RE: [xmca] Link to this month's article

[smago <smago@uga.edu>]

I will assume that Yrjo knows his career better than I do, so at this point I will simply apologize to Yrjo personally for misrepresenting his work in this statement, and to the xmca community for making a false and misleading remark about a colleague and for creating confusion on a topic that is complex to begin with. I am trying to get to the source of my misunderstanding, and if I can get to the bottom of it, will report back. With regrets, Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Yrjö Engeström
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010 8:03 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Link to this month's article

This is a brief comment to Peter Smagorinsky's message, copied below.

Quixotian attacks on triangles have been a relatively common genre for  
some years now. I usually do not get involved in those discussions  
because I don't find them productive. However, I am slightly bothered  
by the following sentence in Peter's message:
"Engeström, at least from what I've read, employs it [the 'triangle  
framework'] as a consultant to business management to help construct  
settings more conducive to collective productivity."

Since I have never done business management consulting, I would like  
to know on what readings Peter might be basing his statement.

Cheers,

Yrjö Engeström

-----
smago kirjoitti 10.9.2010 kello 22.29:

> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA
> Mike Cole is heading out on vacation, and so asked me to start the  
> discussion of the MCA article "Construction of Boundaries in Teacher  
> Education: Analyzing Student Teachers' Accounts," which the  
> electorate identified as this issue's paper for us to consider on  
> the network. I didn't know that Mike actually took vacations. But I  
> did agree to help launch this discussion, and help to sustain it  
> once it gets going. I have done a number of studies with similar  
> populations to those featured in this article-that is, I've studied  
> the transition that teachers make when moving from their university  
> preparation through the first year of full-time teaching. I've also  
> been part of a university teacher education program in English  
> Education (which is the teaching of literature, writing, and  
> language; it is not ESOL) for the last two decades, and before that  
> regularly mentored student teachers in my jobs at secondary schools  
> in the US. So I do have some familiarity with the issues at stake in  
> this article.
>
> One difference: Jahreie and Ottesen use what they call "Cultural- 
> Historical Activity Theory" to motivate their work, and I once did  
> too. But as CHAT has gravitated to Engeström's interpretation and  
> exposition via his Triangle, I have moved away from this orientation  
> and now only claim to use Vygotskian principles to formulate my  
> analyses. So if I were to pose an opening question that perhaps  
> might appeal to those who aren't interested in teacher education, it  
> would be: What is CHAT, and which version of it do we invoke when we  
> claim to use it? Cole's Cultural Psychology did include the famous  
> Triangle, yet seemed very ecumenical in drawing on a host of sources  
> so that it was not the centerpiece of his conception of CHAT.  
> Engeström's system seems more closed to me, involving a specific set  
> of terms and constructs all bound in The Triangle. Perhaps because I  
> entered this field through the writing of Vygotsky and Wertsch (and  
> Engeström is clear in the introductory chapter to Perspectives on  
> Activity Theory that Wertsch is not an activity theorist, nor are  
> Lave and Wenger), I don't equate Engeström with either Activity  
> Theory or CHAT, and have disavowed that nomenclature in my more  
> recent work. So what is it about the Triangle that has become so  
> alluring that it has squeezed out other compelling conceptions of  
> Leont'ev's reformulation of Vygotsky's work so that it shifts  
> attention from the individual-in-context to the collective itself? I  
> find this shift to be particularly troubling in U.S.-based  
> scholarship in which the Triangle is often thrown up on conference  
> screens but never put to any evident use in the research reported.  
> For Scandinavians and others from nations with more collectivist  
> orientations, the adoption of a wholeheartedly Marxist approach  
> makes better cultural sense. And with that I will move to the  
> article in question, authored by faculty members from the University  
> of Oslo.
>
> Jahreie and Ottesen's article concerns the conflicting demands of  
> the different settings faced by student teachers-those who are at  
> the end of their university teacher education programs and beginning  
> to transition to school-based teaching positions by apprenticing  
> under the mentorship of a full-time teacher, ideally one who is a  
> "master" teacher (but as I know from experience, this is not always  
> the case). In my reading of the paper, I see an effort to use  
> Engeström's terminology to account for processes involved when  
> student teachers engage with established members of different  
> settings that inevitably provide different "objects" for activity:  
> the university with its effort to produce a particular kind of  
> teacher, and the schools with their efforts to produce a particular  
> kind of student. A second general question I would pose is: From  
> what I can tell, most countries have settled on a very similar model  
> for teacher education: general education coursework, specialized  
> disciplinary course work, education course work, field experiences,  
> student teaching, and then the first job. Given that this model  
> seems to occur worldwide-amidst nations of different emphasis,  
> orientation to learning, economic structure and process, history,  
> demographics, and so on-what broader activity setting seems to  
> suggest this approach as the most efficacious in the preparation of  
> new teachers, regardless of national character and culture? In the  
> U.S. there are presently moves afoot to provide alternative pathways  
> to teaching careers, but most university programs follow this  
> sequence. Apparently this process, with expected variation, is  
> universal. But why?
>
> To return to a separate point emerging from this same general  
> observation: The authors say (p. 231) that "The object of the  
> activity for the [university Department of Teacher Education] is  
> student teachers' learning trajectories. The object of activity for  
> the schools, however, is pupils' learning." Actually I think it's  
> more complicated than that, at least in the schools, where a primary  
> problem facing educators is agreeing on the purpose of education.  
> Even "student learning" is a highly contested construct, one that  
> creates the sort of boundary problems elaborated in this article. In  
> schools, it's often the ability to perform on tests, while in the  
> "progressive" university environment, it might involve learning more  
> about the self and how to express or explore it. Or something else.  
> For some people, schools exist to socialize young people into adult  
> roles, often based on the economic circumstances of their families.  
> For others they should promote upward mobility. Or learn a trade, or  
> become better informed citizens, or learn to follow authority, or  
> learn to question authority, or learn how to memorize information,  
> or learn how to construct knowledge, or learn how to answer  
> questions, or learn how to pose questions, or do any of many other  
> things. I've referred to this problem as the "mixed motive" of the  
> setting of schools, one that can shift from teacher to teacher,  
> which complicates the idea that the "object of activity for the  
> schools is student learning." Another question thus might be, For  
> complex settings like schools, how do we know what the object of  
> activity is? (I'm using the authors' language here; I'm more  
> comfortable with Wertsch's use of "motive" [1985] to describe the  
> overriding teleological goal toward which activity in a setting is  
> directed.)
>
>
> I'll pose one final question before inviting others to contribute to  
> the discussion: What are the perils involved in using The Triangle  
> as an a priori framework for studying activity? Engeström, at least  
> from what I've read, employs it as a consultant to business  
> management to help construct settings more conducive to collective  
> productivity. To what degree can it then be extrapolated to other  
> kinds of settings that do not share the business environment's  
> relatively closed-ended motive (to produce and sell widgets, etc.)?  
> When the objects/goals/motives are less amenable to agreement, how  
> appropriate is The Triangle as a template for understanding  
> activity, or promoting activity of a certain sort? When the transfer  
> of The Triangle involves a great leap, as from a post office to a  
> school, to what degree might it serve as a Procrustean Bed rather  
> than a useful heuristic for understanding activity? (Procrustes was  
> an Attican thief who laid his victims on his iron bed. If a victim  
> was shorter than the bed, he stretched the body to fit; if the  
> victim was too long, he cut off the legs to make the body fit. In  
> either case the victim died.)
>
> OK, that's enough of a starter kit. Please join in and feel free to  
> ignore what I've written and launch something else, or help me  
> clarify my confusion regarding the questions I've raised.
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