Key points from Hardman article on Activity Theory

For those researchers working to understand how computers potentially impact on or mediate learning, activity theory (AT) provides a powerful analytical framework for situating learning in context (Hardman, 2005c; Lim & Hang, 2003; Lim, 2002; Lim & Chai, 2004; Nardi, 1996; Kuutti, 1996; Bottino et al, 1999).

Figure 1 represents a contemporary view of an activity system, which activity theorists take as the prime unit of analysis (Engeström, Miettinen & Punamaki, 1999; Engeström, 1987). This unit of analysis allows one to situate developmental processes in context. What one can see from figure 1 is that the subject acts on the object in order to transform it using mediating artefacts in order to arrive at an outcome. In turn, the subject's position and engagement with the activity is influenced by the rules of the context, his/her community and division of labour.

Figure 1: An Activity System (Engeström, 1987: 75)

A key characteristic of an activity system is its object orientedness (Leontiev, 1981; Engeström, 1987; Hardman, 2007a; Foot, 2002). Objects define activities and, hence, identification of the object of the activity enables one to map the different nodes of the activity system. However, tracking the object of an activity is a problematic endeavour due in part to the different views on how the object can be defined.

What is activity theory?

Activity Theory provides the researcher with a heuristic device, formulated as an activity system in Figure 1 above, for identifying, examining and aiming to answer research questions related to human activity. Researchers working within the wide AT field share certain concepts and accept certain principles. I draw primarily from Cole (1996) and Russell (2002) in order to elaborate on these principles:

• Human activity is collective and human behaviour originates within the social realm (Cole & Engeström, 1993).
• Mind is social, growing out of joint activity. 
• Tools, which carry socio-historical meanings, mediate our psychology.
• Activity theory studies development and change, which is understood to include historical change, individual development and moment-to-moment change (Russell, 2002).
• Activity theory assumes that people are active cognising agents but that they act in sites that are not necessarily of their choosing with tools that constrain and afford their actions.
• Methodologically, activity theory rejects cause and effect explanatory science in favour of 'a science that emphasises the emergent nature of mind in activity and acknowledges a central role for interpretation in its explanatory framework' (Cole, 1996:104). Consequently, activity theorists make use of a contextualist methodology. 
• Activity systems are constantly subject to change and activity theory sees these changes as driven by contradictions (Engeström, 1987; Russell, 2002). 

...as it is used primarily as an interventionist tool, AT struggles to track the emerging object of complex activity systems observationally. There is nothing, however, in the AT literature to suggest that it is problematic to rely on observations to uncover the object of an activity.  In fact Engeström & Escalante (1996) suggest that the objects of manual labour, for example, are relatively easily discerned due to their observable materiality. The point, however, is that it becomes increasingly difficult to track an object in a complex activity system, such as a school, unless one intervenes to disrupt practice, thereby forcibly making visible the previously invisible object.

One of the challenges facing AT as a framework for understanding the activity system of the classroom is the sometimes opaque use of the term 'object' by activity theorists. While most researchers who work in activity theory indicate that one of the central concepts of the theory is its understanding of activity as object oriented, the notion of 'object' remains conceptually slippery (Kaptelinin, 2005; Miettinin, 2005, 1999; Foot, 2002; Lim & Hang, 2003). This 'slipperiness' makes it very difficult for researchers to 'capture' the object as it emerges within the research site unless one actively intervenes in order to surface it. For theorists such as Engeström (1999) the object of an activity system directs the activity and 'determines the horizon of possible actions' (Engeström, 1999b: 381). Being able to 'capture' this elusive object, then, is of primary importance to researchers who wish to develop an understanding of the activity system they are investigating (Foot, 2002).

Kaptelinin (2005) illustrates that for Leontiev (1978), the object of activity is predominantly the 'object of individual activity'.

For Leontiev then, all activities are social, even those carried out in apparent isolation; however, the focus is on 'concrete individuals' engaged in individual activity. Leontiev's work does not discount the possibility of collective activity; indeed, Engeström (1987) makes a good case for reading his work as a move towards collective activity. It appears, however, that his framework was designed for explicating individuals' activities. [But] Education is a field that deals very much with collective rather than individual activity. As a field of study, education requires that one is able to situate the subject of study within a wider context, highlighting community membership, rules of interaction and issues related to division of labour in order to more fully understand the complexities of learning and teaching.

For Engeström (1987), activities are collective phenomena that unfold over time. Individuals can carry out actions oriented towards goals only within the wider arena of a collective, object-oriented activity. For him, the object is more than merely the motive driving the activity. The object is 'the raw material or problem space at which the activity is directed and which is moulded and transformed into outcomes' (Centre for activity theory and Developmental Work Research, n.d.). 

Methodology

For Daniels (2005) three steps are necessary in the interventionist use of activity theory8 in order to understand the object of the activity system. First, one interviews the participants9 (in this study, the teachers) in order to elicit motives; second, one uses observations to study what is really being worked on and thirdly, one takes the data back to the teachers in order to surface contradictions between the intended and actual practice. These contradictions in turn drive transformation.