Change Laboratory Intervention Research Articles

New Perspectives on Collective Collaboration Within and Between Change Laboratory Sessions

This article contributes new knowledge on collaboration within and between Change Laboratory sessions and how it offers the potential to support the zone of proximal development and the expansive learning of participants. The Change Laboratory is a formative intervention method that helps participants transform their practices. This qualitative study examines how six educators participating in a Change Laboratory intervention dealt with problems that arise when implementing digital artifacts in teaching mathematics. We collected data through participant observation between sessions and video recordings during sessions. We conducted the data analysis abductively, using the seven expansive learning actions as an analytical framework. The findings highlight how collaboration between the researcher and the participants, both during and between Change Laboratory sessions, helped support the participants’ zone of proximal development and expansive learning. This close collaboration enabled the educators to collectively reflect on and transform their teaching practices, specifically by incorporating digital artifacts into their educational routines. The study provides important insights into how digital artifacts can be successfully implemented in practice using Change Laboratories, emphasizing the importance of supporting educators in their zone of proximal development. Using a theoretical perspective grounded in cultural-historical activity theory, the study contributes to understanding how change occurs in the educational field.

Change Laboratory intervention for promoting learning about causes and prevention of workplace aggressions in a mental health facility

AimTo assess a Change Laboratory (CL) intervention concerning the promotion of learning about the causes and prevention of workplace aggression in a Healthcare Service for Drug and Alcohol Users. BackgroundIt is estimated that one fourth of all healthcare professionals worldwide have already experienced some kind of workplace violence. In mental health facilities, aggressions have multiple origins, including moments when physical restraint is applied or situations when the patients’ demands are not met. This problem is aggravated in facilities known for their practice of imposing disciplinary measures. Several studies have shown the need to reduce disciplinary means, as well as the importance of health service teams and user participation in designing strategies to prevent aggression. DesignThis study employed a qualitative approach with an exploratory and descriptive design. An intervention was conducted in a Healthcare Service for Drug and Alcohol Users, in Brazil. The COREQ guidelines were followed for reporting. MethodsThis study is a qualitative analysis of nine sessions of a CL, which was conducted in 2022 with 12 healthcare professionals, mainly women from the nursing staff. ResultsThese workers identified the main causes of aggression after a historical and empirical analysis of the nature of the work performed and the contradictions inherent within it. They also recognized the need for cooperative teams prepared to recognize potentially aggressive situations beforehand. ConclusionsThis article brings practical contributions by showing a detailed analysis of how the CL intervention method, using the principle of Transformative Agency Double Stimulation, promotes a sequence of learning actions. The method helped participants to systematically understand the causes of the situations that give rise to workplace violence, examining the goal of the activity as something socially and historically constructed. Likewise, this method helped the professionals to collectively build the key components of a potential prevention program against aggression in the workplace.

The use and value of cultural historical activity theory in institutional educational technology policy

Institutional educational technology policies in Higher Education Institutions can help or hinder the objectives of faculty and administration staff. In many national contexts, these policies typically result from a top-down unilateral canonical decision-making process  and or/retroactive heuristic models of investigation. However, research utilizing and advocating multilateral non-canonical approaches and more sociocultural models of investigation in institutional educational technology policy decision-making are novel.This paper stems from a project which used a formative Change Laboratory intervention to affect real meaningful change in institutional educational technology policy at one university in South Korea. Participants, including Korean faculty, international faculty and administration staff participated in multilateral, non-canonical workshops over a period of 7 months to explore and redesign their own activity.Central to this formative Change Laboratory intervention was Engeström’s Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The study utilized CHAT as a practical lens/toolkit to expose/examine contradictions and collectively transform institutional educational technology policy-practice activity. CHAT’s activity system models helped participants identify, shape and question ‘normal’ or ‘routine’ practices in shared activity. As a result, participants realized how unilateral canonical policies inhibiting research and pedagogy objectives might be questioned and changed for the better.This paper reflects on the use and value of CHAT as a more sociocultural approach to institutional educational technology policy. Rather than presenting a paper that just ‘happens’ to use activity theory, this paper discusses my reasons for using CHAT, how it was used, how I collected and analysed data, my experience of using it, and prevailing criticisms. This paper will be of particular interest to researchers who are interested in using CHAT to conduct research on topics related to technology enhanced learning.Keywords: institutional educational technology policy; higher education; Change Laboratory; activity theory; CHATPart of the special issue Activity theory in technology enhanced learning research <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.cbaae672>

Becoming a doctor—The potential of a change laboratory intervention

In a previous ethnographic field study, we found that newly graduated doctors (NGDs) found their first months of practice challenging and overwhelming. By including an organisational perspective (Cultural Historical Activity Theory), we were able to identify contextual factors within the hospital organisation, which influence the NGDs’ challenges. This raised the question: What can be done about it? To address this, we designed a Change Laboratory intervention (CL), consisting of six sessions, involving NGDs, junior doctors, and consultants across eight departments (on average, 18 doctors participated in each session). Through the CL, the participants were able to get a mutual understanding across departments and develop two initiatives to support the NGDs: An NGD introduction day with a ‘need-to-know’ focus, where the NGDs meet their future collaborators, and are introduced to important work procedures, and are given the opportunity to establish a peer network. This is followed up by a monthly NGD forum with a ‘nice-to-know’ focus, where new topics are introduced, allowing time for reflections, and supporting the further strengthening of a peer community. The CL approach promoted agency among participants and the results show how CL offers a unique opportunity for stakeholders to challenge and rethink their work practices within the hospital organisation.

Toward Nurses’ Transformative Agency in Transitional Care for Older Adults: A Change-Laboratory Intervention

Mobilization of nurses’ agency across healthcare sectors is needed to counter challenges associated with older adults’ transitions between hospital and primary care. Based on Cultural Historical Activity theory and the Change Laboratory method, we developed a learning intervention with 16 nurses. The aim was to foster the nurses’ transformative agency to improve care. Video-recording of nine learning sessions were transcribed and analyzed. Results demonstrated that shared transformative agency exhibited as an emergent phenomenon crossing sectoral boundaries as a prerequisite for change in transitional care. The nurses progressed from acting as individuals criticizing the current conditions to collectively forming a vision around a transitional care model. This was nurtured through the nurses’ negotiations which included a recognition of sharing similar challenges deriving from the healthcare organization and related financial restrictions, and conflicting healthcare and nursing ideals across healthcare sectors. The evolution of transformative agency was grounded in a professional nursing identity.

Systemic contradictions as causes to challenges in nurses' transitional care: A change laboratory intervention

BackgroundTransitional care involves coordination of care for patients transitioning between primary care and hospital care. This necessitates collaboration with patients, health professionals and organizations with different goals for patient care. This can result in fragmented patient care pathways. Education of health professionals is a means to improve transitional care. We therefore developed a learning intervention in order to enable nurses to develop transitional care. ObjectiveThe objective was to understand how participants identified needs for development can improve transitional care. DesignThe design was that of a formative intervention design based on Cultural Historical Activity Theory. SettingA regional hospital and a primary care department in a municipality in Denmark. ParticipantsNine health professionals from primary care services and seven health professionals from hospital services. MethodThe change laboratory method and the principle of double stimulation guided the facilitation of the learning intervention, which consisted of nine learning sessions (from May to October 2019). A quantitative and qualitative analytical framework was used for data analysis. ResultsThe participants identified needs for development, including a wish to involve patients and their next of kin more and to emphasise relational care. Participants developed an appreciation of challenges concerning collaboration between nurses and the formation of nursing practice. Furthermore, participants began to view challenges as caused by a systemic contradiction between nurses' preoccupation with bureaucratic and managerial demands and patients' expectations of coherent care in transitional care. ConclusionThe process of understanding challenges enabled the participants to change their perception from a need to solve problems as they appear on the surface to a need to address underlying systemic contradictions. This possibly has far-reaching consequences for long-term processes underpinning the development of practice and may serve as an alternative to expedient problem solving.

A three-levels analysis of double stimulation in a Change Laboratory

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to operationalise and apply a three-level analysis of double stimulation in a Change Laboratory with teachers.Design/methodology/approachWithin qualitative inquiry, this Change Laboratory intervention was conducted as case study, by way of an intensive analysis of an individual unit. The macro-level deals with the societal problem and the collective solution found to tackle it. An intermediate level looks at the Change Laboratory as a methodology able to boost expansive learning through chains of first and second stimuli. The micro-level analyses the participants’ interactions during the sessions and traces the terms connected to the first and second stimulus.FindingsThis analysis suggests that the conflicts of motives experienced by the participants at the micro level refer to the aggravated contradiction identified at the macro level. Conflicts of motives seem to be superior in number during the first block of sessions, when the first stimuli are analysed. The micro analysis indicates the 6th session as the turning point of the intervention, when the participants take the auxiliary stimulus and turn it into and effective and meaningful sign. The intermediate level helps to trace the third transition from the formation of the second stimulus to its implementation, reflection upon and further development and generalisation.Originality/valueVygotsky’s method of double stimulation is crucial to develop one’s agency and to explain how individuals deliberately influence events. Yet the literature is fragmented and made of brief accounts, and this paper for the first time inspects double stimulation on different levels within a Change Laboratory intervention with teachers.

Supporting expansive learning in preservice bilingual teachers’ zone of proximal development of the activity system: an analysis of a four-field model trajectory

ABSTRACT The Change Laboratory methodology offers the potential to support expansive learning in preservice bilingual teacher education. This qualitative case study examines how ten preservice Chinese and Korean bilingual teachers, who participated in a Change Laboratory intervention, engaged one of the major Change Laboratory instruments, the four-field model, to make changes in their lesson implementation. By recognising the structural barriers in their bilingual teacher learning and praxis, they were able to take future-oriented actions. Findings from the thematic analysis illustrate how, as the preservice bilingual teachers embraced ambiguity in their teaching, they became increasingly cognisant of the non-linear and complex nature of teaching and learning. In doing so, they explored their collective reflective practices and gained confidence in using their judgement to generate expressions of transformative agency that have the potential to disrupt the status quo in US bilingual education.

Expansive learning in a change laboratory intervention for teachers

The theory of Expansive learning and the change laboratory (CL) methodology has been developed and applied in many studies on workplace learning and educational change. There are fewer studies made on small-scale interventions, exploring the longitudinal development of expansive learning in an educational change effort. This article examines a CL intervention performed in an upper secondary school in Sweden, with a small group of teachers engaged in a participatory design project. By identifying and analysing the relationship of the seven learning actions posited by the theory of expansive learning, the aim was to contribute to the discussion of the CL methodology and the empirical usability of the theory. The results showed that the seven expansive learning actions functioned as analytical tools to map the teachers learning and development, but the analysis also showed many deviations, disruptions and occurrence of practical actions of design in the process. This challenge the notions of cyclicity and ascension in the theory of expansive learning. Cyclicity might be desirable but not necessary for expansive learning which questions the need to first grasp the problem at a conceptual level before generating concrete solutions. The Findings in this study suggests the opposite; that the entanglement and parallel movement between the abstract and the concrete was a driving force for the teachers expansive learning and the design of new curricular units.

The manifestation of chinese preservice bilingual teachers’ relational agency in a change laboratory intervention

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study is an examination of the relational agency manifested by three Chinese preservice bilingual teachers as they participated in a semester-long Change Laboratory (CL) intervention, during which they were placed in bilingual classrooms to work with their cooperating teachers. The bilingual teacher educators (i.e., the authors in this article) adapted and applied the CL methodology in the student teaching seminar course to support preservice bilingual teachers’ learning. Provoked by double stimulation, four different types of relational agency were manifested while the preservice teachers worked toward the goal of promoting equitable learning for bilingual children in the classroom with their cooperating teachers’ guidance. Implications for using CL methods in teacher education and new possibilities for bilingual education are also discussed.

Supporting Transformative Agency among Urban Actors in the Change Laboratory Intervention

This paper contributes to the study of residents’ and civil servants’ transformative agency in urban development with the aid of the framework of cultural-historical activity theory. The aim is to investigate the emergence of transformative agency in five workshops, based on the method of Change Laboratory®, in the city of Espoo, Finland. The formative intervention focused on exploring the collaboration of residents and actors in urban development. The workshop discussions were analysed with the help of the manifestations of contradictions in neighbourhood development connected to the expression of the types of transformative agency and elements of the human activity system. This enabled the identification of the topics of the discussions and the development of transformative agency through envisioning the developmental potential of the activity and taking action to transform it. The findings call attention to creating the tools and means to facilitate the participation and building the transformative agency through time.

The change laboratory in medical education: Two examples of tackling contradictory challenges.

Medical education and workplace learning is bound to develop through tensions between providing high quality patient care and providing training of the future specialist healthcare workforce. This paper on the Change Laboratory and the theoretical framework supporting it, shows examples on how to explore inherent and contradictory tensions in medical education and healthcare and use them as a driving force for change. We argue that the traditional tools and theories for change and fixing tensions are inadequate and therefore suggest an alternative strategy found in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and the Change Laboratory method. The Change Laboratory intervention method builds on the theoretical framework of CHAT and specifically the theory of expansive learning. The Change Laboratory intervention method uses well-defined steps for participants in collaboration with researchers/facilitators to co-construct and develop new ways of going about their work practice. Drawing on our own research on implementing the Change Laboratory intervention method we present two case examples of interventions in respectively a Finnish surgical unit and a Danish paediatric outpatient clinic. The Change Laboratory intervention offers ways to systematically leverage tensions in medical education and thus could be effective in developing and designing organisational and professional change. It is not a quick fix solution as participators must be motivated and engaged in uncovering inherent contradictions in their activity systems (workplace) and get familiar with the concepts and theory underlying the intervention and its procedures. Profound knowledge and transformative agency emerges when participants and facilitators/researchers are given the time and opportunity to analyse both historical practice, current data on practice, and organisational issues collaboratively in order to envision and redesign their practice and learning environment.

Struggling to-be or not-to-be a bilingual teacher: Identity formation in a Change Laboratory intervention

While the methodology of formative intervention research has long been established, the aspect of new instrumentality of Change Laboratory is fragmentally documented. Therefore, in this study, we modified two major Change Laboratory mediating tools used in bilingual student-teaching seminars, namely the disturbance diary and four-field model. These two empirically investigated Change Laboratory tools have mediated transformative agency within the collective movement toward identity formation as the Change Laboratory participants (bilingual preservice teachers) conveyed their dilemma of to-be or not-to-be a bilingual teacher. We provide evidence on the relationship between the bilingual preservice teachers’ identity formation and their participation in the Change Laboratory intervention. The analysis made salient the role of two new Change Laboratory mediating tools, the adapted disturbance diary and individually generated four-field models, for the bilingual preservice teachers’ collective transformation in bilingual teaching. It also crystallized the importance of deepening the bilingual preservice teachers’ analysis of multiple languages and pedagogy as understood in the new bilingual teaching model in the Change Laboratory intervention.

Exploring initial collaboration in an intervention: Creating a meeting place between educational research and educational practice

In the field of education, researchers have focused on the importance of achieving a common understanding of school development and change of practice in collaborations with practitioners. In an attempt to contribute to this research, a formative Change Laboratory intervention is suggested as an interface between the researcher’s world and the practitioner’s world to facilitate collaboration between the two. The case study, conducted in one mathematics class in a primary school with 27 students and two teachers, was informed by the following research question: How does initial collaboration between a researcher and practitioners create a meeting place, and what implications can be drawn from this? The teachers’ motive for joining the intervention was to expand their practice of using the digital game Minecraft. The collaboration lasted 1.5 years. The findings show that e-mail correspondence seems to play a crucial role in the continuation and expansion of dialogue towards achieving an object-oriented activity.

Preparing a change laboratory intervention: waste management in a University hospital

Abstract: Researchers, interventionists and managers are challenged to plan an intervention for the development of an activity. To this purpose, it is necessary to understand and negotiate the object of the intervention with the participants. This task can be facilitated through the elaboration of a research scheme used as a planning and learning tool among interventionists and participants. This article presented an outline of such scheme for future application of a Change Laboratory (CL). This lab is considered a method to provide the development of the solid waste management activity in a university hospital in Paraná State, Brazil. The study shows the aspects to be explored to plan a CL in order to develop a new concept of this activity. It is a draft for the planning of these methodology sessions. Its preparation makes use of preliminary ethnographic data collected during the beginning of the investigative procedure foreseen by CL, seeking the current conflict historical understanding.Keywords: Activity Theory. Change Laboratory. Waste Management. University Hospital. Preparando uma intervenção do Laboratório de Mudança: a gestão dos resíduos de um hospital universitário Resumo: Pesquisadores, intervencionistas e gestores são desafiados a planejar uma intervenção visando ao desenvolvimento de uma atividade. Para tanto, faz-se necessário entender e negociar o objeto da intervenção com os participantes. Tal tarefa pode ser facilitada por meio da elaboração de um esquema usado como instrumento de planejamento e aprendizagem entre intervencionista e participantes. Neste artigo apresentou-se um esboço deste esquema para a aplicação futura de um Laboratório de Mudança (LM). Este laboratório é considerado um método para propiciar o desenvolvimento da atividade de gestão de resíduos sólidos em um hospital universitário do Paraná. O estudo mostra os aspectos a serem explorados para planejar um LM visando desenvolver um novo conceito dessa atividade. Trata-se de um rascunho para o planejamento das sessões dessa metodologia. Sua elaboração faz uso de dados etnográficos preliminares coletados durante o início do processo investigativo previsto pelo LM, buscando a compreensão histórica da atual situação do conflito.Palavras-chave: Teoria da Atividade. Laboratório de Mudança. Gestão de Resíduos. Hospital Universitário.

Learn or earn? Making sense of language teaching and learning at a Mexican University through a Change Laboratory intervention

Abstract The Change Laboratory methodology has already established itself as an effective tool to conduct practice-based interventions inspired by cultural-historical activity theory principles, but there may still be a need to use it in a wider range of cultural contexts and disciplines. This study reports on the implementation of a Change Laboratory intervention in foreign language education at a University in Central Mexico. It shows the validity of the methodology, contradictions affecting the learning and teaching activity systems, and possible joint resolutions. The results indicate that further work is required locally to achieve greater levels of social and personalized learning, and to increase language learning awareness.

The dialectics of authoring expansive learning: tracing the long tail of a Change Laboratory

Purpose The paper aims to examine organizational authoring understood as a longitudinal, material and dialectical process of transformation efforts. The following questions are asked: To which extent can a Change Laboratory intervention help practitioners author their own learning? Are the authored outcomes of a Change Laboratory intervention futile if a workplace subsequently undergoes large-scale organizational transformations? Does the expansive learning authored in a Change Laboratory intervention survive large-scale organizational transformations, and if so, why does it survive and how? Design/methodology/approach The paper develops a conceptual argument based on cultural–historical activity theory. The conceptual argument is grounded in the examination of a case of eight years of change efforts in a university library, including a Change Laboratory (CL) intervention. Follow-up interview data are used to discuss and illuminate our argument in relation to the three research questions. Findings The idea of knotworking constructed in the CL process became a “germ cell” that generates novel solutions in the library activity. A large-scale transformation from the local organization model developed in the CL process to the organization model of the entire university library was not experienced as a loss. The dialectical tension between the local and global models became a source of movement driven by the emerging expansive object. Practitioners are modeling their own collective future competences, expanding them both in socio-spatial scope and interactive depth. Originality/value The article offers an expanded view of authorship, calling attention to material changes and practical change actions. The dialectical tensions identified serve as heuristic guidelines for future studies and interventions.

The paediatric change laboratory: optimising postgraduate learning in the outpatient clinic.

BackgroundThis study aimed to analyse and redesign the outpatient clinic in a paediatric department. The study was a joint collaboration with the doctors of the department (paediatric residents and specialists) using the Change Laboratory intervention method as a means to model and implement change in the outpatient clinic. This study was motivated by a perceived failure to integrate the activities of the outpatient clinic, patient care and training of residents. The ultimate goal of the intervention was to create improved care for patients through resident learning and development.MethodsWe combined the Change Laboratory intervention with an already established innovative process for residents, 3-h meetings. The Change Laboratory intervention method consists of a well-defined theory (Cultural-historical activity theory) and concrete actions where participants construct a new theoretical model of the activity, which in this case was paediatric doctors’ workplace learning modelled in order to improve medical social practice. The notion of expansive learning was used during the intervention in conjunction with thematic analysis of data in order to fuel the process of analysis and intervention.ResultsThe activity system of the outpatient clinic can meaningfully be analysed in terms of the objects of patient care and training residents. The Change Laboratory sessions resulted in a joint action plan for the outpatient clinic structured around three themes: (1) Before: Preparation, expectations, and introduction; (2) During: Structural context and resources; (3) After: Follow-up and feedback. The participants found the Change Laboratory method to be a successful way of sharing reflections on how to optimise the organisation of work and training with patient care in mind.ConclusionsThe Change Laboratory approach outlined in this study succeeded to change practices and to help medical doctors redesigning their work. Participating doctors must be motivated to uncover inherent contradictions in their medical activity systems of which care and learning are both part. Facilitators must be willing to spend time analysing both historical paediatric practice, current data on practice, and steer clear of organisational issues that might hamper a transformative learning environment. To ensure long-term success, economical and organisational resources, participant buy-in and department leadership support play a major role.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0563-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The emergence of learners’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory intervention

Changes and transformations in organisations are traditionally initiated by the management. This approach does not, however, encourage the agency of all the members in an organisation to engage in cooperative development of the activity. This paper presents an analysis of the development of participants’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory (CL) intervention. In a CL, the participants analyse conflicts and disturbances in their local activity and search for ways to transform current work practices. In the analysis, we identified six types of expressions of transformative agency which evolved over the course of the laboratory sessions and across the topical contents of those sessions. Furthermore, we examined to what extent the expressions of agency produced by the participants reflected individual and collective agency. Our key argument based on the research findings is that transformative agency goes beyond the individual and the situational here-and-now actions. It is produced and maintained in collective change efforts and evolves over time.

Expansive Learning in a Library: Actions, Cycles and Deviations from Instructional Intentions

The theory of expansive learning has been applied in a large number of studies on workplace learning and organizational change. However, detailed comprehensive analyses of entire developmental interventions based on the theory of expansive learning do not exist. Such a study is needed to examine the empirical usability and methodological rigor afforded by the theory of expansive learning. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of learning in a entire Change Laboratory intervention in which the workers of an academic library, together with their clients, redefined the services the library offers to research groups and the ways of organizing work in the library. We identified expansive learning and non-expansive actions in the transcripts of the intervention sessions. We examined cyclicity of expansive learning at three levels, namely the level of the entire Change Laboratory process, the level of each Change Laboratory session, and the level of cross-session object-bound cycles. Finally we analyzed deviations between the instructional intentions of the interventionists and the actually accomplished learning process. The analysis shows that in a real-life formative intervention expansive learning actions emerged in the midst of a fairly large number and diversity of non-expansive learning actions. Our analysis of cyclicity revealed an iterative loop within the overall cycle of the Change Laboratory. Our analysis of deviations from instructional intentions and plans demonstrates that expansive learning is indeed more than mere replication or imposition of the interventionists’ plans. The very process is punctuated by deviations which open up space for learner agency and creation of truly new solutions and concepts.