Historical Currents in the Development of Activity Theory

Kaptelinin, V. & Nardi, B. A. (Date) in Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design

Despite being a student of Vygotstky, the Activity Theory that Leontiev developed did not follow in directly from Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology because Leontiev had his own research agenda.

Psychologist Mikhail Basov also made a major contribution to AT by developing a theoretical approach which understood human beings as "active agents in environments". Some of the ideas developed by Leontiev came from Basov's approach. Basov believed in an "equation with three variables - the human being, environment and activity" (Basov, 1930).

For Basov:

• Human activity is understood as an 'interaction of an organism with environment'
• Human activity combined with 'the way an organism establishes a relationship between itself and the world constitutes a 'special object of analysis'
• 'Mediating artifacts' are of particular importance, because 'the development of tools and other organisational forms of labour' changes not only the 'forms of social organisation' but also 'the individual organisation of all human beings'
• Both physical and social environments are not just collections of stimuli but rather are 'integrated wholes' 
• In the physical world objects are 'interdependent and interrelated', making the universe the ultimate physical environment for any organism
• There is a two-way interaction between human beings and environments, and each therefore mutually transforms the other over the course of activities. The resulting 'mutual adjustments of actors and environments' leads to an 'unstable, dynamic equilibrium'
• Environments are 'dynamic entities', and therefore the same environment can be at different phases of development for the same person

Although Leontiev's approach differed substantially from that of Basov, it can be argued that the ideas developed by Leontiev regarding the structure of activity stem more from the work of Basov than Vygotsky. Basov also introduced the concept of 'circular' responses in an attempt to move beyond the traditional behavioural model of 'stimulus-response'.

For Leontiev:

• The object of study were phenomena such as 'perception'
• The ultimate aim was to 'understand the nature of meaningful, purposeful acting in the world'
• Human beings actively transform their environments
• 'Psychological research should focus on the activity as a whole in order to understand the interdependent components of the activity'.
• All activities are social, whether carried out individually of collectively (Leontiev, 1978)

It is important to note that the standard 'two generations' view of AT does not sufficiently highlight the differences between Vygotsky and Leontiev, which are arguable as important as the similarities. Given their differences in research perspectives and individual approaches, it is possible to consider Leontiev's and Vygotsky's frameworks as two closely related but distinct frameworks rather than generations of a single approach (Zinchenko, 1993).

There have been several variations on activity-theoretical frameworks in Russian psychology. Sergey Rubinshtein is sometimes credited as the person to have introduced the concept of activity to psychology rather than Leontiev. Rubinschtein believed that 'activity as a whole cannot be the subject matter of psychology'/ Leontiev objected to this, arguing that 'psychological research should focus on the activity as a whole to understand the interdependent components of the activity'.

Galperin (1976, 1992) developed a theory which focused on the stage by stage formation of psychological functions which aimed to explain the process of internalisation. By revealing the mechanisms underlying internalisation Galperin hoped to develop an educational method which would 'facilitate learning by supporting internalisation'. He believed that the function of the mind was to 'orient the subject in the world'.

Davydov also developed a education-focused variation of Activity Theory in which the main aim for education is to create the 'optimal conditions for conceptual transformations of a special kind, called essential generalisations'. This is understood as the 'ability to reveal the underlying principle of a concept and apply this principle to scientific instances of the concept', and is the opposite of 'empirical generalisation' which is based on 'identifying an invariant property of a set of instances'. Davydov believed that it was not effective to simply tell learners the underlying principles; instead, education should aim to create conditions in which learners can 'rediscover the main ideas developed in the history of humankind'.

Zinchenko (1971, 1976) attempted to combine activity theory and cognitive psychology by proposing the addition of a fourth level to Leontiev's three-level model of activity. His work demonstrated that there was compatibility between activity theory and models of cognitive psychology.

The work of Galperin, Davydov and Zinchenko is understood as representing the Moscow School of Psychology which was most popular in the 1960s and 1970s. 

In the 1980s Boris Lomov challenged the views of Leontiev. For Lomov:

• An understanding of activity as a subject-object relationship went against the Marxist interpretation of activity as a social, historical process,
• 'The analysis of individual activities should be based on an analysis of the functions of individual activities in the larger-scale social context in which those activities are embedded'.
• Instead of focusing on the individual, subject-object orientation as put forward by Leontiev, Lomov proposed that collective (or joint) activity was the essential object of psychological studies.

But Lomov's criticisms of Leontiev were interpreted as fairly general and did not lead to a realistic alternative to Leontiev's approach.

The concept of the "collective subject" has been used to enable an analysis of human-human interactions within the AT framework. This concept interprets the 'subject' of an activity as a group or an organisation rather than an individual human being. The advantage of this is that 'communication can be understood as a relationship between component parts of the compound subject'.

Conclusion

Instead of providing a clear theoretical lens, Activity Theory constitues a 'history of conceptual, social and personal conflicts'. It provides a means of identifying problems with existing concepts and exploring ways to resolve them by creating new ones. 

Validity, reliability and manageability in assessment

Validity is a measure of the extent to which the resulting mark is an authentic way of representing the capability of the learner at the designated task.

Reliability is a measure of repeatability; do all judges say the same?

And manageability is (as the name suggests) about whether the judgements are do-able in a reasonably efficacious way.

Module 3 Week 3: TEL and Assessment

Note the interaction between many factors in these examples:

• Technological possibilities
• Pedagogy and content
• Desire to assist learning
• Policy priorities and organisational change

How do I position myself in relation to these issues?


How do I view the relative stability of much of the e-Assessment literature?


What is my reaction to the various normative standards and distinctions set out by Charman and Elmes?


What are your views on the implications of e-assessment tools undertaking marking or mediating between people (such as students and teachers)?

• I find the potential for e-assessment tools such as Project e-Scape to facilitate new ways of assessing work - and especially portfolio-based work - particularly exciting.

How would you evaluate the variety of examples that are presented in the readings:

• in terms of normative assessment standards

• in terms of the work on learning and teaching in the previous topics

Can your professional background provide concrete examples of how you might apply ideas, o prioritise how you think about assessment?

• Did the readings make you think differently about practices that you are familiar with?

What interesting and timely problems might you want to investigate, and what is the role of assessment theory, policy priorities and technological possibilities within these? 

• I'm interested in what motivates learners to participate in online discussions and activities, particularly if these activities are not specifically linked to assessment.

Mishra & Koehler (2006) TPCK

p.1030 "Teaching and learning with technology exist in a dynamic transactional relationship (Bruce, 1997; Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Rosenblatt, 1978) between the three components in our framework; a change in any one of the factors has to be "compensated" by changes in the other two".

"The incorporation of a new technology or new medium for teaching suddenly forces us to confront basic educational issues because this new technology reconstructs the dynamic equilibrium among all three elements".

p.1031 M&K argue that the accepted belief that 'training' teachers to be proficient with technology will enable them to successful incorporate technology into their classrooms is false, and that the "content neutral emphasis on generic software tools assumes that knowing a technology automatically leads to good teaching with technology".

p.1032 The authors argue that "traditional methods to technology training for teachers - mainly workshops and courses - are ill suited to produce the "deep understanding" that can assist teachers in becoming intelligent users of technology (Brand, 1997; Milken Exchange on Education Technology, 1999; U.S. Department of Education, 1999)". They also argue that "the emphasis on competencies and checklists of things that teachers need to know is inherently problematic for a range of reasons:

• The rapid rate of technology change
• Inappropriate design of software (which is designed primarily for the world of business and work, not education)
• The situated nature of learning
• An emphasis on what, not how

p.1033 "merely knowing how to use technology is not the same as knowing how to teach with it".

"The rich, complex, and situated perspective that we and others have been arguing for clearly requires the development of very different strategies for developing teachers".

p,1034 "Our work on learning technology by design also capitalizes on the idea of involving teachers in authentic problem solving with technology".

"Brown and Campione (1996) have argues that successful curricula are not collections of isolated pedagogical elements, but rather should function as coherent systems".

Situated cognition theory (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989), "a theoretical perspective that acknowledges that knowing is an activity that is codetermined by individual-environment interactinos (Gibson, 1986; Roschelle & Clancey, 1992; Young, 1993). From this perspective, "knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, content, and culture in which it is developed and used" Brown et al., p.32). Central to situated cognition is the notion that learning is best supported when the content is part of a context that the students can perceive as meaningful, assign value to the subject matter, and develop an understanding of the relation of it with their lives (Lave, 1997)".

p.1035 "In the learning-technology-by-design approach, emphasis is placed on learning by doing, and less so on overt lecturing and traditional teaching...Learning through design embodies a process that is present in the construction of artifacts and tradeoffs, between designer and materials, and between designer and audience. Learning technology by design affords students the opportunity to transcend the passive learner role and to take control of their learning".

"Learners have to actively engage in practices of inquiry, research, and design in collaborative groups - groups that have included higher education faculty members and graduate students with an interest in educational technology - to design tangible, meaningful artifacts as end products of the learning process (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). The actual process of design is the anchor around which the rest of the class (and learning) unfolds. This evolving artifact is also the test of the viability of individual and collective understandings, conceptions, and ideas of the project. And finally, the main role of the instructor in such an environment is that of a facilitator and problem-solving expert rather than an expert in the content. Learning in this context involves becoming a practitioner, not just learning about practice (Brown & Duguid, 1991).

Module 3 Week 2: TEL and Teaching

Dillenbourg's 'orchestration' metaphor - is it useful / helpful or not?

No, conducting would be much better. Orchestration implies 'pre-preparation' and does not convey the sense of 'real-time' that Dillenbourg describes.

Does the metaphor help me think differently about how technology supports teachers?

The metaphor, and subsequent discussion by TEL researchers, makes me wonder whether trying to arrive at some form of unified theory for using TEL in the classroom is useful, or even achievable. While there is clearly value in knowing how certain types of pedagogic activity support certain types of thinking as per Bloom's taxonomy, the diversity between disciplines, even at the level of compulsory education, means that any investment in a specific type of TEL tool is unlikely to be transferable between different classrooms (e.g. a Maths class and an English class), and as such will be obsolete after a few years.

Perhaps there is an argument that there is greater value in using case studies to enhance teaching practice with TEL. For example, a teacher reading well-written case study describing a teaching activity involving TEL will be able to decide if and how the activity could be adapted for use in their own teaching. If the underlying pedagogical principles are made clear the teacher will be able to see how the activity supports learning, the amount and type of preparation required, what the teacher needs to do in real-time during the class and the tech support they are likely to require. In view of both disciplinary differences and of the different approaches that teachers take in the classroom (even those from the same discipline), I'm unsure as to the generalisability of the concept of orchestration.

A recent video by marketeer and thought leader Seth Godin sets out what he believes the challenges to be for Higher Education in the early 21st century. He believes that school should be about teaching kids 1) how to solve interesting problems, and 2) how to lead. Although Dillenbourg's paper does not mention standardisation, it does make me worry about the danger of trying to arrive at a standardised approach to using TEL in the classroom. Applying Godin's logic to Dillenbourg's examples, one possible approach to using TEL in a classroom would be for the teacher to set the students a task and then ask them to make use of available technologies to find an answer. Although this might be somewhat chaotic, students would be thinking creatively in order to arrive at a solution rather than the teacher having to micro-manage every aspect of the learning activity. But maybe that's a recipe for disaster.

The response from Dimitriadis et al (2011) refers to the highly "routinized" use of tools by teachers in classrooms, but given the rate at which technology is advancing I'm not sure whether encouraging routinized use of anything is such a good idea.  Given the complexity of the variables involved in teaching (teacher's and students' technical ability, variation in subject matter and learning outcomes, availability and reliability of technology, availability of technical support etc) it is perhaps unreasonable to assume that any TEL activity is generalisable.

Am I being too pessimistic?

Do I think that Mishra & Koehler make the links between the 'learning technology by design' approach and TPCK sufficiently clear? Or not?

I felt that the examples provided in the Learning Technology By Design section of the paper provided a useful practical illustration of the TPCK framework in practice. Each example could be (and probably has been) written up as a separate case study - it was perhaps difficult to fully grasp the ways in which the the TPCK framework had been applied in the learning-technology-by-design approach.

But while I understand and agree with the authors' statement that the availability of a framework enables researchers to make inferences about where to 'predict the consequences of making changes in the situation', I didn't really grasp the idea of TPCK as a framework for research. This aspect of the paper would benefit from a clearer explanation.

Can my professional background provide concrete examples of how I might apply ideas, or prioritise thinking about some areas of learning theory?

After reading the Mishra & Koehler article I have realised that much of my professional work takes place at the intersection of Technology and Pedagogy, and that my knowledge is primarily Technological Pedagogical Knowledge. When I work with tutors to design learning activities, they are bringing the Content knowledge and together we enter the TPCK triad.



TEL is a community of researchers who have differing opinions and perspectives. Think about:

- How these researchers present their case

- How I position myself relative to the issues raised

And based on all the above, what problems might I want to investigate and what is the role of teachers' knowledge and technological support for teachers within these?

Think about the question I came up with in Module 5:

• To what extent should university teaching development programmes (such as the PGCert) embrace new forms of CMC when these are not necessarily permitted by institutional policies / in order to model 'good' practice with learning technology? This must be an issue even for universities such as Lancaster - should the EdRes course team restrict themselves to just using the institutional VLE rather than exploring perhaps more distributed approaches to online teaching and learning.

• The transmissive nature of many institutional VLEs is increasingly out of date in view of the growth of more 'social', conversational means of online communication. If university teacher training courses are to model 'good' practice, should they seek to be at the cutting edge of new technologies in order to prepare tutors adequately for teaching? Or, should they work within the confines of the technology that is provided by their institution?

Module 3 Week 1: summary of 1-minute papers

• Considering how technology relates to learning can seem overwhelming due to the number of different relationships that are actually implicated;
• This complexity reflects the underlying reality that learning actually is multi-faceted, dynamic and chaotic and is not a 'singularity' or a linear process -- we need to think clearly about what we actually mean when we use the term;
• Which of the various relationships involved in learning is important when thinking about TEL is highly contextual, though that between learners and teachers often merits special consideration;
• Yet learning can mean more than just following the direction suggested by a teacher -- it can also imply developing learners in understanding their own situation and thus working towards their own development;
• Thus, we should not start by thinking about technology, but by thinking about the learners and what their needs are in developing their understanding;
• Socio-cultural perspectives can offer valuable insight when thinking about learners' developing understanding and the role of advanced technological tools;
• Yet such useful perspectives actually indicate that we need to think holistically about the range of tools in the setting we are examining, rather than focussing on one tool in complete isolation;
• We need to think about how we are using these different technologies appropriately ("well"), rather than focussing on binary questions of whether we should use them; doing so will involve thinking critically about the 'benefits' that we enthusiastically suppose we are bringing forward (including whether we think we are "enhancing" or "facilitating" learning);
• We need to see technology as being a part of learning in a vast array of different social contexts, and appreciate how those contexts will effect and permeate the learning that we are trying to support.

"affordances"

Brett Bligh:

"The literature basically doesn't agree on what "affordance" means, or even how valid the concept is. The term is discussed a lot within the field of human-computer interaction, where it is used to mean (roughly, off the top of my head) 'what properties some tool can offer to its users'. But this sort of definition is not really very clear. So, for example, there is a well-known disagreement in HCI between two people -- Gaver and Norman -- about whether an affordance is a "real property" of some item, or only exists if the user can "perceive" it.

If we follow the first approach, then obviously affordances are quite static and linked to physical properties. If we take the perception approach, then we might naively think that an affordance is some relation between a tool and a person.

My own perspective is to say that it is obvious from empirical studies that what we are able to perceive about a tool is strongly influenced by our context -- what we are doing now, how we have done that before, and how we expect that we might be able to do it in the future. In other words, tools are not related to people, but to particular practices. Sutherland et al. discuss the notion that tools are actually crystallised versions of human practices, and this is what I am also pointing to here, though I am arriving at the conclusion by a different route.

This does leave an interesting question open, though: tools can be used as part of practices that are different from those within which they were conceived, and can even be the object of reflection by their users (who might want to improve them in some way). Here is where Sutherland's discussion of Wartofsky's work comes in.

I hope that helps a bit. Tool-use and associated forms of perception have been investigated and theorised for a very great period of time, and I'm aware that any attempt to summarise such a great amount of work in only a few words can sometimes result in very dense text indeed.

Brett"