The Change Laboratory methodology is specifically for formative interventions, and can be described as an activity itself “whose object is to create other activities” (Bligh & Flood, 2015: 141). It is commensurate with collaborative endeavour (Peim, 2009: 167) and agentic development of activity in conflictual social circumstances (Cole & Engeström, 2007: 502). Importantly for my intervention’s design, it was anticipated that participants’ transformative agency could be engendered through the methodology’s collaborative exposure and
aggravation of contradictions (Engeström & Sannino, 2011b: 368). Despite these strengths it has residual limitations, which close the chapter. The following sub-paragraphs summarise methodological risks and their management: those identified as low-risk and therefore tolerated; those identified as avoidable risks which were methodologically mitigated; and unavoidable risks which were monitored to constrain my conclusions.
4.6.1 Toleration of low risks
During the design it was challenging to bound an activity system which was complex enough to have meaningful impact and provoke transformative agency, yet simple enough for that meaningful impact to be achievable and sustainable. This is similarly recognised by many authors of the wider corpus of literature including Ellis (2011: 192) who expresses it as an “… urgent need to understand the relationship between conceptual growth of activity systems
98
in the mediating social space of Change Laboratory-type situations and conceptual growth in the activity settings over time.” On a related note, there are concerns that the alignment of double stimulation and conflicting motives may be presented as fragmented in seminal literature (Sannino, 2015a: 12). These fragmentations raise some doubts of the validity of analysing transformative agency as a collaborative quality, by analysing double stimulation tasks which have traditionally been theorised as individual (ibid.).
These concerns were tolerated at the design stage, in an attempt to better understand how such disjoints between individual actions and social activity may relate to transformative agency; disjoints between actions and activity were actually designed to be aggravated by double stimulation tasks, to capture valuable data on how future-oriented and collaborative agency related to identifying and overcoming double binds. In this way the oscillating moments to negotiate both locally meaningful activity, and its broader sustenance through time and new social structures, were deemed to be a lucrative source of trouble and
innovation. The importance of this dialectical rather than dualistic conception is also implied by Engeström (2011: 609) who states that “qualitative transformations [are] driven by an expansive reconceptualisation of the object and motive of the entire activity. But such transformations are both initiated and implemented in daily work actions … The crucial issue is movement between these two levels …” (italics in original).
4.6.2 Mitigation of avoidable risks
Other risks for my instantiation were managed by deliberation and mitigation at the design stage. An early risk to mitigate was that of assuming that participants would positively engage in exposing and aggravating contradictions (Avis, 2007: 153). Without mitigation, this could have been exacerbated by my own partiality to CHAT and the Change Laboratory methodology, particularly with its Marxist and Vygotskian notions of social and subjective change. The naïve assumptions that participants would share my value judgements also relate to a concern from Sannino (2011: 594), “The strong focus on activity in the case of the Change Laboratory is, however, not only a strength. This can also represent a significant limitation if the study of activity is not systematically intertwined with a study of the transformative actions that generate new forms of activities”. Promoting transformative agency thus implies my duty to prevent imposing my own well-meant, yet also potentially hegemonic, intent for change. This was mitigated through designing double stimulation tasks to explore contradictions whilst empowering resistance towards myself and the intervention.
99
The design began with the normalisation and legitimisation of subjectivity, critique and resistance, extended to both problematic TEL activity and the intervention itself; these were qualities which, during the daily reality of the RSME, would never normally be exhibited by these sub-groups in the presence of each other. Legitimisation further informed the design of double stimulation tasks, to counter the tendency for Change Laboratory interventions to over-socialise individuals (Langemeyer, 2012: 807). Examples include coupling tasks on individual workbook reflection with the tasks on collaborative surface-based concretisation. Task design intentionally sought an “agentive layer of causality” for change in troublesome collective learning (Daniels, Cole, & Wertsch, 2007: 17; Blackler, 2009: 33), amplifying marginalised voices and balancing power relationships whilst avoiding accusations between participants of irrationality. In mitigating these challenges my designed double stimulation tasks specifically set out to encourage equitable and multi-voiced participation, including through the fair allocation of time and fair access to shared artefacts such as surfaces.
4.6.3 Acknowledgement of unavoidable risks
A number of risks remained prevalent and unavoidable for design. The most significant for my instantiation were associated with the implied homogeneity of the collective subject, likely to result in difficulties for collecting and analysing individuals’ subjective data. This presented empirical and theoretical dilemmas, some of which are described by Virkkunen (2006: 47) such as methodological difficulties during movement between scientific concepts “from above” and everyday concepts “from below”. For my collective subject of three sub- groups, this was likely to result in highly varied forms of elaborating troublesome
circumstances, due to varied experiences of activity and political disparity. Important differences would likely prove too complex to capture and analyse, driven by the very diversity which was necessary for dialectical movement. Unavoidable risks thus included: learners and lecturers with less opportunity than managers to elaborate on “systemic relationships” (Langemeyer & Roth, 2006: 36); managers with less understanding than learners and lecturers of activity’s potential to be “modified on the basis of local knowledge” (Virkkunen, 2006: 48); and all participants with restricted aspects of agency, limiting my ability to generalise (Peim, 2009: 168).
To compound these risks, the agency of individuals would likely develop in varied ways, some of which could not be captured (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010: 77). This resulted in my need to declare caveats, most importantly that subsequent claims to have answered research questions would be at some collective level (Kontinen, 2013: 113). This intensified the
100
potential for other risks to be realised, such as the activity concurrently evolving during its examination. Changing rules and the promotion of participants in rank were among changes to be faced during the intervention. These could de-value findings beyond the short term and immediate context (Sannino, Engeström, & Lahikainen, 2016: 248) paradoxically driven by my intentions to imbue transformative agency. Importantly, the successful outcomes of that transformative agency would include the empowerment of participants to redesign their activity, and to drive such evolutions themselves. Yet, also importantly, the
composition of the activity system would be unstable which could further curb applicability elsewhere. In summary, and to close this chapter, my time-bound and parsimonious setting was likely to result in a positive local impact but would also restrain the generalisability of my findings. These risks will be foregrounded when presenting and analysing data, which begins in the next chapter.
101
CHAPTER FIVE – DATA PRESENTATION