association of CHAT and an action research methodology. This combination diverges from the conventional interventionist methodologies associated with CHAT. As will be demonstrated later in this chapter, it also moves beyond the most common
contemporary use of CHAT in research - that is as an exploratory device or analysis tool. Instead, it consciously adopts a developmental motive in researching the use and potential of student feedback. In this section, the nature of this deviation from
conventional methodologies is outlined and a rationale for this decision is offered.
In its complexity and conceptual depth, there is little doubt that CHAT offers a unique conceptual framework for qualitative research. As Engeström (1993) explains, CHAT is unlike other qualitative epistemologies such as phenomenonology and
ethnomethodologies that tend to centre on dyadic interaction or discourse of itself. CHAT defies notions of ‘contexts (that) look like something that can be created at will by two or more persons in interaction, as if independently of the deep-seated material practices and socio-economic structures of the given culture’ (p. 66). However, CHAT is not a methodology of itself, nor does it naturally assert one, nor offer an obvious set
of research techniques, methodologies or procedures (Daniels, 2008; Engeström, 1993). Instead, it is primarily a ‘philosophical framework for studying different forms human praxis as developmental processes, both individual and social levels interlinked at the same time’ (Kuutti, cited in Jonassen, 2000). However, implicit in these theoretical principles is the reality that CHAT inherently inspires research methodologies that are more conceptual and open ended, rather than empirical and diagnostic in form.
Although it is reasonably straightforward to determine what methodologies do not meet the demands of the conceptual framework established by CHAT, it is less simple to identify what actually might. Indeed, CHAT remains somewhat methodologically underdeveloped and even ambiguous in form (Sawyer, cited in Daniels 2008). At a surface level, this is perhaps unsurprising given the relatively recent emergence of CHAT as a legitimate theoretical frame. It also has a relatively complex epistemological ontogeny in the materialist notions of human activity of Marx, Vygotsky, Leont’ev and, more recently, the work of European and American theorists (most notably Engeström, Wertsch and Cole). However, at a more fundamental level of research practice, the absence of clear and accessible methodological guidance is more conspicuous given the rapidly expanding use of CHAT to analyse an ever widening array of activity settings (Roth & Lee, 2007; Yamagata-Lynch, 2010).
A notable exception to this broader ambiguity is offered by the interventionist
organisational research of Engeström (1993, 1999b, 2000a & 2008). Engeström’s use of CHAT employs a methodology characterised as developmental work research. This methodology employs a broadly developmental ethnography to undertake highly contextual analysis of localised forms of collective activity. Engeström (2000b) challenges what he asserts is the conventional preoccupation of ethnography with largely passive techniques centred on observation, mediation and recording. His developmental work researchmodel asserts the essential hegemony of the researcher- designer-consultant role. This role centres on abstracted analysis of local activity and the design of modelled development within contested organisational terrains. Engeström describes this methodology as:
developmental transformations seen as attempts to reorganise, or re-mediate, the local activity system in order to resolve its pressing inner contradictions…the emergence,
aggravation and resolution of contradictions may be regarded as a development cycle in the life of the activity system (Engeström, 2000b, p. 152).
Using this research orientation, which he casts as being based on an ‘ethnography of trouble’, Engeström (2000b) sees the methodological challenge as making visible the contradictions in the activity system by creating disturbances. Such disturbances are designed to engage practitioners in analysis (and aggravation) of these inner
contradictions in activity. The objective of this method is to induce connections and realise their expansive (learning) potential for the object of the activity. Essential for Engeström is a methodological portrayal that is founded on a ‘bold experimental attitude’ and the triggering of ‘powerful and unpredictable cognitive, emotional and social dissonances’ (2000b, p. 159). Engeström’s developmental work researchmethod is strongly predicated on the logic of the analysis of the ‘local’: the concrete workplace context. Understanding comes in the disturbances experienced in daily work and demands for innovation. It is guided through a systematic process he describes as ‘expansive visibilization’ which is designed to harness the expansive potential of the activity system (Engeström, 2000a). Although Engeström characterises this approach as the ‘test bench’ of CHAT, it is explicitly predicated on a largely bounded and
immediate context: that is, that the:
fundamental societal relations and contradictions of the given socioeconomic formation - and thus the potential for qualitative change - are present in each and every local activity of that society. (Engeström, 1999a, p. 36)
More recently, Engeström (2008a) has advocated the further radicalising of this
methodological orientation toward what he characterises as formative interventions that accentuate the relationship between CHAT and designed practice. Drawing on the Vygotskian notion of double stimulation, Engeström advocates for stronger
interventionist methodology that epistemically aligns theory, methodology and research. He argues this would allow a greater focus on experimentation that is argumentative, provocative and actively guided toward largely defined interventionist solutions. Some similar methodological work has emerged in a range of other interventions studies using CHAT (for instance, Edwards, Daniels, Gallagher, Leadbetter, & Warmington, 2009; Noffke & Somekh, 2006; Sannino, Daniels, & Gutierrez, 2009). However, evidence of the long-term effectiveness of developmental work researchremains largely uncertain, not least of all as the work remains in its infancy. Yet there is little doubt that the
pioneering work of Engeström and colleagues in the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research, based on this interventionistdevelopmental work researchmethod, has proven highly influential in attempts to understand the application of activity theorising to the analysis of collective activity in bounded activity systems (Roth, 2004).