Cultural Historical Activity Theory Research Articles

The Rohingya Diaspora: A Narrative Inquiry into Identity

This study examined the key experiences and aspects of the life of Rohingya diaspora youth through exploratory Narrative Inquiry. Three semi-structured interviews were held with six participants from the Rohingya community in Malaysia. Responses were analyzed and categorized into three broad sections based on Cultural Historical Activity Theory: environmental impacts on lived experience, the diversity of sociocultural origin within the Rohingya community, and the impact of historical processes on cultural change. It was noted that the Rohingya culture is rich with diverse experiences and origins far beyond its current circumstances. Rohingya youth identify strongly with their experiences of life in Arakan and note that the younger generations missing this experience are less connected with their Rohingya identity. Beyond that, much of the threat to self-perception within the community came from external reductive narratives based only on their plight. In order to establish a constructive framework to support the Rohingya people, it is therefore critical to better understand them as a culture beyond their hardships.

How do Teachers use Inquiry and Advocacy as Curriculum? A Longitudinal Study

ABSTRACT Many initiatives aim to ensure students can access inquiry-based learning that positions them to address global problems such as climate change and economic inequality. However, in the U.S., curriculum that centers students’ positions as activists is rare, particularly in schools that serve marginalized students. In this study, inquiry and advocacy, two activist teaching frameworks, were employed in preservice elementary teacher education through the use of mentoring experiences. A longitudinal multiple case study, which relied on Cultural Historical Activity Theory, examined the appropriations of inquiry and advocacy made by teachers in their first two in-service years. Findings suggest that across activity settings, teachers adapted inquiry and advocacy by using key tools such as informational texts, by aligning their work with accepted initiatives and addressing state standards, and by cautiously choosing mentors. Findings suggests that researchers must increase their attention to preservice teacher typology and the different features of activity settings in studies evaluating the value of preservice learning. Implications for teacher education programs are discussed.

The Impact of Policy on Principals’ Leadership and Management Skills and Student Achievement in Rural Secondary Schools: A South African Case Study

Background: Globally, policy and leadership and management skills of principals that are congruent foster future-focused learning and guide teachers and students towards a passion for learning and for growing creatively and collaboratively. Methods: The qualitative research was undertaken and the Cultural-Historical Activity theory was used as a theoretical lens to determine the impact of policy on principals’ leadership and management skills and student achievement. Results: The results showed that policy and leadership and management skills enabled school principals to effectively implement, assess, monitor learning activities, enhanced student behaviour and provision of resources. Conclusion: Implications uncovered in this research include providing school principals with access to training courses to improve their understanding of the teaching and learning methodologies to enhance student achievement, particularly in science.

Research and education form competing activity systems in externally funded doctoral education

ABSTRACT Several authors have described how the formalization of recent decades has steered doctoral education towards structured curricula, more managerial control and new models for supervision. Largely absent from these accounts, however, is if and how doctoral education has been affected by the concurrent changes in research governance, in particular by the ‘projectification’ of research. For this study, we were interested in the convergence of educational formalization with research projectification around doctoral education in the context of highly competitive, externally funded research in medicine and health sciences in Sweden. Using Cultural-historical activity theory and constructing activity systems for education and research, respectively, we were able to identify several contradictions and tensions, both within and between systems, that were consequences of adaptations to the abovementioned formalization and research policy changes. The contradictions were manifested in the tying of doctoral students, and their education, to their supervisors’ research projects, grants and future prospects, and in students being deprived of opportunities for learning and developing independence. Supervisors were torn between supervision and project management while doctoral students had to balance being students and project members. Our analysis provides a system level explanation to previously reported pedagogical and ethical challenges in STEM doctoral education.

Discovering Teachers’ Personal Beliefs in Poland: Research Intervention Using Activity Theory

Teachers’ beliefs and personal theories have held a significant place in pedeutological discourse for a long time, and they are among the “pulsating” categories within the sphere of the so-called new professionalism. Insight into teachers’ beliefs and personal theories is not only an element of constructing teacher professionalism; these theories constitute resources which may open a new direction of developmental change in the school’s culture, or, by contrast, they may be a source of resistance, or limitation, and form barriers to development. In the education of teachers, we may observe disintegration of cognition, a dissonance between theoretical and practical knowledge. 
 The aim of the present paper is to show teachers’ personal theories and beliefs as important, yet frequently unused, resources in teacher education. 
 Methodology. The theoretical and methodological framework of the considerations in this article is formed by the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). The intervention-research methodology of Y. Engeström was used to analyze the processes of changing the teachers’ thinking which occurred during the sessions in the Laboratory of Educational Change.
 The results are as follows: Discovering the teachers’ convictions and the basis for the success of bottom-up changes in the school’s culture, leading to an improvement in the quality of education. As confirmation of this thesis, examples (case studies), the article provides examples of bottom-up changes in education, achieved with active participation of teachers and the activity of the Laboratory of Educational Change, where teachers experience potentially new ways of working and experiment with them. 
 Conclusions. In order for teachers to “re-think” the school anew, undertake the challenge of opening the school’s culture to a new quality, and engage in the process of change, it is necessary to prepare the “grounds” for them to work with their personal beliefs and theories. This article presents the experience gained from the cooperation of teachers, aimed at creating a critical space for dialogue on the issue of learning processes, in order to foster understanding of complex situations faced by teachers in their day-to-day reality. What proved essential was providing the teachers with conceptual tools enabling them to participate in dialogue contributing to their re-interpretation and modification of their own practice. 
 The examples of projects described here showed that teachers, by creating a community of learning individuals, and by analyzing and participating in similar practices, worked out habitual agreement, team-based styles of thinking and acting, and developed a sense of agency. These days, examination of one’s daily educational reality, joint involvement and construction of knowledge, and confrontation of one’s own methods of work with those of others constitute a teacher’s “professional necessity”, a key to improving the quality of the school’s work, “a professional’s way of being”, “a mind’s habit”.

Norms and collaboration in hybrid making-spaces

Productive collaborative learning and the utilization of educational robots as a tool for developing conceptual understanding and promoting student engagement and interest levels are considered crucial components of our teaching and learning environments. This is becoming more prevalent with the rise of making spaces where collaboration is a key principle and expectation for learning from one another. In this paper, we utilized Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to illustrate how norms and expectations around the educator’s role and student’s ways of acting and behaving in a hybrid making space disrupted the collaborative experience for a group of fifth-grade students engaged with an educational robotics task. In particular, the collaborative experience became fractured through three contradictions: through the introduction of time, an unclear relationship between students and teacher, and competition for a technological device or tool. Through the examples provided, we demonstrate ways that inattention to expectations and norms in making space design can create obstacles for teachers to foster collaboration and for students to leverage one another’s knowledge and skills. We conclude with implications for the design of a collaborative activity within a space that accounts for formal and informal norms and expectations, and recommendations for tools intended for use in a collaborative environment.

Культурно-историческая теория деятельности и ее современные смысл и значимость: Идеи, растущие в контексте и времени

<p>Alexey N. Leontiev’s legacy – as part of cultural-historical activity theory – is discussed as an open-ended, dynamic, and <em>continuously emerging</em> system of ideas. The meaning and import of these ideas are becoming transparent in the context of contemporary <em>conceptual revolution</em> in psychology. Various trends within this cutting-edge movement have converged on the notion of relationality – in opposition to traditional “substance” metaphysics that posits self-contained, independent entities as the exclusive analytical focus. CHAT is revealed to be a <em>pioneer </em>in this conceptual revolution, contributing conceptual advances such as on embodied, situated, distributed, and enacted cognition/mind and on a (non-dual) “natureculture.” In CHAT, human development is an open-ended, dynamic, non-linear, and ever-unfolding, that is, <em>emergent process</em> with no preprogrammed blueprints. This process is composed of embodied bi-directional interactivities of persons-acting-in-the-world, embedded in fluid contexts – soft assemblages contingent on situational demands and affordances. Moreover, CHAT foregrounds <em>collective dynamics </em>of meaningful shared activities extending through history as a unified onto-epistemology of human development and mind. In addition, CHAT also offers, in outlines, steps to move beyond the relational paradigm towards a transformative worldview premised on the notion of a simultaneous persons-and-the-world co-realizing.</p>

The Challenge of Improving Homework Processes and Benefits

This paper is in line with our prior works conducted mainly on parents and teachers’ points of view regarding homework. In Quebec, Canada, homework is perceived as a near-universal practice. However, school communities are strongly urged to engage in a collective reflection over homework at a local level in order to document the different avenues that could embrace the main stakeholders’ concerns. This paper investigates how teachers and parents can act as agents of change in such a process. The research-intervention was based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory using the Change Laboratory methodology. It draws upon the concept of expansive learning and suggests that participants agree with the nature of the problem and model together new solutions. The present study focuses on the transformative agentic actions that were put into place during two Change Laboratory sessions. This analysis deepens our understanding of teachers’ role and expectations towards parents as well as parents’ comprehension of the teachers’ role and of their own role in the context of their child’s homework. The authors conclude that there is a need to have teachers, parents and the school principal engage with one another to develop a common vision of the issues at stake.

Collaborative School-Family Relationships using the Expansive Learning Cycle to Enhance Parents Empowering in Helping their Child in the Context of a New Reading Method

The benefits of parental involvement in literacy have been well documented over the years. It has also been shown that when introducing new ways of doing things, parents often show resistance. It is with a view to improving school-family collaboration in the context of La Planète des Alphas, a new reading method, that we conducted a research-intervention. This paper aims to describe how teachers question their own practices and interact with parents to give help and to put forward new models of pedagogical actions. This research-intervention employed the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and the Change Laboratory methodology. We take a close look at the evolution of the discursive manifestations of transformative agency during the Change Laboratory sessions and the discussion topics they were related to. This approach deepens our understanding of the decision making process in the selection of new solutions and the notion of relational agency in fostering collaboration and communication throughout the expansive learning cycle. Five Change Laboratory sessions were coded and analyzed using MAXQDA 2018 software. We highlight the activity system boundary crossing that allowed teachers, parents and school principal to elaborate, implement and reflect upon new instrument- producing activities aiming at empowering parents in helping their child in schooling. Obviously, the relevance of this intervention and research process can be well extended to the overall field language construction and the overall literature on family-school relationships.

Understanding Pre-service EFL Teachers’ Beliefs and Practice in Reading Comprehension Instruction in China

Despite an increasing understanding of the importance of teacher beliefs and practices, which of pre-service EFL teachers in relation to reading comprehension instruction (RCI) still need to be investigated. Based on Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Activity System Analysis Methods, this study examines the cultural and historical foundation of Chinese EFL teachers' beliefs and practices on reading comprehension instruction. This study highlights the potential value of a comprehensive examination of other CHAT constructs, including the subject(s), tools, rules, community, and division of labor, for a context analysis for successful reform. To better prepare student teachers for adapting to their teaching contexts, it is advised that EFL training programs should provide them the chance to explore their own beliefs.

Theorizing seafarers’ participation and learning in an evolving maritime workplace: an activity theory perspective

This paper presents the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) or simply activity theory (AT) as a suitable framework to theorize seafarers’ learning in a technologically evolving shipboard environment. The recent increase in the digitalization and automation onboard ships is introduced with the aim of enhancing maritime safety and efficiency. However, maritime incidents and accidents continue to occur when seafarers overwhelmed by the complexity of novel technologies and automated tools, often fail to recognize and timely respond to developing hazards. The fundamental changes in the shipboard workplaces and the seafarers’ need for interaction with smart tools calls for a fresh look at cognitive and learning processes and situated action onboard ships. The activity theory provides a theoretical lens that affords a holistic, socio-technical perspective on the inter-dependent elements of a collective shipboard learning activity system. Any misalignment among the elements of this activity system or between itself and other relevant activity systems may result in contradictions. Resolving such contradictions becomes essential for achieving the desired outcome, i.e., competent seafarers who can safely operate highly digitalized future ships.

How do beginning preservice kindergarten teachers’ evaluations of mathematical apps provide insights into their understandings about bildung (danning) for young children?

In this article, evaluations of apps from kindergarten preservice teachers were analysed in relationship to their understandings about children’s cultural formation. The Artifact-Centric Activity theory, a theoretical model based on Cultural-Historical Activity theory, was used in this study to identify how kindergarten preservice teachers considered that the digital games could engage children in mathematics. This analysis gave insights into what the kindergarten preservice teachers considered to be appropriate mathematics for young children and how they should learn it, which can be contributors to children’s cultural formation. The results of this study give insights into how teacher education could be changed so that kindergarten preservice teachers could include other aspects in evaluating apps, such as connections to play and creativity, in alignment with the requirements of the Framework Plan. Making the kindergarten preservice teachers aware of the need for the inclusion of such foci is likely to affect kindergarten children’s potential cultural formation.

대학 온라인 수업에서 교수자의 갈등 경험에 관한 질적 사례연구

Objectives This study aimed to identify the limitations of the current online classes by paying attention to instructors' experience of difficulties in the online realm, where role changes have occurred as courses were taught online. Methods This study used the cultural-historical activity theory as the analytical framework. Through a literature review of the cultural-historical activity theory, the framework of the online class activity system was established, and in-depth interviews were conducted for instructors who taught online classes at universities. Results This study was able to derive an online teaching activity system of university instructors with an emphasis on the instructors as subjects of the activity system and the problems they faced in online classes. Some inherent contradictions were derived from the study. These included “teaching experience,” “structural limitations of online teaching,” “lack of online teaching experience,” and “lack of support from the school.” Unlike fundamental contradictions such as ‘teaching experience’, ‘structural limitations of online teaching’, and ‘lack of online teaching experience’, which can be resolved by the instructors through various strategies, the contradiction of ‘lack of support from the school’ had characteristics that were difficult for instructors to solve personally. Therefore, schools and instructors need to expand discussions on class support for the qualitative growth of online courses. Conclusions Studies have shown that the teaching activities of university instructors in online classes were tool-mediated and retained a structure of social and collective activity. In addition, in resolving conflicts arising from the online classes, they have expanded from being a means of content delivery to an actual learning community. These qualitative changes in online classes have resulted in an opportunity to rediscover new roles and capabilities in university education.

표집 시뮬레이션을 활용한 비형식적 통계적 추리의 교수학습

This study examines the activity system of teaching and learning about informal statistical inference using sampling simulation, based on cultural-historical activity theory. The research explores what contradictions arise in the activity system and how the system changes as a result of these contradictions. The participants were 20 elementary school students in the 5th to 6th grades who received classes on informal statistical inference using sampling simulations. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings show that a contradiction emerged between the rule and the object, as well as between the mediating artifact and the object. It was confirmed that visualization of empirical sampling distribution was introduced as a new artifact while resolving these contradictions. In addition, contradictions arose between the subject and the rule and between the rule and the mediating artifact. It was confirmed that an algorithm to calculate the mean of the sample means was introduced as a new rule while resolving these contradictions.

Integration of computational thinking activities in Grade 10 mathematics learning

This study explored integrating computational thinking (CT) activities in mathematics learning in Grade 10 classrooms in South African township, suburban and independent schools. The inquiry adopted a mixed method approach as part of an exploratory, descriptive survey design and involved purposively selected Grade 10 learners as participants. Quantitative data were collected through the administration of questionnaires among the participants. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews and activities involving integrating computational thinking activities in mathematics learning. The empirical investigation underpins the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as the theoretical framework. Key findings from the study revealed that the integration of computational thinking activities in mathematics learning promises to be an effective means to enhance learners’ understanding of mathematics content. In addition, the participants demonstrated a positive disposition towards computational thinking. The participants perceived computational thinking as a vital tool that can be harnessed to develop problem-solving skills in mathematics classrooms. The study findings provide critical theoretical implications for pedagogic innovation.

Contradictions and Changes in the Teacher Learning Community for Elementary Science Education : Based on CHAT

교사연구공동체가 갖는 교육적 실천성과 의미는 과거부터 중요시 되어 왔으나 COVID-19를 계기로 교육방식의 변화와 교사 전문성이 강조되어 교사연구공동체가 더욱 주목받고 있다. 최근에는 전국 단위의 학교 밖 교사연구공동체의 설립과 운영이 이루어지고 있으나, 해당 공동체가 어떠한 모순과 갈등을 바탕으로 변화하는지에 대한 연구는 미진하다. 이에 따라, 본 연구는 Engeström의 제3세대 문화역사적 활동이론(CHAT)을 바탕으로 전국단위 학교 밖 교사연구공동체의 활동체제에 나타나는 모순과 변화를 관찰하여 교사연구공동체의 확장학습과정을 분석하고자 하였다. 연구 대상으로는 2016년부터 현재까지 운영되고 있는 교사연구공동체 ‘나누리(가칭)’를 선정하였으며, 연구 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 일반적으로 교사공동체에서 갈등과 모순은 부정적이거나 소거의 대상으로 여겨지나, 이는 활동과 변화의 동력으로 작용한다는 점에서 중요성을 지닌다. 둘째, 교사연구공동체의 구성원들이 주변적 참여 행태에서 중심적 역할로 발전하기 위해서는 활동 매개(도구, 공동체, 분업 등)의 적극적 활용이 요청된다. 셋째, 교사연구공동체의 성장은 일부 임원의 리더십에만 의존할 수 없고, 구성원들과의 동료성과 민주성의 발전과 비례한다. 이를 통해 보람, 정체성, 전문성이 동시에 신장할 때 공동체가 성장할 수 있다. 본 연구를 통해 교사연구공동체의 확장학습 과정은 물론, 교사연구공동체가 갖는 교육적 의의와 사회적 기여에 대해 확인할 수 있었다. 이후 다양한 교사연구공동체에 대한 후속연구를 통해 공동체 자체의 성장은 물론 활동이론의 발전이 기대된다.The teachers’ professional community has been regarded as playing a crucial role in terms of educational practice and meaningfulness. In a emerging environment under the COVID-19 outbreak, teachers’ professional community is drawing more attention for the growth of teacher expertise in pedagogical methods. Recently, nationwide teacher learning community are often being established, but research that focuses on contradictions and development in the community has been overlooked. This study attempted to analyze the process of the expansive learning in an elementary teachers’ learning community by looking at the contradictions and changes in the activity system of it based on Engeström’s third generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory(CHAT). For this, the authors selected a teacher learning community for elementary science teaching, called Nanuri, that has been in active since 2016. It was found that, first, contradictions and conflicts played a crucial role as a driving force for changes in activity structure as opposed to the ordinary perception that contradiction is harmful. Second, active use of mediation (tools, rules, division of labor, etc.) is required for the teacher learning community to bring members from peripheral participation to playing a central role. Third, the growth of teachers’ community is related to advancement of collegiality and democratic ethos among members rather than depending on the leadership of a few leading group. The development of teachers’ communities goes together with that of professionalism, and meanings of works and identity. This study attempted to show the educational significance and social contribution of teachers’ activity as well as how the expansive learning has evolved. It is expected that the follow-up research on various teachers’ professional communities would advance the teachers’ professionalism as well as theoretical development of CHAT.

An expansive learning approach to transforming traditional fitness testing in health and physical education: student voice, feelings and hopes

ABSTRACT Whilst the fitness testing debate has become more nuanced over time, the voice that is often absent from discussions is that of students. Located within the ‘big tent’ of critical pedagogy, and using an expansive learning approach that is grounded in cultural historical activity theory, this paper responds to the following research questions: (i) what are Australian Secondary students’ feelings and thoughts toward current fitness testing practices? and (ii) how would they change those fitness testing practices, and why? Data were collected via focus group interviews (n = 48) that utilised participatory arts-based methods. Students from one Secondary College were invited to consider the purpose, outcomes of, and alternatives for fitness testing within HPE. The findings suggest that fitness testing can be a source of anxiety, fear and overwhelm for some students. Findings also suggest that students have the capacity to discover new approaches to fitness testing that are responsive to the students and teachers in their school.

The impact of digital documentation platforms on early childhood educators’ work in Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACT Thousands of early childhood education centres around the world use digital documentation platforms to report children’s learning. Yet there is little research into how these platforms are changing work practices in early childhood education. This pilot study tested the usefulness of cultural-historical activity theory to analyse work shadowing observations and follow-up interviews with seven teachers across four centres in Australia and New Zealand. The use of Leontiev’s ‘hierarchy of activity’ of operations, actions and motive objects was found to foreground two actions – tagging and monitoring – that connected basic technical operations with motives for the use of digital documentation platforms. The article reflects on the potential of this theory for future research in digital documentation in early childhood education, and suggests areas for further research, including the emergence of datafication in early childhood education as a new mode of governance of educators’ work.

Explaining the principles of Cultural Historical Activity Theory and the Change Laboratory to participants in a research intervention

Explaining the principles of Cultural Historical Activity Theory and the Change Laboratory to participants in a research intervention

Application of CHAT Analysis to a Community-Based Action Team

This study applies cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to a community-based racial equity and social justice action group in the American South. The community action group is referred to as a “team” by participants and by its host community. The CHAT framework applied incorporates Vygotsky’s mediated action triangle and holds that learning can occur within any activity system. Using CHAT, it is possible to clarify points of tension that occurred within the action team during the community-based team’s first year of development. Reflecting on points of tension within the CHAT framework supported appropriate modifications to the team’s development. This application of the CHAT framework demonstrates ways CHAT could be applied to support leadership assessment and constructive follow-up on areas of tension in a community group, thereby contributing to group maintenance and ongoing well-being.
 Keywords: community action group, racial equity, social justice, CHAT