The origins of many of Activity Theory’s concepts originated in Russia in the 1920s, receiving attention from western scholars during the post-cold war ‘social awakening’ (Daniels, Cole & Wertsch, 2007: 13). Successive adaptations of Activity Theory have been proposed, often discontinuously and antagonistically (Lompscher, 2006: 35; Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2009: 173). CHAT originates in the works of Russian psychologists including Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev who challenged dominant theories of behaviourism, intending to develop a non-deterministic theory of consciousness to improve the human condition. Their original insight was in emphasising the mediation of social activity, through sharing internal and external artefacts including: material tools and instruments; signs, speech and
illustrations; and cognitive concepts and problem-solving devices. These artefacts, and their influence on the world and mind, led to CHAT’s theorisation of human-world interaction (Cole & Gajdamaschko, 2007: 193) which can be represented as a triangular activity system attributed to Engeström (1987: 94) as shown at Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1. Engeström's (1987: 78) triangular activity system describing the structure of human activity Outcome Instrument Object Consumption Distribution Production Subject Exchange Division of labour Community Rules
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The starting point of activity in CHAT is production, shown as the top triangle in Figure 2.1: the subject (person or people) interacts with the object (the purpose of the activity) and is mediated by artefacts (tools and signs) to reach the outcome (the activity’s intended and unintended consequences). The outcome is the interactional, societally meaningful and relatively lasting abstraction of the completed object (Engeström, 1999a: 31) also described as the “exhibition of value in a way not previously evident” (Taylor, 2009: 231). This project uses the collective term ‘nodes’ to describe all of these outer connections from this point forward. The nodes at the base of the activity system represent activity’s less visible social mediators (Engeström, 2008: 27). They are:
• Rules, which are the implicit and explicit regulators of social activity.
• Community, representing the social formation with interest in the object whose membership is outside the subject.
• Division of labour, describing the horizontal and vertical allocation of roles and responsibilities.
The four assembled sub-triangles comprise CHAT’s representation of meaningful human activity (Sannino, 2011: 577; and c.f. Blunden, 2010d: 229 for a critique of representational simplicity). These sub-triangles are referred to as ‘functions’ from this point in the thesis, and they can be analysed either as mediated by, or mediating, their enveloping activity (ibid.). Their triangular representations of mediation challenge duality and directness (Sannino et al., 2009: 13). The representation of collaborative, durable and culturally- mediated activity, defined by the object, is termed “object-oriented activity” (Karakus, 2014: 13) and activity systems can be used as theoretical bases for interventions with CHAT as explained in subsequent chapters for the RSME’s boundary-crossing TEL in HE (see also Ellis, 2008: 56; Sannino, 2010: 843; Laferrire, Hamel, & Searson, 2013: 463). The functions are (see also Engeström, 1987: 95; Bligh & Flood, 2015: 147):
• Production, where the collaborative subject re-creates an object to satisfy social need.
• Distribution, which is allocating and reallocating through social demand.
• Exchange, which is allocating and reallocating based on individuals’ demands.
• Consumption, which is finally satisfying social need.
CHAT’s activity system foregrounds mediation and activity’s evolving, dialectical and dynamic nature (Engeström, 1987: 77). This is illustrated by the three nodes in any function’s triadic
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relationship. The origins of contradictions and dialectics can be traced through these nodes and functions, with mediational relationships aggravated for development, rather than represented as closed (Langemeyer & Roth, 2006: 20). Contradictions are mutually defining and interdependent tensions; they are examined in some detail below in Sub-section 2.2.4. CHAT’s activity system can represent how activity iteratively and continuously changes, and is changed by, its own elements through time and social circumstances. This makes it useful for studies of education and development in their social and historical contexts (Roth, 2004: 5), rather than the subject-object duality of behaviourism (shown in Figure 2.1 as a direct line between subject and object). The representation of mediated social activity indicates
CHAT’s theoretical power for this formative intervention in boundary-crossing TEL, which examines the political reality of social activity in which contradictions had been insufficiently aggravated. In turn these limitations have led to social conditions which have hampered the development of activity.
CHAT can also highlight intertwined and complex relationships of context and culture (Cole, 1996c: 137). Context denotes how participants determine the significance of their thoughts and actions (discussed for TEL by Nardi, 1996: 69; Luckin, 2010a: 9); whilst culture is
conceived as the accumulated artefacts of a group, representing “history in the present” (Cole, 1996b: 110). The metaphorical ‘weaving together’ of context, culture and TEL activity is a developmental process, rather than considering culture as a ‘container’ with TEL as an outcome (examined in Cole, 1996c: 135 and Luckin, 2010b: 164). Culture is instead
communicated in multiple directions, with artefacts carrying markers of cultural knowledge and social experiences which shaped them (Kaptelinin, 1996: 109). These may be
interpreted materially through social history, or more ideally through their direct meaning to individuals. These notions will prove important in my chapters describing the project’s empirical stages.
Reasons for using, choosing and valuing Activity Theory in empirical HE research are in Bligh and Flood's (2017) examination of 59 empirical papers, framed by their “wish to understand what difference using Activity Theory makes in published research” (p. 128). Referring to Bligh and Flood’s categorisations for choosing Activity Theory (p. 137), and applying them to this project:
• In Section 1.4, I set out my intentions for the project as a whole. The intent to empower participants to change the social conditions of their own learning, which
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provided my impetus for the intervention, illustrates my own epistemological agreement with Activity Theory.
• In Section 1.6, I explained the relationships between expansive learning and the participants’ uncertain requirements for work and learning. The identification and aggravation of contradictions for developing social activity, as discrete from the pursuit of consensus and completion, highlights Activity Theory’s comparative advantages for the intervention.
• In Section 2.2 of this chapter below, I will describe how the theoretical framework of Activity Theory informs the intervention’s developmental focus, highlighting potential changes to local practice in boundary-crossing TEL.
• In Section 4.3 of Chapter 4 I describe the methodological considerations and the intervention’s design, indicating Activity Theory’s methodologically appropriate match with a Change Laboratory intervention.
• In Section 7.5 of Chapter 7 and Section 8.3 of Chapter 8, I discuss and conclude the intervention with a review of the techniques to collect, present and analyse data. These illustrate how the intervention aspired to investigate the theory; reflecting on the data and results to examine how useful Activity Theory was.
Cognate examples of CHAT in educational research, which inform this project, include Algers, Lindström and Svensson (2016) and Waitoller and Kozleski (2013) who study learning’s potential at boundaries. Like these authors I have used CHAT to theorise how meaning and sense-making can be revealed in the mediation of collaborative endeavours (Cole, 1996c: 140). Unlike other authors, I have aspired to establish how transformative agency relates to activity’s organisation and its changing object (Davydov, 1999: 50). CHAT’s theoretical framework has assisted my project in defining: the current and proposed object of activity; what people are doing; why they are doing it; and to some extent why they are doing it that way (see also Kaptelinin, 2005: 5). CHAT has then allowed participants to make future- oriented collaborative changes to their object-oriented activity. This requires some further explanation of CHAT’s underpinning principles, as detailed below.