RE: [xmca] A question about Lewin & CHAT& Engestrom

[Rauno Huttunen <rakahu@utu.fi>]

Moro,

I agree. There are many similarities between Engeström's Developmental Work Research theory (plus expansive learning) and Lewin's action research theory. For some reason Engeström is reluctant to discuss about action research tradition. Maybe Engeström feels that action research is some kind of rival company/team.

Has Jussi Silvonen any "inside information" on this matter?

Rauno Huttunen 

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: 22. toukokuuta 2013 4:46
To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: [xmca] A question about Lewin & CHAT& Engestrom

A former colleague sent this comment/question to me and I thought I would
pass it along.

I responded that there was a lot of interaction between Lewin, Vygotsky,
Luria and ......., but
I could not speak for later users of CHAT.

Sort of fyi.
mike
-----------

One thought has emerged from my current reading to come up with theories to
inform methodology: I am curious as to why CHAT researchers had never
seemed to look into Kurt Lewin's Action Research and Field Theory as tools
to think about. For example, what I see Engeström is calling "Expansive
learning" looks to my eye to be quite close to Lewin's
freeze-unfreeze-freeze model, and to this standard change management model,
in which we are looking (I think) at a fairly typical model of an object in
the world of software products, in which external forces (which I would
call activity systems) are interacting with an object that is evolving
through the interaction of such systems:


Software installation, tuning, management and upgrade is very much like
this. The object mutates in response to its environment, interacting with
multiple interactive communities, as customers use the tool and discover
new things they wish it would do, or developers think of interesting things
that can be done with the tool, in response to an environment of new tools
and other developer's objects. The shared object changes in response to
those goals (or is dumped--not that this would ever happen with
*my*company's objects) for an object that looks like it can better
reward the
effort to shape it into goals that may not be fully grasped, but that
become real in the interaction of users, developers, communities, and
goals.

I suppose Lewin's focus on the individual in society, rather than on action
in society, is a theoretical barrier. But they both work for me
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