Yrjö Engeström

University of Helsinki | HY · CRADLE

Our research project, In Search for Significance: Fostering movement across the six worlds of adolescents, aimed to identify and test ways in which adolescents can find and cultivate significance in their lives, understood as commitments and actions that connect the adolescents' personal interests with activities and projects for a just and equitab...

Understanding and promoting agency are crucial to addressing urgent social problems of our time. Through agency, we can take transformative steps toward the future that ought to be. This book shows how contemporary conceptualizations from cultural-historical activity theory can inform research and practice that fosters positive change. At the core...

Boggi Cavallo’s perspective on the crisis of the modern ideal of science had brought her to turn to the works of Lewin and Vygotsky as both alternative epistemological and ethico-political orientations for the future of scientific inquiries in psychology. Our discussions became fertile ground for inquiries with a nonconventional psychological exper...

In the U.S. school systems, Native American students receive harsher and more frequent school discipline than White counterparts. Exclusionary discipline may result in adverse academic, social, and life outcomes. There is an urgent need for creating an inclusive, equity-oriented learning environment where Native American students’ identities, well-...

In the United States, school disciple has been racialized. Youth from racially minoritized backgrounds receive exclusionary discipline more frequently and severely for more subjective reasons such as disrespect, excessive noise, and dress code violation in U.S. schools. The study presents how an urban school community in Wisconsin engaged in inclus...

This double symposium brings together activity-theoretical formative intervention research conducted in six continents. The aim is to illuminate and examine the common threads, important differences, and new challenges of formative intervention studies to address "wicked problems" in different cultural, political, and economic contexts. Formative i...

This double symposium brings together activity-theoretical formative intervention research conducted in six continents. The aim is to illuminate and examine the common threads, important differences, and new challenges of formative intervention studies to address “wicked problems” in different cultural, political, and economic contexts. Formative i...

The article explores developmental tensions in Finnish adolescents’ accounts of their different worlds. By understanding tensions experienced by students, educators can develop their pedagogical practices to address those tensions. Building on cultural-historical activity theory, we analysed 12 interviews of 8th graders, focusing on their experienc...

This article describes an investigation into how to build agency among growers so they take the lead in transforming their own activity of managing whiteflies. The study shows how the principle of Transformative Agency by Double Stimulation (TADS) was applied in a formative intervention based on the Change Laboratory method for developing pest mana...

Digital lifelong learning and more specifically digital peer learning (DPL) can play a major role to foster transformative agency in professions and occupations which are critically positioned for responding to acute societal needs. Yet so far, no published studies seem to have focused on this. This article aims at filling this gap with the help of...

Abstract of the Activity Theory symposium: Professor Yrjö Engeström is an internationally leading figure in Activity Theory, which is one of the featured topics at AMEE 2019. He developed expansive learning, an interventionist and participatory research approach, to studying change in complex organizations. AMEE will have the privilege of hosting...

The article examines the potential of the dialectical principle of ascending from the abstract to the concrete for transforming practices of learning. It is shown that V.V. Davydov’s work has created a foundation for such transformation. The theory of expansive learning builds on Davydov’s legacy and brings the principle of ascending from the abstr...

Theories of agency are often borrowed from psychology and sociology; truly educational theories of agency are rare – theories that not only classify and measure dimensions of agency but enable us to understand how its formation can be pedagogically facilitated. Based on Sannino’s recent work on transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS), a...

The article outlines four generations of theorizing and research on work and learning within the Finnish school of activity theory. The main focus of the paper is on the evolution of the unit of analysis through the four generations, from mediated action to a collective activity system, to multiple-interconnected activity systems, and most recently...

This article introduces key concepts of activity theory and expansive learning. Expansive learning builds on the foundational ideas of the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). It is a research approach designed for studying the complexities and contradictions in authentic workplace environments. Change Laboratory is a formative intervention...

Context Medical education and workplace learning is bound to develop through tensions between providing high quality patient care and providing training of the future specialist healthcare workforce. This paper on the Change Laboratory and the theoretical framework supporting it, shows examples on how to explore inherent and contradictory tensions...

Professor Yrjö Engeström is an internationally leading figure in Activity Theory, which is one of the featured topics at AMEE 2019. He developed expansive learning, an interventionist and participatory research approach, to studying change in complex organizations. AMEE will have the privilege of hosting a plenary lecture by Professor Engeström dur...

Статья посвящена основным идеям культурно-исторической теории деятельности и вызовам нового времени, встающим перед ней. Особое внимание уделяется работе так называемой Хельсинской школы теории деятельности. В первой части статьи мы описываем революционные идеи, лежащие в основе теории и уходящие корнями в работы Маркса и Выготского, а также рассма...

Cambridge Core - Organisational Sociology - Expertise in Transition - by Yrjö Engeström

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how a new concept of educational management was produced in a formative intervention project for manager educators in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing on Vygotsky and Leontiev, we asked: What is the nature of the interplay between participants’ personal senses and the societal meaning of educational man...

Artiklis analüüsitakse, kuidas Brasiilias São Paulos loodi haridusjuhtidele mõeldud kujundava sekkumisprojekti käigus uus hariduskorralduse kontseptsioon. Võgotskile ja Leontievile tuginedes esitasime küsimuse, milline on osalejate isikliku arusaama ja hariduskorralduse sotsiaalse tähenduse vastastikmõju ühise kontseptsiooni kujundamisel. Ühise kon...

Mobile workers are professionals who frequently work on the move, far from a fixed workplace, often performing knowledge-intensive activities. Mobility challenges creation and sharing of knowledge among these professionals, and the existing literature lacks powerful theoretical frameworks conducive to creating supportive learning pathways for them...

The study examines learning in home care visits aimed at systematic facilitation of clients’ physical mobility. Building on the theory of expansive learning, the article asks what kinds of learning cycles may be identified in home care encounters charged with implementing the new Mobility Agreement practice, what kinds of interplay may be detected...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the generation of innovations by employees and the creation of initiative paths, and to discover which factors contribute to the implementation of an initiative. Design/methodology/approach Based on longitudinal qualitative research, the study explores the profiles of initiative paths and the types...

The context of science education is expanding beyond the classroom. This chapter examines five layers of this expansion, namely, (1) bringing elements of societal practices into classroom instruction, (2) understanding the entire school as an activity system and community of learning, (3) pursuing science learning in activity systems outside the sc...

This commentary explores conflicts and dissonances between my own views, based on cultural-historical activity theory, and three key ideas presented in the articles of this special issue, namely (a) technology as partner, (b) agency as hybridization, and (c) historicity without contradictions. I hope that the dissonances I put forward will evoke cu...

Formative interventions and the specific method of the Change Laboratory (CL) are presented as examples of intervention research that generates actionable and societally impactful knowledge. In contrast with stabilization knowledge that fixates phenomena into static categories, actionable knowledge is understood here as collaborative and generative...

Three core ideas are at the heart of this book: relational expertise, the capacity to interpret problems with others; common knowledge, which consists of knowing what matters for professionals in other practices; and relational agency, which involves using that common knowledge to take action with others. These ideas are based in cultural-historica...

O artigo explora a possibilidade de desenvolver uma metodologia para estudar o surgimento da ação agentiva experimentalmente. Ele discute as limitações da pesquisa experimental clássica e busca uma perspectiva diferente sobre a questão do controle. O argumento começa por analisar como o conceito de uma experiência tem se expandido ao longo dos anos...

Professor Engeström's exciting approach sees expansive learning as the central mechanism of transformation in societal practices and institutions. For researchers and practitioners in education, this book provides a conceptual and practical toolkit for creating and analyzing expansive learning processes with the help of interventions in workplaces,...

This commentary focuses on the ways the set of articles in this issue, taken together, engage an important and much needed conversation in design-based approaches to inquiry: that is, what does it mean to do work in and with nondominant communities? Drawing on cultural historical activity theory, decolonizing methodologies, and indigenous perspecti...

The article examines formative interventions as we understand them in cultural-historical activity theory, and reflects upon key differences between this intervention research tradition and design-based research as it is conceived in the learning sciences tradition. Three projects, including two Change Laboratories (CL), are analyzed with the help...

The article argues that the crucial task of expansive learning is to generate alternatives to capitalism in human activities, organizations and communities. To meet this challenge, the article discusses two areas of current development in the theory of expansive learning. The first area is transformative agency and double stimulation; the second ar...

Purpose The paper aims to examine organizational authoring understood as a longitudinal, material and dialectical process of transformation efforts. The following questions are asked: To which extent can a Change Laboratory intervention help practitioners author their own learning? Are the authored outcomes of a Change Laboratory intervention futil...

Abstract The paper analyzes a collaborative learning process among Finnish pre-service teachers planning their own learning in a self-regulated way. The study builds on cultural- historical activity theory and the theory of expansive learning, integrating for the first time an analysis of learning actions and an analysis of types of interaction. We...

This study presents a systemic innovation in the context of Integrated Pest Management – IPM. We introduce the Change Laboratory method as a tool for transforming pest management in a community of greenhouse firms that are interdependent through a shared pest. The objective of the study was to see if the Change Laboratory method, based on an activi...

This article analyzes the problems of bringing in social media in a traditional, hierarchical organization. Difficulties rise from the contradiction between the bureaucratic approach of an organization and the collaborative community approach connected to social media. A change in the role of a developer is analyzed through a case study. The data w...

Inspired by Susan Leigh Star’s work, we propose a conceptual grammar for analyzing and comparing culturally and historically different kinds of collaboration. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory and Bakhtin’s theorizing, the grammar is tested and concretized with the help of the macroscale case of different types of social movements and...

The interdisciplinary field of the learning sciences encompasses educational psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and anthropology, among other disciplines. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences is the definitive introduction to this innovative approach to teaching, learning, and educational technology. This dramatically revis...

What are the key characteristics of double stimulation in an everyday work activity facing transformations? We will present and test a conceptual model of the critical encounter as a potential site of double stimulation at work. Our data consist of 26 videotaped home care visits understood as critical encounters. The home care workers and the elder...

This symposium will introduce and illustrate the Socio-cultural/CHAT family of approaches to Design Research. Design Research has become central to the Learning Sciences. It is a key strategy for the study of learning in settings outside the laboratory, and it embodies the twin goals building theoretical knowledge about learning and contributing to...

Changes and transformations in organisations are traditionally initiated by the management. This approach does not, however, encourage the agency of all the members in an organisation to engage in cooperative development of the activity. This paper presents an analysis of the development of participants’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory...

Cet article traite de la formation de l’agentivité transformatrice au sein d’organisations, sous l’angle de la volonté et de l’action volontaire de la théorie de Vygotsky et du principe dialectique du mouvement ascendant de l’abstrait au concret comme point de départ. Le principe de la double stimulation de Vygotsky offre un cadre dans lequel les l...

Knotworking w bibliotekach uniwersyteckich: studium dwóch przypadków z Uniwersytetu Helsińskiego Streszczenie: Bibliotekarze z bibliotek uniwersyteckich muszą sprostać ogromnym zmianom w swojej pracy. Zmiany te związane są m.in. z rozwojem Internetu, digitalizacją zasobów czy rosnącym użyciem nowych kanałów wyszukiwania informacji przez najważniejs...

In this interview Prof. Engeström discusses his professional trajectory and interest in cultural-historical activity theory with a focus on its insights into the fields of work and human development. He comments on recent transformations within this theoretical orientation, many of them promoted by his research into a variety of workplaces and orga...

The article presents a process of collective formation of a new concept of mobility between home care workers and their elderly clients, who are at the risk of losing physical mobility and functional capacity. A new tool called mobility agreement was introduced to facilitate the inclusion of regular mobility exercises in home care visits and in the...

Librarians in academic libraries are facing major changes in their work due to, e.g., the internet, digitization, and increasing use of new channels for information retrieval by their most important clients, namely researchers. This creates challenges for librarians: both to deepen their own expertise and to develop innovative service models for th...

The theory of expansive learning has been applied in a large number of studies on workplace learning and organizational change. However, detailed comprehensive analyses of entire developmental interventions based on the theory of expansive learning do not exist. Such a study is needed to examine the empirical usability and methodological rigor affo...

The article examines strengths and limitations of three examples of well known post-behaviorist process theories of learning: Norman and Rumelhart, Kolb, and Nonaka and Takeuchi. Two central shortcomings are found in these theories, namely universalism and separation of learning from instruction. After that the article analyzes Davydov's theory of...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new methodological framework for the identification and analysis of different types of discursive manifestations of contradictions. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on the dialectical tradition of cultural‐historical activity theory. The methodological framework is developed by mean...

Change Laboratory, a developmental work research methodology that stands at the crossroad of education, knowledge management and knowledge creation, is presented as a meta-tool for involving growers in transforming the innovation process of pest management. The tool was used in Finnish Ostrobothnia greenhouse cluster to develop collective managemen...

Our analysis focuses on a long-term process of design that took place as collaboration between different stakeholder groups and aimed at creating a complex set of artifacts for the purpose of facilitating learning in a work organization. We will put particular emphasis on the emergence of hybrid language, hybrid concepts, and hybrid forms of knowle...

Der Beitrag von Yrjö Engeström „Activity Theory and learning at Work“ wurde 2010 zum ersten Mal in dem Handbuch „The Sage Handbook of Workplace Learning“ veröffentlicht. Yrjö Engeström hatte uns einen aktuellen Beitrag für unser Buch zugesagt, konnte diese Zusage aber auf Grund einer längeren Krankheit leider nicht einhalten. Deshalb haben wir uns...

Das Change Laboratory® ist eine neue Methode zur Entwicklung der Arbeitspraxis durch die Praktiker selbst. Es ermöglicht sowohl intensive tiefgreifende Transformation als auch kontinuierlich zunehmenden Fortschritt. Die Idee besteht darin, auf der Ebene der jeweiligen Produktionsstätte einen Raum zu öffnen, der ein reichhaltiges Set von Instrumente...

The article argues for a historical perspective on mobility and learning. In social production or peer production, mobility takes the shape of expansive swarming, sideways transitions and boundary-crossing. The notion of wildfire activities is proposed to point out that activities such as birding, skateboarding, and disaster relief of the Red Cross...

The paper examines studies based on the theory of expansive learning, formulated in 1987. In recent years the theory has been used in a wide variety of studies and interventions. The theory builds on foundational ideas put forward by Vygotsky, Leont’ev, Il’enkov, and Davydov, key figures in the Russian school of cultural–historical activity theory....

This panel will analyze the research activities (including objectives, theoretical foundations, developments, synergy, and differences) of three research centers: • Center for Research on Activity, Development, and Learning (CRADLE), University of Helsinki, with a research focus on "expansive learning"; • Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3...

The examination of an effort to move home care from mass production toward co-configuration and as an example of expansive concept formation at work based on the analysis of the new forms of agency generated through the use of the Mobility Agreement.

In a previous attempt to outline the challenges facing cultural-historical activity theory, I observed two opposite tendencies in our field: One force pulls researchers toward individual applications and separate variations of certain general, often vague ideas. The other force pulls researchers toward learning from each other, questioning and cont...

Contrarily to most workplace studies which focus on temporally and spatially compact and stable “centers of coordination”, this paper attempts to direct attention to an almost opposite type of work organization. It refers to work which requires active construction of constantly changing combinations of people and artifacts over lengthy trajectories...

Attempts to identify an intermediate unit between collective activity and individual action within activity theory are useful and necessary. While several possible conceptualizations have been put forward, engagement is a relevant candidate for naming such a unit. However, the elaboration of such a unit opens up difficult theoretical questions whic...

The Setting, the Intervention and the InnovationActivity—Theoretical ConceptualizationDesign and Implementation of the ‘Final Project’: Transforming the Teachers' Construction of StudentsThe Power of Multi-voicednessConclusion

The discussion of design experiments has largely ignored the Vygotskian tradition of formative interventions based on the principle of double stimulation. This tradition offers a radical approach to learning reasearch which focuses on the agency of the learners. The principle of double stimulation is used and developed further in the intervention m...

Teams are commonly celebrated as efficient and humane ways of organizing work and learning. By means of a series of in-depth case studies of teams in the United States and Finland over a time span of more than ten years, this book shows that teams are not a universal and ahistorical form of collaboration. Teams are best understood in their specific...

INTRODUCTION. This chapter examines Vygotsky's method of double stimulation as a basis for formative interventions in the workplace. I argue that double stimulation is radically different from such intervention approaches as the design experiments currently discussed in educational research. Double stimulation is, above all, aimed at eliciting new,...

An intervention study aimed at analyzing and transforming work and learning in three organizations (a bank, a primary health care center, and a hi-tech company) allowed us to investigate forms of coconfiguration work in which there is a focus on the development of products and services that adapt to the changing needs of users. The working hypothes...

25 vuoden ikään ehtinyt Aikuiskasvatus kysyi kaikilta aikuiskasvatuksen professoreiltamme heidän näkemyksiään neljässä asiassa. Kaikkiin ei tarvinnut vastata. Tällaista kysyttiin ja näin vastasivat Yrjö Engeström ja Reijo Miettinen Helsingin yliopistosta, Anneli Eteläpelto Jyväskylän yliopistosta, Jukka Tuomisto ja Juha Suoranta Tampereen yliopisto...

In psychology and education, values are usually understood as personal preferences or subjective orientations toward the world. In other words, values are firmly located inside the individual subject's mind. While this may correspond to much of our everyday experience, there is also a very different, if not diametrically opposite, way of locating v...

INTRODUCTION In this paper, I will approach interaction design from the viewpoint of cultural-historical activity theory (Leont'ev, 1978, Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki, 1999). My central arguments may be condensed in the following five.

The chapter makes an attempt at hybridization between three relatively separate fields of inquiry: (a) theories and studies of collective intentionality and distributed agency, (b) theories and studies of social capital in organizations, and (c) cultural–historical activity theory. Employees’ collective capacity to create organizational transformat...