No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Expanding the Scope of Science Education: An Activity-Theoretical Perspective
Abstract
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 school, (4) working with indigenous and other communities as funds of knowledge and alternative epistemologies, and (5) working with social movements as dynamic contexts of activist science learning. Studies of these five layers, based on or inspired by cultural-historical activity theory, are discussed to identify potentials and challenges of expansion. It is argued that movement, negotiation, and hybridization between the contextual layers have the potential to revitalize also classroom learning in science education. This inter-contextual movement requires new theoretical and methodological openings in research. The chapter identifies transformative agency, concept formation in the wild, boundary crossing and third spaces, and formative interventions as such openings currently being developed in activity-theoretical research.
... Anxiety has always been reported as an obstacle in learning (Horwitz, 2001;Mohebbi, Azarnoosh, & Abdolmanafi Rokni, 2016) and writing anxiety (henceforth, WA) is not an exception. Being hotly debated since 1970 (Haddad, 2018;Horwitz, Most studies on activity systems analysis (ASA) and expansive learning have been on clinical research (Engestrom, 2017;Sannino & Engestrom, 2017), or on professional context (Beighton, 2016). However, few studies have attempted to trace WA qualitatively applying expansive learning (henceforth, EL), transformations, or contradictions (Beighton, 2016;Engestrom, 2018;Gibbes & Carson, 2014;Sannino & Engestrom, 2017;Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). ...
... Activity systems analysis in learning deals with continuous analysis, evaluation and transformation; it takes the whole learner into consideration and welcomes formative interventions (Engestrom, 2017;Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). Despite the importance of formative intervention in EL, Aljafen (2013) implicitly stated that most studies have not taken the anxious learners seriously into account. ...
... Despite the importance of formative intervention in EL, Aljafen (2013) implicitly stated that most studies have not taken the anxious learners seriously into account. In other words, most qualitative studies simply deal with an in-depth description of the phenomenon without any attempt at solving problems which constitutes the starting point of expansive learning and ASA (Engestrom, 2017;Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). Consequently, the formative intervention describes the learner in activity, expands his understanding, and awaits transformations (Sannino & Engestrom, 2017). ...
This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learning perspective. Given the centrality of writing for both EFL learners and teachers, writing anxiety was explored through a longitudinal study spanning two years with 25 EFL learners and teachers who participated by providing comments, diaries, and documents. The participants were also observed and interviewed following Mwanza's model as a guide. The obtained data in the whole process was constantly thematized by means of a qualitative software, NVIVO 10. The main themes on writing anxiety were extracted from teachers and learners by applying contradictions as a principle of expansive learning theory. To help learners become transformative agents of anxiety, an intervention process was carried out in the form of an online collaborative writing task. The findings recommend applying contradictions as an initiative point for problem-solving and a driving impellent of activity which may lead to expansive learning. Besides, the dynamic and developmental process is hoped to help learners expand and transform their writing anxiety. Contradictions may also become an initiation for future studies on language learning.
... Some related practice theorizing has arisen in the field of science studies-Bruno Latour's Reassembling the Social (2005) has contributed to actor-network theory (ANT). Historically, in the 1920s, Lev Vygotsky (1978) and colleagues (Aleksei Leontjev, Alexander Luria) developed a view of human action and development that, from the perspective of today, looks like a form of practice theory, although it is now better known as "activity theory" or Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), championed in education by Engeström, (2005Engeström, ( , 2017 among others, and in science education by, e.g., Roth and Lee (2007) and Severance et al. (2016). This line of theorizing not only focuses on human activity but also emphasizes the sociomaterial shaping of practices; that is, their inherent sociality and anchoring in material objects like tools and other artefacts. ...
Science teachers struggle to implement and sustain new curricular ideas from professional development (PD) experiences. These PD opportunities are crucial for enacting real‐world changes to teaching practice and address pressing global challenges, such as the teaching and learning of socioscientific topics nested in school communities. Additionally, it is important to consider how school situative conditions are an important aspect in how science teachers learn, develop, and enact curricular practices in their classrooms. This paper is part of a special issue on Teacher Learning and Practice within Organizational Contexts. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to illustrate how researchers can frame research using the theory of practice architectures (TPA) as a lens to develop a dynamic socio‐material understanding of teacher learning within teachers' working environments and their local school communities. An ongoing multi‐year professional learning study with science teachers in an elementary school and secondary school was analyzed using TPA. Using a philosophical‐empirical approach, observations from PD sessions and collaborative meetings illustrated teachers' practices in the form of sayings, doings, and relatings and their changes over the duration of the observations with associated modifications in schools' practice architectures. Although specific school conditions, such as timetable restrictions and curriculum accountability, constrained teachers' practices they were still enabled to learn and develop their practices. Overall, TPA was found to be an insightful framework for theorizing changes in science teaching practices of teachers' saying, doings, and relatings at their school sites. Future research focused on PD within schools would benefit from using a TPA approach to theorizing science teacher learning and curriculum enactment practices.
... However, the subject does not complete this task in isolation; rather, they different tools to complete the activity within their settings. Activity theory further outlines how s/he is connected to a social group as they complete said activity, which are often then used to divide responsibilities among the group members (division of labor) (Engeström, 2017;Sannino & Engeström, 2017). Finally, rules are the informal and formal regulations that govern the task and group dynamics (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010), which are used to describe the importance of social learning and peers scaffolding (MacLeod & van der Veen, 2020). ...
Theoretically-informed design is a hallmark of the field of learning and instructional design and technology (LIDT). Designing digital environments for learning on the basis of theory can lead to theoretically pure and potentially effective learning interventions, yet theory alone is insufficient to consider the myriad of issues that emerge while a learner is engaged in digitally mediated learning. As the field of LIDT shifts towards more human-centered design practice, the phenomenon of learning experience design (LXD) has emerged as a novel, multidisciplinary focus area. LXD equips designers with a range of useful methods for explicitly considering the learner within the learning context. Two methods that we argue are particularly well-suited for this are personas and scenarios. The development of personas and scenarios can be informed by activity theory, which provides a lens for holistically considering the technology usage context and the learner’s role therein. The current article discusses the interplay of activity theory, personas, and scenarios, and illustrates how this can be potentially useful in learning experience design practice in two separate case examples. Implications are discussed.
... Subjects and object The subjects of transformation include students and teachers. An object is not a short-term goal that an individual seeks to achieve but a long-term purpose with a substantial foundation that gives meaning and motive to activities (Engeström, 2017). In an assessment culture (Birenbaum, 2014(Birenbaum, , 2016, teachers are expected to develop assessment skills through professional learning. ...
Although the importance of formative assessment has been recognized worldwide, the theoretical foundation is insufficiently captured within a broader sociocultural context that promotes teachers and students building an assessment culture. This study proposes a theoretical framework that supports the claim that formative assessment aims to accelerate an agentic process of transforming and improving the teaching-learning activity systems rather than helping teachers mold students with traditional values and cultural discourses. The characteristics of formative assessment were organized for each of the learning metaphors: acquisition, participation, and expansion. In this paper, assessment for expansion is defined as a form of formative assessment to facilitate expansive learning toward a process of making teaching-learning better, of which the functional core is sociocultural feedback with reference to situational criteria. Next, the theoretical discussions demonstrate that assessment for expansion emerges from making a third space and forming a culturally fitted tool for realistic and sustainable practical judgements. These conditions, which work within a continuum of problematic, ends-in-view, and expanded contexts, recognize the impact of assessments in associating a single student's voice with a school-and community-wide problem. In conclusion, the possibilities and challenges of assessment for expansion are discussed from theoretical and practical perspectives.
... The second stance underlying the argument for the preparation of community teachers is that the source of knowledge critical for the preparation of effective classroom educators is not, contrary to the views of many, held entirely in the minds and hands of those who work within the halls of higher education (see, for example, Banegas, 2020;Richmond, 2017;Zeichner & Payne, 2013). We hold that this obligation of teachers to be both knowledgeable about and responsive to individuals and groups beyond those in their classroom is in part the result of recognizing that students have powerful learning experiences outside of school (Engeström, 2017;Kinloch et al., 2017;Kirkland, 2013), and that often this learning takes place in nontraditional venues and as a result of using rapidly evolving participatory social media platforms (e.g., Tik Tok) which are not typically sanctioned as school-based ways of knowing. The understandings that young people bring to school are a product of such experiences, and these understandings shape what students are willing to learn during the school day. ...
In this conceptual/theoretical paper, we present an argument about the importance of preparing community teachers, articulating tenets of youth voice, community voice, and context in this undertaking. We operationalize these tenets by proposing a Learning-to-Teach Cycle as an organizing structure for teacher candidates to encounter across their programs through four interrelated elements-observing; identifying; reflecting/synthesizing; and designing/implementing-that center and leverage community issues, knowledge , and voice. This approach is urgently needed in urban contexts amid increasingly porous boundaries between schools and broader communities, and in recognition of youth and communities as sources of knowledge integral to the preparation of teachers.
... However, the subject does not complete this task in isolation; rather, they different tools to complete the activity within their settings. Activity theory further outlines how s/he is connected to a social group as they complete said activity, which are often then used to divide responsibilities among the group members (division of labor) (Engeström, 2017;Sannino & Engeström, 2017). Finally, rules are the informal and formal regulations that govern the task and group dynamics (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010), which are used to describe the importance of social learning and peers scaffolding (MacLeod & van der Veen, 2020). ...
Theoretically-informed design is a hallmark of the field of learning and instructional design and technology (LIDT). Designing digital environments for learning on the basis of theory can lead to theoretically pure and potentially effective learning interventions, yet theory alone is insufficient to consider the myriad of issues that emerge while a learner is engaged in digitally mediated learning. As the field of LIDT shifts towards more human-centered design practice, the phenomenon of learning experience design (LXD) has emerged as a novel, multidisciplinary focus area. LXD equips designers with a range of useful methods for explicitly considering the learner within the learning context. Two methods that we argue are particularly well-suited for this are personas and scenarios. The development of personas and scenarios can be informed by activity theory, which provides a lens for holistically considering the technology usage context and the learner's role therein. The current article discusses the interplay of activity theory, personas, and scenarios, and illustrates how this can be potentially useful in learning experience design practice in two separate case examples. Implications are discussed.
... La renovación y ampliación de los límites del aula, como contexto único de enseñanza y de aprendizaje, moviliza nuevas interacciones y evoca una mayor autonomía en los estudiantes, quienes desde sus intereses, motivaciones y metas formuladas movilizan recursos para modificar los escenarios educativos. Esto es, convoca a la agencia transformadora, definida como el potencial de los seres humanos para convertirse en creadores de historias; o transformadores de sus propias actividades, a partir de acciones específicas que tienen el potencial de transformación (Lemos, Pereira-Querol y Muniz de Almeida, 2013;Engeström, 2017). ...
El trabajo presenta una revisión bibliográfica del concepto agencia, contemplando el estado actual de la investigación y la discusión científica con respecto a los aportes teóricos más importantes, tomando como referencia central la Teoría cognitiva social. Se parte de la delimitación conceptual de la agencia personal, en sentido general, y, en particular, con relación al constructo compromiso académico, como la dimensión proactiva que tiene un fuerte impacto para pensar las prácticas educativas de nivel superior. Seguidamente, se describen aportes teóricos convergentes, retomando contribuciones desde la teoría histórico-cultural de la actividad, los planos de la actividad sociocultural y la influencia de la teoría para repensar el campo educativo. Finalmente, se avanza hacia la delimitación de criterios a contemplar en una educación que busque promover el compromiso agente a través del aprendizaje expansivo, donde la agencia se piensa como múltiple, distribuida y en red.
... However, Engeström (2017) finds that when students finish their science education, they are still confused about how to use their scientific knowledge for life improvement and why they needed to learn scientific knowledge. Students of professional science education have a particularly difficulty time understanding how to plan their career development, and they have difficulty encountering related job positions that require scientific knowledge. ...
This study’s purpose was to investigate the relationships among learning through experience, learning for stress resistance, learning cognition, learning outcomes, the entrepreneurial mindset, and the discrimination of social information. The main research methods adopted in the study were the partial least squares (PLS) and the Sobel test. We adopted PLS to test the relationships between six variables, including mediating and moderating effects. In addition to PLS, this study used the Sobel test to verify the mediating effects. Large samples may cause a mediating effect testing error when PLS is used; however, the Sobel test can resolve this issue. According to our test results, learning through experience and learning for stress resistance can change students’ learning cognition and improve their learning outcomes. In addition, an entrepreneurial mindset has a mediating effect on the relationship between learning through experience, learning for stress resistance, and learning cognition. That is, for the student, having an entrepreneurial mindset strengthens the effect of learning through experience, as well as learning for stress resistance, and improves learning cognition. However, the discrimination of social information has a moderating effect on the relationship between learning cognition and learning outcomes. That is, a lower discrimination capability with respect to social information changes learning cognition and results in poor learning outcomes.
... 6. Establecimiento de un centro de investigación para apoyar y promover la investigación asociada a los GIS en la educación. 26 7. Los investigadores de GIS deben ser capaces de explicar las bondades de los GIS en la enseñanza secundaria y tener claridad en como los GIS pueden avanzar a nivel de política educativa. ...
La presente investigación se centra en la problemática que atañe a la enseñanza de las Ciencias Sociales y las Ciencias Naturales en la escuela secundaria, como consecuencia de las políticas educativas nacionales que profundizan la brecha de la equidad, el déficit histórico de escolarización (entre los mayores de Sur América), la sobre permanencia y sobre edad del alumnado en el nivel de secundaria (Rivas y Sánchez 2016) entre otras problemáticas.
Este panorama se convierte en la causa de los desalentadores resultados en las pruebas PISA (Programa Internacional para la Evaluación de Estudiantes) para el área de las Ciencias y Matemáticas. Por ejemplo, para el año 2015 Colombia presentó tan solo 1.2 % de alumnos con un excelente desempeño en las áreas de Ciencias, Matemáticas y Lectura y el 38.2 de los estudiantes tuvieron bajo rendimiento en las tres áreas (OCDE 2016). Estos resultados podrían asumirse individualmente al área de las Ciencias dado que los puntajes promedio de rendimiento para las tres áreas oscilaron en un rango estrecho: entre 390 y 416.
Acorde a la situación descrita, la presente investigación desarrolló a manera de prueba piloto el ajuste de contenidos programáticos de Ciencias Sociales y Ciencias Naturales de educación secundaria usando las Tecnologías de Información Geoespacial TIG como recursos de enseñanza-aprendizaje.
Para el desarrollo de estos objetivos, a nivel local (Montería) se identificaron las Fortalezas, Debilidades, Oportunidades y Amenazas para la inclusión de las TIG como herramientas pedagógicas en la enseñanza de las Ciencias Sociales y Naturales. Se seleccionó una muestra de 38 profesores que dictan los cursos de Ciencias Sociales y Ciencias Naturales en diferentes colegios de Montería y sus alrededores.
Se planteó una estructura de desarrollo de contenidos en la cual se conserva el cumplimiento de las competencias especificadas por los estándares educativos del Ministerio de Educación Nacional, y se utilizaron como guía diferentes textos de Ciencias Sociales y Naturales avalados como recurso de enseñanza en las instituciones educativas. Se ajustaron los contenidos programáticos, incorporando el uso de las TIG, como complemento de la fase teórica y como medio principal para abordar la fase práctica.
Como fortaleza se identificó que el uso de TIG, en la educación secundaria tiene gran impacto por ser herramientas innovadoras y cada vez más necesarias. En consecuencia, los docentes reconocen su uso como importante para el desarrollo de sus contenidos, de tal forma que su implementación tendría una buena acogida en el sector (oportunidad). Sin embargo, la dificultad en el acceso a internet (amenaza) ha limitado la utilización de estas herramientas en Montería y en general en el Departamento de Córdoba (debilidad).
A partir del análisis de Fortalezas, Debilidades, Oportunidades y Amenazas y de la estructura de desarrollo de contenidos programáticos se ajustaron los contenidos programáticos de un conjunto de temáticas y se diseñó un prototipo informático (configurado como un Objeto Virtual de Aprendizaje) que pueda ser usado por docentes y estudiantes en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje.
Esta investigación se orienta con la teoría de la agencia sociológica, tiene como propósito reconstruir las expresiones de agencia generadas por los estudiantes de la Licenciatura en Sociología de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa (UAMI) durante la pandemia del COVID‒19, consideradas como respues- tas a los condicionamientos estructurales y dificultades imprevisibles que padecie- ron en escenarios académicos y sociales precarizados. Participó en la encuesta el 87% (197 casos) del estudiantado que ingresó a la licenciatura durante los trimes- tres 2020‒O y 2021‒O. La información recabada fue sistematizada y procesada en SPSS 21. Los resultados interpelan para la comprensión del estudiantado como agente educativo y social, y en ese reconocimiento de capacidad de agencia soste- ner proyectos universitarios como: educar para la agencia.
Palabras clave: agencia, enseñanza remota, estudiantado, sociología, educación superior.
ABSTRACT
This research is guided by the sociological theory of agency, its purpose is to re- construct the expressions of agency generated by the students of the Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iz- tapalapa (UAMI) during the COVID‒19 pandemic, considered as responses to the structural constraints and unforeseeable difficulties they suffered in precarious academic and social scenarios. Eighty‒seven percent (197 cases) of the student body that entered the degree program during the 2020‒O and 2021‒O quarters participated in the survey. The information collected was systematized and processed in SPSS 21. The results are a challenge for the understanding of the student body as educational and social agents, and in this recognition, to establish and sustain univer- sity projects such as: educating for agency.
Keywords: student agency, remote teaching, student body, sociology y higher education.
This chapter presents an approach to the study of learning which analyzes small groups – such as a dyad, a group, a classroom – or large groups – for example, a community or a social movement. This approach is based on a situativity or sociocultural theory of cognition and learning, where learning is “situated” within complex social and material contexts known as activity systems. Sociocultural theories are related to cultural-historical activity theory, situated learning theory, distributed cognition theory, and cultural psychology. These theories suggest that a full account of learning must extend beyond individualist psychology to analyze and explain social practices, technological artifacts, interactional patterns, and the different roles occupied by the participants.
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, first published in 2006, is the definitive introduction to this innovative approach to teaching, learning, and educational technology. In this significantly revised third edition, leading scholars incorporate the latest research to provide seminal overviews of the field. This research is essential in developing effective innovations that enhance student learning - including how to write textbooks, design educational software, prepare effective teachers, and organize classrooms. The chapters illustrate the importance of creating productive learning environments both inside and outside school, including after school clubs, libraries, and museums. The Handbook has proven to be an essential resource for graduate students, researchers, consultants, software designers, and policy makers on a global scale.
Reculturing Museums takes a unified sociocultural theoretical approach to analyze the many conflicts museums experience in the 21st century. Embracing conflict, Ash asks: What can practitioners and researchers do to create the change they want to see when old systems remain stubbornly in place? Using a unified sociocultural, cultural-historical, activity-theoretical approach to analyzing historically bound conflicts that plague museums, each chapter is organized around a central contradiction, including finances ("Who will pay for museums?"), demographic shifts ("Who will come to museums?"), the roles of narratives ("Whose story is it?"), ownership of objects ("Who owns the artifact?"), and learning and teaching ("What is learning and how can we teach equitably?"). The reculturing stance taken by Ash promotes social justice and equity, 'making change' first, within museums, called inreach, rather than outside the museum, called outreach; challenges existing norms; is sensitive to neoliberal and deficit ideologies; and pays attention to the structure agency dialectic. Reculturing Museums will be essential reading for academics, students, museum practitioners, educational researchers, and others who care about museums and want to ensure that all people have equal access to the activities, objects, and ideas residing in them.
The purpose of this chapter is to establish a broader context for rethinking science education by connecting inclusive teaching and learning with sustainable development. It presents a teachers’ training course on the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) and the connections with inclusive education, which was designed and implemented by the researching @fise group of the University of Ioannina, Greece. The course focuses on the concepts of Sustainable Development Goals that are relevant to the dimensions of Science, Education and Health (S|E|H) and are included in the science curricula for the early grades. Furthermore, it responds to the need of teachers to connect the contents of the school curriculum with real-life situations as well as the learners’ interests. The teachers developed educational material and worked on the inclusion of this material in the science education curricula for the early years. This course was introductory in bringing together S|E|H in the school science curricula and in designing educational material that could fit in inclusive classrooms. At the end of the course, participants stressed the importance of raising public awareness and helping members of society take action in order to benefit from the sustainable development goals without any distinction.
What are the mental processes set in motion when a mathematician faces (and solves) a problem? What cognitive functions come into play during these processes? And what are the interactions connecting these functions?
In the 2005 film ‘Inside Out’, the core emotions living in the head of Riley, an eleven-year-old girl, are personified by five main characters: Joy (who guarantees happiness to the girl), Disgust (who protects Riley from physical and social poisoning), Fear (who defends Riley against danger), Anger (who prevents Riley from suffering injustice) and, finally, Sadness (an emotion that we often suppress but is funda- mental to the achievement of psychic balance). The director’s aim was to take the movie’s audience “to a place that everyone knows, but no one has ever seen: the world inside the human mind”. This article transposes this aim to mathematics education. We describe our efforts to guide students along a journey inside the mind of a mathematician engaged in a process of problem solving.
The Science in the Learning Home (SciLH) program was designed to address two well-documented, inter-related educational problems observed in the Community High Schools in Nepal. The first relates to the achievement of students in science in Secondary Education Examination (SEE), which is below average (33 out of 75 i.e. 44%), and the second concerns the insufficiencies of the resources and instruction to discourse their traditional and livelihood requirements through school science learning activities. Funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC), Nepal, as a Small Research Development and Innovation Grants (SRDIG) to the faculty member, SciLH is a title set by the researcher to provide a new and innovative concept to learn science from the home and cultural practices. The tenth-grade high school students and the community people (parents) participated in the study. Livelihood practices and activities at the home link SciLH concept aligns with the school science curriculum and textbooks with that of cultural practices. This research article offers a framework to explore factors which support the accomplishment of the ethnically different student population and parents using the outline of ethno-perspective.
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 of conceptual lenses derived from basic epistemological principles for intervention research in activity theory. In all three interventions, learners expansively transformed the object of their activity. The CL cases, however, show that this learning process included productive deviations from the researchers’ instructional intentions, leading to significant outcomes, both practical and theoretical, that were not anticipated by the interventionists. Together, these cases illustrate that an activity-theoretical formative intervention approach differs from design based research in the following ways: 1) formative interventions are based on design done by the learners; 2) the collective design effort is seen as part of an expansive learning process, including participatory analyses and implementation phases; 3) rather than aiming at transferable and scalable solutions, formative interventions aim at generative solutions developing over lengthy periods of time in both the researched activities and in the research community.
This paper is a review of ten years of research on the relationship of science education and museum education in the context of learning sciences and lifelong learning. A multiset of papers – more than 25 – from different institutions, such as schools, museums, and universities, is reviewed through the prism of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT).
A key goal of science and engineering education is to provide opportunities for people to access, interpret, and make use of science and engineering to address practical human needs. Most education research, however, focuses on how best to prepare students in schools to participate in forms of science and engineering practices that resemble those of disciplinary experts. In this paper, I argue that education research is needed that focuses on how people use science and engineering in social practices as part of collective efforts to transform cultural and economic production. Drawing on social practice theory, I argue that learning inheres in such activities, not only because people access and make use of science knowledge and develop repertoires for participating in science and engineering practices, but also because participation in such activities transforms the ways that people imagine themselves and expands their possibilities for action. Research can inform and support these efforts, both directly and indirectly, by giving an account of the conditions for science and engineering learning and by diagnosing inequities in access to science and engineering for addressing pressing human needs.
What Is Activity Theory?Activity theory represents the application of principles of human development and learning from the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his contemporary interpreters such as Yrjö Engeström (1987) and Michael Cole (1996). While this ensures that activity theory enjoys a rich albeit evolving philosophical grounding, it also confronts science educators with challenges when appropriating it into their classrooms. Activity theory is not a monolithic template or a well-bounded set of research techniques that one can quickly extract from a textbook and reassemble for use. Rather, it is better considered a spectrum of ideas – without achieving complete consensus among researchers – that are located within the sociocultural learning tradition. Its unfamiliarity to those trained in Western psychology may have resulted in either indifference to activity theory or its use in ways that some experts would deem as unorthodox if not erroneous. While this state of affairs is u ...
In this article, Kris Gutierrez, Betsy Rymes, and Joanne Larson demonstrate how power is constructed between the teacher and students. The authors identify the teacher's monologic script, one that potentially stifles dialogue and interaction and that reflects dominant cultural values, and the students' counterscripts, formed by those who do not comply with the teacher's view of appropriate participation. The authors then offer the possibility of a "third space" — a place where the two scripts intersect, creating the potential for authentic interaction to occur. Using an analysis of a specific classroom discourse, the authors demonstrate how, when such potential arises, the teacher and students quickly retreat to more comfortable scripted places. The authors encourage the join construction of a new sociocultural terrain, creating space for shifts in what counts as knowledge and knowledge representation.
Calls for the improvement of science education in the USA continue unabated, with particular concern for the quality of learning opportunities for students from his-torically nondominant communities. Despite many and varied efforts, the field contin-ues to struggle to create robust, meaningful forms of science education. We argue that 'settled expectations' in schooling function to (a) restrict the content and form of science valued and communicated through science education and (b) locate students, particu-larly those from nondominant communities, in untenable epistemological positions that work against engagement in meaningful science learning. In this article we examine two episodes with the intention of reimagining the relationship between science learning, classroom teaching, and emerging understandings of grounding concepts in scientific fields – a process we call desettling . Building from the examples, we draw out some key ways in which desettling and reimagining core relations between nature and culture can shift possibilities in learning and development, particularly for nondominant students. Because of [the sea's] fluid capacity to link the smallest microorganism to the largest eco-system, the ocean is a medium through which to explore shifting limits of the category life in the biological sciences. [Helmreich, 2009, p. 5] Many tribes speak either of periodic renewal … or of periodic cleansing of the planet with some disruption of landscape and destruction of life followed by the appearance of new life-forms and new networks of responsibility. [Deloria, Deloria, Foehner, & Scinta, 1999, p. 25] Despite continuing calls for improvement [National Research Council, 2007, 2011], the field of science education has struggled to create robust, meaningful forms of education that engage nondominant students in complex learning as empowered
Participatory mapping attempts to engage youth in the generation of personalized maps, as a way to both harness the value of individual knowledge about geographic space, and to concurrently empower the research participants by inviting them to take an active stake in the representation and explication of their spatial environment. Engagement in the mapping exercise facilitates a nuanced process of reflection – often unrealizable through purely textual methods – and can stimulate youth empowerment by seeding critical conversations around personal safety, mobility and technologies of spatial representation. Findings from a study that implemented participatory mapping in the context of an after-school program for urban high school students are used to demonstrate the potential of this research strategy as a participatory pedagogical intervention, and to extract methodological recommendations for its effective implementation in urban educational settings.
Personal mobility is a mundane characteristic of daily life. However, mobility is rarely considered an opportunity for learning in the learning sciences, and is almost never leveraged as relevant, experiential material for teaching. This article describes a social design experiment for spatial justice that focused on changes in the personal mobility of six non-driving, African-American teenagers, who participated in an afterschool bicycle building and riding workshop located in a mid-south city. Our study was designed to teach spatial literacy practices essential for counter-mapping—a discursive practice in which youth used tools similar to those of professional planners to “take place” in the future of their neighborhoods. Using conversation and multimodal discourse analyses with video records, GPS track data, and interactive maps authored by youth, we show how participants in our study had new experiences of mobility in the city, developed technically-articulate criticisms of the built environment in their neighborhoods, and imagined new forms of mobility and activity for the future.
The purpose of this paper is to address three major shortcomings
of Sen’s capability approach with regard to sustainability: (i) First, the weakness
of the ecological dimension of the capability framework. This can be
overcome by devising a place where it is possible to relate the intrinsic and
instrumental values of Nature; (ii) Second, the issue of responsibility, which
is only considered from a consequentialist viewpoint by Sen (i.e. ex-post
responsibility). Such a restrictive view can be extended by adding the exante
dimension of responsibility; (iii) Third, the relationship between the individual
and collective levels. This can be overcome by introducing the idea of
collective agency. Overcoming these limitations makes it possible to fully integrate
the ecological dimension into an extended vision of the capability
approach which makes it consistent with strong sustainability, and which
leads to a new definition of the agent as a responsible person acting so as
to generate sustainable human development
This article contends that the third generation of cultural–historical activity theory as forwarded in Yrjo Engeström’s version of expansive learning offers the people of South Africa a framework within which to practically realise the objective of a more culturally inclusive and relevant education. By recognising and harnessing the divergent and even opposing principles and values within indigenous and modern western knowledge traditions, the expansive learning framework provides a vehicle for implementing the kind of education which has been conceived of by such policies as the country’s Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) Policy and the Science-IKS curriculum. It is argued that this approach has the potential to take the indigenous knowledge initiatives beyond their current impasse in policies and bureaucratic institutions by generating new forms of cultural activity from the very conflicts inherent in the project. The principles of object orientation, multi-voicedness, historicity, contradictions as a driving force and expansive transformation are outlined at the level of interacting western and IKS, but shown to be operationalised through learning and research activity at a local level in classrooms and communities so that they generate new practices and policies from people’s daily activity.
We explore the connections among indigenous climate-related narratives, documented temperature changes, and climate change
impact studies from the scientific literature. We then propose a framework for enhancing synthesis of these indigenous narratives
of observed climate change with global assessments. Our aim is to contribute to the thoughtful and respectful integration
of indigenous knowledge with scientific data and analysis, so that this rich body of knowledge can inform science and so that
indigenous peoples can use the tools and methods of science for the benefit of their communities if they choose to do so.
Improving ways of understanding such connections is critical as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment
Report process proceeds.
The purpose of this article is to identify some necessary conditions of learning. To learn something, the learner must discern what is to be learned (the object of learning). Discerning the object of learning amounts to discerning its critical aspects. To discern an aspect, the learner must experience potential alternatives, that is, variation in a dimension corresponding to that aspect, against the background of invariance in other aspects of the same object of learning. (One could not discern the color of things, for instance, if there was only one color.) The study results illustrate that what students learn in a sequence of lessons is indeed a function of the pattern of variation and invariance constituted in that sequence. All teachers make use of variation and invariance in their teaching, but this study shows that teachers informed by a systematic framework do it more systematically, with striking effects on their students' learning.
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, schools and communities. Chapters 1-3 situate the theory of expansive learning in the field of learning science. Chapters 4-8 contain empirical studies of expansive learning in various organizational settings (such as banks, schools and hospitals). In Chapters 9-10, the author looks at new challenges and possibilities arising from rapidly spreading 'wildfire' activities (disaster relief, for example) and from the methodology of formative interventions aimed at triggering and supporting expansive learning. This book provides an integrative account of recent empirical studies and conceptual developments in the theory of expansive learning, and serves as a companion volume to Learning by Expanding.
Analysis and case studies show that including different orientations toward the natural world makes for more effective scientific practice and science education.
The answers to scientific questions depend on who's asking, because the questions asked and the answers sought reflect the cultural values and orientations of the questioner. These values and orientations are most often those of Western science. In Who's Asking?, Douglas Medin and Megan Bang argue that despite the widely held view that science is objective, value-neutral, and acultural, scientists do not shed their cultures at the laboratory or classroom door; their practices reflect their values, belief systems, and worldviews. Medin and Bang argue further that scientist diversity—the participation of researchers and educators with different cultural orientations—provides new perspectives and leads to more effective science and better science education.
Medin and Bang compare Native American and European American orientations toward the natural world and apply these findings to science education. The European American model, they find, sees humans as separated from nature; the Native American model sees humans as part of a natural ecosystem. Medin and Bang then report on the development of ecologically oriented and community-based science education programs on the Menominee reservation in Wisconsin and at the American Indian Center of Chicago. Medin and Bang's novel argument for scientist diversity also has important implications for questions of minority underrepresentation in science.
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 revised second edition incorporates the latest research in the field, includes twenty new chapters on emerging areas of interest, and features contributors who reflect the increasingly international nature of the learning sciences. The authors address the best ways to design educational software, prepare effective teachers, organize classrooms, and use the internet to enhance student learning. They illustrate the importance of creating productive learning environments both inside and outside school, including after-school clubs, libraries, museums, and online learning environments. Accessible and engaging, the Handbook has proven to be an essential resource for graduate students, researchers, teachers, administrators, consultants, educational technology designers, and policy makers on a global scale.
One of the challenges of science education is to integrate activities, content, and tools in a meaningful manner. One way to address this challenging goal is the transformation of authentic scientific practices into contexts for learning, in line with sociocultural activity theory. In this respect, authentic scientific practices are interpreted as the totality of human work situated in society. Within such authentic scientific practices, the activities, content, and tools are connected logically and the relevance is clear among its participants. This study presents an activity-based instructional framework that assists educational designers in transforming authentic scientific practices for the population of students in science education. The activity-based instructional framework has been dialectically constructed with the design and classroom enactment of a curriculum unit based on an authentic chemical modeling practice. The curriculum unit was developed through a participatory design process that took teachers’ expertise into account. The pedagogical decisions were abstracted in design guidelines. The curriculum unit was implemented multiple times in classroom to evaluate the design guidelines. Research data were collected by means of audio-taped discussions, completed worksheets, and written questionnaires. The findings supported the potential of transforming authentic scientific practices to achieve meaningful science education.
The ever-widening scope and range of global change and interconnected systemic risks arising from people-environment relationships (social-ecological risks) appears to be increasing concern among, and involvement of, citizens in an increasingly diversified number of citizen science projects responding to these risks. We examined the relationship between epistemic cultures in citizen science projects and learning potential related to matters of concern. We then developed a typology of purposes and a citizen science epistemic-cultures heuristic and mapped 56 projects in southern Africa using this framework. The purpose typology represents the range of knowledge-production purposes, ranging from laboratory science to social learning, whereas the epistemic-cultures typology is a relational representation of scientist and citizen participation and their approach to knowledge production. Results showed an iterative relationship between matters of fact and matters of concern across the projects; the nexus of citizens' engagement in knowledge-production activities varied. The knowledge-production purposes informed and shaped the epistemic cultures of all the sampled citizen science projects, which in turn influenced the potential for learning within each project. Through a historical review of 3 phases in a long-term river health-monitoring project, we found that it is possible to evolve the learning curve of citizen science projects. This evolution involved the development of scientific water monitoring tools, the parallel development of pedagogic practices supporting monitoring activities, and situated engagement around matters of concern within social activism leading to learning-led change. We conclude that such evolutionary processes serve to increase potential for learning and are necessary if citizen science is to contribute to wider restructuring of the epistemic culture of science under conditions of expanding social-ecological risk.
Yrjö Engeström(1987) developed cultural-historical activity theory and its interventionist methodology in modeling expansive learning in and for the collaborative production of new object-oriented collective activity systems. Engeström's formulation of activity theory has laid the cornerstone of developmental research to reconceptualize humans as creators and transformers. In this way, human agency is a central focus of activity theory. From the viewpoint of activity and expansive learning theories, the concept of human agency is briefly described as the subject potentialities and positions of creation of new tools and forms of activity with which humans transform both their outer and inner worlds and thus master their own lives and futures (Engeström, 2005a, 2005c, 2006b). The account of new forms of agency in activity theory brings the Vygotskian heritage alive with regard to the future of human freedom (Yamazumi, 2007). Today, new forms of human activity are experiencing accelerated paradigm shifts from mass-production-based systems to new systems based on interorganizational collaboration, building partnerships, and networking across cultural, organizational, and occupational boundaries. As human activity rapidly changes to partnering and networking among diverse cultural organizations, we need to ask ourselves whether schools and other contexts devoted to learning are equipped to prepare people for such practices. We also need to consider what kind of learning can generate critical and creative agency among learners. Such agency will help people shape their own lives and futures, which are gradually undergoing transformation.
Over recent years connective partnerships between educational communities and sectors outside of education have become increasingly popular. One significant reason behind this popularity has the expansion of information and communication technologies which have increased access and provided mechanisms for ongoing connections to be made between differing worlds. But… successful connections that cross cultural boundaries are not easy to establish and even harder to maintain in ways that are mutually beneficial. This book focuses on science and technology connective ventures and the complexity inherent in bringing such worlds together. The authors have been ‘in the business’ of developing such connections and this book brings them together to describe how and why making connections can support the science/technology education sector, the technology/science communities, and the wider sociocultural life we all inhabit. A range of illustrative examples of connections-in-action provide an empirical basis from which to explore and gain insight into the issues for and potential of such connective ventures, alongside a rich mix of critical commentary, arguments, cautions and challenges. Five key principles have been distilled from the collective experience and wisdom of the authors, serving to capture that which underpins effective and efficient connective initiatives. Each principle is accompanied by a set of questions that reflect the issues raised and successes illustrated throughout the book. It is hoped these principles and questions will serve to guide people interested in developing, funding and/or participating in future connective initiatives in the fields of science and technology.
The book's focus is the hegemonic role of so-called modernist, Western epistemology that spread in the wake of colonialism and the capitalist economic system, and its exclusion and othering of other epistemologies. Through a series of case studies the book discusses how the domination of Western epistemology has had a major impact on the epistemological foundation of the education systems across the globe. The book queries the sustainability of hegemonic epistemology both in the classrooms in the global South as well as in the face of the imminent ecological challenges of our common earth, and discusses whether indigenous knowledge systems would better serve the pupils in the global South and help promote sustainable development.
Our aim is to discuss how school mathematical activity is modified when students' everyday situations are brought into the classroom. One illustrative sequence-7th grade classes solving problems that required proportional reasoning-is characterized as a system of interconnected activities within the theoretical perspective of activity theory. We discuss the tensions and contradictions that evolve when a generic school procedure emphasized by the teacher meets the specific procedures applicable to everyday situations proposed by the students. We evaluate the modifications that we perceived in the power relationships and other components of the school activity and the expansion of the meaning of those procedures as positive outcomes of how everyday situations were dealt with in school mathematics.
This article examines 15-M as a movement that has made manifest the claims that have been ongoing since the 1970s in much less prominent participatory urban interventions and art about space, memory and democracy under neoliberalism in Spain. The practice of counter-mapping and 15-M are both interested in Henri Lefebvre's “lived space” and are equally concerned with making political action possible again. Artistic space-related activism is becoming an important form of political struggle not only in Spain, but also worldwide. Drawing on the meaningful connections between the practice of counter-mapping, the still-developing story of indignation, participatory democracy, and the favored role of historical memory in the Spanish context, this article explores and compares the participatory mapping of a neighborhood in Barcelona known as la Barceloneta (2009) and the mapping of subjectivities in various interventions by Spanish artists Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González (2005-2012) in order to better gauge the relevance of the 15-M movement for spatial activism in the future.
While contemporary literature understands double stimulation primarily as a method to study specific mental functions with the help of two types of stimuli, this article points at two under-researched aspects of double stimulation based on a close reading of classic texts by Vygotsky and his colleagues. First, double stimulation, besides being a method, is a principle of volition which distinctively characterizes all higher mental functions. Second, double stimulation comprises conflictual aspects, in particular conflicts of motives. Together with the two types of stimuli, conflicts of motives constitute the core of a strategic setup that human beings establish to intentionally affect their behavior and the world around them. A model based on these interpretations is constructed. The model may enrich our understanding of double stimulation and open up interesting new avenues for further research.
In November 200 1, Nature published a letter in which University of California Berkeley's biologists claimed to have found evidence of genetically modified (GM) DNA in regional varieties of maize in Oaxaca, even though the Mexican government had banned transgenic corn agriculture in 1998. While urban protesters marched against the genetic 'contamination' of Mexican corn by US-based agricultural biotech firms, rural indigenous communities needed a framework for understanding concepts such as GM before they could take action. This article analyzes how the indigenous organization, the Zapatistas, mobilized a program to address this novel entity. Their anti-GM project entailed educating local farmers about genetics, importing genetic testing kits, seed-banking landrace corn and sending seeds to 'solidarity growers' around the world. This article explores material-semiotic translations to explain one of the central aspects of this project, the definition and circulation of Zapatista corn--an entity defined not only through cultural geography, but also technological means. Through its circulation, Zapatista corn serves to perform a biocultural engagement with Zapatista's political project of resistance to neoliberalism. While much has been written about both regulatory policy and consumer activism against GM in the Global North, Zapatista corn also provides a case study in indigenous, anti-GM activism founded on biocultural innovation and the creation of alternative networks for circulating corn.
Vygotsky refers to a waiting experiment and uses it as an example to conceptualize double stimulation as human beings' ability to willfully transform conflictual circumstances with the help of auxiliary means. This experiment can be considered a key to a Vygotskian view on this topic, which can significantly contribute to today's discussions of ways to support transformative agency. In this article we provide an overview of a waiting experiment, recently conducted with the specific aim of testing a Vygotskian model of the emergence of volitional action. While confirming this model, the findings suggest two extensions to it. One extension is the inclusion of participants' life activity. The second extension, closely related to the first one, points at fluid and iterative movements that may occur between and within the phases of the model, due to the interference of life activity and conformity to the experimental setup.
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 daily lives of the clients. Our analysis starts with an overview of those visits in 2008 and 2009. We then analyze in detail one visit conducted in 2011, after two years of implementation of the mobility agreement. The analysis brings together the dialectical principle of ascending from the abstract to the concrete with the help of a germ cell, and key ideas from embodied and enactive cognition. During the visits a new concept of mobility began to emerge in the simple movement of standing up from the chair. This new concept transcends and overcomes the contradiction between safety and autonomy. Also it embeds and integrates mobility into necessary everyday actions of the old person. It is accomplished jointly with the nurse and relying on often innovative uses of everyday household artifacts. Finally, the new concept frames physical mobility in terms of sustainability.
In recent years, changes in participatory methodologies (PMs) may have been even more rapid than those in spatial technologies. Local people's abilities to make maps only became widely known and facilitated in the early 1990s. Participatory mapping has spread like a pandemic with many variants and applications not only in natural resource management but also in many other domains. With mapping as one element, there are now signs of a new pluralist eclecticism and creativity in PMs. The medium and means of mappin g, whether ground, paper or GIS and the style and mode of facilitation, influence who takes part, the nature of outcomes and power relationships. Much depends on the behaviour and attitudes of facilitators and who controls the process. Many ethical issues present troubling dilemmas, and lead to overarching questions about empowerment and ownership. Questions to be asked, again and again, are: Who is empowered and who disempowered? And, who gains and who loses?
The articles in this special issue make valuable contributions toward a scientific understanding of concepts that is broader than the traditional view that has focused on categorizing by individuals. I propose considering concepts for categorization as a special case of concepts. At their clearest, they can be referred to as formal concepts, or concepts used formally,which have explicit definitions and are used in formal deductive reasoning and argumentation. A label for broader aggregations of concepts is functional concepts, or concepts used functionally. This distinction is nearly parallel to Vygotsky's (1934/19876.
Vygotsky , L. S. 1987. “Thinking and speech”. In The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. Volume 1: Problems of general psychology, Edited by:
Rieber , R. W. ,
Carton , A. S. and
Minick , N. 39–285. New York: Plenum. Original work published in Russian 1934 View all references) distinction between scientific concepts and everyday concepts. Formal (uses of) concepts are important products and resources in subject matter disciplines, especially in science and mathematics. I suggest that the distinction between formal and functional (uses of) concepts can support a useful interpretation and organizing frame for efforts to provide meaningful instruction in disciplinary domains.
In the continued efforts of rethinking science education, activism has been proposed as a context for learning science. In this article, I go one step further. I propose activism as a theoretical category as an extension of the category of activity that forms the heart of cultural–historical activity theory. Much more so than the ambiguous English term activity, which conflates two very different concepts that its originators had created in German and Russian, activism returns our curriculum theorizing to Karl Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach, which states that it is not the understanding of the world that matters but its transformation. True, practical understanding is the result of the (ideal) reflection of the process and product of materially transforming the world. That is, activism implies not just knowing something abstractly but being able to concretely and knowledgeably bring knowing to the problems at hand. In concluding, I show how activism is connate with an ethics of care more typical of the ways in which the First Peoples of Canada related to their world.
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 methodology called Change Laboratory, created in the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research at University of Helsinki. The paper analyzes the Change Laboratory methodology and its potential for generating expansive learning, using data from an intervention conducted in 2006 in the surgical unit of a university hospital in Finland. The analysis demonstrates how the agency of the learning collective developed hand-in-hand with the construction and implementation of a new organization of work by the collective. Such expansive learning goes beyond knowledge construction, resulting in materially anchored new practices.
First published in 1987, Learning by Expanding challenges traditional theories that consider learning a process of acquisition and reorganization of cognitive structures within the closed boundaries of specific tasks or problems. Yrjö Engeström argues that this type of learning increasingly fails to meet the challenges of complex social change and fails to create novel artifacts and ways of life. In response, he presents an innovative theory of expansive learning activity, offering a foundation for understanding and designing learning as a transformation of human activities and organizations. The second edition of this seminal text features a substantive new introduction that illustrates the development and implementation of Engeström's theory since its inception.
Participatory mapping, learning and change in the context of biocultural diversity and resilience
- M Belay
Meanings teachers make of teaching science outdoors as they EXPLORE citizen science
- Benavides
Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms
- N González
- L C Moll
The multiple senses of science teaching at a hospital school Science education research for evidence-based teaching and coherence in learning Nicosia: European science education research association
- C R Mattos
- L B Tavares
- CR Mattos
Mapping for change: The experience of farmers in rural Oromiya, Ethiopia. Film available at
- J Phillimore
The third Finnish breeding bird atlas. Helsinki: Finnish Museum of Natural History and Ministry of Environment
- J Valkama
- V Vepsäläinen
- A Lehikoinen
The multiple senses of science teaching at a hospital school
- C R Mattos
- L B Tavares
A study of magnitudes and measurement among Brazilian indigenous people: Crossing cultural boundaries
- V S Tomaz
- VS Tomaz
Science education research for evidence-based teaching and coherence in learning
- C R Mattos
- L B Tavares
- CR Mattos
Helsinki: Finnish Museum of Natural History and Ministry of Environment
- J Valkama
- V Vepsäläinen
- A Lehikoinen