In my last post Hedgehogs, Foxes and the Internet Filter Debate, I mentioned a paper by Rasmussen and Ludvigsen which discussed analysing ICT reforms in education through the lens of Activity Systems. This lead me to go back to my PhD and revisit why I did not use Activity Theory as the basis for the analysis of online learning environments. The following is a slightly modified version of that treatment.
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These frameworks [activity systems and legitimate peripheral participation] both provide insights into learning from beyond the classroom environment. The frameworks required for understanding an online learning environment require attention to both the individual level and the social level of human interaction outside a geographically constrained environment such as the classroom.
The theory of activity systems is a philosophical framework for illuminating how both individual and social levels of human practice are simultaneously interlinked (Kuutti, 1996, Lewis, 1997). This linkage allows for the bridging of the dichotomy between the individual and the social, which stands to exclude either human agency in the social or contextuality in the individual (Lewis, 1997, Hung and Wong, 2000). Activity theory challenges the Cartesian Mind/Body dualism by emphasising dualities in relations between the mind and body (Scribner 1997) and is located within constructivist notions of epistemology (Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy, 1999) and in the work of Vygotsky (1978). The key premise of activity theory is that there exists a “fundamental type of context, called an activity” (Kuutti, 1991, p531). An activity is where an individual’s actions are mediated by tools to achieve an objective (Lewis, 1997). This is elaborated in the following narrative form:
“an individual (subject) is helped by tools to achieve an objective (object) and may accept rules to work in a community which contributes to the objective through a division of labour. From such an activity there is an outcome.” Lewis (1997, p213 italics in original.)
So for instance, in the learning environments, activity theory views an individual’s actions to achieve an objective through the mediation of the action by artefacts and then extends that to a community context. Knowledge ‘owned’ by one individual may overlap with another individual’s zone of proximal development (Lewis, 1997). So each individual may be able to assist others in their learning within a social group. While similar to Burkean Theory (1969) in many respects in that it includes a subject (agent), an object (act) and tools (part of the scene), it tends to focus on the process arising from activity rather than the motives leading to activity, including individual agency. While this focus assists understanding how the situation will contribute to learning, it may be less helpful in understanding how individuals elect to engage with what constitutes the setting. There were different levels and kinds of participation in the activities provided through the four courses of this study, which reinforce the significance of human agency in the constructive act of engagement and learning, and the inevitable personal-dependent dimension of learning environments.
In many ways, activity theory is premised on the idea that all learning is contextualised within a particular kind of setting or community (Lewis, 1997). One of the problematics of activity theory is that it posits that performance outside of the setting is not conducive to learning (Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy, 1999). This means, all activity must be viewed through a contextualising lens of a community. However, distance learning is inherently outside the physical educational institutional setting in that it is generally undertaken by an individual isolated from both the university and any community of practice. The learner is removed from peers and teachers and often from many of the contextualising features of the environment. The nature of an online environment is to re-establish some of the contexts through which peers and teachers can interact, albeit in a somewhat decontextualised setting of the online learning environment. So while activity theory focuses on the processes within an activity, the Burkean Pentad, on the other hand, accommodates and privileges intentionalities and motives leading to individual activity. The Pentad elaborates to what degree an activity is contextualised and whether there exists a community of individuals operating within a specific environment. Differences were evident in one course with respect to the emergence of a community of learners due to this course list’s emphasis as a ‘self-help’ group rather than one which provides a ‘forum’ for discussion.. Through interactions a more contextualised and embodied outcome is possible via electronic communication.
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The study I was undertaking, specifically an online environment consisting of a web site and email discussion lists was a decade ago, and it would be interesting to reapply these concepts to more mature forms of online interactions. What are the motivations to engage with social media? Can social media be viewed as an activity system and if so, how does the system play out? What is the activity system embodied in our current approach to using the Internet, social media and the web? That, I think, is the subject of another post.
References
Burke, K. (1969) A grammar of motives, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Hung, D. W. L. and Wong, A. F. L. (2000) Activity Theory as a Framework for Project Work in Learning Environments, Educational Technology, 40:2, pp 33-37.
Jonassen, D. H. and Rohrer-Murphy, L. (1999) Activity Theory as a Framework for Designing Constructivist Learning Environments, Educational Training Research and Development, 47: 1, 61-79.
Kuutti, K. (1991) Activity Theory and its application to information systems research and development, in Information Systems Research: Contemporary Approaches and Emergent Traditions, Nissen, H., Klein, H. K. and Hirschheim, R. (Eds) Elsevier Science Publishers, North Holland, pp 529-549.
Kuutti, K. (1996) Activity theory as a potential framework for human-computer interaction research, in Context and Consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction, Nardi, B. A. (Ed) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lewis, R. (1997) An Activity Theory framework to explore distributed communities, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 13, pp 210-218.
Scribner, S. (1985) Vygotsky’s use of history, In Culture, Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian perspectives, Wertsch, J. V. (Ed) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 119-145.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society – the development of higher psychological processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
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