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Finding life beyond the classroom walls: a Change Laboratory supporting expansive de-encapsulation of school

August 2023
Éducation et didactique 17(17-2):125-141

DOI:10.4000/educationdidactique.11773

Authors:

Yrjö Engeström

University of Helsinki

Pauliina Rantavuori

Tampere University

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Finding life beyond the classroom walls: a Change

Laboratory supporting expansive de-encapsulation of

school

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu, Maria Tapola-Haapala

Dans Éducation & didactiqueÉducation & didactique 2023/2 (Vol. 18)2023/2 (Vol. 18), pages 125 à 141

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Éducation et didactique

17-2 | 2023

Varia

Finding life beyond the classroom walls: a Change

Laboratory supporting expansive de-encapsulation

of school

Sortir de la salle de classe : un laboratoire du changement pour

« désencapsuler » l’école par apprentissage expansif

YrjöEngeström,PauliinaRantavuori,PiiaRuutuandMariaTapola-Haapala

Electronicversion

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/educationdidactique/11773

DOI: 10.4000/educationdidactique.11773

ISSN: 2111-4838

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Presses universitaires de Rennes

Printedversion

Date of publication: 23 August 2023

Number of pages: 125-141

ISBN: 978-2-7535-9550-7

ISSN: 1956-3485

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Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu and Maria Tapola-Haapala, “Finding life beyond the

classroom walls: a Change Laboratory supporting expansive de-encapsulation of school”, Éducation et

didactique [Online], 17-2 | 2023, Online since 02 January 2025, connection on 19 September 2023.

URL: http://journals.openedition.org/educationdidactique/11773 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/

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Éducation & Didactique, 2023, vol. 17, no2,p.125-141 125

FINDING LIFE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM WALLS:

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE

DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström

CRADLE, University of Helsinki; ID ORCID: 0000-0002-6949-4278

Pauliina Rantavuori

Tampere University; ID ORCID: 0000-0002-0160-9825

Piia Ruutu

CRADLE, University of Helsinki; ID ORCID: 0000-0001-5731-5394

Maria Tapola-Haapala

CRADLE, University of Helsinki; ID ORCID: 0009-0002-5713-5267

In an encapsulated classroom, the school text – the knowledge conveyed by teachers and textbooks and reproduced

in tests and exams – tends to become the object of the activity instead of being an instrument for understanding the

world. In order to understand and promote sustainable de-encapsulation, we need to identify, document, analyze,

and foster a wide variety of actions and practices. Our article contributes to this need by presenting a practical,

methodological, and conceptual framework for de-encapsulation in schools. In this study, 8th graders from one

comprehensive school in Finland worked on projects chosen by themselves, with the support of researchers during

the school year. The projects were carried out in Change Laboratory intervention, a method of participatory analysis

and design based on the theory of expansive learning. We built an analytical framework to examine how students took

actions to break out of the encapsulated classroom and school while working on the projects signiﬁcant for them. The

expansive de-encapsulation actions were analyzed using three dimensions: 1)the individual or collective nature of

the de-encapsulation efforts; 2)the direction of the movement, and 3)the composition of the movement. The ﬁndings

show signiﬁcant variation of de-encapsulation actions in the four projects. None of the four project groups was unable

or unwilling to engage in de-encapsulation. This indicates that there is a broad spectrum of possible student-led

projects that can, in a variety of ways, involve and nourish actions of expansive de-encapsulation. Allowing students

to create and lead their own projects has strong potential for the opening up of the school and creating partnerships

with progressive actors outside the school.

Sortir de la salle de classe: un laboratoire du changement pour «désencapsuler» l’école par apprentissage expansif

Keywords: encapsulation, expansive de-encapsulation, action, Change Laboratory, cultural-historical activity theory.

Au sein d’une forme scolaire « encapsulée » [fermée sur elle-même], le texte du savoir (les connaissances transmises par

l’enseignant et reproduites par les tests et les examens) tend à devenir l’objet de l’activité au lieu d’être un instrument

de compréhension du monde. Aﬁn de comprendre et promouvoir une «désencapsulation», il est nécessaire d’identiﬁer,

documenter, analyser et encourager une grande variété d’actions et de pratiques. Notre article répond à ce besoin en

présentant un cadre pratique, méthodologique et conceptuel pour la désencapsulation de la forme scolaire. Dans cette

étude, des élèves de 8eannée [classe de4e] d’un collège public en Finlande ont travaillé pendant l’année scolaire et avec le

soutien de chercheurs sur des projets qu’ils avaient eux-mêmes choisis. Les projets ont été menés au sein d’un Laboratoire

du Changement, une méthode d’analyse et de conception participative basée sur la théorie de l’apprentissage expansif. Nous

avons construit un cadre d’analyse pour examiner comment les élèves ont agi pour sortir de l’encapsulation de la classe

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

126

INTRODUCTION

Obligatory public schools were created to protect

children from child labour and other hardships of

life. Paradoxically, this protective mission has led to

the separation of the school from the rest of life and

to alienated learning – a phenomenon we call encap-

sulation. Efforts to analyze and overcome the encap-

sulation of school instruction by means of the theory

of expansive learning (Engeström, 2015) date back

to an article published in 1991.

“The expansive learning approach exploits the

actually existing conﬂicts and dissatisfactions among

teachers, students, parents and others involved in

or affected by schooling, inviting them to join in a

concrete transformation of the current practice. In

other words, this approach is not built on benevolent

reform from above. It is built on facing the current

contradictions and draws strength from their joint

analysis. […] The expansive learning approach would

break the encapsulation of school learning by a stepwise

widening of the object and context of learning. […]

This kind of expansive transition is itself a process of

learning through self-organization from below. The self-

organization manifests itself in the creation of networks

of learning that transcend the institutional boundaries

of the school and turn the school into a collective

instrument” (Engeström, 1991, p.256-257).

The present article reports on practical, metho-

dological and conceptual steps toward de-encapsula-

tion, taken in a recent project in Finland (Engeström,

Rantavuori, Ruutu & Tapola-Haapala, 2023). Our aim

is to add momentum to the agenda of moving into

the collective zone of proximal development of school

instruction. This agenda identiﬁes the zone with the

help of two interconnected dimensions, namely that of

overcoming skin-deep learning and that of de-encap-

sulation of the school (Engeström, in press). The

skin-deep learning that dominates school instruction

around the world was well characterized by Alberts.

“The factoid-filled textbooks that most young

U.S. students are assigned for biology class make

science seem like gibberish—an unending list of dry,

meaningless names and relationships to be memorized.

Take, for example, my 12-year-old grandson’s life

science textbook. Approved by the State of California,

it is filled with elaborate drawings and covers an

astonishingly broad range of biology. But the text is

largely incomprehensible for its student audience…

When my grandson and his classmates successfully

complete that book and the class based on it, it is clear

that they will know nothing of the kind of biology that

inspires passion in the souls of the scientists working in

the labs around me…” (Alberts, 2012, p.1263).

Patricia Phelan and her co-authors (1998) iden-

tiﬁed three worlds between which school students

et de l’école tout en travaillant sur des projets signiﬁcatifs pour eux. Les actions de désencapsulation par apprentissage

expansif ont été analysées suivant trois dimensions: 1)la nature individuelle ou collective des efforts de désencapsulation;

2)l’orientation du mouvement d’expansion de l’enquête, et 3)la nature de ce mouvement. Les résultats montrent une

évolution signiﬁcative des actions de désencapsulation dans les quatre projets. Aucun des quatre groupes de projet n’a

été incapable ou n’a refusé de s’engager dans la désencapsulation. Cela indique qu’il existe un large éventail de projets

possibles dirigés par des élèves qui peuvent, de diverses manières, impliquer et nourrir des actions de désencapsulation

par apprentissage expansif. Permettre aux élèves de créer et de diriger leurs propres projets présente un fort potentiel pour

l’ouverture de l’école et la création de partenariats dynamiques avec des acteurs en dehors de l’école.

Mots-clés: encapsulation-désencapsulation, apprentissage expansif, laboratoire du changement, théorie historico-culturelle

de l’activité.

All the four authors equally contributed to the writing of this article and are therefore listed in alphabetical order.

We express our gratitude to the students, teachers, headmaster and partners of the comprehensive school in which

the study was conducted. This study was funded by the Academy of Finland, grant number325599, principal

investigator Yrjö Engeström.

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Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

127

move, often with considerable friction: the world of

the family, the world of the school, and the world of

peers. We added to this model the worlds of digital

activity, civic activity, and future activity (Figure1).

Today, encapsulation means the deliberate or habi-

tual tendency to exclude the students’ other worlds

from the world of school activity – although in fact

the other worlds penetrate and hybridize with

the school world, often without anybody’s plan

or permission (Engeström, Rantavuori, Ruutu &

Tapola-Haapala, 2022).

In an encapsulated classroom, the school text

– the knowledge conveyed by teachers and text-

books and reproduced in tests and exams – tends to

become the object of the activity instead of being an

instrument for understanding the world. When the

text becomes the object, the instrumental resources

of the activity are impoverished – students are left

“on their own devices,” to deal with decontextua-

lized abstractions. This typically hits hardest those

students whose families and communities are most

vulnerable to begin with. These are typically students

who have little or no access to academic knowledge

and skills outside the school. Encapsulation is closely

connected to compartmentalization, the fragmenting

of learning and knowledge into closed compartments

dedicated to different school subjects and their speci-

ﬁc demands of reproducing correct answers.

De-encapsulation efforts are not alien to regular

school work. However, when de-encapsulation is

initiated and directed by teachers, it is often limited

to short-term events squeezed in between tasks dicta-

ted by standard curricula, for example excursions

and visits by outside experts in classrooms. Such rela-

tively compartmentalized events tend to have only

limited impact on the overall experience of school

learning. Thus, we should pay serious attention to

and nourish students’ own attempts at de-encapsula-

tion. Clearly student-initiated de-encapsulation is a

long journey. It may initially emerge as small steps

and modest initiatives. Yet, if they come together and

begin to cross-fertilize, such small steps and modest

initiatives may generate a sea change.

Cultural-historical activity theory and the theory

of expansive learning have been used as resources in

a variety of attempts at de-encapsulation. At the risk

of over-simpliﬁcation, we may see four main strands

in these attempts. One strand consists of efforts to

move students out of the school, to become involved

in real-life activities that have value for the school.

A good example is the recent paper of Ghadiri

Khanaposhtani etal. (2022) on youth participation

in community and citizen science programs in out-

of-school settings. The paper reports on experiences

of moving the students “towards activities which

mirror the multi-role nature of professional scientists

and their research practices” (p.1749).

The other prominent strand consists of efforts to

move resources of the students’ out-of-school life-worlds

into the school, to challenge and enrich the knowledge

prescribed in curricula and textbooks. Studies within

this strand include the funds of knowledge approach

(Moll etal., 1992; Gonzales, Moll & Amanti, 2005),

based on the premise that students, their families,

school staff and researchers together build an educa-

tional practice in which local culturally developed

knowledge, skills and traditions are recognized and

cultivated. This strand also includes efforts to foster

students’ movement, exploration and engagement

in urban environments (Leander, Philips & Taylor,

2010; Morrison etal., 2019; Taylor & Hall, 2013).

The third strand consists of student-led projects

(e.g., Azevedo, 2006; Hilppö & Stevens, 2023; Vare,

2021). When such projects are truly shaped by the

students and have sufficient longevity, they may

include both students’ movement out of school into the

world, and movement of resources of the students’ out-

of-school life-worlds into the school.

Figure 1. The six activity worlds of adolescent

students (Engeström etal., 2022, p.6)

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

128

The fourth, perhaps most demanding type of

de-encapsulation is represented by efforts taken by

entire schools to build long-term partnerships with

various actors and activity systems in their commu-

nities. Inspiring examples of this may be found in

the work of Yamazumi (2010; 2014; 2021) and

Jóhannsdóttir (2018).

The present article examines bi-directional efforts

of de-encapsulation that correspond to the third type

sketched above, namely four projects1 initiated and

led by 8thgrade students that went on for an entire

school year.

This article seeks to answer two research questions,

one substantive and the other one methodological:

1. What kinds of possibilities for and limita-

tions to de-encapsulation may be identiﬁed in

student-led longitudinal projects hosted and

supported by the school?

2. What kinds of methodological solutions

and novel challenges are found in an effort

to systematically analyze de-encapsulation in

student-led longitudinal projects hosted and

supported by the school?

TWO KINDS OF DE-ENCAPSULATION

The core of the encapsulation of the school resides in

the speciﬁc subjects of instruction. A school may be

quite open to the outside world in its daily interac-

tions, yet the contents of instruction in the various

subjects commonly remain self-contained, as if pre-

packaged within curricular modules and textbooks,

enforced by frequent exams and tests.

However, we also see a growing array of forms

of de-encapsulation that do not represent a delibe-

rate emancipatory strategy and fail to challenge the

predetermined instructional contents. We call these

forms chaotic de-encapsulation. Three forms of chao-

tic de-encapsulation are particularly salient. First of

all, schools are increasingly used as marketplaces for

various commercial and corporate actors (Parreira

doAmaral, Steiner-Khamsi & Thompson, 2019;

Hogan & Thompson, 2020; Seppänen etal., 2023).

Secondly, social media and associated patterns of

behavior and interaction are brought into schools by

students of all age groups and have pervasive contra-

dictory impact on everyday school life (Olowo etal.,

2020; Raza etal., 2020). Thirdly, the notion of ‘open

learning environments’ (Hannaﬁn, Land & Oliver,

1999) has had signiﬁcant impact both in terms of

bringing digital tools into classrooms and in terms

of architectural design of schools as ‘open spaces’.

These three forms of chaotic de-encapsulation some-

times make teachers and students feel overwhelmed

and under-appreciated. Indeed, re-encapsulation may

at times be warranted as defense against the intrusive

forces of chaotic de-encapsulation.

In contrast to chaotic forms of de-encapsulation,

we advocate expansive de-encapsulation of schools.

Such alternative type of de-encapsulation has four key

characteristics: (1)it is based on the students’ own

initiatives, concerns and interests, formulated and

pursued in dialogue and collaboration with instruc-

tors and other stakeholders; (2)it takes shape in

longitudinal collective efforts that go beyond short-

term individual self-interests and are connected to

the advancement of common good; (3)it seeks criti-

cal dialogue with and anchoring in the contents and

forms or regular instruction in school subjects; and

(4)it initiates and maintains durable partnerships

between the school and the surrounding commu-

nities, including various activity systems that are

oriented toward promotion of human ﬂourishing and

common good. In other words, expansive de-encapsu-

lation seeks to expand the object and motive of school

learning and school instruction, not only in terms of

geographic and social space but also in terms of subs-

tantive contents and ethical-political commitments.

ACTIVITY, ACTION AND PROJECT

In our analysis, the distinction between activity and

action made by Leont’ev (1978) plays a foundational

role. For Leont’ev, object-oriented activity, or acti-

vity system, was the foundational unit of analysis. For

him, the object was the true motive of an activity. For

example, the object of a collective tribal hunting activity

would be the wild game that could feed the tribe – and

this object also embodied the motive of the activity. In a

complex activity, division of labor separates individual

goal-driven actions from the overall object and motive.

“We call a process an action if it is subordinated

to the representation of the result that must be

attained, that is, if it is subordinated to a conscious

purpose. Similarly, just as the concept of motive

is related to the concept of activity, the concept

of purpose is related to the concept of action.

The appearance of goal-directed processes or actions

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

129

in activity came about historically as the result of the

transition of man to life in society. The activity of

participants in common work is evoked by its product,

which initially directly answers the need of each of

them. The development, however, of even the simplest

technical division of work necessarily leads to isolation

of, as it were, intermediate partial results, which are

achieved by separate participators of collective work

activity, but which in themselves cannot satisfy the

workers’ needs. Their needs are satisﬁed not by these

’intermediate’ results but by a share of the product

of their collective activity, obtained by each of them

through forms of the relationships binding them one to

another, which develop in the process of work, that is,

social relationships.” (Leont’ev, 1978, p.63-64)

Blunden (2009) proposes that a collabora-

tive project, not activity, should be the prime unit

of analysis of activity theory. Cambridge English

Dictionary deﬁnes a project as “a piece of planned

work or an activity that is ﬁnished over a period of

time and intended to achieve a particular purpose.”

In other words, projects are limited in their duration

and aimed at a more or less clear predetermined goal.

The very idea of activity as an object-driven gene-

rative formation, temporally unbounded, not redu-

cible to plans and open-ended in its outcomes, is

foundational for understanding the creative poten-

tial and historical responsibility of human beings

and their communities. The temporally bounded and

goal-directed character of projects makes Blunden’s

proposal alien to the very mission of activity theory.

These limitations of projects have been identiﬁed by

both activists and scholars. A Nicaraguan agroecolo-

gical activist cited by Holt-Giménez (2006, p.171)

stated: “We promote projects, and projects have a

short life. They are unsustainable. The problems

go farther than whether or not the aid arrived or

if the people implemented different techniques.”

Correspondingly, organizational scholars have

identiﬁed what they call ‘the project learning para-

dox’, pointing out that “the temporary nature of

projects […] seems to inhibit the sedimentation of

knowledge, because when the project dissolves and

participants move on, the created knowledge is likely

to disperse” (Bakker etal., 2010, p.494).

However, short-term individual and group actions

may grow into durable activities. This kind of expan-

sive transformation typically involves search for and

testing of possible objects and motives (Bratus &

Lishin, 1983). Such search is particularly prominent

in adolescence, as young people explore and shape

their life commitments, careers and identities. Projects

initiated and led by adolescents may be seen as efforts

of ﬁnding and generating new, durable and generative

activities. Such projects can be lengthy, and they typi-

cally generate complex strings or bundles of actions.

Yet they are temporally ﬁnite and often their intended

end product is more or less explicitly spelled out at

the beginning. This kind of projects may be regarded

as intermediate formations between goal-directed

actions and object-driven activities. In the present

analysis, we focus on this type of projects.

CONTEXT, INTERVENTION AND DATA

The Finnish education system aims to offer equal

educational opportunities for all. Education is free

of charge from pre-primary to higher education.

The local authorities and other education provi-

ders maintain comprehensive schools for students

between 7 and 16years of age. One-year pre-primary

education before the comprehensive school has

been compulsory for all children in Finland since

2015. Compulsory primary education begins with

comprehensive school, usually during the year the

child turns seven. School place is assigned to each

child close to their homes by local authorities.

Parents are also free to apply for a place in another

school of their preference where the pupil can start if

there is room. Compulsory education ends when the

student reaches the age of 18 or when the student has

completed upper secondary qualiﬁcation.

Finnish teachers are required to have a Master's

degree. Teachers are highly educated and commit-

ted to their work. The education system in Finland

is based on trust in teachers and their education.

Teachers can choose which teaching methods and lear-

ning materials they want to use. Finland has no natio-

nal test for students in primary and lower secondary

education. School ranking lists do not exist. Teachers

are responsible for assessments based on the goals and

assessment criteria written in the curriculum.

Our study aims to identify and test ways in which

adolescent students can find and cultivate signifi-

cance in their lives, understood as commitments and

actions that connect the adolescent students' perso-

nal interests with collective actions and projects for

a just and equitable world (Engeström, Rantavuori,

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

130

Ruutu & Tapola-Haapala, 2022; 2023). We conduc-

ted this study in a public comprehensive school with

500students in Helsinki metropolitan area. The

school has grades from 1 to9, including several special

education classes. Like all comprehensive schools in

Helsinki, our research site organizes the instructions

following the principles of inclusion. Students who

need intensiﬁ ed or special support for their learning

or schooling are offered this support in their nearest

school. At the time of the research implementation,

38% of the school's students received intensiﬁ ed or

special support, and 37% studied Finnish as a second

language. The school received positive discrimination

funding from the City of Helsinki to prevent margina-

lization and reduce social exclusion.

After a commitment from the school's principal,

research permission was granted by the Education

Division of the City of Helsinki. The principal of the

school helped us with recruiting participants. We

wished to have 14–15-year-old eight grade students

representing the typical school population. The prin-

cipal suggested a group of 8th-grade students whom

researchers met at school before the beginning of

the study. Participants were informed in advance in

writing and orally about the research. Researchers

ensured that the given information was clear and

understandable and addressed that it is possible

to withdraw from this study at any point without

consequences. Consent was asked from the parti-

cipants and their guardians, who received written

information letters and consent forms that comply

with the data protection regulations.

Altogether, fourteen 8th-grade students volunta-

rily began to work on long-term projects chosen and

shaped by themselves. The process was carried out as

Change Laboratory (CL) intervention (Sannino etal .,

2016; Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013) over the school

year 2020-2021. The CL is a method for participatory

analysis and design, based on the theory of expan-

sive learning. “The very point is to generate the unex-

pected—learning what is not yet there” (Sannino &

Engeström, 2017, p.81). The CL typically consists of

6 to 10sessions, with one or more follow-up sessions.

The CL sessions were conducted within regular

school hours and in a regular art classroom space.

The projects' topics, contents, and means were selec-

ted, designed, and implemented by the students

without the constraints of the regular curriculum and

the pressures of testing and grading. This CL prima-

rily involved students themselves and put them at

the center as the owners of the process. The central

actors and agents of change were 14 to 15-year-old

middle-school students. Projects were conducted

with the support of researchers, school staff, and

external experts if needed. Figure2 presents the

timeline of the Change Laboratory intervention.

Eight CL sessions were held in the school weekly

during the fall of2020. In the ﬁ rst session, researchers

Figure 2. Timeline of the Change Laboratory intervention

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

131

presented examples of Finnish adolescents' common

concerns and interests. After that, researchers asked

students to think about topics that they ﬁnd relevant

to themselves. Students wrote down their thoughts

independently, and after that, topics were discussed

together. In the ﬁrst and second sessions, partici-

pants formed project groups to construct and imple-

ment projects they found signiﬁcant for them. Each

of the four researchers, the authors of this paper,

was responsible for one of the project groups. In the

third session, the groups elaborated on their projects'

topics and guiding ideas. Table1 presents the names,

topics, and products of the four projects.

At the beginning of each session, groups were given

a common task to support their projects. At the end

of the session, all participants gathered together, and

groups reported on what they had worked on during

the session and on their plans for the next session.

In January 2021, students presented their projects

to classmates, teachers, and the principal. After that,

19follow-up sessions were organized during the spring

term. The number of follow-up sessions depended on

the situation of each project (see Figure2).

A public closing event of the research project was

held at the school at the end of May 2021. Students

prepared presentations of their projects with the

help of researchers. Students presented their projects

and ﬁnal products at the closing event to a broader

audience. The principal of the school and the deputy

mayor of the City of Helsinki gave talks at the event.

A Finnish member of the European Parliament

commented and provided feedback on students'

projects after each presentation.

Our data consists of recordings of the eight

CL sessions, 19follow-up sessions, the public

closing event (3632words), and ten final inter-

views (58808words). The length of the CL sessions

varied between 66 and 98minutes and of the follow-

up sessions between 30 and 155minutes. The

length of the final interviews varied between 34

and 117minutes. The data was transcribed verba-

tim by professional transcribers. Table2 presents

the number of transcribed words for each of the four

project groups.

METHOD OF ANALYSIS

The ﬁrst step of our analysis consisted of prelimi-

nary identiﬁcation of all actions of de-encapsulation

in the unfolding of the four projects. For example,

the issues of equality, bullying and mutual accep-

tance may be understood as an object that motivated

the emerging activity of creating a documentary ﬁlm

in the project ‘Everyone should be accepted as one

is’ (see Table1). That emerging activity was accom-

plished by means of numerous goal-directed actions,

such as selecting interviewees or writing the script for

a segment of the ﬁlm. Some of these actions opened

up the classroom or the school to interaction with the

outside world, for example project group members

going to the headmaster to ask for advice, or inviting

selected persons to come to the school to be inter-

viewed on ﬁlm. We call such actions de-encapsulation

actions. These actions were primarily taken during

school time, within the Change Laboratory sessions,

although they gradually expanded also beyond the

school hours.

As the second step, we constructed and imple-

mented a three-dimensional framework for the

analysis of the data. The ﬁrst dimension is that of

directionality and scope of the de-encapsulation action.

This dimension contains four categories: (a)moving

out of the classroom into the wider school;

(b)moving out beyond the school; (c)bringing the

Table 1. Names, topics, and products of the four projects

Name of the project Topic of the project Product of the project

Small action, big world How do one’s positive and negative words

and actions affect other people?

A booklet and posters

K-pop The meaning of music, especially K-pop,

for people

Survey and presentation on K-pop

Everyone should be accepted as one is Equality, bullying, and mutual acceptance A documentary ﬁlm

Brotherhood of Steel A tabletop role-playing game that com-

bines history and science ﬁction; in the

game, you have the possibility to either

be yourself or whoever you want

A tabletop role-playing game

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wider school into the classroom; (d)bringing the

outside world into the school.

De-encapsulation actions are illustrated by

arrows. Their direction describes the direction of

de-encapsulation action in question, and their size

whether the de-encapsulation action is related to the

wider school or to the outside world (Figure3).

The second dimension of the analysis is that of

subject of the de-encapsulation action. This dimen-

sion contains three categories: (a)individual actions

(illustrated by a circle); (b)group action (a cloud);

(c)organizational action (a square). By organizatio-

nal actions we mean actions taken by representatives

of organizations, for example by the headmaster

of the school or by representatives of non-govern-

mental organizations (NGOs) invited to support

the students’ projects. Actions taken by individual

teachers were considered as individual actions, as

teachers usually do not act on behalf or as appointed

representatives of the school organization.

The third dimension of the analysis is that of

vehicle of the de-encapsulation action. This dimension

contains three categories: (a)movement of people

(illustrated by red color); (b)movement of text,

discourse or representations (blue); (c)movement

of images and imaginaries (green).

The categories in each dimension may be to some

extent overlapping. For example, one and the same

action may involve both movement of people and

movement of textual representations. However, as

we conducted the analysis at the relatively detailed

and ﬁne-grained level of actions of de-encapsulation,

the dominant mode of each action could regularly be

determined in each of the three dimensions so as to

reach a consensus among the four authors.

It must be pointed out that we also found actions

of re-encapsulation (illustrated with a ‘Do not enter’

sign). Actions of re-encapsulation include protective

isolation and closure of projects vis-à-vis the outside

world, including students from other project groups

within the Change Laboratory.

The analytical framework is summarized with the

help of graphic symbols in Figure3. We will now

apply the analytical framework to the data on the

four student-led projects.

PROJECT ‘SMALL ACTION, BIG WORLD’

The members of the group had experienced exclu-

sion and bullying and wanted to do something to

alert other students to stop it. The students decided to

create and administer a questionnaire to collect their

fellow students’ experiences of both negative and posi-

tive impact other people’s words and actions can have

on us. On their own initiative, they walked to the

headmaster’s ofﬁce to ask for support for the ques-

tionnaire. They got a permission and encouragement

to send the questionnaire to all students of the school.

This gave the process traction, and they eventually

received 108responses. One of the students began to

draw pictures that illustrated some of the responses.

The work of the group resulted in a 24-page prin-

ted booklet, titled Small Action, Big World. It consists

of 16responses to the questionnaire and the group

members’ commentaries to the selected responses,

plus pictures drawn or painted by a student (Figure4

is an example). The printed booklet was distribu-

ted to all students of the school. In addition, four

pictures were enlarged and, together with the asso-

ciated commentaries, printed as posters that were

placed on multiple walls of the school.

In the booklet, the picture of Figure4 was pres-

ented as an illustration of excerpts from students’

answers to the questionnaire and the project group’s

comments on these excerpts. Here is an example of

such an excerpt and the group’s comment on it.

Table 2. Number of transcribed words by project groups

CL sessions Follow-up sessions Total

Small action, big world ≈ 39,000 words ≈ 44,000 words ≈ 83,000 words

K-pop ≈ 32,000 words ≈ 30,000 words ≈ 62,000 words

Everyone should be accepted as one is ≈ 44,000 words ≈ 14,000 words ≈ 58,000 words

Brotherhood of steel ≈ 43,000 words ≈ 50,000 words ≈ 93,000 words

Total ≈ 158,000 words ≈ 138,000 words ≈ 296,000 words

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“They have scolded me, meaning it as a joke, but

one could well take is as malicious. They spoke in a

malicious tone.”

Even if you try to say something as a joke, you cannot

always be sure whether you meant it for real. It is wise

to follow up on what impact one’s own words have, and

to think how you could perhaps change your habits.

Even a small amount of malice in your tone or laughing

can lead to many problems.

The members of this project group were from the

beginning driven by personally experienced conﬂicts.

They wanted to reach a wide audience, primarily

fellow students. For this they searched and received

authorization from the headmaster of the school.

They produced the questionnaire by themselves, but

they brought in outside expertise for the design of the

booklet and posters. The actions of de-encapsulation

taken within the project are summarized in Figure5.

The group produced the whole substance of the

booklet and posters, namely texts and pictures, but

a professional graphic artist took care of the layout

in collaboration with the students. In an online

meeting, the graphic artist and the students discussed

the layout, the order of the texts, which pictures and

texts would be placed on the same page, and the

color and fonts of the booklet. During the process,

the students commented on and made suggestions

for the different versions of the layout of the booklets

and posters. Before the material was taken to a prin-

ting press, the students accepted the ﬁnal version of

the layout. The fee of the graphic artist and the prin-

ting of the booklet and posters were paid from the

budget of the research project.

As can be seen in Figure5, eight de-encapsula-

tion actions were directed outward and four inward.

Nine of the 12actions were performed by the group.

Five actions involved physical movement of people,

whereas seven involved movement of text and

discourse. The following comment by one of the

group members illuminates the students’ experience

of de-encapsulation.

”Well, we got to decide what we do, actually all the

time. We were able to get a graphic artist, which probably

wouldn’t be possible in school. It wouldn’t happen.

Because we often don’t have very much power. For

instance like in presentations, there may be a certain topic

or length or amount. Here we had a lot more inﬂuence

over it [the project]. And then, of course, we haven’t done

anything like this in school before.” (Final interview with

a student, project group ‘Small action, big world’)

The student’s statement “which probably wouldn’t

be possible in school” is particularly interesting. The

project group worked in a school classroom and

during regular school hours – yet the student did not

experience this as being “in school.” This reﬂects the

empowering potential of student-led projects. But the

student’s statement also reﬂects an important problem,

namely the fact that the projects remained largely

disconnected from the contents and processes of regu-

lar classroom instruction in the different subjects.

PROJECT ‘K-POP’

K-pop, Korean popular music, is a voluminous music

phenomenon with lots of international fans. To the

fans, K-pop may be a significant part of life that

brings happiness, sense of community, and emotio-

nal closeness (e.g., King-O’Riain, 2021; Laffan, 2021;

Park etal., 2021). The group ‘K-pop’ produced a

presentation on K-pop, based on an inquiry targeted

at fans from different countries. The choice of the

topic was not self-evident. Group members doubted

if music, although personally signiﬁcant, could be an

issue signiﬁcant enough for being a project theme

that others would ﬁnd relevant.

Student A: Everything that interests me is not

signiﬁcant in any way.

Figure 4. Illustration from the booklet produced

by the project group ‘Small action, big world’

(picture by Rania Al-Mafrachi)

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Researcher: But it is to you.

Student A: Well, I don’t know.

Researcher: What are they [your topics of interest],

what would you like to say? Because they are signiﬁcant

if they are interesting. And surely there are also other

people who think the same way.

Student A: Music. It is not signiﬁcant in any way.

Researcher: Why is it not signiﬁcant?

Student A: It is not. (Change Laboratory session 2)

In this project, something signiﬁcant to the group

but unrecognized at school was brought to the school

from the outside world. There were also hesitations

and rejections, including an action of re-encapsula-

tion when the group initially refused to show K-pop

videos to the participants of the other project groups

within the Change Laboratory. The group used the

Internet to ask for comments from personal acquain-

tances. They did not use online forums available

for larger, anonymous audiences. The actions of

de-encapsulation and re-encapsulation taken within

the project are summarized in Figure6.

Out of the 13 actions of de-encapsulation in this

group, ﬁve were directed outward and eight inward.

Eight de-encapsulation actions were performed

by individuals and six by the group. Five actions

involved physical movement of people, whereas eight

involved movement of text and discourse.

In the final interview at the end of the school

year, a member of the project group was asked about

possible connections between the project and regular

school instruction.

Researcher: Well, did you get, through this work,

some ideas on what could be done in a new way at

school altogether?

Student A: Well, they use lots of books. They could

use also computers in some subjects. (Final interview

with a student, project group ‘K-pop’)

The student’s response indicates dissatisfaction

with the bookish bias of instruction, perhaps made

salient by the experience of actively using digital

videos and the Internet within the project. However,

connections between the contents of the project

and contents of the subject matter taught in various

school subjects were not taken up.

PROJECT ‘EVERYONE SHOULD BE ACCEPTED

AS ONE IS’

Equality, bullying, and diversity were impor-

tant themes for the members of the project group

‘Everyone should be accepted as one is.’ They had

seen or experienced themselves bullying, prejudices,

racism, and inequality at school, in their leisure

time, and on social media platforms. They felt that

everyone should understand that it is not OK to bully

or exclude other people. They also felt that it is difﬁ-

cult to intervene without becoming oneself bullied,

excluded or even subjected to violence. They empha-

sized many times the importance of their topic.

Student A: We chose this topic because it is important.

It should be made more visible so that all people would

understand how important it is. (Change Laboratory

session 2)

The group decided that they would create a

documentary ﬁlm. It would include drama scenes of

bullying situations, the points of view of the perpe-

trator and the victim of bullying, and interviews with

people who have experienced bullying or discrimi-

nation. The group began planning the manuscript

and recruiting interviewees and actors. Researchers

found a documentary ﬁlm maker who worked with

the students in three Change Laboratory meetings.

The group continued planning the contents and

practical realization of the documentary with the

help of the documentary ﬁlm maker. They discussed

and designed the scenes and dialogues of bullying

situations. The group also discussed locations, music

and colors that would depict different emotions rela-

ted to bullying, such as anxiety and fear. The pers-

pectives of the bullied and the bully were represented

with the help of bullying narratives created by the

students. The documentary ﬁlm maker guided the

students in formulating interview questions. They

also discussed the practical realization of the inter-

views and the timetable of ﬁlming.

The work of this group was objectiﬁed in the form

of a 10-minute documentary ﬁlm ‘Everyone Should Be

Accepted as One Is’, which was ﬁlmed in school during

two school days. Other students from the school acted

in the ﬁlm. The group conducted four interviews in

the school. The documentary was shown in the closing

event of the research project, in the group’s own

school, in other schools, and it is still available on a

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website with Finnish and English subtitles. Figure7

represents frames captured from the ﬁlm.

In this group, de-encapsulation actions were rich

and continuous throughout the project (see Figure8).

Altogether 49actions of de-encapsulation were taken

in this project. Out of them, 22were directed outward

and 27 were directed inward. 19actions were perfor-

med by individuals, 26actions were performed by the

group, and ﬁve actions by representatives of organi-

zations. 10actions of de-encapsulation were accom-

plished by moving people, whereas 38 of them were

conducted by means of text, discourse and represen-

tations. The action of planning of the drama scenes

of the documentary together with the documentary

ﬁlm maker was coded as having been accomplished

primarily by means of imagination.

Besides the participation of the city’s deputy

mayor in the closing event of the research project,

shared by all the four projects, this trajectory also

included de-encapsulation actions by two organiza-

tions outside the school. Students found it essential

to obtain more knowledge of bullying. Researchers

suggested they could have a phone call to a NGO that

works at the national level in Finland, supporting

schools to resolve bullying situations. We arranged

a time for a phone call. Students prepared questions

for two representatives of the NGO and wrote them

down beforehand. Each student presented one ques-

tion, such as What is the motive of the bully? and How

is it possible to end bullying? After the phone call,

one student commented on it: “They answered very

well.” The group also needed to ﬁnd a person to be

interviewed about bullying and discrimination. The

researcher found a platform called Speaker Forum,

and students made a phone call to its coordinator.

The students described their project and the reason

for the phone call. The coordinator suggested three

persons. In the next session, students chose one of

those three who promised to be interviewed.

Although this group took an exceptionally large

number of de-encapsulation actions, this was not easy

and did not happen automatically. The students had

intensive debates about the choice of interviewees, they

practiced phone calls and prepared interview ques-

tions beforehand. Students reﬂected on the process

during the intervention, in the ﬁnal interviews, and at

the closing event. They pointed out several things they

learned during the project and connections between

their project and ordinary schoolwork.

Researcher: Did something that you studied in school

support doing it [the project]?

Student A: Information technology, yes. Finnish

language.

Student B: Yes. At least I have been in optional drama,

and perhaps some ideas came from there into this

manuscript. And then just this basic experience that we

get in school, too.

[…]

Student A: But [name of the Finnish language teacher]

says that in our project we went through all sub-domains

of Finnish language. (Final interview with the project

group ‘Everyone should be accepted as one is’)

The actions of de-encapsulation and re-encapsu-

lation taken within this project are summarized in

Figure8.

Figure 7. Two frames from the documentary ﬁlm

produced by the project group ‘Everyone should be

accepted as one is’

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PROJECT ‘BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL’

The members of this group developed and played

a dystopic tabletop role-playing game called

‘Brotherhood of Steel’2. The topic and the name of

the project were articulated by the group members

as follows:

Brotherhood of Steel role-playing game which

combines history and science ﬁction and while playing

it you can be yourself or anyone you want. (Report

of the project group ‘Brotherhood of Steel’, Change

Laboratory session 2)

In the third session of the Change Laboratory, the

group members explained further their choice of topic:

Researcher: Why are we making this project?

Student A: Because we want that people can be

themselves, who they are. And it is also fun.

Researcher:That was well said. How does a role-

playing game help people to be themselves?

Student A:You can be anyone, anywhere you want.

Nobody is going to bully you.

Researcher: Do you mean that through a role you can…?

Student A:You can be a different gender. No one

comes to you and says, hey, you are a boy, so you cannot

be a girl.

Student B: So, you can even be a stray dog. (Change

Laboratory session3)

The group created its own graphic logo (Figure 9).

The ‘Brotherhood of Steel’ role-playing game was

created from three separate worlds that later merged

into one heterogenous but shared world. A map of

the worlds was drafted on brown kraft paper and

became a central artifact for the group.

This project group mainly worked in a separate

part of the classroom. The members of the group did

not easily allow outsiders to enter their world and

they twice denied school staff members and students

from other projects access to the group.

A role-playing game is foundationally a fantasy

activity (Fine, 2002). Consequently, the entire

process of this group’s work was saturated by the use

of imagination.

The de-encapsulation and re-encapsulation

actions of this group are summarized in Figure10.

The most puzzling feature in the de-encapsula-

tion conducted by this group was the continuous

ﬂow of imagination in the group members’ gestures,

words and actions. This feature is represented by

means of the green continuous two-headed arrow

on the top of the Figure10. This ﬂow was accom-

plished by the group as a whole, often in the form

of one member completing the sentence, gesture or

action initiated by another member. Isolating speciﬁc

de-encapsulation actions in this ﬂow turned out to be

very difﬁcult, and it remains an unsolved methodo-

logical challenge.

Besides de-encapsulation by means of the conti-

nuous flow of imagination, this project included

ﬁve de-encapsulation actions directed outward and

six directed inward. Only two of these actions were

performed by the group. Seven of these de-encap-

sulation actions were performed by moving people,

four by moving text and discourse. Perhaps the most

surprising actions were taken when individual group

members started to communicate with the professio-

nal transcriber by talking to the video camera during

the Change Laboratory sessions – and the transcri-

ber responded by inserting in the transcripts short

messages to the group members.

Researcher: The one who is writing these [ transcripts]

is a fan of this group. You have such funny stories and

so nice things going on.

Student A: Is she our fan or?

Researcher: Yes, she is. She wanted to send her regards.

Student A: Regards back to her.

Researcher: I´ll tell her and she also hears…

Figure 9. The logo of the project group

‘Brotherhood of Steel’

Figure 3. Symbols used in the analysis of de-encapsulation and re-encapsulation actions

Figure 5. Trajectory of de-encapsulation actions taken within the project ’Small action, big world’

Figure 6. Trajectory of de-encapsulation and re-encapsulation actions taken within the project ’K-pop’

Figure 8. Trajectory of de-encapsulation actions taken within the project ’Everyone should be accepted as one is’

Figure 10. Trajectory of de-encapsulation and re-encapsulation actions taken within the project ‘Brotherhood of Steel’

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Student A: Thank you.

Transcriber writes back in the next transcript with an

emoji: You are welcome [student’s name], and you are

an amazing group

Members of this group reﬂ ected on their project

in the ﬁ nal interviews.

Researcher: Yes, have some things that you’ve studied

in school supported your project?

Student B: Mathematics.

Researcher: Mathematics, yes.

Student B: Mathematics. You have to know how to

count. And Finnish language is pretty good, too, so that

you know how to write and make no mistakes, that’s

pretty important. What else? Well, a free mind and a

creative character. It is a bit, well, not an inborn thing,

but you must have it. And what else? Well, Finnish

language is the biggest thing, mathematics (…) This

is more just the idea, that you get the feeling that,

goddamn it, these three random guys did something

like this. Something I have not done before, so why

couldn’t I do that! (Final interview with student, project

group ’Brotherhood of Steel’)

Student A: But it was super fun, as we did not have

to do school work. Well, no, it was fun in the sense

that I got to create something new and also my friends

got to create their own things. Well, I am not sure how

much they liked it, hopefully they did. But to be allowed

to create something of one’s own without restrictions.

Well, there were restrictions, one could not do just

anything. (Final interview with student, project group

’Brotherhood of Steel’)

The latter excerpt is particularly illuminating in

its oscillation between straightforward rejection of

the standard mode of schooling (“ we did not have

to do school work”; “without restrictions” ) and more

nuanced consideration of what was actually accom-

plished in the project (“ I got to create something new”;

“there were restrictions” ).

When the Change Laboratory process ended in

this school and the other groups terminated their

work, this project group continued playing and

modifying the game.

D ISCUSSION

Our ﬁ st research question was: What kinds of possi-

bilities for and limitations to de-encapsulation may

be identified in student-led longitudinal projects

hosted and supported by the school?

Table 3 gives a summary of the distributions of

de-encapsulation actions taken in the four projects.

The table shows that there was signiﬁ cant variation

among the four projects. The project ‘Small action,

big world’ was strongly outward oriented and acted

as a tight group. The project ‘K-pop’ was more

oriented to bringing in resources from the outside,

and its actions were more frequently taken by indi-

viduals. The project ‘Everyone should be accepted

as one is’ took an exceptionally large number of

de-encapsulation actions, oriented equally outward

and inward, and also quite evenly taken by the group

and by individuals. Finally the project ‘Brotherhood

of Steel’ was unique in its reliance of imagination.

Its de-encapsulation actions outside those conduc-

ted within the medium of imagination were quite

equally oriented outward and inward, and they

were predominantly taken by individuals. In the

first three projects, the de-encapsulation actions

were most frequently accomplished with text and

discourse. In the ‘Brotherhood of Steel’ project, the

dominant vehicle was imagination; de-encapsulation

actions outside those conducted within the medium

of imagination involved movement of people more

frequently than movement of text and discourse.

We ﬁ nd this diversity encouraging. It seems that

there is a broad spectrum of possible student-led

projects that can in a variety of ways involve and

nourish actions of de-encapsulation. It is notable that

none of the four project groups was unable or unwil-

ling to engage in de-encapsulation. Some resistance

to outward-oriented de-encapsulation actions was

evident in the ‘K-pop’ group, and resistance to inward-

oriented de-encapsulation actions inside the school

community was manifested in the ‘Brotherhood of

Steel’ group. But neither one of these groups remai-

ned closed or insulated; they found their own ways of

pursuing de-encapsulation. This means that allowing

students to create and lead their own projects has

strong potential for the opening up of the school.

While student-led projects such as those analyzed

in this article are an important step toward de-encap-

sulation, they have also clear limitations. First of all,

with partial exception of the ‘Brotherhood of Steel’

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project3, the projects we analyzed had relatively weak

connections to the contents of regular instruction in

different subjects. It was a deliberate decision to give

the students as much power as possible to shape their

projects, without demanding that they connect the

projects to the contents, constraints and pressures

of regular instruction. From the point of view of the

school, this left the innermost capsule of the curricu-

lar subject matter largely unopened and unchallenged.

We see such critical encounters between the students’

own interests and the contents of instruction as a next

step in this line of research and interventions.

Secondly, much in the same vein, the projects did

not systematically involve teachers as collaborators.

The researchers did not speciﬁcally ask the teachers

to get involved in the projects. When a project group

found it useful, they asked and some teachers suppor-

ted the work in speciﬁc phases of the projects. The

project group ‘Everyone should be accepted as one is’

interviewed one school staff member in a documen-

tary ﬁlm. Two teachers collaborated in recruiting the

actors for the ﬁlm and took care of the rehearsals.

One teacher also acted in the documentary. Members

of the ‘Brotherhood of Steel’ project were interested

in playing their game outside the CL sessions and

school staff members arranged room and time for

students, enabling them to play during the school

hours. The ‘Small action, big world’ group distributed

a questionnaire to school students and students were

allowed to answer it during their lessons. While these

were important steps, having teachers more systema-

tically engaged as collaborators could surely enrich

the projects.

Thirdly, we had good experiences of useful and

competent support to the projects from outside the

school, but much needs to be done to make such

collaboration a systematically supported strategy.

Partnerships between schools and outside organiza-

tions tend to be administratively arranged and thus

easily reproduce the top-down logic of standard

schooling. Alternative types of partnerships need to

be developed, for example between student-led colla-

borative projects and social movements, or between

projects and grassroots community organizations,

cooperatives and social enterprises. This is a stepwise

development, as schools and principals may initially

be timid to engage in collaboration with organiza-

tions working for equity, sustainability and social

justice (DeMatthews & Tarlau, 2019).

The left-hand side of Figure 11 depicts what was

accomplished in the Change Laboratory process

analyzed in this article. The right-hand side of

Figure11 represents the possible next step in

de-encapsulation, addressing the three limitations

identiﬁed above. This image of the zone of proxi-

mal development indicates that de-encapsulation is

more than breaking away. It is also entering into and

ﬁnding traction both in classroom instruction and in

potential partner activity systems outside the school.

The second research question of this study was:

What kinds of methodological solutions and novel

challenges are found in an effort to systematically

analyze de-encapsulation in student-led longitudinal

projects hosted and supported by the school?

The three-dimensional methodological framework

summarized in Figure2 worked well as a whole. As

shown in Table2, the analysis captured the rich

diversity of actions and trajectories of de-encapsu-

lation accomplished in the four projects. Obviously

our analysis is still exploratory and further studies are

needed to reﬁne and solidify the framework.

The main methodological challenge arose in the

analysis of the project ‘Brotherhood of Steel’. This

project group was immersed in a ﬂow of joint imagi-

ning in which speciﬁc actions were difﬁcult to iden-

tify and bound. However, as Murphy (2004) argues,

joint imagining is not just internal and mental.

“…this form of imagining is always mediated by

objects: not just mental objects, although surely they

can play a part, but also by material, verbal, and gestural

objects that all serve, in various ways, to help constitute

the act of imagining. These objects are often used in

combination with one another, in creative synthesis, to

construct new meanings in settings that are often socially

accomplished and shared.” (Murphy, 2004, p.277)

Murphy studied joint imagining in a group of

architects, arguably a more organized and planned

context than that of the adolescents constructing

and playing a fantasy role-playing game. Yet Murphy

talks about the joint imagining among the architects

in terms of ongoing activity, not in terms of distinct

identiﬁable actions.

In our analysis we purposefully used the

notion of ﬂow to describe the imagining that took

place in the project group ‘Brotherhood of Steel’.

Csikszentmihalyi’s (2014) concept of ﬂow is descri-

bed as a state of mind that occurs when a person

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

139

is totally immersed in an activity, or as the melting

together of action and consciousness. Already these

two common characterizations make it clear that,

besides being foundationally about individual mental

states and processes, Csikszentmihalyi’s theory does

not make a distinction between activity and action.

In other words, it is of little use for our purpose of

analyzing materially mediated actions of collective

imagining embedded in an emergent activity.

For us, the notion of ﬂow is a placeholder for

a more nuanced and robust understanding of how

actions can be identiﬁed as entities in their own right

and yet organically interconnected in an ongoing

activity largely conducted by means of collective

imagining, such as the creation and playing of a

Table 3. Overview of the distributions of de-encapsulation actions in the four projects

Direction of de-en-

capsulation action*

Subject of de-encapsulation

action**

Vehicle of de-encapsulation action Actions of re-

encapsulation

Outward Inward Indi-

vidual

Group Organi-

zation

People Text, talk Imagination

Small action,

big world

8(6/2) 4(2/2) 2 9 2 5 7 - -

K-pop 5(3/2) 8(2/6) 8 6 2 5 8 - 1

Everyone

should be

accepted as

one is

22(8/14) 27(7/20) 19 26 5 10 38 1 -

Brotherhood

of Steel

5(2/3) 6(3/3) 8 2 2 7 4 Continuous

bi-directional

ﬂow of actions

of imagination

* The numbers in parenthesis indicate distribution between actions of moving between the classroom and the wider school (the ﬁrst

digit) and actions of moving between the school and the outside world (the second digit).

** The sum of actions for each project group in this dimension may exceed the total number of de-encapsulation actions taken by the

group because some actions were coded as having been taken by more than one kind of subject, e.g., by both an individual coming from

the outside and by the project group, acting together.

Figure 11. Moving in the zone of proximal development: From student-led projects to collaborative projects

anchored in contents of instruction and in bottom-up partnerships

A CHANGE LABORATORY SUPPORTING EXPANSIVE DE-ENCAPSULATION OF SCHOOL

Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu & Maria Tapola-Haapala

140

fantasy role-playing game. Vygotsky’s work on art

and imagination may provide fertile resources for

developing this endeavor (Vygotsky, 1971; 2004).

As a concluding note, we offer a response given

in the ﬁnal interview by one of the participants of the

project ‘Small action, big world’.

Researcher: Well, have this Change Laboratory and

your project somehow connected to or inﬂuenced your

own thoughts about the future?

Student A: Yes, I would say so.

Researcher: What kind of inﬂuence might they have

had?

Student A: Well, maybe along with them I have

somehow gained more hope about perhaps being able

to impact things in some ways. And even if it is not big

impact, it is still impact.

NOTES

1. There were actually ﬁve projects in this school. In this

paper, we analyze four of these, as each of the four authors

of the paper was responsible for one of them.

2. The project was inspired by the Fallout4 game world.

3. For example, teachers of the members of ‘Brotherhood

of Steel’ took into account the work done in the project as

grounds for elevating grades in the year’s ﬁnal report cards

of the project members.

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Secondary school students are granted few opportunities to change their world, yet they are expected to engage fully as citizens the moment they leave school. This issue is growing starker with multiple global crises contributing to mental health concerns. This situation stimulated a practical education for sustainability project designed to promote student agency by supporting small, student-led, community-based projects, planned and supported within the secondary school context. This research ran alongside the project in order to investigate (a) the impact of implementing these projects on the students involved and (b) the implications of this for their teachers. The research approach was based on Cultural-historical Activity Theory, which explores the learning generated through multi-layered interactions within a given activity system. In stimulating student agency, it was clear that the project had challenged existing practice. Students sensed a shift in power relations, remarking on how teachers respected and listened to their opinions. Those teachers who appeared more authoritarian appeared to experience the greatest transformation although ceding power did not come naturally, particularly where this challenged notions around teacher responsibility. In this way, teachers' professionalism threatened to become the means by which they withheld power from their students. Implications of this for schools and policy are considered.

Activist Principals: Leading for Social Justice in Ciudad Juárez, Baltimore, and Brazil

Article

Apr 2019

Background/Context A growing interest in how principals address issues of social justice in schools has emerged with an emphasis on critically interrogating school practices, policies, curriculum, and instructional approaches. Yet, many injustices, which prompt calls for social justice, are created outside of the school by larger socioeconomic arrangements and require greater consideration and collaboration between schools and communities. Given the interrelatedness of schools and communities, this study explores the principal's role in addressing social injustices through activism and utilizing the community's resources and emerging political opportunities to promote social justice. Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how, if at all, do principals with social justice orientations engage in activism, particularly in relation to their school-community context and the networks and political opportunities that are available within and around the school. Setting Data were collected in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Baltimore, United States; and Ceará, Brazil. Research Design This qualitative multicase study used in-depth interviews and observations to explore the leadership actions of principals with social justice orientations. Findings Findings revealed the specific actions taken by principals to understand the social and political context in which they work. The principals in the study utilized their understanding of context to inform their avenues for organizing activity and how they lead to strategically position their schools as resources to support communities and families. Challenges to an activist approach to leadership were also identified, including (a) tensions associated with the multifaceted nature of social justice and the demands; (b) ethical obligations of being a principal within a system and needing to adhere to district policies and priorities; and (c) the unpredictability and uncertainty of outcomes in certain school-community contexts. Conclusions/Recommendations Major conclusions and recommendations for this study include the need to instill in principals a recognition that what happens in society impacts schools, and therefore, requires leadership to be attentive to community needs and activist-oriented. Preparing and supporting principals requires additional attention to how principals can lead for social justice with communities and in ways that are responsive to context. The potential constraints associated with being employed by a school district or connected to a social movement with predetermined priorities needs to be further explored and considered.

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Activity Theory and Collaborative Intervention in Education: Expanding Learning in Japanese Schools and Communities

Book

Feb 2021

Katsuhiro Yamazumi

By applying cultural-historical activity theory and expansive learning theory to educational research, this volume illuminates new forms of educational activities as collaborative interventions in schools and communities where learners and practitioners generate expansive learning so that they can collectively transform their activities and expand their agency for themselves. It covers four cases of activity-theoretical formative intervention studies conducted in Japan, which are related to: fostering children’s expansive learning in classroom lessons; teachers as collaborative change agents in redesigning schools; expanding the school activity from below; and emerging knotworking agency in community-based disaster prevention learning. This book employs activity theory as a general theoretical framework of human learning and development to connect focal data from empirical and interventional studies on real human learning in specific educational settings in Japan. In this way, the book illustrates how the general theoretical framework could be used to understand a specific socio-cultural milieu, that is, the Japanese context. It also shows the universal relevance of the Japanese context of educational activity on broader international research, analyzing concrete empirical data from specific settings in Japan. In conclusion this book creates new understanding and develops a cohesive framework of the agentic and hybrid nature of educational activities as collaborative interventions in the expansion of learning.

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