Associate lecturers within an activity system

Engestrom (2000) explains activity theory by using the metaphor of a Finnish baseball game. The game of baseball is the activity system, which consists of a community of players, coaches, umpire and audience, rules (in this case the rules of baseball), a division of labour, pitcher, hitter, fielders and umpire and certain instruments such as the bat and ball.

The metaphor is a useful one for this study as it is possible to replace the baseball game and its components, with associate lecturer practice. There is a community – associate lecturers, students, staff tutors, regional and central university staff; there are rules, such as assignment submission dates and examination rules, academic norms and conventions. There is

furthermore a division of labour between the associate lecturer, student, staff tutor and other university staff, and there are instruments of practice, such as a generic marking guide, PT3 assignment-marking feedback sheet etc.

The metaphor is also a useful one as it allows for the subject, object and outcome of the activity to change. So, for example, the subject is the pitcher, the object is the pitching plate, the hitter and the state of the field, and the outcome is the ball being pitched. Then, for a moment, the subject becomes the umpire who may call the pitch foul, the object becomes the flight of the ball and the outcome will be a foul or good ball, then the subject becomes the hitter with the object being the pitched ball and the outcome a hit, and so on.

Such a metaphor is useful for this study as it allows the student body into the activity system and allows the centre of the activity to change. For example, the student can be seen taking the position as subject, the object being the submission of an assignment; this is done within certain rules of submission dates and the need for it to be one’s own work. The outcome is

hopefully a ‘good’ assignment, then the associate lecturer becomes the subject, with the object being to mark and give feedback on the assignment; and the outcome is a marked assignment using instruments such as a generic marking guide and not using a red pen. The staff tutor may then become the subject if plagiarism is suspected and the outcome might become an assignment that is marked zero.

The activity system allows for individual agency, with instruments and rules being negotiated at an individual level without the mutual negotiated meaning between

practitioners observed in the Wenger research, as well as for collective rules and instruments such as the use of PT3 assignment-feedback forms and assignment-monitoring systems. Thus, the individual agency is seen as being practised within a socially constructed activity system.

Engestrom asks whether this makes individuals prisoners of the configuration of the activity system: individuals’ possibilities of constructing their own knowledge are reduced to ahistorical situations where, for a passing moment, they are centre stage as the subject of the activity system, ‘societally impotent thrill seekers’ (Engestrom 2000 p. 304).

Engestrom answers this question by pointing to the internal and external contradictions and disturbances of the activity system. In Engestrom’s example of the baseball game, the umpire notices disquiet in the crowd at the ease with which foul balls are being dispatched at critical moments in the game. On investigation, the umpire finds the matches have been fixed for betting purposes. Engestrom sees the umpire crossing the boundaries of the usual role, and beginning to get involved in the historical reorganisation of the entire game of baseball in Finland. Engestrom sees the umpire getting involved in contradictions in the object and rules of the system, i.e. the system being based on competitive sport or as

business. Engestrom termed this as the umpires revising their zone of proximal development, constructing new kinds of knowledge, a new instrumentality, a new developmental

It would be possible to postulate such a process happening in the example of associate lecturers. Students, having experienced a didactic and directive approach to tutorials, pass their examinations; they then become frustrated at experiencing other tutorial teaching in the following years, and express dissatisfaction, worried they might not be so successful in their exams with more-interactive approaches. One can envisage an associate lecturer

investigating this, finding a large number of associate lecturers taking a more-directive approach and trying to come to terms with this by advocating changes to the rules of the activity system in order to make directive approaches less favoured, and to support their more ‘student-centred’ approaches. This would involve associate lecturers possibly revising their own zones of proximal development and making historical changes to the activity system.

Applying activity system theory to this study would explain the three major trends identified in Chapter 1, namely initiatives in work-based learning, professional development and accreditation, and the growth in part-time portfolio working in terms of contradictions internally or externally to the associate lecturer activity system.