objects that are mutually defining and their
implicit dialectic. This was also the context within which the dancer/dance
image was brought up.
Unless the term "unit analysis" has been broadened, I understand it in
Vygotsky's sense of the minimal unit that still contains the properties of
the whole phenomena. The important point is that the unit of unit-analysis
is not simply the phenomena itself. To say that word-meaning was simply
used to analyze the relationship between language and thought seems
circular. Following Bakhurst I understand Vygotsky's inquiry to be much
broader, extending to the basic psychological processes such as learning,
memory, internalization in general and other "higher order" psychological
processes, .
Does the zoped, on the other hand, have such characteristics? I don't think
so. What is the phenomena of which it is the minimal unit that resists
further analysis without losing the properties of the totality of which it
both contains and constitutes the genetic root? As I understand it,
Vygotsky raises the zoped in relation to questions of development and
specifically, "measuring" development. Thus he writes that a child with a
"larger zone of proximal development will do much better in school." But
the zone of proximal development does not contain the totality of the
phenomena; i.e., development, which it serves to characterize since: (a) it
is relative and we have larger and smaller zopeds, something that is rather
incomprehensible with respect to "word-meaning" or "commodity"; and (b) it
refers essentially to a framework of development that is not characterized
within its very definition.
This distinction has to do with theoretical concept formation and not losing
the power of a concept; i.e., unit of analysis, through applying it
willy-nilly -- the Chesire cat using words to mean exactly what it wants
them to mean. It's not simply a question of semantics but rather something
akin to identifying what is a syllogism and what isn't. If everything and
anything is a syllogism, then nothing is, and consequently we lose the
possibility of a theory of syllogisms, or in this case a theory of unit
analysis that might contribute to the formation of concepts as powerful as
"word-meaning" or "commodity" as the unity of use and exchange value.
So although I do agree that there are multiple units of analysis, not
everything is one.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 11:08 AM
Subject: one what?
>
> Paul, I thought I was arguing for multiplicity of units of analysis
> depending upon the object/ives of the activity in question. Word
> meaning is presumably a unit of anlysis for understanding the relation
> of language and thought. A Zoped is a particular structure of interaction/
> transaction; perhaps it could be a unit of analysis for understanding
> the relation of learning and development?
> mike
>
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