Carol - been thinking about your question - so close to home for me as a teacher -
so activity theory is about the ways the tools, rules and labour are used by members of a community to achieve a particular object -
and in schools teachers as members of the school community are all working for an object of change - change in students' learning and change in teachers' teaching with often changes in materials (tools), rules (teaching methods) and labour (who does what in the classroom and outside of the classroom) - again, all focused on change -
i see reflective practice as one of the tools used by the teachers as a way of evaluating the success of the tools, rules and labour within particular actions within the classroom -
so within activity theory, the unit of analysis here would be the activity of reflection, what tools are used for the reflection, the rules of the practice of reflection, the labour, as in who does what within the collaboration that supports the object of reflective practice - then, the new ways of understanding that arise out of the reflective practice - those new ways become tools to use within the greater activity of teaching within the school, and supports that object, change.
my two bits worth.
phillip
phillip white
school of education
university of colorado at denver
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