The 4th Congress of the International Society

for Cultural and Activity Research

29 September 3 October 2014 | Sydney Australia

Inventing the Future

Abstracts
Oral Presentations
www.iscar2014.com

Understanding Brunei Darussalam young people's relation to

academic study
Abdullah Teo, Naasirah
1

Ministry Of Education

Whilst there are numerous studies on young people's motivation towards academic
study in their late adolescence stage, the internal relationship between young people
and academic study is still unclear. This presentation shares the descriptions of
young people to academic study through a model developed based on the Theory of
Activity. The research is based on the understanding that young people are faced
with multiple contradicting demands from the society, which evolve with their
developmental ages. The contradicting demands generate conflicts for young
people as they participate across the different institutional practices in their everyday
lives. The research entailed a semi-participatory research approach, which
emphasised young people's lived experiences, from a first-person perspective. Data
were collected from focus group discussions, annotated photo albums and a
participant self-generated' questionnaire. The focus of the data collection was on
the young people experiences of conflicts with respect to their academic study and
the different agenda in their everyday lives. The data were analysed for
contradictions within the motive hierarchy and with the institutional demands on
young people. This research discovers that young people's relation to academic
study can be explained according to the status of the academic study in their motive
hierarchy, which is in dialectic relation with the societal demands. Fundamentally,
young people are oriented to the objective-motive of the institutional practice(s). The
young people also show inclination to orientation towards the societal object,
perhaps as futuristic orientation, that characterised their late adolescence stage.
Another emerging motive-orientation that is becoming apparent in my research is the
tendency for the young people to be oriented to societal values. The societal values
in this case do not only serve as the societal code of practice' but also emerged as
societal object that the young people and the institutional practices are oriented
towards. The emergence of this phenomenon in the context of Brunei Darussalam
seems to agree with the strong Malay Islamic Monarchy (MIB) tradition of the
country.

Student-teachers issues in using constructivist approach to

teaching secondary science
Ahmed, Tanvir1*, Banks, Frank2 , Hutchinson Steven3 , Stutchbury Kris4 ,
1

PhD Candidate, FELS-DoE, The Open University,

tanvir.ahmed@open.ac.uk
2
Professor, FELS-DoE , The Open University. frank.banks@open.ac,uk
3
Associate Dean, FELS-DoE, The Open University,
steven.hutchinson@open.ac.uk
4
Senior Lecturer,FELS-DoE, The Open University,
kris.stutchbury@open.ac.uk
This presentation will discuss a PhD research carried out in the context of secondary
teacher education in Bangladesh. The secondary teacher education curriculum has
been updated in 2007 and constructivism has been introduced as a theory of
learning and an approach to instruction. Since then the Teachers Training Colleges
(TTCs) are preparing student-teachers to adopt participatory methods which based
on constructivism in practice. However, it has been observed that teaching of
science is still largely conducted using traditional lecture methods. There are many
issues that can hinder the use of constructivist teaching approaches. The aim of this
research is to identify and analyse issues which are experienced by student-teachers
through the lens of activity theory. Activity theory has been selected as an analytical
framework because of the object oriented nature of enquiry and the emphasis on
context where goal directed activities like teacher education are situated. Moreover;
it allows us to identify and understand the contradictory situations or issues which
appear as resistance to change but have the potential to negotiate for changing
practice. The research progressed with assumptions drawn from activity theory that
student-teachers issues concerning the use of constructivist approach can originate
from contradictions among and between different activity systems involved with
teacher education. The required data is collected through interviews, videoobservations and review of related curriculum documents. It is anticipated that
activity theory analysis of data will allow understanding of the activity system of
teacher education as well as identifying and exploring the issues that can create
contradictory situation for the student-teachers to employ their newly acquired skills
in classroom practice. It is also expected that understanding of these issues will
create opportunities to find out ways of negotiating these issues and understand how
to bring about pedagogical change. The research will also be a valuable addition to
existing knowledge base of teacher education and research methodology.

Caring for infants calmly: Environmental sustainability as object

Alcock, Sophie
Alcock, Sophie J 1*
1

Unitec Institute of Technology

This paper discusses a case study research project that used ethnographically
inspired methods to investigate infants feelings of belonging and attachment in an
early childhood care and education centre which prioritised environmental
sustainability. Environmental sustainability in this centre was understood as
including caring relationships between people as well as caring for the physical
environment summed up in the Maori concept of Manaaki Whenua - Manaaki
Tangata; care for the land - care for the people - bringing together old and new
knowledges. Teachers shared infant care-giving, rather than following a more
individualistic model of key/ primary care-giving. Drawing on socio-cultural-historical
and activity systems theory (Engestrom, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978, 1987) and relational
psychoanalytic theory (Benjamin, 2004; Mitchell, 2000) the paper explores the
complexly intertwined layers, tensions and contradictions in these systems of
relationships. From a micro perspective relational systems included observing how
care-giving relationships among infants, toddlers, and teachers were enacted and
mediated within this educational institutional setting. The researcher as a participant
observer tried to focus her awareness on the relational third, the space between and
within the observed children, as well as her own intersubjectively mediated feelings
and responses. Thus relationally mediated activity served as a unit of analysis
(Wertsch, 1991, 1998). Macro connections with the local geographical community
and the more widely geographically dispersed family community are addressed. The
macro-micro lens is extended to explore how macro and micro factors are mediated
and played out interactively, to include individual subjects (infants) inter and intrasubjectively becoming humanely social beings. In this developing childrens space
the centre philosophy of sustainability seemed to function as a shared and
sometimes lost object motivating and mediating ongoing awareness and action
around environmental sustainability within complexly changing and at times
conflicting, environmental and psychological contexts. The presentation will present
several examples from the researchers field notes of events that illuminate these
observed micro-macro internal-external interconnections and tensions.

Niu -Psychology from the shores of Polynesia

Alefaio, Siautu
Alefaio-Tugia, Siaut1*
1

Monash University

The early discoveries of Margaret Mead put Samoa on the psychology radar as she
released findings that galvanized social scientists, challenged the psychological
development of American adolescents and put Anthropology on the map. Although
Mead's findings refuted by Derek Freeman are now historically controversial, the
underlying principle of her contribution is worthy of further investigative pursuits. The
introduction of new ways of knowing, being and doing' in her time spent studying a
group of adolescent girls in Samoa despite being somewhat 'off-track' contributed to
the introspective evaluation of American cultural practices, in particular child-rearing
of girls. From the shores of Samoa an Island Nation in the heart of Polynesia, comes
a contribution of knowledge to inform socio-cultural/psychological practices once
again. Through the lens of a Samoan psychologist, experiences of psychological
practice, reflected upon and re-informed by Fa'aSamoa (Samoan Indigenous cultural
knowledge), provides new insight for informing current psychological practice. Saili
Matagi a poetical proverb from the Island nation of Samoa was chosen to describe a
Pacific focused rehabilitation programme targeting violent offending. Saili Matagi,
literally means in search of winds, and symbolically describes the need to catch good
winds for smooth sailing. In ancient times, Polynesian voyagers relied heavily on the
winds to carry them to their destination. Niu (new) methodological insights in the
form of Va'ai, Fa'alogo ma Tautala evolved organically through the theoretical
pathway of cultural-historical conjecture. Fa'aSamoa informs reflective experiences
of psychological practice enacted in the redevelopment of Saili Matagi. NiuPsychology diffuses psychology theory and practice within the Saili Matagi work
project, and infuses Fa'aSamoa cosmological underpinnings forming a philosophical
frame of reference for the development of new methodological encounters in
psychology. Deepening our understanding of culture' provides the platform upon
which this research is grounded. Neo-Vygotskian cultural-historical tenets proffer a
'framework' for developing new constructs especially for cultures in transition where
the fabric of culture lies in its language, heritage, customs and beliefs. The current
research hopes to provide a way forward in the dialogue' of therapeutic interventions
with diasporic cultural communities.

Combining Activity Theory with Multimodality: A Methodological

Discussion
Alhuthali, Mohammed
Alhuthali, Mohammed Ali1*
1

Taif University- mohuthali@gmai.com; mhuthali@tu.edu.sa

Activity Theory and multimodal research share similar concepts as to how meaning
making shifts according to context, and how this meaning making is a product of
speech, gesture and tool use. However, especially in an educational setting, the two
are rarely combined. Jewitt's research into student meaning making made use of
both but only took account of speech rather than the full range of meaning making.
This paper argues that it is possible to combine the two and include non-verbal
interaction and tool use. This allows the researcher to report on the shifting flow of
meaning making across a period of learning and to look, in detail, at particular
phases. Activity Theory also adds a clearer focus on the importance of context as
the concept of resemiosis is often underdeveloped in multimodal analysis. In this
study, student meaning making during a Problem Based Learning (PBL) task was
observed. The entire class was analysed first using Activity Theory to gain an
overview and to examine how key relationships shifted as the task progressed.
From this, seven specific short blocks were selected for a more detailed multimodal
analysis. This selection covered key shifts in the meaning making process and
allowed a detailed investigation of how tool use varied according to the changing
task. Despite this there are methodological problems in combining the two
approaches. Activity Theory, as developed by Engestrm provides a structured
framework which can be used for analysis and reporting. Mulitmodal research tends
to rely on frameworks constructed for a particular study. Equally, there are
challenges in showing the relationship between the detailed multimodal analysis and
the overarching Activity Theory analysis. Overall, though, the two approaches are
compatible and each adds considerable value to the other. One example in this
research was the role of the PBL tutor. In Activity Theory terms he could be either
part of the subject (ie the active group) or the community but on careful analysis in
multimodal terms he was clearly never part of the subject group as he used different
meaning making processes (in particular scaffolding) to those adopted by the
students.

A collaborative-authentic learning-tool mediation framework

transforming teaching and learning
Amory, Alan
Amory, Alan1*
1

University of Johannesburg

This paper is concerned with the development of two groups of people as they
engage with a collaborative authentic learning and tool-mediated (CAT) framework to
transform their teaching, learning and assessment practices at a South African
university. The first part is a narrative exploration, using the Cultural Historical
Activity System, including expansive learning as a lens, to describe transformational
actions of individuals as they shift from training to an academic development
paradigm. A move away from training is required to closely align the staff
development processes with the institutional position that learning is part of a
knowledge and practice domain, that recitation of information limits optimal learning,
and that Information and Communication Technology tools need to support
innovative teaching. The interaction with this group of educational consultants in the
design, development and delivery of an academic professional development
workshop is explored. In addition, the CAT framework is used as a heuristic to
design, implement and evaluate the workshop (the second part of the investigation).
A number of tertiary contradictions arose during the processes that included
dialogical, double-stimulation, and experiential learning approaches. The
contradictions were related to disciplinary concerns, staff technical skills (deficit),
application of abstract educational theory (performativity) and an emphasis on
outcomes and not tool-mediated knowledge construction. The second part of the
study evaluated the use of this professional development workshop. Quantitative and
qualitative assessment of workshop activities and artifacts showed that the CAT
framework allowed academic participants to evaluate the pedagogical design of
game-based learning reports, design their own learning activities and evaluate the
workshop. However, the concept of tool mediation was not fully understood. During
both components of the study the abstract notions of tool mediation, which are
fundamental to the approach, were not fully understood. Also, the contradictions
raised by the consultant developers were neither visible during the workshop
engagement nor present in academic participants' productive outcomes. It is argued
that the educational consultants, who previously worked in the institutional training
regimes, clutched to their historical perspective. Future professional development
with the consultants is required to support individual transformations, and thereby
their world view.

Parent Narratives: Heritage language and cultural sustaining in

Australia
Babaeff, Robyn
Babaeff, Robyn1*
1

Monash University

Recognition of Australian legislative underpinnings for sustaining multilinguistic and

multicultural heritage goes unquestioned in multicultural policies of the nation, but
without genuine and pertinent support, there is a risk of intergenerational cultural and
linguistic loss within Australian families (Clyne, 2005; Kipp, 2007). The future of a
familys heritage language can diminish rapidly within one generation of immigration.
Winter and Pauwels (2007) perceive the realm of diverse linguistic and cultural
family practices to become customs of the past only. Distinguishing heritage
sustaining through bilingual and bicultural family practices is in the life trajectory of
past, present and future. The importance of authentically understanding parents
choice and action in maintaining their heritage requires interpretation and reflection
that brings forward the explicit and the implicit question for this study: What historical
and societal experiences configure diverse heritage language parents
bilingual/bicultural family practices and participation? Through a cultural-historical
narrative case study approach, personal and intergenerational histories were
astonishingly detailed during unstructured interviews. The shared interview
moments of each participants lived experiences were insightful stories of direct and
indirect experience that clearly linked to the subjective reasoning for the aspiration to
maintain heritage language and ways of being with their next family generation in
Australia. Methodology tool design, unexpectedly provoked mediation of Self.
Originally thought to be a simple filling in of demographic and language
backgrounds, instead mediated many perezhivanie insights of each participant Self.
Fortunately, the audio had commenced to capture rich moments that linked to
present day participant action and motivation. Understanding individual
perspectives, revealed subjective configurations (Gonzalex-Rey, 2009) for how
individuals gain their meaning and determine cultural actions. The social and
situated nature of development that is presently emerging in todays psychology of
human development enlightens understanding for the role of culture and history in
determining how knowledge is generated, and how social practices contribute to the
individuals sense of Self in relation to being and becoming in their world, (Stetsenko,
2010). Data generation and interpretation depicts the interconnection of individual
subjective configurations and subjectivity transforming within ones own contextual
and social space, from the past to the present, with future conjectures. Clyne, M.
(2005). Australia's language potential. Sydney:University of New South Wales,
Kipp, S. (2007) Community languages and the 2001 Australian census. In A.
Pauwels, J. Winter & J. Lo Bianco (Eds.) Maintaining minority languages in
transnational contexts. Hampshire:Palgrave Macmillan. Gonzalez Rey, F. (2009).
Historical relevance of Vygotskys work: Its significance for a new approach to the
problem of subjectivity in psychology. Outline, No.1, 59-73.

Stetsenko, A. (2010). Standing on the shoulders of giants: A balancing act of

dialectically theorizing conceptual understanding on the grounds of Vygotskys
project. In W.M. Roth Re/Structuring science education: ReUniting sociological and
psychological perspectives: Cultural studies of science education 2, (1) 69-88.

Possibilities of expansive methodologies informed by CHAT: two

case studies in educational research
Barahona, Malba
Barahona, Malba1*, Darwin, Stephen2 *
1
2

The Australian National University-malba.barahonad@gmail.com

The Australian National University-stephen.darwin@gmail.com

As has been observed, CHAT does not provide a ready-made methodology nor a
strongly predictive theory but its explanatory potential provides researchers with a
powerful framework for understanding complex socially mediated relations and
potentially contribute to transform social practices. This paper explores two
methodological responses to the application of CHAT in educational research. The
two studies one in higher education and one in teacher education offer divergent
methodological approaches that are both conceptually drawn from the CHAT
tradition that understands learning as an inherently social activity. One of the studies
sought to study a novel use of activity theory with an action research methodology to
analyse the expansive potential of students' opinions in higher education pedagogy.
Whilst the second study, used CHAT as a heuristic tool to examine how pre-service
teachers learnt to teach EFL in a Chilean SLTE program. This paper will seek to
analyse the commonalities and differences in these two methodological approaches,
including compared to more conventional interventionist methodologies. Although
the methodological approaches used were different, the findings of both studies
concluded that learning is an activity that begins on the social plane, in social
relations among individuals engaging in practical activity within spatial, temporal, and
social contexts before making its way to the intra-psychological plane of
consciousness. The paper will conclude to tentatively draw some observations about
how CHAT methodologies need to broaden for application in educational research
environments.

Towards a cultural psychology of early music development

Barrett, Margaret
Barrett, Margaret 1*
1

The University of Queensland

Young children's musical development has been a topic of research interest since
the mid 20th century. Early studies, undertaken largely within the discipline of
experimental psychology, focused on investigations of infants' and young children's
capacities to respond to and recognize musical stimuli including isolated tones and
intervals, rhythmic patterns and short musical excerpts (see Dowling (1999) for a
summary). These studies, conducted in laboratory settings, drew on the musical
genre of Western music, and tended to focus on the perception of music, rather than
the generation and performance of music. Whilst children's generative capacities
have been well-documented in the visual arts there has been less focus on these
capacities within music. Early exceptions have included seminal studies undertaken
by Moorhead & Pond (1978) in the early 1940's, Moog's (1978) work in the 1960s,
and subsequent work in music education and musicology. These studies have
employed naturalistic rather than experimental research methods and techniques
(such as observation) to document and analyse young children's musical generation
and production in everyday' settings of home and community. This expansion in
both methods employed (experimental and naturalistic) and the phenomena
observed (children's musical perception, and generation and production) has
prompted researchers in music development to seek new theoretical frameworks
through which to view young children's early music development. Such frameworks
need to recognize infants' and young children's musical agency and their capacity to
both shape and be shaped by those musical worlds in which they live. This paper
will report the findings of a longitudinal study of young children's (aged 18 months to
4 years) musical engagement as singers (musical production) and song-makers
(musical generation). 18 infant parent dyads participated over periods ranging from
12 to 24 months. Data generated included video and paper diaries of young
children's musical activity in home, childcare, and MELP (Music Early Learning
Programme) settings, and interviews with parents, child-care workers, and MELP
leaders. Through the analysis of findings a cultural psychological model of young
children's musical development will be presented.

10

Pursuing Development In Community College: Student Experiences

of Research
Beaty, Lara
Beaty, Lara Margaret1*
1

LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, larabeaty@gmail.com

Vygotsky paved the way for an understanding that some aspects of development
simply will not happen without certain types of learning, but clarifying the types is
complex. Often, education researchers have examined what is missing in the lives of
poor children that impedes their progress in school, but rarely do researchers focus
on development. By contrast, this project, which was inspired by participatory action
research, Engestrom and colleagues' developmental work, and Stetsenko's (2008)
collaborative purposeful transformation, endeavors to influence changes in students'
thinking and participation through the creation of a research group. The context of
this project is essential to understanding its aims and progress: A unique system of
higher education emerged in the United States that seems to address the needs and
ideals of democracy by creating junior or community colleges. Students attend these
two-year institutes because they are cheaper, offer courses at more diverse times,
offer remedial courses, make special efforts to accommodate students who are
older, work, or have children, and most significantly accept students who will not be
accepted by four-year institutes. In the City University of New York system, one
result is an increasingly hierarchical system with students of poverty and nonEuropean ancestry, particularly immigrants, being segregated into the community
colleges. The Student Experiences Research Group (SERG) was created to
address the needs of community-college students and to pursue research about
student retention and development. The group exploits the cooperative-education
program to bring a different model of learning to students. Based on ideas such as
using a hybrid language (Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Tejada, 1999), the need to
have purpose, and the influence of having a place to belong, three cohorts of
students have begun exploring their own lives while learning about and carrying out
formal research about student experiences. Focusing primarily on video-recorded
meetings, an analysis of activity is pursuing different ways of tracing student
development as it relates to their participation in the group. This paper will present
efforts to trace how students move from the concrete to the abstract and the abstract
to the concrete as a measure of development.

11

Intellectual disability and assessment of literacy in a CHAT

perspective
Berthn, Diana
Berthn, Diana1*, Andersson, Fia2*, Reichenberg Monica3*
1

Stockholm University, diana.berthen@specped.su.se

Uppsala University, fia.andersson@edu.uu.se
3
University of Gothenburg, monica.reichenberg@ped.gu.se
2

Within the Swedish special school for pupils with intellectual disability known as
Grundsrskolan - issues concerning the improvement and formative assessment of
knowledge formation and appropriation are largely unexplored. The teaching practice
is generally organized by means of simple, repetitive tasks with a minimum of
variation and a tempo that tends to inhibit, fragmentize and simplify the whole. In this
way contemplated knowledge remains inaccessible. However, within special
educational research, this kind of teaching is often questioned and attention is drawn
to alternative ways to consider aspects of teaching. This presentation is based upon
data from two case studies and a series of intervention studies. In the first case
study, the research circle Communication with focus on literacy in Grundsrskolan,
twelve teachers, together with a researcher studied issues of common interests in
relation to literacy practices. Texts, video- and audio recordings from reading and
writing situations were analyzed in order to develop knowledge on literacy practices.
In the second case study, a research and development project, Developing key tasks
as strategy for the development of teaching, teachers from different special schools
together with a researcher developed and tested a teaching and learning practice for
introducing literacy. A program was designed where pupils were given what is
referred to as key tasks. The third study is a series of intervention studies that
implemented two reading programs in Grundsrskolan. The studies were designed
to use video recordings to assess and evaluate both pre-and post-test student
performance. Theoretically the projects are framed within the Cultural-Historical
Activity Theory and focus on two main issues: How can teachers and researchers
together form and create a challenging teaching practice for these pupils? How can
formative assessment be used as a tool for progression in reading and writing
instruction? Tentative results indicate that pupils with intellectual disability learn to
read and write when they are given opportunities, which in the activity theory
perspective can be understood as shaping motive, goal and means that compel
towards participation in a literacy practice.

12

Hierarchical learning cycles in science museums

Bizerra, Alessandra
Bizerra, Alessandra1*, Mattos, Cristiano1 , Marandino Martha1
1

University of Sao Paulo

Cultural heritage conservation and extroversion are characters of museums,

regardless of contextual type or origin. Although there is an ongoing historical
change in the social role of these institutions, an emerging dimension becomes
clear, i.e., the use of museums as educational spaces, organized within historically
constructed human knowledge, which is shared and re-produced by subjects in
activity. Expansive learning cycles could be understood as hierarchical cycles whose
dimensions depend on the interactive phenomena within which they occur. Whence,
we propose analyzing expansive learning micro-cycles of groups of interacting
visitors at a science museum, with the aim of understanding how the hierarchical
levels of learning activity should be structured within these settings. Our proposal is
to investigate the learning activity of families when visiting an exhibition in a Brazilian
science museum, simultaneously to considering their complex expansive learningcycle process. In order to arrive at the possible different hierarchical levels, we
analyzed a corpus constituted of institutional and personal documents related to
science education, as well as science communication practices held by the institution
since its creation in 1901. Furthermore, an analysis of cycles and micro-cycles of
learning activity, from the point of view of visitors and monitors, was developed. The
main data of this level was obtained by semi-structured interviews with museum
monitors and video recordings of 15 families visiting the museum. Wireless
microphones were also used for recording audio conversations during their visits.
These analyses could thus attribute a dynamical view to both greater magnitude
(macro-cycles) and smaller scale (micro-cycles) phenomena, as synthesized in a
unit of analysis, viz., the teaching/learning activity. We observed that the family's
history was manifested by cultural modes of being, represented by family rules, the
division of labour, and instruments. These modes could be seen during the
negotiation process between adults and children during the visit. This research is
expected to contribute to understanding museum exhibitions, as the 'mediator'
structures which drive family expansive learning activities. Museum exhibitions could
then be considered as teleological artifacts which allow for many different
possibilities of interaction between various cultural hierarchical levels, such as
subjects and communities.

13

Using mobile assistive technologies to promote classroom

participation and inclusion of pupils with dyslexia
Bjrn, Marianne
Bjorn Milrad, Marianne1*
1

Linnaeus University

In this presentation I will describe the results of a pilot study conducted with pupils
with dyslexia at a Swedish primary school where they have been equipped with
mobile assistive technologies to support their learning process. Dyslexia is a
disability that affects a person's reading abilities and involves difficulties with written
text (see e.g. Lyon, Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2003, Snowling, 2013). Assistive
technologies are defined as hardware devices and software applications that are
used to increase and augment a person's functional and cognitive capabilities. In
this particular study, tablet computers in the form of iPads equipped with special
software applications are used to assist pupils with dyslexia while working with text.
The underlying assumption that guided this exploration is that the introduction of
assistive technologies combined with proper scaffolding techniques can act as
mediators for achieving increased participation and inclusion of pupils with dyslexia
in the classroom. The data collected consists of interviews with pupils and teachers,
as well as observations of the interactions in the classroom in relation to how the
pupils and teachers use and appropriate the tools and artefacts. Activity Theory
(Engestrom, 1987) serves as the theoretical framework for the analysis and
understanding of pupils' and teachers' experiences with regard to how the
technology enhanced teaching and learning environment (Issroff & Scanlon, 2002)
was experienced. The analysis of the collected data and an elaboration of the
outcomes serve as the basis for discussion with regard to the applicability of Activity
Theory for identifying traces of enhanced learning and assistance offered by the
mobile assistive technologies in combination with the proper scaffolding techniques.

14

Collaborative Project as a unit for an Activity Theoretical

Interdisciplinary Science
Blunden, Andy

This paper picks up on Vasily Davydov's comment in his notes for the Fourth ISCAR
Congress: the problem of activity and the concept of activity are interdisciplinary by
nature,and the issue of activity is not necessarily connected with psychology as a
profession... Things just turned out this way. Drawing on Hegel's Logic, a conception
of an activity, viz., a collaborative project, is outlined, which keeps in place all the
achievements of Activity Theory, based on the work of A N Leontyev, in psychology.
However, in moving towards the solution of sociological problems, the conception
departs in important ways from European and Finnish conceptions of the relation
between personal sense and the motives of an activity. In addition, by means of a
general approach to the relations between projects, the approach transcends Yrjo
Engestrom's third generation of Activity Theory and does away with the dualism of
needs and objects. In the proposed approach, the object is taken to be immanent
within the norms and artefacts characterising the project. This allows the theory to
appropriate Vygotsky's work on concepts, which are taken as ideals, universals
immanent in particular projects, and underlying the individual actions making up the
project. The resulting theory provides a coherent and consistent basis for both social
theory and psychology.

15

Teacher subjectivity and school identity: experience narratives and

participant research
Braga, Elizabeth
Braga, Elizabeth1*
1

University of Sao Paulo

In this paper, I will bring to discussion the issue of teacher subjectivity having as
analytical point of departure teachers' participation in meetings of projects developed
in a public school of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The aims of the research project are: 1) To
investigate the relationship between memory, narrative and experience in accounts
produced by subjects who participate in the school setting and/or who live in the
nearby community; 2) To reflect upon the production of narratives of practices, trying
to grasp in the accounts constitutive elements of a collective and discursive memory.
Articulated to the research, in a collaborative work, an extension project has been
developed at the same context in order to contribute to the process of teacher
formation, to increase the interaction between school and community, and to rethink
school identity, through the acknowledgement of experiences and memories. In the
last years we have been developing research activities such as participant
observation and interviews and the teachers participate in them, not only as research
subjects but also as co-researchers. And we have developed interdisciplinary
pedagogical projects to involve pupils and organised a school archive open to the
community which has significant documents kept in school and community or
produced during the research. All this process is constantly analysed by the
participants in formation meetings where they are free to talk about the difficulties,
experiences and emotions they feel during the activities. Based on Vygotsky's ideas
on experience and development, on Bakhtin's dialogical principle, and on
contributions of authors who articulate memory, discourse, experience and narrative
(e.g. Halbwachs, Bartlett, Ricoeur, Benjamin, Middleton, Brown, Bosi, Arfuch) and
explore them from the perspective of schooling and teaching (Smolka, Connelly,
Clandinin), we consider the double process of constitution - teacher/researcher
subjectivity and school identity. This is analysed as concerned to the ressignification
of work in a context that is transformed in object of systematic research. We argue if
the work conditions are modified by some knowledge of the history of the school and
its subjects, linked to the history and reality of the local community.

16

Meaning-making' Analysis, A Methodological Framework : An

Interventions Research Methodology
Calderon, Bronya
1

Spaces4learning

The study of activity/practice has become an important theoretical perspective for

those concerned with the study of learning. This abstract proposes a methodology
concerns about the improvement of educational practice, an interventionist approach
that involves the integration between educational research and educational practice.
I refer to this methodology as 'meaning-making analysis' to distinguish it from other
analysis. From this perspective meaning-making is regarded as social practice. The
methodology is based on a framework. The framework developed has been
influenced by the work of several disciplines, but it also has its own special
characteristics. In the fist stage I turn to activity theory to understand the relationship
between individual and their environment. I draw on ethnography, social semiotics
and multimodality within an analytical framework of activity theory to account for the
socially situated nature of meaning-making. The second stage of the methodology
suggests, an action research project, that draws directly on the fist stage, on the
contradictions of the activity system. This methodology has focused on what is
involved in constructing a logic of inquiry that is dialectical theoretical-practically
driven and conceptually coherent. It differs from viewing learning as an activity of
the mind only, which consists of acquiring skills and knowledge. Rather it sees
learning as meaning-making, a dynamic process and it's interpreted as
multidimensional development: Personal meaning, social meaning, and practice as
meaning. This methodological framework gave me a way to acknowledge individuals'
development processes, they also provide a language of description aiming to
capture and illustrate the circumstances and conditions in which particular practices
are produced. Furthermore, this methodology could provide indepth analysis on the
affordances of the environment and contribute to the understanding of the
individuals' agency in this process.

17

Potential Activity: Conceptualizing Human Development in the

convergences and complementarities between Paulo Freire and A.
N. Leont'ev
Camillo, Juliano
Camillo, Juliano 1*, Mattos, Cristiano 2
1
2

University of Sao Paulo; julianocamillo@gmail.com

University of Sao Paulo; mattos@if.usp.br

Activity Theory has been largely considered a powerful theoretical and

methodological framework to analyze human practices in various fields. Likewise,
there is a growing interest in Freire's ideas concerning the possibilities of social
change through education. Despite similarities, there is a lack of studies profoundly
connecting Freire and Leont'ev. From that, we introduce here the concept of
Potential Activity, which could represent a convergence between these authors: a
synthesis of the conception of human development present in both of them. Both
Freire and Leont'ev are grounded on the perspective of historical nature of
humankind: a dialectical overcoming of the pure biological condition. Leont'ev
analyzes this process through the relation between objectification and appropriation;
in/within/through activities, humans humanize the world and themselves dialectally
throughout history. Furthermore, Freire states that such development (the process of
humanization) must be driven by the vocation of becoming more fully human,
founded in the concrete achievements of humankind and in the existential conditions
of the individuals, who must recognize themselves as historical and uncompleted
beings, becoming subjects of their history and of the process of transforming the
world. For Freire, dehumanization, although a concrete fact within history, is a
distortion, the result of an unjust order, not a given destiny. Precisely because of this,
the struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of
alienation, is possible. Freire also states that, given the incompletion of human
being, education is an ongoing process, profoundly connected to politics. Through
dialogue, individuals, realizing contradictions in which they live, are able to take the
knowledge not as a content to be received, filed and stored (like deposits in a bank),
but rather as a medium to overcome limit-situations seeking the untested feasibility.
Potential Activity requires not only the acknowledgment of the problematic situation
but also the commitment to develop concrete actions, structuring new activities and
consequently new consciousness (given the essential relation between activity and
consciousness), which represents the appropriation of the problem, turning ProblemIn-Itself into Problem-For-Itself. Potential Activity is the most developed activityconsciousness that emerges from historical and concrete collective analysis of the
reality.

18

Expansive learning for pedagogical leadership: Understanding

centres as dynamic systems
Carroll-Lind, Janis
Carroll-Lind, Janis1*, Ord, Kate1*, Robinson Lesley1*, Smorti Sue1*,
1

Te Tari Puna Ora/NZ Childcare Association

Pedagogical leadership is an emerging discourse in early childhood. It refers to the

way in which the central task of improving teaching and learning takes place in
educational settings. This presentation reports on the implementation of a recent
research and development project (Te Whakapakari Kairahi huatanga Ako
Khungahunga: Developing Pedagogical Leadership in Early Childhood Education),
undertaken by Te Tari Puna Ora o Aotearoa/NZ Childcare Association. The project
explored the use of expansive learning theory (incorporating third generation activity
theory) with pedagogical leaders of early childhood education centres as a
methodology for change in their leadership practice. It also explored ways in which
kaupapa Mori (ie., cultural aspirations, preferences and practices) aligns with
expansive learning theory. The research was carried out across three sites (clusters)
with collaborative research teams. Participants attended a series of workshops
interspersed with coaching and mentoring sessions in their centres over a period of
seven months from July 2012 to February 2013. Findings suggest that third
generation activity theory provides a credit or strengths-based approach to
understanding leadership by viewing conflict or tension as productive and a potential
(and powerful) source of transformation. By coming to understand the centre as a
social (activity) system, leaders who participated in the study learned to play the
system rather than the person as they engaged in change conversations within their
workplace settings. At times appropriating the model to participants specific contexts
involved stepping outside their comfort zones as they brainstormed (imagined), and
then prioritised strategies most likely to effect change in their centres. We contend
that the methodology of expansive learning theory is productive as a framework for
conceptualising pedagogical leadership in early childhood settings, and this is well
suited to a range of settings, including those that prioritise the collective over
individual ways of working such as in kaupapa Maori and Pasifika settings. This
presentation will promote activity theory as an innovative tool for mediating
pedagogical leadership in early childhood centres. Specific examples from this
project will be explored to show how pedagogical leaders used activity theory and
reframed approaches to centre processes of decision-making and goal setting.

19

Using Activity Theory to Investigate Classroom Practice in Further

Education
Casey, Leo1*
1

National College of Ireland

This session reports on an on-going investigation of how teachers and students codevelop and learn through evolving classroom practice in the further education
sector in Ireland. Specifically, it will focus on two inter-related influences namely, the
use of new technology in the classroom and the pedagogic shift toward inquirybased learning. As a result of these and other influences classroom practices evolve
over time. This reshaping of what happens in class has important implications for
both teacher and student; as roles, actions and expectations are continuously
redefined. The process is itself a form of learning. It is a change to how we go about
learning' what Shulman calls the implicit structure of pedagogy. The research is
intended to reveal the learning mechanisms involved in these classroom practice
changes. Classroom practices are complex sites of inquiry involving teacher and
student action and communication, and the dynamic of external influences including
college rules and norms, quality and qualification policies, professional standards,
new technologies, workplace rules and many more. The challenge for educational
research is to glean meaningful insights from investigations of what takes place in
these settings. Activity Theory provides a conceptual and methodological framework
that helps make sense of the complexity of such settings. The one year investigation
follows classroom practices in five different FE classrooms. The strategy involves
teachers, and later students and teachers, in a series of Developmental Work
Research workshops intended to reveal different conceptions of intended outcomes
and to use the Activity Theory framework as a means of revealing and dealing with
contradictions and goal alignment. The research strategy also involves field
observation of classroom practices using the Practice Profile of Inquiry co-developed
by the PI in previous research. In addition, individual interviews with participating
teachers, sample participating students and college principals further contribute to
the data-set for this research. An additional and important intended outcome is to
add further insights on the methodological possibilities of Activity Theory for future
research on classroom practice.

20

Gender and Style: Studying Practice on a Cultural-Historical

Perspective supported by CAPES- Coordenao de
Aperfeioamento de Pessoal de Nvel Superior
Cassandre, Marcio
Cassandre, Marcio Pascoal1 , Canopf, Liliane2 *, Appio Jucelia3 ,
Bulgacov Yra Lcia 4 ,
1

Universidade Estadual de Maringa

Universidade Tecnologica Federal do Parana
3
Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Parana
4
Universidade Positivo-Universidade Federal do Paran
2

It is recent the approximation of the cultural-historical perspective to the

organizational studies in Brazil and one of the authors who has been a reference in
such field is the French Yves Clot. Practice is understood by this author through the
concept of guided and situated activity, from the cultural-historical theory of social
psychology, focusing on the relationships between gender and style, from which it
has been studied the practice of two food handler professionals (FHs - MAs) of a
elementary school. In such perspective, the unit of analysis involves the subject, the
object and the relationship with others. The method used was the confrontation by
recorded interview that was transcribed and analyzed considering the speeches,
expressions, images, odor, clothing, posture, symbols, instruments, formal and
informal rules, norms and statutes. On the second stage of data collection, besides
the FHs (MAs), the nutritionist responsible over the students was interviewed. All the
stages contributed to the search of explaining the gender and style on the practice of
such workers. The system of norms and regulations, both legislative and local rules,
contributed to express a restrictive, standardized and tasks prescriber gender,
denoting a high degree of mechanicity of workers, who were submitted to constant
surveillance, stripped of autonomy on the conduction of the everyday tasks.
However, it was possible to identify two different styles within this gender. The FH1
(MA1) showed less adhesion to the rules and prescriptions than FH2 (MA2), with this
one expressing more conditioning to the norms, rules and gender impositions,
ratifying that the style is an own movement of the subject within a given gender.
Comprehending that the style renews the gender makes it possible to reveal that the
invention practiced by the subjects within the activity - called stylistic invention - is
necessary, because if it does not exist, the gender itself takes the risk of extinction.
This paper offers a new perspective regarding organizational studies, with new
possibilities of comprehending and sustaining the development of the subject within
its labor activity.

21

The role of research in professional practice: An activity-theoretical

conceptualisation
Chaiklin, Seth
1

University College UCC seth@ucc.dk

The basic societal problem addressed by this paper is the use of research in the
development of ongoing professional practice (such as school teaching, social work,
and nursing). Since at least the 1960s, there has been intense focus on these
questions, without any stable or reliable positions about how to address these
questions. Traditional models or expectations (e.g., a linear transfer of knowledge,
production of instrumental solutions, enlightenment through research) have not been
successful in achieving widespread, lasting change. The premise of the present
paper is that cultural-historical theory offers useful conceptual tools for forming
research strategies that are grounded in other conceptions about how researchgenerated knowledge can be integrated into professional practice. Sutter (2011) and
Chaiklin (2013) have put forward some analysis of this problem. The present paper
builds further on these analyses. In addressing this issue with cultural-historical
theory, a series of challenges or contradictions must be confronted. In addressing
these challenges, the paper puts forward a way to conceptualise a strategy for
developing practice. Main points in the argument are: (a) the relationship between
researchers and practitioners are usually organised as a social division of labour, (b)
the primary way in which researchers can communicate with a practice is through
knowledge, (c) but verbal communication is generally recognised as inadequate for
making significant changes in practice (this is one of the contradictions that must be
faced). Research approaches need to conceptualise the role of knowledge in the
activity, and the relation of activity to practice. The present paper discusses the
difference between practice and activity, and how the theory of activity can be to
conceptualise the formation of research strategies in relation to professional practice.
This approach moves away from a commonly-posed question about how to use
cultural-historical concepts explicitly in the analysis of problems of the development
of professional practice. Rather it conceptualises that much research serves only to
develop the consciousness of other researchers, and that researchers can use these
concepts more productively to understand reflexively their own actions in developing
strategies to develop practice.

22

The precondition for conducting Change Lab sessions in Taiwan

Chen, Fei-Ching
Chen, Fei-Ching1, Wang, Thomas Ching-Chung2 , Chang ChihHsuan3 *,
1

fcc@cc.ncu.edu.tw Institute of Learning & Instruction, National Central

Univ.
2
thomaswang1888@gmail.com Dep. of Sociology, Fu-Jen Catholic
University
3
chsuchang@gmail.com Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Central Univ
Speaking turns in Change Laboratory sessions are usually used as one of the main
data for analyzing the systemic causes of recurrent disturbances and the
contradictions in the system that may be embedded within them. Basically Change
Lab has to rely upon the presence of active conversations before an audience.
However, practitioners from different cultural/historical backgrounds may not speak
as directly as westerners do. In such situations, disturbances may not be evident in
the transcripts because practitioners have predisposed mindsets which often leave
little room for letting confrontational ideas come out. They are highly sensitive to
whether a particular individual shows up or not and may posit one kind of idea if
someone is present and another if that person is absent. They may even cease
talking when the situation becomes acrimonious. Therefore, the research question of
this paper is: what should the preconditions be for conducting Change Lab across
different cultures. This idea is based on an empirical research study at a school in
Taiwan. We have been conducting Change Laboratory sessions with 14 teachers
promoting environmental education at a junior high school since 2009. In weekly
two-hour sessions, the teachers discussed and analyzed their collaborative
curriculum-designing practices. They identified the difficulties that arise in replacing
the conventional fair with a green fair. Interview data were also used to understand
the teachers' individual sense-making of the Change Lab sessions so that the
analyses would involve an exploration of the pre-conditions present when conducting
the Change Lab and perhaps include candid anecdotes that might otherwise have
been omitted in a more public forum. The results of this study raise an interesting
issue. Avoidance of interpersonal contention, a predisposition common in the
Chinese community, suggests the manner of speech in Change Lab. Such collective
mentalities do not aid in real discussion and identification of contradictions in the real
world because participants are so deferential and reticent to cause offense. It would
be a promising tactic to take ideology and cultural propensities into consideration as
a pre-condition for conducting Change Lab sessions.

23

Multimodal methodologies for analyzing preschool children's

engagements with digital technologies
Chimirri, Niklas*
1

Roskilde University

Recent research on the role of technologies and specifically digital technologies in

pedagogy has engaged in re-reading Vygotsky's opus with a focus on the
technological mediatedness of personal and collective development. Among other
issues, it questions the differentiation between tools and signs and between reality
and virtuality. In its stead, it suggests understanding technologies as mediating
devices or artifacts, which offer the possibility to communicate with others for the
sake of negotiating and actualizing imaginations together, for the sake of
transforming pedagogical practice and the technologies it builds on collectively.
Particularly when it comes to actively engaging in such a collective transformation as
a researcher together with young children, the above conceptual reformulation poses
a number of methodological challenges. For instance it remains unclear how the
perspectives and problems of children can be accounted for throughout the
technologically mediated collective development of a pedagogical practice how it can
be avoided that the adults' perspectives take the sole lead throughout this collective
engagement. What lies at the heart of these challenges is the question of how adults
can meaningfully communicate with young children, who are not able to fully
verbalize their premises and reasons for acting, and who therefore hold a relatively
weak positioning when it comes to influencing the negotiation processes necessary
for engaging in collective transformative engagements. Here, children's enactments
of digital technologies offer important clues on how children seek to appropriate
world and on how they intend to change it both alone and together. However, such
an analytical focus on children's technological enactments calls for endorsing visual
and other modal methodologies: These render it possible to understand all children's
actions as essentially communicative and assist adults in approximating the
children's perspectives on a collective transformative engagement. The presentation
will illustrate the enactment of such multimodal methodologies for the analysis of
age-transgressing collective transformations of technologically mediated pedagogical
practice with empirical experiences made while participating in a preschool over the
course of four months.

24

Reconceptualising teachers' work as activity: Expanding culturalhistorical activity theory through Bourdieu
Cross, Russell
Cross, Russell1*, Gale, Trevor2*, Mills, Carmen3 *, Parker, Stephen2*,
1

Melbourne Graduate School of Education

Deakin University
3
The University of Queensland
2

The focus of this paper is teachers' social justice dispositions as understood by

Bourdieu: the tendencies, inclinations, and leanings that provide un-thought or prethought guidance for practice. It reports work-in-progress from the second phase of a
large multisite qualitative study investigating dispositions in the context of teachers'
pedagogic work. For Bourdieu and Passeron (1977; 1990), pedagogic work' is
comprised of a series of pedagogic actions' conferred with pedagogic authority'.
Focusing on Bourdieu's ideas of actions' and work', we extend this conceptual
framework using cultural-historical activity theory, as developed by Engestrom
(1987), to conceive of pedagogic work' as an activity system', together with the
opportunities this presents to ultimately rework systems to bring about different
outcomes, change, and transformation. Of particular interest in the present paper are
key themes to emerge from analyses of classroom data that examines the nature of
pedagogic actions realised across different sites for teacher activity, which is
captured well in the use of activity systems as a unit of analysis. Comprising data
from schools at the extremes of education advantage and disadvantage, we argue
that the influence of different social, cultural, and material conditions upon teachers
(and schools) realises different forms of dispositions evident within such practice.
Socially just pedagogic work is thus different in different contexts. Our aim is to
interrogate how pedagogic work is differently informed by teacher dispositions
across varied classroom spaces for practice. In doing so, we also aim to build and
extend new conceptual tools for working with activity theory in the domain of critical
studies in education.

The type of assessment is essential to operationalize the

curriculum
Dalland, Eva
Brustad Dalland, Eva*,
1

Nord-Trndelag University College, Section of Educating Driving

Teachers and Exa
This qualitative case study in intervention research is rooted in the Activity Theory,
and the process can be described by The expansive learning cycle (Engestrom,
1999).Tensions arise in the system for the Driver education in Norway: The
curriculum is based on a constructivist view, and emphasizes pedagogical methods
like dialogue, problem-oriented tasks, reflections and self- assessment to develop
the drivers self-knowledge and awareness, in order to influence the road safety in
our community. However, the Driving test is a standardized test serving another
curriculum based on a positivist view. The examiner shall only do observations and
measurement by using a graduated scale. The candidates thinking about risk
understanding, reflections and self- assessment is not emphasized in this test. The
aim of the project was to develop tools and methods which can be used in the future.
We developed how to use the dialogue as a tool in addition to the existing tools, and
tried it out in 210 real driving tests. In the driving test in the project the examiners
asked open questions to get knowledge about the candidates self-assessment,
reflections, risk-understanding, It can be described as a qualitative assessment
(Sadler, 1989). The assessment has formative intentions and the result is based on
several sources. The dialogue and multiple criteria are important tools in a
constructivist view of assessment. The type of assessment is essential to
operationalize the key components and intentions in the curriculum. When the
curriculum emphasizes attitudes, reflections and thoughts behind the actions, it is not
enough to focus on the actions in the assessment (Black & Wiliam, 2006; Sadler,
1989; Stobart, 2006). The findings are based on data materials from log books,
participant observations, qualitative interviews and questionnaires. The findings
show that the new tools and methods in the driving test influenced the teaching, and
thereby the operationalizing of the curriculum and the candidates preparing for the
test. The new tools made the examiners more certain about their decisions. It's all
about how to get a better construct validity and consequence validity (Messick, 1989,
1998) in the Driving test.

Tensions and Teacher Learning in Paired Placements

Dang, Kim Anh
Dang, Kim Anh 2*, Cross, Russell1, Williams, Alan1 ,
1
2

Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Vietnam National University, Email: dangthikimanh@gmail.com

This paper explores the potential of an alternative placement model, the paired
placement, for teacher preparation. It reports on part of a larger research project
concerning the learning-to-teach-English practices of a cohort of 10 pairs of
Vietnamese pre-service teachers. The overarching aim of the project is to advance
understanding of how paired placement facilitates teacher professional learning. This
paper focuses on one aspect of the study by researching the types of teacher
professional learning afforded by the paired placement. Nascent research on paired
placement acknowledges tensions as an inevitable part of learning and invites
further investigation into this area. However, the notion of tension' remains undertheorised, and the link between tensions and teacher learning is under-researched.
To fill this gap, the study focuses on the tensions teachers encounter in paired
placement and the implications of those tensions for their professional learning. In
adopting third generation activity theory, the study conceptualises tensions in terms
of systemic contradictions in the pair work. Deviating from the conventional
conceptualisation of learning, here contradictions are viewed as sources of change
and development. The findings reveal that teacher learning opportunities were
initially manifested in conflicts within the teacher pairs, for example, negotiation of
their multiple roles, as friends, students, and teachers in training, or tensions in
reaching consensus while planning. However, within the framework of planned and
supervised collaboration, the teachers resolved most of their conflicts constructively
and experienced qualitative development in their professional identities, professional
knowledge, and collegial collaboration. While highlighting the paired placement as a
promising teacher preparation model, the study offers a new approach of
conceptualising teacher learning in such collaborative settings, suggesting a new line
of inquiry capable of many further applications. Specifically, the study stresses the
role of contradiction as a catalyst for teacher change and development within paired
placement context, and reveals the nature of the transformation in teacher pairs'
joint-activity.

Framing objects of desire: managing sexual risk and HIV

Daniels, Harry
Van Der Riet, Mary1, Sofika, Dumisa, Akhurst Jacqueline , Daniels
Harry5*
1

University of KwaZulu-Natal vanderriet@ukzn.ac.za

University of KwaZulu-Natal jwili@ukzn.ac.za
3
University of KwaZulu-Natal glocsupreme@gamil.com
4
York St John University jakhurst@yorksj.co.uk
5
Oxford University harry.daniels@education.ox.ac.uk
2

Youth in a rural area of South Africa have demonstrated an investment in

relationships and risky sexual activity at the expense of risk prevention and health
protection. In the tradeoff between safety and membership, the identity production
activity related to relationships is based on particular forms of masculinity and
femininity. Using qualitative data generated through novel techniques in interviews
and focus groups, we explored how early sexual socialization frames the object of
desire and mediates a particular form of sexual activity and thus risk; and how sexual
activity underpins social reputation and identity production. The techniques included
a social constructs interview to explore and define the objects of desire; a shaping
tool to explore the limits of safe sex practices and the possible subject positions
available to young people living in the research site; and an adaptation of the
Nominal Group Technique to explore how risk prevention is mediated by identity
investments. These techniques surfaced the tensions, contradictions and dilemmas
faced by rural youth in the context of HIV and AIDS. In a series of Developmental
Work Research (DWR) styled workshops participants everyday understanding of
current practices and contradictions in sex, relationships and risk emergent in the
interviews and focus groups were raised for reflection and examination. In this paper
we discuss how the culture of masculinity and femininity in this rural setting mediates
particular forms of risky sexual activity. We discuss whether the process of
expansive learning in the DWR process opened up possibilities for developing new
forms of social behaviour. We critique our use of the approach and discuss its
strengths and limitations as an intervention design.

Exploring the contractions and tensions in student evaluation in

Australian higher education
Darwin, Stephen
Darwin, Stephen1 *
1

The Australian National University (stephen.darwin@anu.edu.au)

Student feedback-based evaluation has been widely adopted over the last three
decades in American, European and Australian universities, moving rapidly from the
status of an academic development fringe dweller to a privileged institutional citizen
in the recent life of the academy. This paper reports on the key contradictions and
tensions identified in a small-scale research project that sought to understand
student feedback-based evaluation as a complex socio-cultural activity in Australian
higher education, using the explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory
(CHAT). This research used an action research model informed by CHAT to
investigate how conceptions of academic practice are influenced by the activity of
student feedback-based evaluation. This was developed through a series of
interpretive lenses considering the historicity of student feedback-based evaluation
and the disturbances, contradictions and tensions that have been fundamental to its
evolution. This paper reports specifically on these identified contradictions and
tensions that were identified in this research, notably ambiguities around the desired
and feasible outcomes of student learning, complex and divergent expectations of
graduate learning outcomes, heightening demands for accountability in
autonomous' academic practices, growing uncertainty around the rights and
responsibilities of academics, students and institutions and ever more complex
demarcations for academics, professional staff and students in learning
relationships. These key contradictions and tensions are broadly explored in the
context of the current institutional framing and contemporary work of student
evaluation in Australian higher education that is increasing contested around the
poles of accountability versus enhancement, quality versus resources and pedagogy
versus consumerism. Finally, the implications of these contradictions and tensions
are considered in the development of tentative conclusions on the potential
expansive use of student evaluation in higher education settings.

Rolling Role: Revisioning Heathcote's model for creative

collaboration and learning
Davis, Susan
Davis, Susan 1*
1

CQUniversity, Australia s.davis@cqu.edu.au

There is considerable value in documenting and analyzing practical models of

effective learning processes that embody sociocultural concepts. As drama and
theatre are based on human life and interactions, it is therefore a realm of activity
which can provide practical examples and historical models of transformational
learning practices. This paper will analyze one particular model based on the work of
legendary drama teacher Dorothy Heathcote and analyse it in sociocultural terms
identifying its relevance and potential for further development. Dorothy Heathcote
achieved international recognition throughout the 1970s and following decades for
her innovative work centred on using drama processes to make learning meaningful
and important. She developed models that encouraged teachers to structure
purposeful experiences through careful planning, framing, enactment and reflection.
Teacher-in-role and Mantle of the Expert are probably the most well known of these
strategies and models. Another model she developed was that of Rolling Role. This
model is less well documented, but Heathcote herself believed it had great potential
to be realised through using websites and digital technologies. While she did not
explicitly reference the work of Vygotsky and other socio-cultural theorists, it can be
argued that Heathcote's work embodied the principles of their work in practical form.
For both Heathcote and Vygotsky, learning was not conceived of as transmission but
a mediated social activity within a zone of proximal development involving physical,
symbolic and psychological tools. Rolling Role work can be seen as a form of
intervention into contemporary school practice and requires the teacher/researcher
to engage in a collective activity that has the potential to generate expansion and
learning. This introduction to and analysis of the model will draw on concrete
examples from an international Rolling Role project that involved five school sites in
four countries. During the development of that project and through archival research
the key features of the Rolling Role model have been investigated and interrogated.
This paper will outline features of the Rolling Role model from a socio-cultural
perspective and to identify its potential for further development in a digital era.

Classroom Communication Practices to Support a Child with

Special Needs
DeThorne, Laura
DeThorne, Laura1*, Hengst, Julie2, Vallentino Hillary3 ,
1

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lauras@illinois.edu

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, hengst@illinois.edu
3
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, valentine@illinois.edu
2

Studying individuals with communication impairments provides the opportunity to

highlight the critical ways that environments shape communicative success for all of
us. The present study used ethnographic methods to examine the classroom
communication practices involving Aaron, a preschool-age child diagnosed with
autism and apraxia of speech who utilized an electronic speech-generating
communication device. Secondary participants included Aarons father, the school
director, classroom teachers, a paraprofessional, and 17 of Aarons preschool
classmates. Data was collected in three forms: a) field notes taken from
approximately 9 hours of classroom observation, b) in-person interviews of all adult
secondary participants, and c), one 25-minute videotaped observation of a supported
small group activity in the classroom. Observations focused on descriptions of the
physical space and all social interactions involving the target participant. Using a
grounded theory approach, we applied the following coding categories across
multiple passes through the data: a) transitions and loops, b) marked forms of
support to manage behavior or facilitate social interaction, c) initiations to and from
Aaron, and d) interaction with objects. One emergent theme across coding
categories was the importance of marshaling diverse semiotic resources to support
communicative interactions. Some partners were more flexible than others in their
interactions with Aaron. For example, certain individuals were inclined to focus their
communication to Aaron through his electronic device (presumably due to his lack of
speech), while others were more inclined to presume his communicative
competence and take up multiple modalities meaningfully. The point is not to say
that the electronic device was not an important communication support; in fact, we
observed instances in which it was. Instead, findings indicated that supporting
successful social interactions for children with speech-language impairments
requires acknowledging the ubiquitous multimodal nature of communication for all of
us. Consequently, requiring a child or his/her partners to communicate via a
particular modality, be it speech or an electronic device, is unwarranted and actually
places atypical restrictions on a child with speech-language impairment and his/her
communication partners.

Teacher Research: Becoming a researcher by inquiring into

teaching practices
Dobber, Marjolein
Dobber, Marjolein1*, de Koning, Lorien2*, Van Oers Bert1,
1
2

VU University Amsterdam
De Activiteit, National Center for Developmental Education

Much attention has been given in recent years to teacher research in practice and
research. This type of practitioner research has been found to be a good way to
organise professional development for teachers, and has the potential to increase
pupils outcomes and enhance school development. In the present study, the
following research question is investigated: How does the process of becoming a
researcher influence teachers' ability to develop curricula aimed at inquiry based
learning? We have qualitatively followed the research process of a group of teachers
from one school for Developmental Education in the Netherlands for 10 months.
Developmental Education stems from Vygotskian theory and aims to generate sociocultural activities in which students and teachers take on roles, for example the role
of inquirer. The teachers were supported by an external institute (De Activiteit':
National Center for Developmental Education) in researching their own practice
during this period in a trialogical learning process (Hakkarainen). The development
of the research knowledge, attitude and skills of teachers were determined by a preand posttest with a self report instrument. Furthermore, we followed the research
process on the floor by (video) observations and analysing material that was
produced by teachers during the research process. We found that teachers gain
research knowledge, skills and attitude by collaboratively engaging in research on
their own teaching practice. Important aspects of such a research process are
starting from teachers' own questions and translating these questions into research
activities. By engaging in these research activities, teachers become better able to
develop curricula aimed at inquiry practices for their pupils. We can conclude that
collaborative teacher research can create opportunities for teachers to become
better curriculum developers, which eventually leads to better learning opportunities
for pupils. However, the process of researching own practices is demanding for
teachers and asks for time, a school organization that enables and facilitates
collaborative teacher research and good guidance by experienced teacher educators
during the whole process. Acquiring an identity as a researcher and developing
agency has great benefits for the teaching profession.

Limits and potentialities for interactive classes in a multimodal and

multimedia webconferencing system
Dotta, Silvia
Dotta, Silvia1*, Braga, Juliana Cristina2, Pimentel Edson Pinheiro3,
1

Universidade Federal do ABC

This paper aims to analyze the limits and potencialities of an interactive class
conducted in a synchronous virtual classroom in a multimodal and multimedia web
conferencing system. Due to the complexity of multimodal and multimedia
conferencing systems, planning the lesson and its application require new teaching
skills and the teachers role needs to be shared with other actors such as technical
and pedagogical mediator, in order to encourage students interactions and facilitate
learning process. In our analysis, we assume that the production of the expansive
cycle of Activities Systems (AS) results from complex relationships historically
established between the elements of an AS (Engstrm et al., 1999), in our case the
Activities System of Interactive Classroom. Five principles ( Daniels , 2003) will be
considered. The first states that the primary unit of analysis is a collective AS,
artifact-mediated and object-oriented, seen in its network relations to other systems.
The second is the multivocality principle: an AS assumes the presence of multiple
voices, converging and diverging, whose contradictions and meanings negotiations
lead to (re)signification of activity. The third is historicity in which one can observe
expansive cycles of the activity, i.e., cycles which result in the formation of a new
social structure from the previous cycle. The fourth is represented by the central role
of contradictions as sources of change and development. The fifth principle
proclaims the possibility of expansive transformations in activity systems. We
present preliminary results of an ongoing research that brings together 24
synchronous virtual classes taught on a degree course in a Brazilian public university
during the years 2012 and 2013. We selected a class in which teacher applied
strategies to foment interactive and dialogic collaboration (Dotta et al., 2013). At the
end we intend to conceptualize interactive synchronous virtual classroom, describe
its constituent elements, presenting the factors that influence the conduct interactive
lessons in multimodal and multimedia web conferencing environments and present
the indicators of production expansion cycle of Activity Systems.

Differentiation Practices of Five Teachers Working with the Same

Class
Douglas, Alaster
Douglas, Alaster 1*,
1

University of Roehampton (alaster.douglas@roehampton.ac.uk)

This presentation addresses teachers' differential behaviour which is suggested to

be one of the most influential educational factors which affects student interest,
motivation, and academic achievement (Rosenthal, 2002). The research questions
whether teachers form specific perceptions of individual students based on their level
of attainment, interest and learning profile or whether they form their expectations
based on group characteristics of students, for example, their gender, ethnicity and
social class (Rubie-Davies, 2009, McKown & Weinstein, 2008). The pilot study
followed one class of Year 8 students (12/13 year olds) being taught by five teachers
in different subjects in one secondary school in London. The research explores the
individual student characteristics and group characteristics that teachers take into
account in their teaching practice. The findings consider why the differences
regarding classroom differentiation exist between the five subject teachers. The data
analysis in this study focuses on the social and cultural practices in school
classrooms and explores how teaching activity has developed historically and
collectively. The data analysis uses a cultural historical activity theory (CHAT)
framework to give suggestions as to what may constrain the development of future
teaching activity for the students in the year 8 class. Exploring the structural
tensions in and between different dimensions of teaching activity as defined by
CHAT, such as the rules, tools and divisions of labour that have emerged in
practices over time highlights specific differentiation behaviours that teachers display
towards their students. Several categories of teachers' differentiating behaviour have
been identified and these are related to teachers' perceptions of the student's socioemotional teacher-student relationship, student feedback, the type of teaching
activities and classroom interactions. This study feeds into an international research
bid which identifies whether relevant differences regarding classroom differentiation
exist between schools in the United Kingdom, United States, and the Netherlands.
Equivalent pilots are being undertaken in the partner countries. Research results will
be fed back to student teacher education programmes at the respective universities
and disseminated with the findings from the other participating universities.

10

Discursive Strategies in Preschool: Analyzing Argumentation in

Early Childhood Classrooms
Dovigo, Fabio
Dovigo, Fabio 1*,
1

Department of Humans and Social Sciences, Bergamo University

dovigo@unibg.it
Argumentation as a discursive strategy in preschool has been the subject of several
studies from a cultural-historical perspective. We can identify two main tracks of
inquiry respectively devoted to investigate children-teacher talk and peer talk in early
childhood. Children-teacher talk (CT) in the classroom is primarily related to the
management of planned activities (drawing, telling stories), which are structured by
teachers in terms of educational goals. CT requires specific teachers abilities in
building learning environments enabling everyday conversation as a pillar for
collaboration on knowledge construction from an early age. Though CT and PT
coexist within the same educational setting, they originated two separated research
traditions. Therefore, the relationship between formal and informal talk as a mean for
learning in preschool remains relatively unexplored. To fill this gap we chose to
analyze the way teachers and children use different kinds of argumentation through
CT and PT in preschool. For this purpose, we adopted a sociocultural perspective,
which sees argumentation as a dialogic social practice aimed to develop children
socialization through the process of arguing alternative points of views. Adopting an
ethnographic approach (which included video-recordings, observations, extensive
field notes, and conversation analysis) the research is aimed (1) to know how
effective are teachers in using argumentation as a conversational pattern directed to
promote children learning; (2) to analyze what kind of discursive strategies children
use in constructing arguments as a mean to negotiate social relationships through
the peer talk; (3) to understand how CT and PT could integrate and contribute to
create a common ground for collaborative learning in preschool.

11

Unifying for a new, true center of psychology

Duran, Richard Paul
Tharp, Roland G.1*, O'Donnell, Clifford R.2 *,
1
2

Universities of Hawaii & California tharp@hawaii.edu

University of Hawaii cliff@hawaii.edu

We have long advocated a unification of Community-Cultural (CC) psychology with

Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), thus providing a new true center for
psychology itself. The centers of a science are marked by the density of intersecting
topic fields, with research clarifying common or competing propositions. In the
CC/CHAT nexus, such a center is forming. There exists a wealth of published
overlaps among culture studies, education, psychological counseling and therapies,
cognitive science and psychoneurological research fields, all investigating aspects of
central concepts of CHAT: intersubjectivity and joint activity. This paper reviews
that emerging center. In Delta Theory, the central dynamic of all intentional
influence-and-change is drawn from CHAT: joint activity increases intersubjectivity
which increases affinities. This dynamic accounts for intentional influence as
practiced by all helping professions, in all organizations, from the mafia to the
military, and by all those in roles of caretakers and developers of the young in all
cultures. Heretofore considered far removed from CC or CHAT, studies by cognitive
science and psychoneurology now provide specific mechanisms for crucial CHAT
concepts. Pairs of subjects, who can see and talk to each other, working puzzles,
non-consciously mimic each other, and unintentionally synchronize rhythmical
movements. CHAT emphasizes semiotic mediation as creating intersubjective
values; cognitive studies also find conversation necessary. Psychoneurological
studies provide additional direct mechanisms: witnessing the actions, sensations
and emotions of other individuals activates brain areas normally involved in
performing the same actions and feeling the same sensations and emotion . Cultural
psychological variables are studied. Subjects from a collectivist culture perform
nonconscious mimicry more than those from individualist cultures. Mimicry increases
with motivations to get along well with others. Behavioral mimicry is a part of human
natural repertoire, to be employed in a desire to create rapport. Even non-conscious
mimicry of gestures, postures, and mannerisms fosters liking between participants.
These findings are uniform and robust. They may be treated as settled science. It is
now arriving: an emergent new, true center of psychology.

12

Action and Knowing in the World of Ubiquitous Computing

Duran, Richard Paul
Duran, Richard P 1*,
1

University of California, Santa Barbara

The past decade has seen widespread emergence of ubiquitous computing

electronic computing and communication tools embedded-in or attached-to everyday
cultural artifacts, and living bodies. CHAT theorization of Human-ComputerInteraction has emerged (see works by Kaptelinin and Nardi), but has not been used
to its full advantage as a way to theorize these developments. The primary CHAT
representation of the relationship between subject and object mediated by a tool is
being extended because of the properties of ubiquitous computing tools that enable
new forms of cultural action, activities, and activity systems that have deep
implications for human collaboration, communication, consciousness, and learning.
This presentation explores how the semiotic and distributed-distance properties of
ubiquitous computing tools such as mobile communications devices (e.g., intelligent
phones/tablets, Google Glass, and cognitive radio) extend the range of human
senses and sense making into new domains of action and interaction. The
presentation outlines important examples of these tools and their features and how
they mediate connections between humans and action. Some tools operate in part or
wholly without calling on human conscious attention for their activation e.g. motion
sensors turning-on or turning-off lighting or electrical appliances. Others are
activated automatically by electronic recognition of radio frequency identifiers tags or
other electronic sensors/transmitters worn by humans in material they wear, carry, or
have embedded bodily. These forms of ubiquitous tools do not require human
intervention. Yet other ubiquitous computing tools require conscious human
intervention via humans' physical action and symbolic input responsive to their
semiotic interfaces. E.g,, humans may push visual buttons, making deliberate
meaningful gestures, or input written or oral commands detected by app sensors as
on intelligent phones/tablets that represent things or actions and that give human
operators choices in their operation e.g., as with asking Siri questions. Finally, the
presentation gives attention to instances where ubiquitous computing tools are
capable of acting in intelligent or smart crowd mode as with cognitive radio artifacts.
These are information processing systems where large networks of ubiquitous
computing devices connect and coordinate shared information and subsequent
actions of large aggregates of persons in real time.

13

Vygotsky's cultural historical theory and Marxs Ethnological

Notebooks
Elhammoumi, Mohamed
Elhammoumi, Mohamed1 *,
1

Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University

elhammoumim@hotmail.com

In the 1920s, a vision arose which was to captivate the Soviet psychologists
imagination for the next six decades: the vision of molding a new man for a new
society as rationally ordered as the Marxian view of society. While fueling
extraordinary advances in all fields of human, social and natural sciences, this vision
perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and
society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Vygotsky
confronted that agenda in his writings, he stated that man is social person=an
aggregate of social relations, embodied in an individual (psychological functions built
according to social structure)' 66. Vygotskys ideas are rooted in Marxs Ethnological
Notebooks. Marx put the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach to the test in his critique of
Maine. Marxs conception of the social individual as an ensemble of social relations
became the kernel of Vygotskys cultural historical theory. Vygotsky, like Marx
moved away from the conception of the individual as a self-contained agency and
grounded his theory on Marxs conception of social individual as an ensemble of
social relations. Social individual do not simply produce the means and conditions of
their own lives and live under these conditions, but produce the conditions under
which they live. Vygotsky engaged in developing a theoretical framework to the twosided reality of social individuals as not merely subject to their life conditions, but
simultaneously creating them. The ethnological notebooks were in circulation in
Moscow as early as 1923. In sum, the Ethnological Notebooks is perhaps as
important for cultural historical psychologists as the Method of political economy is
for economists. It is suggested that the Ethnological Notebooks should be
reexamined for their implications for most present-day Vygotskys cultural historical
psychology. References Marx, K. (1972). The ethnological notebooks of Karl Marx .
Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum Vygotsky, L. (1994). The Vygotsky reader. Oxford:
Blackwell. Vygotsky, L. (1993). Studies on the history of behavior: Ape, primitive and
child. New Jersey: Erlbaum. Vygotsky, L. (1997). The history of the development of
higher mental functions (Vol. 4). New York: Plenum .

14

Mediating Communal Homophobia with Narrative Tools

Etengoff, Chana
Etengoff, Chana 1*, Daiute, Colette 2*,
1
2

Barnard College, Columbia University

Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Cultural activity research suggests that symbolic and realistic writing activities can
assist minority groups in imagining diverse audiences, purposes and contexts
facilitating the mediation of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intersystem dimensions
of conflict (Daiute, 2010). Within this lens, letter writing and storytelling become
interventionist tools as participants mediate their living history and social challenges.
This paper presents the letter writing and storytelling narratives of 23 gay men and
14 of their religious Christian and Jewish relatives as a case study of how narrative
tasks facilitate individual and cultural development within discriminatory contexts.
Participants navigated their experiences of communal homophobia by writing letters
to religious figures regarding how their religious community should be addressing
sexual orientation and disclosure as well as by completing a vignette focusing on a
religious leaders' decision to exclude a gay man from a communal activity. Narrative
analysis was guided by the perspective that narratives are socio-relational behaviors
that illustrate the interactions of individuals in society. For example, religious family
allies' beliefs regarding the unchanging prohibition against homosexuality did not
prevent family allies from using secular cultural tools such as governmental
legislation to advocate a myriad of social policy changes within their religious
communities. In addition, participants' narratives urged clergy to assist their
congregations in humanizing their discourse regarding sexual minorities ('Urge the
membership to no longer talk about this subject in the pejorative ways that cause
so many so much doubt and shame and fear'), to apply religious values of
brotherhood to sexual minority populations, and to normalize the gay community ('we
are not freaks at a freak show on display for people to stare and worry about').
Although the majority of participants had not sent letters or other forms of protest to
religious figures in the past, all participants that wrote letters for the purposes of this
study were able to provide clear mediational directives suggesting that this form of
narrative tool engagement is an essential developmental research methodology as it
helps researchers explore participants developing capabilities within contexts that
have otherwise been viewed as only promoting maladaptive behaviors and negative
mental health outcomes.

15

Contribution to Learning : A Lens to Understand and Encourage

Student Engagement with Physics
Farhangi, Sanaz
Farhangi, Sanaz 1*,
1

New York University sanaz.farhangi@nyu.edu

In traditional views on education, students are viewed as the receivers of knowledge

and skills. Although this view has been challenged by socio-cultural standpoints on
learning, the students are still regarded as participants that gradually acquire the
communities of practice's ways of being and fit in them. This paper argues for a
change in the perspective and the interventions based on it: from students'
participation in their science learning to their contribution to it. Contribution to activity
(Stetsenko, 2009) can be a theoretical lens enabling us to explore the students'
collective agency, not their individual identity transformation, that can lead to a
change in the culture of science to a more diverse and equitable practice. I argue for
and use 'contribution' to understand and foster students' engagement in science
education and changing the role students can play in science. Using culturalhistorical activity theory and Engestrom's Change lab (1996) method of intervention
in two introductory physics courses, I used Anna Stetsenko's 'contribution to activity'
(2008) as a necessary lens to understand the role of students as well as facilitating
their understanding of themselves while taking part in a short-time activity of a
course. I explain contribution as a powerful notion to understand people in their
activities that can show us the venues for change. Contribution can be especially
informative when examining how underrepresented students in science can be more
engaged in science education. My study in introductory physics courses in a
research university expands on the notion of students' contribution and explores the
possibility of it. Analysis of the change lab conversations and students' interviews,
alongside field observations and activity analysis of the courses, show that the
proposed intervention opened a way for the students to understand their roles,
resources and engagement in the course in a new light. As an illustrative case, I put
forward the case of Zoey's contribution to the activities in the course that initiated
change among her peers.

16

Ex/Inclusion: What do we actually practice?

Fidalgo, Sueli
Fidalgo, Sueli 1*,
1

Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP) ssfidalgo@terra.com.br

Carried out in the field of Socio-Cultural-Historical studies, and bearing in mind the
means by which this area connects with other areas of knowledge production, more
specifically: Critical Applied Linguistics, Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy, this
investigation aimed at looking into the language that is employed either to include or
exclude the members of educational contexts in Brazil. This was carried out in
schools since it is in school organizations that this dichotomy is mostly seen, both
historically speaking and in the microgenesis of a lesson that is taught. The former
will be shown through the analysis of educational laws and public policies that have
traditionally been prescribing the work developed within the public school
environment; the latter through classroom observation and field notes. In other
words, this paper aims at discussing school inclusion, a rather popular, yet rather
controversial policy in Brazil at present due to the way it has been practiced
throughout history and more precisely in the last few years, when the term has been
defined and implemented. The focus on the language employed is to verify if, by
what means and in which instances the project of school inclusion has led to social
inclusion especially of educators (who lack teacher education in this area) and
students. Theoretically speaking the paper is based on the dialogical understanding
of language, Socio-Cultural-Historical concepts of defectology', zpd and mediation;
critical collaborative research methodology, which assumes that every interaction will
be based on conflict, negotiation and a search for some consensus which leads to
knowledge production. The investigation was carried out in a public school in
Guarulhos, the largest city in the outskirts of Sao Paulo. It was carried out with
undergraduate students and the senior researcher as part of an Extramural Program
in which the students receive a scholarship from the University. Results indicate that
most teachers cannot identify what special need the students in their class may
have, let alone work with them. Therefore, many young people are going through the
system without receiving any quality education.

17

Teacher-researcher collaboration as transformation A case

study
Gade, Sharada
Gade, Sharada 1*,
1

Ume University, Sharada.Gade@umu.se

This paper details researcher collaboration with Lotta, a mathematics teacher at a

Grade 4-6 school. This began with a six month study during which I observed Lotta's
classroom teaching at Grade six. My pursuit of narrative perspectives in this study,
created room for intersubjectivity and endeared Lotta and me to collaborate
thereafter. Lotta's application for project funding from national school authorities,
then paved way for researcher intervention in Lotta's teaching, at her now Grade
four. Our conceiving teaching-learning in Vygotskian terms allowed for two kinds of
interventions. Talk based interventions geared towards correlating mathematics and
communication as part of Lotta's project and specific interventions relating to say
mathematical problem posing and students' use of the mathematical = sign. In Lotta
next being employed by national school authorities themselves, our collaboration
shifted to reflecting and reporting on our interventions by means of co-authorship.
The trajectory from participant observation to co-authorship in our collaboration thus
corresponds to my reference to Lotta as Lea in my first study, to her theorising and
facing up to public scrutiny as herself. Lotta is since Rektor of a school at which we
intend to widen our collaboration. While recognising agentive understanding as
teacher and researcher to be a result of intervening in Lotta's instructional practice, it
is purpose, goals and outcomes of teacher-researcher collaboration that is of
interest. With its transformative manner as backdrop and in line with writings led by
Anna Stetsenko I examine three specific aspects. First, in what way did our
collaboration qualify as leading activity, enabling research to capture our selves as
evolving in our interventions. Second, how did our actions exemplify a transformative
activist stance that promoted human knowing and becoming, rooted in the ideals of
social justice. Finally, how did our attempts at collaborative purposeful transformation
stem out of social practice, through social practice and for social practice we set out
to change. In line with a practical-theoretical endeavor, such analysis sheds light on
a transformatory vision of human development in terms of a dialectical, nonreductionist, non-dualist, non-additive relational ontology as played out in our case of
teacher-researcher collaboration.

18

Culture in action: conversations in the movie The Social Network

Galimberti, Carlo
Span, Carmen 1*, Galimberti, Carlo 2*,
1
2

Dept. of Film, Television and Media Studies, Auckland University

CSRPC Universiti Cattolica del S.Cuore di Milano

The Social Network is a film built on conversational exchanges. The exquisitely

'spoken' nature of the text makes it a privileged object for a pragmalinguistic
analysis, aimed at penetrating its complex and stratified structure so as to reveal
multiple levels of significance and interpretation. The analysis of conversations
(Mazzoleni, De Micheli & Galimberti, 2008) has been chosen as a tool to analyze the
film in order to understand the role of conversations among characters in influencing
the narrative construction and in determining the mechanism of its meaning
production by acting as 'modulators' of the characters' relationships. To illustrate the
outcomes of our analysis, we will show how conversations between the character of
the protagonist, Mark, and his ex-girlfriend Erica, as well as the relationships
between Mark's former friend, Eduardo, and the Winklevoss twins, contribute to the
progressive structuration of the story, by establishing a circular movement between
references to what is happening here and now' (interactional level) and the shared
knowledge about past interactions (relational level). Subsequently, the paper will
focus on how the interaction of diegetic and extradiegetic elements taking place in
conversations, generate narrative effects. For this purpose, we will take into account
how the characters' modalities to deal with the cinematographic representation of
Facebook with reference to the communicative structure' that is peculiar to the
network itself effectively gives us elements to evaluate the social practices daily
implemented by Facebook's users. To briefly summarize our conclusions, we can
say that showing how the circularity between interaction and relationship and the
modes of articulation between diegetic and extradiegetic levels work, we will be able
to illustrate the way elements of cultural-linguistic nature (represented in
conversation by what characters say and how they say it) and factors action-oriented
(represented in conversation by the effects of what they say) intertwine to generate
specific narrative effects, otherwise difficult to achieve with the same effectiveness if
only making use of traditional narrative tools.

19

Education, human development and mental health: Opening new

paths on cultural-historical approach
Goulart, Daniel
Magalhes Goulart, Daniel1*, Rey, Fernando Gonzalez1
1

Univesity of Braslia

This study discusses new paths for the cultural-historical approach, with an
emphasis on the intersection between the spheres of education, human
development and mental health. Some ontological and epistemological issues are
discussed in order to advance on topics historically omitted by this approach. The
Theory of Subjectivity and the Qualitative Epistemology, both developed by
Gonzlez Rey, are the basis on which our research is developed, taking into account
the theoretical alternative they opened for overcoming the fragmentary way in which
mental health, human development and education have been treated by mainstream
psychology. This theoretical framework emphasizes the indissoluble link of the
symbolic and the emotional processes, which becomes an important premise in
order to overcome several dichotomies that have prevailed in the areas of
psychology and health, such as social/individual, external/internal and
education/health. This integration fosters new ways of intelligibility about complex
phenomena and enables the construction of new institutional strategies in order to
face some historical dilemmas that still persevere in mental health attention.
Specifically regarding this context, this theoretical approach permits to transcend
historical gaps between psychic suffering, culture and society, because human
health is conceived as the quality of the processes of life, not as an attribute that
some people have and others do not. Therefore, health should be treated as an
integral expression of human development, a reason by which its promotion should
be considered as a whole process that involves society in all its institutions and
agencies, especially those who attend education in the broad sense of the term.
From this point of view, the concept of education is considered as the system of
relationships that includes family, community and working institutions addressed to
the integral development of the people who share these spaces. Starting from these
definitions, it is necessary to consider human development as a main goal for the
mental health assistance, something that is still far from the dominant practices. This
integral educative aim should be organized and oriented by public policies able to
consider the subjective side of this complex process, fostering different possibilities
to construct citizenship.

20

Relational agency: Changing conditions in schools for English

language learners
Gray, Susan
Gray, Susan M 1*, Kitchen, Margaret C1 *,
1

University of Auckland

Increasing intensification of teacher work and demands for public accountability

(Kostogriz, 2012) can lead to decreasing feelings of teacher agency. Intensifying
these changes in New Zealand is a new superdiversity in student demographics.
Cognisant of this demographic shift, a collaborative venture among the Ministry of
Education (MOE), schools and universities incentivised TESSOL study wherein
teachers acquire the knowledge and skills to meet students' English language/s
needs. However, reclaiming and expanding teacher agency to effect systemic
school-wide change remains challenging. In this paper we explore an aspect of one
of those TESSOL programmes where we aimed to help teachers expand their sense
of agency in co-configuring change to create more equitable English language
learning opportunities in their schools. Following Sanino's work (2006) teachers
analysed a negative experience related to current learning opportunities for English
language learners. From this analysis they drew on Engestrom's (1993) model for
mediated action and framed an intervention that arose from a shared goal identified
with a group of colleagues that would address this student need. In framing their
action plan, the teachers were encouraged to consider the resources on which they
could draw. To understand how teachers enhanced their agency and built
collegiality around identified student need we analysed the action plans of three
teachers as they capitalised on some of the NZ MOE initiatives and directives
(curriculum policy, reporting for English language learners, National Administrative
Guidelines). This analysis highlights issues facing NZ teachers but is also relevant
for all teachers as they reclaim and expand their agency in the face of intensified
demands. Critical to understanding teacher agency is the role of affect (Davydov,
1999, p . 77) the emotions enable a person to decide from the very beginning
whether the physical, spiritual and moral means he needs to fulfil a task are
available. We are interested in how teachers who are effective agents of change
move from being heroic practitioners (Daniels 2007) to those who practise
relational agency (Edwards, 2007). These agents of change, with an understanding
of mediated action, give help and also ask for it.

21

Place, body and meaning: School toilets as as sites for social

participation
Gulbrandsen, Liv Mette
Gulbrandsen, Liv Mette1*,
1

Oslo and Akershus University College, liv-mette.gulbrandsen@hioa.no

Toilets are places tightly knitted to bodily appearances and functions. Bodies are,
however, culturally inscribed and interpreted. This makes it interesting to explore
how various aspects of bodies come to the fore, are imbued with meaning and made
socially and personally relevant in various situations. The theoretical frame of the
analyses to be presented here is rooted in socio-cultural traditions as well as in
gender and disability studies. Material aspects of toilet related situations; meaning
making and mediating aspects, social aspects and personal and bodily aspects are
all to be addressed. The paper draws on empirical data from several qualitative
explorations into the everyday lives of schoolchildren in Norway. Irene, aged seven,
has her own toilet at school. Her toilet is marked by a wheelchair symbol. Gender
symbols mark the toilets for the other children. Going to the toilet is a way of doing
gender (West & Zimmerman, 1987) for most children. For Irene, however, the
disabled body is fore grounded in the semiotics of toilet arrangements. Faced with
her bodily needs, Irene become genderless whereas the other children meet with a
highly gendered material and semiotic structure. The boys'/girls' toilets are zones
under less adult supervision than other school areas which make the generational
relationships a bit different in the gendered loos than elsewhere. Irene's toilet is,
however, also a room for adults; she needs her assistant to help her pee. The
generational arrangement is the same as in the classroom. Going to the toilet
underlines Irene's disability; for the rest of the girls a visit to the loo underlines their
gender and age. Bodily abilities, age and gender intersect in the meaning of visiting
the loo at school. In this paper more comprising data from (mostly) girls of different
ages and with various forms of dis-/abled bodies will be brought into the analyses.
The intersection of dis-/ability, age and gender in the forming of social and personal
processes of participation and meaning making will be elaborated.

22

Conceptual acquisition in the Foundation Phase: A Vygotskian

analysis of teaching concepts in science classrooms
Hardman, Joanne
Hardman, Joanne 1*,
1

University of Cape Town

In the 19 years since the first democratic elections in South Africa, the education
sector has seen immense changes. Currently, the government is committed to
developing the foundations of education by focusing on improving education at a
grade school level. Research (Askew, 2013; Chin, 2007; Fleer, 2007) indicates that
the mediation of scientific ('schooled') concepts is necessary for conceptual
development. Of special interest to this paper is the acquisition of school based
concepts at a Foundation Phase (grade 1 and 2) level. The research reported in this
paper draws theoretical insight from the Neo-Vygotskian understanding of two broad
categories of concepts: the abstract scientific concept and the everyday, empirical
concept. The dialectical logic underpinning Vygotksy's thesis indicates that these
concepts are complementary and dialectically related. However, scientific concepts
are developmental in a manner in which everyday concepts are not. Vital in this
respect is Vygotsky's notion of mediation, namely, the utilization of cultural artefacts
(tools, signs, symbolic and communicative activity) as a means of attaining higher
mental functions (Vygotsky, 1978). Mediation is aimed at the development of
children's acquisition of scientific concepts, which are necessarily taught. Given the
developmental importance of scientific concepts for children, this paper investigates
the extent to which these concepts are taught at the FP level in science classrooms.
Four teachers (across grades 1 and 2) and 177 students in one quintile 3 school in
the Western Cape province of South Africa participated in the small scale exploratory
case study reported here. The data were analysed utilising an analytical framework
developed by Hardman (2008). Findings indicate a general paucity of the mediation
of scientific concepts and a focus on the teaching of everyday empirical concepts,
calling into question the developmental impact this will have on children.

Cultural History of Institutional Research Activities: A SocioTechnical Systems Perspective

Hasan, Helen
Hasan, Helen1*, Crawford, Kate2 ,
1
2

University of Wollongong, hasan@uow.edu.au

University of Wollongong, katec@uow.edu.au

All research occurs within its own unique cultural historical context. Within most
universities, research incentives and reward structures that are embedded in the
institutional culture favour elite individuals and homogeneous teams whose members
all belong to the same Field of Research (FOR). While the benefits of crossdisciplinary collaboration for innovation and creativity is espoused, research funding
regimes mitigate against cross-disciplinary research by targeting projects located
within FOR codes. These conditions constrain what kinds of research can be
conducted in universities whereas, in more progressive organisations and the wider
community, socio technical systems are evolving that enable innovative and creative
activities that span discipline and cultural boundaries. At universities it is widely
believed that within discipline research and publications are best rewarded. We have
conducted an investigation of the publications and grants records of a group of 30
social science researchers to determine the relationship between the extent of their
cross-disciplinary collaboration and their standing according to conventional
research indicators such as the h-index. Among the 30 researchers, those who
published only within their own discipline either alone or with colleagues from their
own discipline indeed performed well on the standard indices. We then interviewed
selected subgroup of researchers with varying research profiles in order to explore
their interpretations of the implications of this bias for assessing the merits of crossdisciplinary collaborative research. From the findings of this investigation we explore
the dialectic impact of changing primary, secondary and tertiary tools and emerging
organizational practices on research activities. In particular, the tensions between
the organizational stakeholders in research activity and their differing objects, roles,
and expectations within the organizational system shape emergent research activity
in unintended ways. Over time, these processes also shape the knowledge that is
available, as a secondary tool, to be used in research activity and the ways new
knowledge is shared in society. Research suggests that tensions, arising from
differing cultural historical experiences, are particularly evident in multidisciplinary
research. These tensions can be resolved using tools such as social media, to
facilitate collaboration across traditional boundaries with emerging cooperative
cultural practices, adaptation and innovation.

Bridging the gap? Transcontextual learning in work-based

professional education
Havnes, Anton
Havnes, Anton1*,
1

Centre for the Study of Professions, OAUC. anton.havnes@hioa.no

The paper explores learning potentials inherent in work-based professional

education. It is part of a wider project exploring the role and impact of researchbased and experience-based knowledge in teacher education across schoolteacher
and early childhood teacher education, and across full-time campus and part-time
work-based programs. While full time campus-based programs have theoretical,
research-based knowledge up-front, the work-based program has experience-based
learning up-front. In the program studied in this project, the students have work
experience as non-professionals in early childhood institutions, and hold such a
position while students. The program design is built around series of learning loops
where themes are pursued across various learning contexts (workplace, peer
groups, campus). The students alternate between being employed in day care
institutions and students in higher education. They are generally older and ethnically
more diverse than full-time campus students. The design of the program is a
collaborative venture for local day care administration and the early childhood
teacher education. The agenda is to also promote professional learning culture in the
day care institutions involved. The paper addresses three interrelated phenomena.
Firstly, the paper reviews students' accounts of learning potential within each, and
across the diverse contexts within an early childhood teacher program. How do
teacher educators, mentors and students in these boundary-crossing contexts and
learning trajectories bridge the diversities in epistemologies rooted in Academia and
workplace? Secondly, the paper addresses students' experiences as learners in a
transcontextual programme. Do students experience the diversities in views on
knowledge as complementary or in conflict? Do they (and how) deal with these
disparities as resources for mutual learning? Thirdly, the paper discusses whether
the transcontextual program structure potentially instigates learning and
development to the benefit of the workplace and to the benefit of the teacher
education programme. The analysis is grounded on observations, survey (free text)
and focus interview data with students, lecturers and professionals. Data are
analysed by the use of NVivo software. Preliminary results indicate that key
challenges involve the establishing of learning loops in terms of trajectories of
learning across contexts and the work place as learning contexts.

A shared understanding to enhance interpretive research

creditability
Hawkins-Waters, Louise
Hawkins-Waters, Louise 1*,
Interpretive research is often published without a clear research gestalt being
described. However, as there is not a single set of attributes for undertaking
interpretive research, this paper considers how a paradigmatically informed rigor
may be developed in order to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of interpretive
research. A research gestalt includes the epistemological and ontological
presuppositions, theoretical commitments , research goals, and methodological and
reading practices (Schwartz-Shea, 2004, p.2) of the research. There are three aims
in clearly stating the research gestalt for interpretive research: (1) to guide the reader
to a shared understanding with the researcher as to how the research argument has
been constructed, (2) to describe how decisions have been made throughout the
research, and (3) as a means of enhancing the credibility of the research in essence
providing the intellectual justification for the research design. To demonstrate these
three aims, the following discussion draws on research where guidelines (the
research gestalt) were developed based on social constructivism and cultural
historical activity theory (CHAT). Twelve guidelines were developed, seven
guidelines from social constructivism and five guidelines from cultural historical
activity theory. These guidelines are used as an umbrella of guidance to make
methodological choices as well as enhance the trustworthiness (credibility,
confirmability, dependability, and relevance) of the interpretive research.

Funds of knowledge: Transforming relationships with families and

communities
Hedges, Helen
Hedges, Helen 1*, Cooper, Maria 2*,
1
2

Helen Hedges The University of Auckland h.hedges@auckland.ac.nz

Maria Cooper The University of Auckland m.cooper@auckland.ac.nz

A funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) perspective enhances

teachers credit-based view of families. It provides an analytical cultural-historical lens
on ways family practices are foundational to stimulating childrens interests and
inquiries. Visits to family homes have been utilised in educational research for
various purposes. One purpose is to tap into household funds of knowledge. A focus
of a two-year qualitative study funded by a Teaching and Learning Initiative in
Aotearoa/New Zealand was interpreting childrens interests and inquiries connected
to family experiences. Academic and teacher-researchers worked together to
generate and analyse data from two early education and care centres in Auckland.
Each centre was a full-day service, catering for children (birth-five years) and
families from diverse backgrounds, experiences and cultures. The project is framed
by sociocultural theories and methodologies (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009; Yin, 2009).
Data generation has included the following methods: video and audio recordings of
child/ren (and teachers), curricular/pedagogical documentation, reflective and
analytic memos, research team discussions and collaborative analysis, and analysis
of data shared with the full teaching teams for additional insights and validity. Of
focus in this paper, drawing on the original funds of knowledge studies methodology,
the teacher-researchers engaged in visits to family homes to gain deeper insight into
childrens lives and interests. The value of the visits was to transform relationships
and practices in ways beyond the purpose of merely connecting childrens home and
centre experiences. Findings from transcripts of home interviews, research team
meetings and teachers reflective memos will be used to illustrate ways that
relationships and understandings amongst teachers, children and families have been
enriched, mutual trust established or strengthened and some elements of curricular
provision re-thought as teachers engaged in deeper, more analytical reflection. This
presentation will argue that home visits may help to transform relationships between
teachers, children and families through the cultural-historical insights gained. In turn,
these relationships create opportunities for more purposeful and focused
communication between families and centres, enhance shared understandings of
childrens behaviour and learning, promote continuity of learning for children, and
assist teachers to respond to children and families authentically.

How to strengthen coherence in teacher training?

Heggen, Kare
Heggen, Kare 1*, Raaen, Finn Daniel 2,
1
2

Volda University College and Oslo University College

Oslo University College

Teacher education for the elementary school is in Norway and other European
countries a complicated mix of theoretical knowledge and practice, carried out in
colleges, but partly also in practice schools, where student teachers get supervision
from practice teachers. The educational program has become more theoretical and
research based last years. The education is often criticized of being heavily oriented
towards a disciplinary rather than a professional discourse. Learning at colleges has
been criticized of being too weakly integrated to teachers work. Coherence has
become an important concept in international discussion (Tatto 1996), defined by
Tatto as: ' shared understanding among faculty and in the manner in which
opportunities to learn have been arranged (organizationally, logistically) to achieve a
common goal ' (176). The concept is valuable, but we ask whether 'shared
understanding' is sufficient. The definition seems to miss an understanding of how
important it is that student teachers are invited into sociocultural processes to create
coherent education. In an activity theoretical approach we mention two contributions
which can further develop the concept. Van Oers (1998) argues about the
importance of re-contextualization in students learning, to arrange learning arenas
where students' knowledge from college can be reorganized and made useful in a
new practical setting. We also find the concepts development transfer and
negotiation important to develop an integrated teacher training (Tuomi-Grhn &
Engestrm 2007). Our research project investigates qualities of teacher education by
interviewing practice teachers as well as representatives of teacher training colleges
in different teacher educations in Norway. We will present a paper where we
analyses how these representatives of teacher training work to build more coherent
and integrated teacher qualification. References Tatto, M.T. (1996): Examining
Values and Beliefs About Teaching Diverse Students: Understanding the Challenges
for Teacher Education. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 18, No. 2.
Tuomi-Grhn, T. & Engestrm, Y. (2003): Conceptualizing Transfer: From Standard
Notions to Developmental Perspectives. In: Tuomi-Grhn, T. & Engestrm, Y. (Eds.):
Between School and Work. Amsterdam: Pergamon. Van Oers, B. (1998): The
Fallacy of Decontextualization. Mind, Culture and Activity, 5 (2).

Object-related view on customer understanding for developing

service networks
Heikkil, Heli
Seppnen, Laura *,
The notions of customer understanding and client orientation are central in the
discussions of developing social and other public-driven services. Administration and
professional specialization have led to fragmentation, and the needs of customers do
not always fall into service categories of specialised professions. Specialisation and
the fragmentation of tasks require strengthening of network collaboration of the
professionals, in particular when facing the common object of the services, the client.
The societal importance of customer understanding requires its careful
conceptualization. The first aim of the paper is to elaborate the notion of customer
understanding as a dynamic object relation of the networked service activities. Both
professionals and clients are considered as agentic subjects being influenced and
influcencing the services. The object-relatedness of human activities (Leontiev 1983)
is a principle that helps conceptualize both collaborative exchanges and human
subjectivity as interconnected and co-evolving aspects of material practices
(Stetsenko 2009). The network collaboration of services offers new possibilities and
support for professionals, but it may as well complicate customers' situations. In
practical service activities, mismatches may emerge between service providers and
customers. Rather than breaking the service processes, they may turn its direction or
disturb it, sometimes unexpectedly. Various types of mismatches have been
identified and analysed in concrete service situations (Seppnen, Cerf and
Toiviainen 2013). I assume that the collective analysis of mismatches by service
professionals may help develop both customer understanding and the network
collaboration. The second aim of this paper is to lay the theoretical and conceptual
ground for examining the developmental potential of mismatch analyses in service
networks. The studied service networks, from public criminal sanctions and
municipal social work, deal with complex social and societal questions. The empirical
data consist of developmental interventions where public service providers working
with same customers were gathered together to discuss service processes of
selected customers. Considering object-relatedness, including its mismatches and
human subjectivity in the formation of service processes aims at conceptualizing
customer understanding in a developmentally useful way.

The complex relationship between transformative agency and

work-related well-being
Heikkil, Heli
Heikkil, Heli 1*,
1

Finnish Institute of Occupational Health

Agency is one of the key outcomes of formative interventions utilizing the principles
of Developmental work research (Engestrom 1987). Agency can be defined as
participans' capacity to take purposeful actions to change their work activity
(Engestrom & Virkkunen 2007). In addition, most researcher-interventionists, who
are interested in issues of work-related well-being, share the idea that we can
enhance work-related well-being by promoting transformative agency of the
employees. There is evidence of and theory-building on the theme, and most
interventionists probably have witnessed how the new concepts and practices
developed during an intervention process seem to empower the participants.
However, the relationship between transformative agency and work-related wellbeing may not be as uncomplicated as it seems. Taking new kinds of actions and
changing practices does not guarantee work-related well-being for an individual
employee. This paper will be based on data from a workshop organized in a
research project. The workshop gathered together participants from service network
for divorced families. One of the participants was a social worker, who during the
workshop reflected on her own experiences: she had succeeded in helping a
customer by working in a way, which deviated from the conventional and legitimate
practices of her work community. Her decision to act differently and express
transformative agency can be understood from the viewpoint of object-dependent
well-being (Mkitalo 2005). This concept emphasizes the importance of the
employee's personal sense concerning his or her work, and the need to be able to
work properly. Nevertheless, in this particular case, the social worker ended up in a
situation, where she on one hand was feeling uncertain and guilty for her
unconventional decision, on the other was convinced on having done the right thing
with the customer and even discreetly challenged the workshop participants to
ponder the need for changing practices together. Thus, what had changed was the
personal sense of the social worker - not the shared object of the network. In my
paper I will present the detailed analyzes of the case, and discuss the complex
relationship between individual and collective levels of transformative agency and
work-related well-being.

Analysing power and resistance in firms strategic management a

methodological perspective
Heino, Hannamari
Heino, Hannamari 1*,
1

University of Helsinki, CRADLE

The concept of power has in previous research provided one feasible explanation for
strategy underperformance. However, the power has been widely ignored,
marginalized and trivialized in many discussions of organizations. The objectives of
my research are to i) develop a methodological approach by using which resistance
in firm strategic management can be addressed empirically, ii) to advance
identification of structural and/or managerial shortcomings that contribute to the
emergence of disturbances in strategic management, iii) to present a way in which
the methodological solution contributes to the firm strategic performance. In strategic
management research the dominating definitions of concepts of power and
resistance are sprouting form so called Power School (e.g. Minzberg, Pfeffer) and
later under the label of Strategy as Practice (Whittington, Johnson). Researchers
present power as the possession of management understating the scope for
resistance. Resistance is seen as irrational and dysfunctional response by change
recipients. The other organizational research traditions focus on explaining power;
how it emerges and what the power is. The main traditions can be defined as
focauldian perspective and neo institutionalism. Previous research, however, are
lacking appropriate methodological tools in respect of my research objectives.
Activity theory can provide sophisticated methodological tools in order to
conceptualize the resistance and to express empirically the contradictions. Activity
system as a unit of analysis combines human actors and the structure of the
organization. My intention is to create a sensing mechanism how problems related to
power and resistance in strategy implementation could be anticipated and mitigated
and firm performance ensured.

Designing Robo-Buddies': Technologies to Mediate

Communication in the Wild
Hengst, Julie
Hengst, Julie A.1*, DeThorne, Laura S.2 *,
1
2

Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hengst@illinois.edu

Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign lauras@illinois.edu

Taking up a CHAT approach (Cole, Luria, Rogoff, Wertsch) to Augmentative and

Alternative Communication (AAC), this paper presents interactional data from a twoyear project developing Robo-Buddy a multimodal tablet PC designed to blend
strengths of human mediators with features of current AAC devices. Traditionally,
AAC devices are designed as prosthetic extensions for users with communication
disorders and are most effective in supporting prefabricated communication (e.g.,
physicist Stephen Hawkins' successful use of his AAC device for public speaking). In
contrast, the Robo-Buddy is conceptualized as a mediator, a pseudo-intelligent (AI)
participant that can provide real-time linguistic and contextual resources to scaffold
users' successful participation in everyday activities. The goal for Robo-Buddy is to
be aware of settings, recognize environments and people familiar to the user, have
its own voice and iconography, and be capable of reporting what the user wishes to
say. Activity-based approaches to communication shift attention from construction of
linguistic messages to mediation of activity. Thus, we have grounded our work in
theories of distributed cognition (e.g., Hutchins; Pea), semiotic practice (e.g., Hanks;
Agha; Hengst; Prior), and activity-based theories of social interaction (e.g., Goffman;
Goodwin; Irvine; Wertsch). To inform the design we have recruited 20 participants
(university students and staff) who have used assistive technology because of
physical or cognitive disabilities. Utilizing ethnographic and design methodologies
(interviews, community observations, lab sessions trialing device components,
device field trials), the research is developing detailed descriptions of routine
activities and communicative practices across settings; identifying communication
needs, supports, and goals of participants; collecting digital video/audio data needed
to personalize Robo-Buddy systems for each participant; and providing a setting to
pilot the prototype Robo-Buddies. This presentation will focus on data collected with
7 focal participants (six with cerebral palsy, one with a bilateral hearing loss). We will
present interactional profiles for these participants, focusing on patterns of
multimodality, the nature of communicative disruptions, and interactional discourse
patterns that represent their everyday communicative routines on campus. Grounded
in CHAT perspectives, these interactional profiles together with a design for active
mediation rather than simple prosthesis offer a promising new approach to AAC
design.

10

Teachers developing assessment practices: Conditions for

knowledge work
Hermansen, Hege
Hermansen, Hege1*,
1

Department of Education, University of Oslo, Oslo and Akershus

University College of Applied Sciences
Recent decades have seen a move towards more collective forms of practice
development in the teaching profession, with groups of teachers taking the lead in
assessing and experimenting with new pedagogical principles and tools, which are in
turn intended to be circulated across a given school and integrated into existing
practice. Such initiatives are also indicative of the challenges of contemporary
'knowledge societies', where the multitude of available knowledge resources make it
difficult for individual professionals to independently assess new developments in
their fields of practice. Increasingly, groups of practitioners are requested to act as
'knowledge brokers' between their local places of work and broader landscapes of
knowledge, working as intermediaries who assess and experiment with new forms of
knowledge, and subsequently introduce them to local settings. This paper examines
the work of such knowledge brokers at two secondary schools in Norway, where
selected teachers had been tasked with supporting the development of formative
assessment practices at the school level. The analytical focus is on the intersection
of organisational practices and discourses, and forms of epistemic work (Nerland &
Jensen 2010, 2012). Drawing on social practice theory (Shatzki et al 2001), the
paper analyses how organisational practices and discourses shaped the work of the
teachers, and how the two diverse organisational contexts afforded different
affordances and constraints for knowledge work. The data material, consisting of
qualitative interviews supported by observations made over 18 months, is derived
from a research project investigating knowledge work in the teaching profession.
The findings illustrate how organisational practice and discourses differentially
constituted the work of the teachers, and how this affected the kind of knowledge
work they were able to engage in. In turn, this had consequences for how the
teachers were positioned professionally, and the kind of agency they were able to
exert to support the collective development of assessment practices. Theoretically,
the paper contributes to the conceptualisation of the relationship between the
organisational practices and professional discourses that shape teachers' work, and
the knowledge practices of teachers in settings where they work collaboratively to
transform established practice.

11

Self-authored Visual Artifacts as Mediational Means: A

Methodological Investigation
Hilpp, Jaakko
Hilppo, Jaakko 1*, Lipponen, Lasse2 , Kumpulainen Kristiina3 , Rajala
Antti 4,
1

University of Helsinki, jaakko.hilppo@helsinki.fi

University of Helsinki, lasse.lipponen@helsinki.fi
3
University of Helsinki, kristiina.kumpulainen@helsinki.fi
4
University of Helsinki, antti.rajala@helsinki.fi
2

In this study, we investigated the interactional processes taking place when Finnish
children share and discuss their preschool day experiences via self-authored photos
and drawings. We specifically focused on how these visual artifacts functioned as
mediational means in these negotiations to provide a methodological contribution to
discussions concerning visual methodologies in early years. Our theoretical
framework stems from socio-cultural perspectives on human interaction and
meaning making (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 2007). Accordingly, we understand
interaction and meaning making as being a situative process in which participants
utilize different mediational means to engage in collaborative activities. These
activities are embedded within a specific institutional and cultural-historical context.
The on-going analysis draws on iterative interaction analysis frameworks (Jordan &
Henderson, 1995) with a specific focus on embodied interaction. That is, the
analytical work identifies social and material conduct through which participants use
photos and drawings as mediational means (Goodwin, 2000). Data consist of nine
focus group discussions between 10 to 30 minutes each, totaling 192 minutes. In the
discussions, 2-3 preschool children shared and discussed digital photographs and
drawings they produced to represent their moments of joy during a preschool day.
The discussions took place over a two-week period when the children documented,
shared and reflected upon their lives and experiences in the preschool. One Finnish
public preschool class (19 preschool children, 6-7 years old) and their teacher
participated in the study. Our study contributes to the ongoing discussions around
visual methodologies in two important and connected ways. First, it highlights the
interactional dynamics taking place when children share their experiences (Westcott
& Littleton, 2004). Second, it addresses the undertheorized role of the visual tools
within these interactions (O'Brien, Varga-Atkins, Umoquit, & Tso, 2012). In all, our
results highlight how children's perspective's on the preschool day emerges through
self authored mediational means. Thus, our results speak to how children can take
part in the development of early years institutions via visual methodologies.

12

Innovative settings for organizational development: the example of

Comau, in Detroit
Ivaldi, Silvia
Bodega, Domenico1*, Fregnan, Ezio2*, Ivaldi Silvia1*, Scaratti
Giuseppe1*,
1
2

Catholic University
Comau

This paper presents an innovative procedure for training and assessment of

competences and abilities, that is useful in the socialization in the workplace of future
young professionals. In particular, it describes the characteristics and potential of a
setting that integrate professionals working within an actual organizational context,
and young university students involved in a training course that is aimed at
evaluating the professional effectiveness of the participants. In particular the paper
presents the experience of a group of students with different formative and
professional backgrounds, that were selected from two Italian universities to take
part in a training course inside the academic center of one of the worlds most
innovative industrial automation companies, in Detroit. The aim of the company can
be boiled down to a number of objectives that go from selecting new young
professionals, to spreading and consolidating the organizational culture, to testing
managers in mentoring and training activities, to creating strategic partnership with
the universities. Thus, the paper illustrates the characteristics of a setting created ad
hoc for reciprocal learning and interaction between the group of students and the
companys professionals and managers, who, on that occasion, took on the function
of training and mentoring. The paper also explores the methods and techniques
used to assess the skills and give feedback to the different players involved in the
experience about the hard and soft skills, the personal and professional potentialities
and the knowledge acquired. The goal of this is to analyze the main strengths and
the advantages that this approach brings to the students and to the practitioners
involved. In the same way, the outcomes, in terms of impact of the initiative within
the company, and among the main external stakeholders, are discussed. Finally, the
conclusions dwell on the essential features and obligations that should be
guaranteed for the training experience to be effective.

13

Caring and the dialogue between children and the world

Iwata, Keiko
Iwata, Keiko1*, Udagawa, Kumiko2 , Hayashi Hiroko3 ,
1

Tamagawa University
Sagagmi Women's University
3
St. Margaret's Junior College
2

This paper attempts to describe the developmental processes of play that preschool
children engage in. Analysis of how play develops has often focused on social skills
of teachers and carers interacting with peers to help their plays. However, this
viewpoint is unilateral from carers to children. Noddings (1984, 2010) notes that
caring are not unidirectional but bidirectional and interactive; the carer establishes a
climate of receptivity and the child as the cared-for accepts the receptivity and
retains it. In the engrossment of this relatedness, the child could lose himself not
only in others including the carer, but also in ideas and objects. The early childhood
program of Reggio Emilia, Italy, for example, put importance on the act of listening
(Rinaldi, 2006) especially by carers to children and by children to other children and
to materials (Vecchi, 2010) as well as on children learning to participate in cycles of
one-caring. The paper aims at demonstrating the developmental processes of play
by reviewing Noddings' viewpoint of caring and by analyzing children's mutual
communication with materials. Three episodes, qualitatively analyzed with respect
to how children have dialogues with others or materials to develop their play, are
introduced: 1) an 11-month-old boy, playing with a can, received himself and learned
it and viewed his world with the materials from a dual perspective of himself and his
world; 2) a child with autistic tendencies started to convey his world to the carer's
world, continuing individual and dual transformations to renew their worlds, when the
carer committed herself to the child by imitating his actions to empathize with his
world; and 3) children playing at a kindergarten had individual dialogues with
materials to develop play worlds. The carers received the children and viewed their
worlds through both the carer's own and the children's eyes, and thereby saw the
children discovering and exploring alternative worlds by interacting with materials
and others. The paper concludes that carers should have empathetic understanding
of children to grasp their worlds, where children dialogue with other children and
materials to engage in play.

14

Looking through a Vygotskian lens: New opportunities for

practice-based research
Joosa, Esther
Joosa, Esther 1*,
1

Arts Of The Earth Learning Hub

This presentation features the doctoral research of the author. It investigates the
social and semiotic nature of the artistic experiences of a group of young adults with
Down syndrome in Singapore. It seeks spaces to accommodate cultural variations
and the inclusion of the representations of minorities and diverse populations. It is
situated in current cultural-historical perspectives and emphasises the arts as
representations of the lived experience sustained by social interactions and made
visible through complex semiotic processes. Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory
finds a growing resonance with current arts-based research. While often cited in
current arts-based research, the main dilemma for this research was the relatively
little research that employs a clear Vygotskian perspective that outlines how to frame
arts-based semiotic research. This presentation aims to fill the gap. It describes how
questions about the perezhivanie lead to the decision to use Vygotsky's own
development for the design of a conceptual framework for semiotic analysis. It
presents the development of this framework as an iterative process that required
deep insights into the world of Vygotsky. It traced Vygotsky's societal and social
context, the development of his viewpoints over time and influences of his
contemporaries, his personal interests and experiences. This brought understanding
of the semiotic relationship of this theorist with his own ontology. It brought about
human development as a complex process of qualitative reorganization of semiotic
systems. The framework gives attention to dynamic relationship between the lived
experience as the source of semiotic development, the moving forces such as new
experiences, directions, and change and features such as individual culture and
context. This presentation brings attention to the design of a framework for semiotic
analysis that takes into account the dynamic interdependence of social and
individual semiotic processes. Crucial issues that are the importance of wholeness
and that nothing can be explored without a systematic account of the various
interrelated processes that mediate semiotic development. The focus of the
conceptual framework on the relationship of meaning as a product and social
processes, mediated by time and context, individual and social and emotions and
cognition is powerful. The findings evidence the impact of a Vygotskian lens on
practice based research. It emphasises Vygotsky's viewpoints, brings insights into
the relationships of the individual with the world and underpins the researcher's own
ontology.

15

Beyond Tolerance: A Vygotskian Approach to Interculturalism

Junker, Deborah
Junker, Debora Agra 1*,
1

Christian Theological Seminary

In contemporary western societies marked by cultural diversity and religious

pluralism, it is indispensable that all areas of knowledge seek to perceive complex
cultural phenomena from a critical perspective that analyzes the disconnection
between what is spoken and what really is practiced. For instance, the enthusiasm
and predisposition to teach about tolerance and respect for other cultures are
oftentimes trapped in ethnocentric, monocultural, and patriarchal knits that have
excluded the reality and contribution of minority cultures. Every so often, we
unconsciously employ theoretical frameworks that end up reinforcing submission and
domination of minorities, while supporting individualism and self-sufficiency of
predominant groups. Vygotsky sociocultural approach affirms that knowledge is
constructed through an action shared among all individuals involved in a social
learning process. He stresses the idea that human language and thought have their
genesis in the social environment where human beings develop themselves
mediated by symbols in collaboration with peers. According to him, the social world
does have primacy over the individual in a very special sense, placing a high value in
cooperation and interdependence as necessary elements to construct knowledge.
Inspired by the work of Vygotsky and his understanding of human participation in a
given culture through the interaction and negotiation of meanings, this article aims to
contest the assumptions that have enforced social inequality, cultural domination,
and religious intolerance. It takes on the challenge of embracing an epistemological
framework that considers the task to educate culturally diverse learners, while it also
explores the possibilities generated by the encounter of cultures that long for mutual
transformation and the flourishing of all. The present paper also suggests possible
pedagogical strategies for educators and learners alike to reflect on the way they
relate and learn from each other as they strive for engaging in dialogue and acts of
solidarity. Ultimately, this article seeks to foster a global citizenship mindset that
appreciates differences and recognizes the dignity of all human beings.

16

Conceptualising customers in public sector organisations in

Finland
Kaatrakoski, Heli
Kaatrakoski, Heli1*,
1

CRADLE, University of Helsinki, heli.kaatrakoski@helsinki.fi

The objective of this study is to explore in a multidimensional way the concept of

customer in four public sector organisations in Finland. During the last decades the
public sector in Finland and other Western countries has encountered extensive
transformations, for instance, by following global trends towards the New Public
Management procedures and corporatisation. One character of the new kinds of
organisations is increasingly evident discourse of customer. The theoretical
framework of the study is cultural-historical activity theory and it leans mainly on
works of Vygotsky, Leont'ev, Davidov, and Engestrom and their theorisation of
ascending from abstract to concrete and zone of proximal development.
Methodologically, the study has two main lines: analysing interviews and historical
documents (object-historical analysis) to support discursive data analysis. In
addition, a theory-historical analysis has been conducted in the area of studied
organisations. Thus, discursive data are analysed in their cultural, historical, and
material context to avoid linguistic idealism and not seeing discourse a privileged
source of interaction. The data were collected in two separate projects. The
objectives of the projects were to support organisations when facing changes in work
activities. The studied organisations were from the area of elderly care, day care,
road management, and academic library services. The interviews (total number 53)
were conducted in order to obtain background information for planned or conducted
Change Laboratory sessions or applications of the method. The interview data
analysis provided, first, three thematic categories: 1) customer as a core of work, 29
expanded customer, and 3) customer as an evaluator. Second, the categories were
further analysed with dimensions of 1) abstract, concrete, and between abstract and
concrete customer, 2) socio-spatially and socio-spatially and temporally expanded
customer, and 3) active and passive customer. Historical analysis focused on how
the customer appeared and was conceptualised in historical documents. The
analysis supported the increased emphasis on customers in studied organisations.
Also, it revealed the rather passive and invisible position of customers prior to the
conducted interviews.

17

Culturally and Historically Situating Data: A Case Study of

Leadership
Kang, Raymond
Kang, Raymond 1*,
1

University of Illinois at Chicago

The case study presented here follows an Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) in the
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) over the 2012-2013 school year as they attempted to
implement collaborative, data-driven practices after the school district and teachers
union resolved a contentious strike. CPS leadership mandated an approach to datadriven decision-making called Instructional Rounds (IR), a four-stage cycle of
purposing, collecting, interpreting, and acting upon data (City, Elmore, Fiarman, &
Teitel, 2009). The motivating question for this case study centers on both how and
what the ILT learned from implementing IR, with specific attention paid to the ILT's
conception, perception, and production of data. To address this question, we define
organizational learning in terms of cycles of internalization and externalization that,
critically, require the resolution of contradictions internal to the activity system in
order to become expansive (Engestrom, 1999). This analysis further adopts a
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and Institutional Theory framework (CHAT-IT;
Ogawa, Crain, Loomis, & Ball, 2008) in an attempt to trouble the assumptions of
data-driven educational reforms. Reform efforts often assume data provides direct
guidance for practice instead of viewing data use as situated within activity systems
(Spillane, 2012). Viewed through the framework of CHAT-IT, not only can IR be
recast as an activity, but we can also account for the institutional effects of coercion,
mimicry, and norms on the ILT. Moreover, issues of evaluation, accountability,
standardization, and the district's historyall central to the discourse of the
strikeemerged within the ILT due to these mechanisms. Thus, the CHAT-IT
framework supports culturally and historically situating the process and products of
organizational learning. This study builds upon the fruitful dialogue between the
CHAT and IT research communities by framing organization learning as culturally
and historically situated activity. By analyzing audio-recorded ILT meetings and
interviews with individual members as well as produced artifacts such as agendas,
forms, and data, we tracked the manifestations of contradictions within the ILT's
implementation of IR. As the ILT struggled to resolve these contradictions, we
hypothesize their cultural-historical origins and trace their effects upon the ILT as
they attempted to learn a data-driven practice.

18

Narrative and Discourse in Story-telling with Halliday, Vygotsky,

and Shakespeare
Kellogg, David
Kellogg, David 1*,
1

Graduate School of TESOL Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

When a teacher tells a story, there is a basic contradiction to resolve: the wholeness
of each moment of lived experience that constitutes the story and the sequential,
syntagmatic nature of the language in which it unfolds. Halliday resolves this through
a linguistics that is at one and the same time paradigmatically SYSTEMIC and
syntagmatically FUNCTIONAL. Vygotsky resolves this through a a psychology of
systems and functions as well (but, as we shall see, his systems are more like
Halliday's functions and his functions are rather like the systems). Shakespeare
resolves this by including both narration and dialogue in his work, and by
'internalizing' narration in self-directed dialogue--that is, soliloqy. This presentation
will first try to establish a basic complementarity between these three authors. Next, I
will explore how Halliday's systemic-functional grammar and Vygotsky's model of
speech processses in Thinking and Speech helps us to uncover layers of dialogue in
narrative and thus render otherwise opaque passages of Shakespeare more
comprehensible. Finally, I will suggest that the process can be reversed--that is, we
can uncover passages of narrative in dialogue, and just as the former offer a fulcrum
for understanding, the latter offer a powerful point d'appui for child development.

19

Using discourse analysis in CHAT

Kemp, Shaun
Kemp, Shaun 1*,
1

University Of Melbourne

Discourse analysis as a method has been used in various ways in CHAT (Collins,
2008; Engestrm & Sannino, 2011, 2012; Sannino, 2010; Wu, 2005). But these
methods have been used primarily for the analysis of discourse obtained from case
studies, where the analysis has been primarily of oral discourse in the form of
conversation during meetings. While useful for these case studies, if activity theory is
to be used as a research methodology (Engestrm & Sannino, 2010) which looks at
the ontogentic development of the outcome then the discourse analysis should also
take in to account other forms besides oral discourse such as written records, in the
forms as minutes or policy documents. This presentation looks at the use of
discourse analysis in Q methodology as adapted by Lo Bianco (2001)from the work
of Dryzek and Berejikian (1993),to interpret both oral transcripts and written historical
records. The context is the process of micro language planning in a school context
where 36 decision makers in microgenetic committee meetings are influenced by,
policy documents, media (newspapers) and written historic documents. Q
methodology (Brown, 1980) attempts to expose the beliefs of the decision makers
which may not be apparent in their oral conversation but might be the agency for the
decision outcome. The advantage of this approach to discourse analysis is that it can
be used at any time during the expansive learning cycle and is not just limited to
conversations that occur in meetings. The disadvantage is the terminology of the
discourse analysis framework is not directly related to the terminology of expansive
learning such as provided by the research of Engestrm and Sannino (2011), nor
more conventional discourse genres such as persuasion and argument (Wu, 2005).

20

Multi-disciplinary discourse on design problems in construction

site meetings
Kerosuo, Hannele
Maki, Tarja ,
I have followed two school renovation projects in Mid-Finland and observed the site
meetings for two years. In these meetings, different project partners take up and
solve the design related shortcomings, errors, and conflicts in multi-disciplinary
discourse. The partners express their knowledge, interpretations, and interests on
design solutions and comment on the suggestions of the others. The problem solving
stakeholders include an architect, a mechanical designer, HVAC-E (heating,
ventilation, automation, cooling, electricity) engineers, a chief manager and subcontractors' site managers, a supervisor and a maintenance manager. The research
data includes 18 meetings, each lasting about 4 hours. The data is video- and sound
recorded and transcribed. In addition, there are meeting memos and other written
documentation available for the analyses. I will analyze the shortcomings and
problems the different parties or partners take up, who participate in the problemsolving and creating new design solutions. I also analyze how and by whom the
decisions on the design solutions are made. The unit of analysis is the problemsolving trajectory from identifying and solving problems to making decision on
suggested solutions. The shortcomings and flaws in designs cause disturbances in
the construction process, like delays and extra work. When participating in the joint
problem solving, the different partners exceed their traditional, distributed job
descriptions. The discussion also gives them a chance to advance the design
solutions that are beneficial for their own objectives such as cutting costs,
maintainability of designed structures, or the time of the construction work. The
construction industry is currently moving towards using new digital-modeling tools in
the design and construction of buildings. The aim is to improve the information
management, the collaboration between the project partners, quality of the design
and construction work, and the productivity of the projects. Utilization of the new
modeling tools makes the need for the multi-disciplinary collaboration across the
traditional professional boundaries urgent. Keywords: construction site meetings,
design problem, design error, multi-disciplinary collaboration, boundary crossing,
construction project

21

Designing Developmental Instruction for Learning Nature of

Scientific Evidence
Kirch, Susan
Kirch, Susan 1*,
1

New York University

A theory of causality is at the heart of every scientific explanation. The theory is

embodied in the tools, methods and processes used by scientists and developed
over time. It is embedded the causal argument that supports or challenges a claim
or conclusion drawn from an investigation. Recently, Losee (2011) conducted a
historical survey of over 25 theories of causality ranging from classical regularity
theories to protests against the practice of identifying causality. Despite the plurality
of theories accepted by practicing scientists, most experimental designs that science
students encounter represent a regularity theory of causality. Regularity theories
present causation as a relation of dependence among discrete events. Given the
pervasiveness of this approach in elementary school science teaching tools, we
were interested in interrogating the implications of these findings for curriculum
design in science education. We will present results from a qualitative study focused
on students and teachers at work in an experimental curriculum designed to teach
the nature of scientific evidence and the relationship between knowledge claims and
evidence. The main research questions in this study addressed the reproduction of
theories of causality in participating classrooms: (1) How did teachers and learners
assign causality? and (2) With what did teachers and/or learners struggle when
assigning causality? We argue, through our analysis of the findings, that by
highlighting what methods were used to determine causality we can provide teachers
with tools to select and represent a broader range of investigations in school
science. By presenting a more accurate representation of the range of approaches
used in science using a developmental instructional approach (e.g., Aidarova 1982;
Davydov 2008; Haenen, 2001) and asking students to critique the methods and
assignment of causality (Barad 2007), they can learn a broader view of theories of
causality, which will help them keep the concept problematic in the future. We argue
that by expanding the concepts of causality students experience in school (through
the types of research to which they are exposed in readings, lab exercises, and other
explorations), we can productively expand students' capacity to shape their own
developing scientific epistemologies.

22

Young children's core groups: joint activity, friendship relations,

and we-ness
Koivula, Merja
Koivula, Merja1*,
1

University of Jyvskyl

Recent sociocultural theories of development and learning emphasize the meaning

of different communities in children's lives. In this paper the focus is on the core
groups children are forming inside the larger peer group in a day care centre. Fernie
et al. (1995) define core groups as highly cohesive and socially distinct, different
from other friendship groupings and peer culture of the day care group. Kantor et al.
(1993) state, that core groups are produced through joint rituals, objects, play roles
and play activities, and interactions. However, we are still lacking research about
core groups. We do not fully understand the meaning of the core groups for children,
and the process through which core groups are formed and maintained. The aim
of this study is to explore the processes in a five-year-old children's core group. The
study addressed the following questions: 1. how is the core group produced and
maintained, 2. what is the role of joint activity and friendship relations in the core
group, and 3. what transformations occur in core group, when children are starting
preschool in a different context, in a different peer group? The data of this
ethnographic case study were collected by reactive observation and interviews.
Observations were captured through video recordings, tape recordings and pen-andpaper observations. In the analysis of the data the main analytical tool was theory
based content analysis, but also discourse analysis was utilized. Results suggest the
formation of the core group was based on close friendship relations, but mutual
interest in joint play activity was also emphasized. Joint play activity was the context
in which the membership of the group was produced, and mutual friendship relations
and group cohesion were strengthened. The membership of the core group was
highly important for children, and the members of the core group utilized different
techniques to protect the boundaries of their group from others. In this paper the
meaning of the core group, and the effects of transformations that occurred when the
members of the core group started preschool in a different context will be discussed
further.

Psychological/educational Practices as Psychotechnical Systems

Kolpachnikov, Veniamin
Kolpachnikov, Veniamin1*,
1

National Research University, Higher School of Economics

Specialists developing Psychotechnical approach today, understand it as

methodology of general psychology which subject is not just 'consciousness', but
'work with consciousness'. Sources of Psychotechnical approach are fairly seen in
cultural and historical psychology of L.S. Vygotsky, where development and
functioning of human consciousness is understood as a process of active inter-and
intra-personal application of cultural signs and symbolical means - psychological
tools of the organization of human activity. L.S. Vygotsky - and his follower A.A.
Puzirei have introduced a concept of 'psychotechnical machine', understanding it as
cultural symbolical and practical system of development and change of
consciousness of a person. Different types of psychological practices can be
considered as psychotechnical systems. Within development of psychotechnical
approach we offer a concept of psychotechnical system as purposefully or
spontaneously organized practice aimed at change of consiousness and behavior of
people. It is possible to allocate the following elements of any psychotechnical
system (Kolpachnikov V. V., 2004) 1. A purpose of influence. The purpose can be
declared obviously or remain implicit. 2. A coordinated system of knowledge
(concepts). This sign and symbolical system serves as means for estimation,
explanation and regulation (control, correction) of practice. 3. An organized system
of activity, practice of people at whom 'the psychotechnical system' is aimed. This
activity will be organized according to system of the knowledge, mentioned above,
and plays a crucial role for efficiency of any psychotechnical practice, introducing
real experience. This experience, in turn, is understood, comprehended,
systematized according to the concepts inherent in this psychotechnical system. 4.
A person or group of people who act and 'live' in accord with this psychotechnical
system in unity of its conceptual and practical parties, embodying it in a system of
professional and everyday activity. 5. An organized system of interaction between
the psychologist and the client. In the course of proceeding intensive interaction the
psychologist inspires, organizes, instructs, supports, supervises and corrects activity
of the client according to a conceptual basis of this psychotechnical system. Any
established psychological/educational practice may be viewed and analyzed as a
psychotechnical system. Examples will be provided.

Testing and differentiation. A critical approach to standardized

testing in education
Kousholt, Kristine
Kousholt, Kristine 1*,
1

Aarhus University, Department of Education

This presentation will explore how educational standardized testing becomes part of
everyday differentiation and categorization processes primarily with respect to
categorizations of being clever or non-clever. The presentation is based on a 3 year
long post doc project concerning the practice of standardized testing in the Danish
primary and lower secondary school (Folkeskole). The empirical material consists of
qualitative interviews of pupils and teachers and participative observations both in
and outside test situations in 5 school classes. The theoretical basis is the DanishGerman Critical Psychology which emerged from Cultural Historical Activity Theory
and from the work of Klaus Holzkamp. This theoretical framework offers a historical
dialectical materialism outset. The theoretical outset provides a critical approach
towards testing in several ways of which two are presented here. First; learning is
recognized as changing participation in concrete action contexts which points to
learning as processes of taking part, of possibilities of taking part and of engagement
in concrete practice. In relation to this testing can be seen as external and abstract
measures. Instead of abstract test results, the theory provides a foundation for
investigating childrens reasons to act and to learn concrete places. Second; the
theoretical outset provides opportunities for analyzing how the technology of testing
and children in communities co-constitute the practice in which children take part and
becomes measured. Even though school practice and test practice are ambiguous,
test results present themselves as unambiguous, decontextualized measures of
childrens cleverness and abilities and are hereby connoted to high legitimacy. In
relation to this the empirical material points to processes of categorization and
differentiation concerning understandings of childrens level of cleverness and
abilities in relation to test practice. The empirical material as well as the theoretical
outset points to the critique that tests identifies certain views on individuals lacks of
cleverness/abilities instead of looking at childrens concrete possibilities to learn in
their communities. Furthermore this individual differentiation and categorization
practice seem to have consequences for school practice as such.

Resource-Map as a Mediational Means of Personal Development

Kovaleva, Tatiana
Kovaleva, Tatyana1*, Lampert-Shepel, Elina2,
1
2

Moscow State Pedagogical University, tkova@mail.ru

Touro College, elina.lampert-shepel@touro.edu

The purpose of this paper is to examine resource-map as a mediational means of

student's development in the context of (1) newly designed subjects, and (2) in the
process of tutor's support of student's Individual Educational Program (IEP) . Activity
theory (A.Leontyev, V.Davydov, V.Repkin) has dominated Russian education.
Curriculum in this approach is targeted on the development of the Subject of
Learning Activity. Subjectivity is considered in the context of the mastery of
theoretical concepts, i.e. generalized principles of action. An emerging new
anthropological approach in Russian Education stresses the importance of the
development of agentive, personal mastery, where such cultural forms as
generalized principle of action become secondary. Lev Vygotsky's idea of sign
mediation is key to cultural-historical psychology: for Vygotskian logical analysis of
the connection between elementary and higher psychological functions, to the
mechanism of transformation of natural psyche into cultural consciousness.
Vygotsky considered signs as psychological tools. This paper presents an argument
that a map as a cultural tool is a didactic mediational means that combines in itself
both tool and sign functions as has three major characteristics: (1) topic existence of
various space objects; (2) direction central and distant from the center location of
objects; (3) scale indication of proportionality of objects. Resource map is suggested
as a cultural psychological tool similar to word meaning, a mediational means that
has a generalization potential, that helps to navigate unknown contexts of learning,
and a reflection tool. The paper discusses an action of personal resource mapping
as a new didactic means for collaborative work of a teacher and student that will
assist a student in exploring possible individual learning trajectory, the space for selfdetermination and new goal-setting. In addition, a specific work of a tutor (a new
position in Russian schools) with IEPs with the help of resource-maps as a
mediational means of identifying learning interests, search for educational resources,
and reflection of educational needs is analyzed on the basis of the empirical data
from the International Tutors Association.

Children's Perspectives on Everyday Life in Preschool in Two

Cultures
Kragh-Mller, Grethe
Kragh- Mller, Grethe1 *
1

Aarhus University, Dept. of Education

Everyday life in preschools vary from culture to culture. A study will be presentedin
this session discussing similarities and differences in everyday life in preschool in
two different cultures - Denmark and the United States. The study was based on
socio-cultural developmental theory and social learning theory, with a focus on how
children learn and develop through participation in cultural contexts. A variety of
methods (interviews, observations, children's drawings and assessment of preschool
culture) were used to collect data. Everyday cultural practices in two different
settings were analyzed and compared. The children's perspectives on their everyday
life in preschool in two cultures were analyzed: their likes and dislikes, their
perspectives on play and learning, their opportunities for influence in preschool, their
relationships to the teachers and to the other children. Based on the analysis of
interviews with and drawings from the children many similarities were found
regarding the children's perspectives on a positive childhood in two cultures.
Children in both cultures found that playing with friends, nice places to play, positive
relationships to 'nice teachers' and influence on everyday life were important for
them in preschool. After presenting the study, it will be discussed how studies
including children's perspectives can contribute to enhancing quality of everyday life
for children in preschools. To illustrate how children's perspectives can influence
everyday life in preschools, and also contribute to the design process of planning
and constructing a new preschool, an example from another research project will be
presented. In this project the results from interviews with the children were similar to
the cross-cultural study, and the children's ideas and concerns were taken into
account in a process, where children together with researchers and teachers
participated in the process of designing the preschool building and classrooms.

Positive in children's lives: A co-participatory visual study on

children's sense of agency in their life worlds
Kumpulainen, Kristiina
Kumpulainen, Kristiina1 *, Lipponen, Lasse1 , Hilppo Jaakko1 , Mikkola
Anna1 ,
1

University of Helsinki, kristiina.kumpulainen@helsinki.fi

This study investigates the social construction of children's sense of agency while
they reflect upon positive events in their lives during collective photo-reflection
situations. By positive events we mean moments or experiences that are meaningful
and important points in children's everyday lives from their own perspective
(Kumpulainen, Lipponen, Hilppo, & Mikkola, 2013). The socio-cultural framework of
learning and development on which this study is based focuses on tool-mediated
interaction, discourse and participation processes during which meanings, including
a sense of agency are constructed (Archer, 2003; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, &
Cain, 1998; Valsiner, 1998; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, del Rio, & Alvarez, 1995).
Altogether, 29 third-grade students (9-10 years old; 12 girls and 17 boys) from two
elementary classrooms participated in the study. The social interactions during
photo-reflection situations were analysed at a micro-analytic level. We identified
episodes in which we could identify children's sense of agency talked into being,
guided by our earlier work on the social construction of agency (Kumpulainen, &
Lipponen, 2013). The photo-reflections were found to be constructed of interactions
in which the children are sharing and validating their self-documented worlds and
experiences as sources of agency and empowerment. This involved positioning
themselves and others across different space and time contexts, recognizing others
as significant for their lives and wellbeing, defining themselves as individuals with
specific experiences and backgrounds, and constructing, maintaining and contesting
the cultural practices of what it means to have authorship in their social settings in
and outside school. In all, the results reveal that the positive events in the children's
lives were embedded in a range of social practices, relationships and artefacts in the
children's everyday lives. These events were not extreme experiences or something
extraordinary, rather, the other way around. In accordance with earlier research, we
can conclude that the positive events in children's lives may be so small' that they
go unnoticed if one does not deliberately focus on identifying them.

Meaning of play at home, day care, and school in constructing

childrens daily life
Kyranlampi, Tania
Kyranlampi ,Tania1*, Korvela ,Pirjo2
1
2

University of Oulu
University of Helsinki

Everyday life of children is often constructed with home, school, and institutional daycare in Finland (Korvela & Keskinen, 2008). Schools as institutional practices create
conditions for the structure of the day at home and influence activity settings in the
families (see also Hedegaard & Fleer, 2013, p. 192), i.e. construct daily rhythm for
children at home and school. Daily rhythm of pre-school age children is mainly
constructed with parents working hours and institutional day-care. Childrens play
has been widely analyzed as a learning environment within the socio-cultural
tradition. We take another perspective and analyze the meaning of play for childrens
(5-7 years and 10 years) well-being in the context of constructing their own daily
rhythm. We have gathered data by interviewing children under school age and by
interviewing school age children while looking at photos they have taken on their
daily living. Childrens institutionally organized daily rhythm in which they have to
adopt parents rush and institutions structured pace is opposite to their spontaneous,
peaceful rhythm. Earlier studies (Kyrnlampi-Kylmnen, 2007; Kyrnlampi, 2014)
show that smaller children experienced even more strain than older, school age
children. Experienced stress is connected to timetables of day-care center that do
not allow enough uninterrupted time for childrens own initiatives on play. Less
pressure experienced with school age children is connected to not strictly structured
evenings. Children have enough time for play. At school, childrens play during the
breaks between the lessons is significant for their well-being. Play can be interpreted
as a meaningful social situation of development (Vygotsky, 1998). Children do not
want or need hectic daily living, but peaceful time for being together with their
parents, and for playing with siblings and friends (Korvela, 2003). To conclude, we
would like to encourage professionals to analyze the rhythms of childrens play and
fit them, but not to subordinate them to the all other institutional rhythms.
Uninterrupted play promotes well-being and supports daily living of children.

Activity Theory and the functional paradigm for the 21st century.
Leontiev, Dmitry
Leontiev, Dmitry1 *,
1

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) was a marginal approach in the last

century due to its methodological incompatibility with the mainstream psychology
based on Aristotelian essentialist paradigm. This paradigm required seeking for
basic essences that would predict actual phenomenology; examples are
psychoanalysis or trait theory which explained the consistency and predictability of
human persons, their equality to themselves. In the recent decades the agenda
started to change; the challenge of explaining reasonable changes rather than
stability began to prevail. Essentialist approaches are no more helpful for solving this
problem; the paradigm that I would call functional (FP) seems to set the mainstream
perspective for the psychology of the 21st century. So far I see three approaches
merging in this paradigm. The first one is existentialism with its explicit slogan
Existence precedes essence (Sartre), suggesting that no fixed essence can predict
and determine actual ongoing processes of being-in-the-world; the second one is
CHAT which experimentally treats stable mental and personality structures as
produced by actual activity rather than producing it; the third is the poorly structured
field of well-structured models of self-regulation and self-organization in the activity
of living and quasi-living systems in physiology (Bernstein, Anokhin), cybernetics
(Wiener, Ashby), general systems theory (von Bertalanffy), synergetics (Prigogine)
and their applications in psychology (Bateson; Miller, Galanter & Pribram; Carver &
Sheier etc.). The similarities between cybernetics and existentialism have been
articulated (Wiener, v. Betralanffy), as well as between activity theory approach and
existentialism (Asmolov, Vasilyuk, Subbotsky, D. Leontiev, Thomae, Laengle) and
between CHAT and self-regulation and self-organization models (Klochko, D.
Leontiev) . The FP that embraces CHAT as well as two other approaches seems to
be the most relevant approach for the challenges of the new century. It suggests that
the present and the future can be to a very limited degree deduced from the past and
that the flexible active navigation in the realm of actual possibilities is more predictive
regarding the outcomes of human enterprises than cognizing the fixed reality as it is.

Activity Theory East and West: E.V. Ilyenkov's Dialectics of the

Ideal
Levant, Alex
Levant, Alex 1*,
1

Wilfrid Laurier University

The Soviet philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979), is widely recognized as a

significant figure in the history and development of Cultural Historical Activity Theory
(CHAT) (Blunden 2010, Jones 2009, Stetsenko 2005). His principal contribution to
CHAT in the dominant literature is his reading of Marx's method of ascent from the
abstract to the concrete', (Engestrom 1999, Meittinen 2000). Specifically, his
conception of contradiction has been deployed to understand how change occurs
within an activity system (Engestrom 1987). The main texts that are referenced are
his first book, Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's Capital (1960),
and Dialectical Logic (1974), a collection of essays on classical German philosophy
and specific problems in Marxist dialectics. In recent years, however, there has
been a renewed interest in Ilyenkov's work beyond these important texts. For
example, Brill is in the process of publishing The Activity Approach' in Soviet
Philosophy 1960-1980 (Maidansky and Oittinen, eds), as well as a collection of his
essays on Hegel in English translation. My own contribution has focused on
translating and commenting on Ilyenkov's Dialectics of the Ideal the most developed
articulation of his concept of the ideal, which was prevented from publication during
his own lifetime, and which was published in its complete form only in 2009 in the
Russian philosophy journal, Logos (edited by Andrey Maidansky). The upcoming
volume, Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism (edited
by Levant and Oittinen, Brill, 2013), features an English translation of the text along
with commentaries from several experts in the field. The proposed paper offers to
place this new work in the context of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). It
explores how the concept of the ideal articulates with the principal categories of
CHAT. Specifically, it examines this work in the context of a set of critiques
advanced by Avis 2007, Jones 2009, Langemeyer and Roth 2006, Mojab and
Gorman 2003, Warmington 2008, among others, who challenge CHAT on a
methodological level.

A Long Road to Cultural Respect for Australians towards Chinese

Li, Shi
Li, Shi 1*,
1

University of New England

Despite rapidly dramatic social and economic changes in China in the last three
decades, the perceptions of many Australians about Chinese appear behind the
need to advance with the times. How long will a road to cultural respect for
Australians towards Chinese be? This paper attempts to answer this question
through an empirical analysis of some relevant legal provisions, books, journal and
newspaper articles, and some personal experiences from the embarkment of the first
Chinese coolies to Australia in the mid 1850s up to the present.

10

Mediating artifacts and Agency in the Creative Chain of Activities

Liberali, Fernanda
Liberali, Fernanda1*, Lemos, Monica2*, Engestrm,Yrjo3*,
1

Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo

University of Helsinki
3
University of Helsinki
2

This presentation aims at discussing school reports in a Creative Chain of Activities

as mediating artifacts for fostering agency and transformation in teaching and
learning processes. It uses data from the Management in Creative Chains Project, a
project which has been developed as a demand from the City Secretariat of
Education of a big capital city in Brazil for the wide development of all levels of
school management (teacher educators, coordinators, principals, teachers and
students). In order to foster agency (Engestrom & Sannino, 2013) and
transformation to cross boundaries of school subcontexts, two types of reports were
developed: teacher's classroom reports and students' development report. This was
done as a result of the interplay of senses to produce new meanings about teachinglearning activities. In this Creative Chain (Liberali, 2006) composed by coordinators'
meeting with teacher educators and consultants, school development programs with
coordinator and teachers and classes with teacher and students, discussion of
reports gave rise to new meanings about how teaching and learning could be
enhanced and developed for all those involved. These meaning transformations
which stem from the struggle established in activities between subjective senses
were created in the process of dynamic and responsive understanding and acting.
The presentation exposes the theoretical background that sustains the idea of
management developed in the project and the concept of mediating artifacts in the
production of agency. After that, it discusses the Management in Creative Chains
Project and the methodology for data production and analyses. Finally, it introduces
discussions on the data from teachers' and students' reports and the way in which
they were developed in order to foster agency and transformation.

11

Remaking a policy instrument in the educational field - Developing

an idea of school transformation
Lin, Hongda
Lin, Hongda1*,
1

University of Helsinki

This study aims to understand the generation of an idea in an expert group remaking
a policy instrument for school transformation. Policy instruments have made
important contribution to our understanding of political systems, public policy,
governance changes in national and international settings (see, e.g., Hood and
Margetts, 2007). Nevertheless rising issues in recent years, like governance change
and infra-national organizations operations, have brought the reconsideration to the
policy instrument. Lascoumes and Le Gals (2007), for example, point out the
problems of 'functionalist' in instrumental approach, and propose political sociology
approach for policy instrument study. However, the weight of idea generation in this
instrumental approach is underestimated. The political sociology approach to policy
instrument overlooks the potential of imagined activities born together with the new
birth of instruments. This study adopts otherwise the approach of Cultural Historical
Activity Theory, assumes that the contradiction embedded in the policy instrument as
the source leading to transformation. To demonstrate this viewpoint, this study
analyzes the meeting data in a case of School Actualization Program (SAP) in
Taiwan, which is a national policy program aimed to improve quality of senior high
schools. An expert group has been built up for taking care of the SAP. Two meeting
records of this SAP expert group are selected out of 22 meetings held during 20082010. This study encodes data by three levels of policy instrument - policy
instrument, techniques, and tools - which is hierarchized by Lascoumes and Le
Gals (2007), and investigate the evolution of their relations in the discussions.
Three results are found in the analysis: 1. the idea generation is based on the actors'
experiences of problem confrontation by instruments adaption; 2. the manifestation
of idea generation in the discussion is a constant return process between policy
instruments, techniques, tools and terms, revealing the repeating problems and
possibilities of problem resolving; 3. A new idea in its beginning is represented as a
new relationship between artifacts. This representation is the candidate to make the
prototype of new policy instrument.

12

Traditional assignments changed vocational knowing

Lindberg, Viveca
Lindberg, Viveca1*,
1

Stockholm University, Dept. for Education

This paper is related to a study on Swedish upper secondary vocational education in

carpentry, part of a broader study financed by the Swedish Research Council. The
issue is related to vocational knowing, for this particular paper the questions that will
be illuminated are what emerges as vocational knowing for carpenters during
interviews with teachers and in video-recorded observations in workshops? The data
used for this part of the study are firstly sequential group interviews, inspired by
previous work on collective remembering (Konkola 2002; Middleton & Brown 2005;
Middleton & Edwards 1990); secondly video-recorded sequences of
teaching/learning in a school workshop for carpenters, and thirdly texts and
documents related to vocational education. While the initial group interviews were
narrative in their character and focusing changes in the local education over time
related to teachers, equipment and external demands, the final interview was formed
as a presentation of the workshop, tools, material and machines but also introducing
the studentseducational path through the workshop focusing on questions like
what is the students first assignment? What machines and tools do they start with,
what is their final assignment? For the analysis cultural historical activity theory has
been used, which here means in a first step of the analysis focusing on indications of
traditions and related to work as well as vocational education and training,
assignments, tools, materials and rules. In a second step of analysis these are
related to vocational knowing for carpentry. Preliminary results show that although
assignments may remain the same for a long period of time for some there is
evidence that can be traces to the 1920s the content of vocational knowing has
changed due to new tools, technology and material but also in relation to societal
demands, related to for instance security and environmental issues.

13

Teachers' perceptions of teaching and the dilemmas for inclusion

of pupils in special schools who have extra need of special support
Linikko, Jari
1

Stockholm University

The aim of this thesis is to clarify the contradictions in teaching practice that are
reflected in teachers' statements about the education of pupils in need of special
support at the government-run special schools in Sweden, especially from the
perspective of inclusion. The contradictions are explored using Engestrm's model of
Activity Systems. The following questions are addressed: 1) What aspects are
highlighted by teachers as essential in the instruction of pupils in need of special
support? 2) What opportunities and barriers to inclusive education can be seen in the
teachers' statements? 3) How does a teacher of pupils with multiple disabilities
collaborate with other teachers in the team? Sixteen teachers from all five regional
special schools for the deaf and hard-of-hearing were interviewed. The theoretical
insights of cultural-historical activity theory were utilized to analyze the transcriptions.
The study shows that there are several contradictions in the Activity System model.
Some specific findings are as follows: Communication with some pupils requires
teachers to use several modalities, and teachers who do not have every day contact
with these pupils, feel awkward in interaction. A consequence of this will be that
teachers do not readily substitute for one another or divide labor equally as much as
expected. More time is needed for lesson planning in cooperation with other
teachers and assistants. It becomes necessary to modify materials for teaching
which was time consuming. Special education groups are sometimes forgotten in
plans of common activities by other school personnel. Key conclusions are: There
needs to be a greater variation and flexibility in teaching methods for all students to
make it easier for pupils in extra need of special support within special schools to be
better included. There needs to be more interactions with those pupils and with
personnel other than their teachers in order to decrease exclusion.

14

Mathematics Problem Solving, Latino/a Students and Positioning

LpezLeiva, Carlos
LopezLeiva, Carlos 1*,
1

University of New Mexico

This study explores the interconnection between social interaction and mathematics
performance regarding how bilingual Latino/a students participate and are positioned
as they interact with others around mathematics problem solving. Great efforts have
been placed on promoting egalitarian participation of students and improving
student-teacher and student-student interactions, but still remains a question related
to how egalitarian and uneven participation and marginalization evolve. This study,
rooted in a sociocultural perspective and concerned with student participation in
small groups during mathematical problem solving, explores events of how positional
identities evolve and how they affect in student participation in mathematics.
Participation, in this case, refers to persons engaging together in a social activity
(i.e., mathematical problem solving) where the interactions, active observations,
communications, and shared thinking are mediational tools for accomplishing the
activity, while at the same time learners are apprenticed through participation.
Positioning emerges as how one is perceived, as well as how one presents himself
or herself. Positioning is a social, situated, and discursive act, which refers to the
roles and actions that participants take up and/or are given to them when interacting
with others. This longitudinal study explores the participation and positioning of four
focal bilingual Latina/o students (grades 3rd-6th) participating in mathematics
problem solving in an afterschool. The data corpus includes: 1) videotaped
interactions of participants, 2) facilitator field notes, and 3) relevant student artifacts.
Analysis of video data was done through categorical aggregation and direct
interpretation of the positioning and participation of students interacted in problem
solving in small-group work. Patterns were identified and condensed into three main
factors that affect positioning. Results indicated three factors mediating the process
of co-constructing one and others positions, namely the quality of attention,
alignment, and ability co-constructed among the participants. The quality of these
factors, unevenly distributed and negotiated among the group participants, afforded
different positions for participants (i.e., powerful, null, powerless, and equalized),
which in turn also determined the quality of mathematical and social affordances that
participants accessed in the group. Educational and research implications will be
discussed.

15

Examining participation processes for action in an inclusive

classroom community
MacCallum, Judith
MacCallum, Judith A1*, Morcom, Veronica 2 ,
1
2

Murdoch University, j.maccallum@murdoch.edu.au

Davallia Primary School, Veronica.Morcom@education.wa.edu.au

Schooling does not occur in a vacuum but within a cultural context. Thus, the culture
of school is paramount to create conditions that allow students and teachers to be
creative and thrive. In this paper we examine participation processes to develop an
inclusive primary school classroom community. A Vygotskian sociocultural
perspective underpins the research, conceptualising learning as primarily a social
activity. Thus, participation in the cultural activity of the classroom is the source of
learning and development, with a focus in this study on collaborative activities.
Teacher guided weekly class meetings provided a means for all students to
participate in authentic decision-making and collective action, and to build their
personal resources for future social action. The research project was a year-long
ethnographic study of cultural practices in a Year 3 classroom. Video recordings of
classroom activities made it possible to revisit interaction and observe and analyse
participation processes and to identify different patterns of participation over the
school year. For this paper we also used data from interviews with students and
artifacts produced by participants (such as researcher reflective accounts, student
reflection diaries). The aims of research reported in this paper were to examine: the
forms and patterns of interaction that were created over the year, using class
meetings; and the role of the teacher in scaffolding differing patterns of student
participation. The class meeting interactive practices were analysed qualitatively by
using fine-grained micro level analysis method (Kovalainen & Kumpulainen). This
analysis focused on three dimensions: communicative functions, discourse moves,
and interactive sequences. Different modes of student participation were identified in
the interaction in the early part of the year (similar to those found by Kovalainen and
Kumpulainen), and particular students adopted particular modes of participation. The
analysis showed that these modes of participation changed over the year, as the
teacher and students scaffolded dialogue and ways to participate. This scaffolding
supported the inclusion of all students (to some degree) in exceptional class
decision-making and the building of personal resources for the future.

16

Critical Collaborative Intervention Research in Teacher Education

to Literacy Development
Magalhaes, Maria Ceclia
Magalhaes, Maria Cecilia1*, Lessa, Angela2*,
1
2

Pontifical Catholic University at Sao Paulo - cicamaga@gmail.com

Pontifical Catholic University at Sao Paulo - cavenagh@uol.com.br

This paper aims at discussing a teacher education project to multiteracy

development in an Elementary Public school whose students come from homes that
present poor literacy backgrounds. A Critical Collaborative Intervention Methodology
is the basis for this research project developed in a Brazilian school context as a
possibility to build up the fragmented, individualistic and a-historical approaches to
teaching-learning concepts that usually characterize the pedagogical work in and
across subject areas. The Social-Historical-Cultural Activity Theory is a theoreticalmethodological framework that enables both the school as a community and the
researchers, to collaboratively work in order to understand and transform
themselves, their practices and the students learning and development. In this
collaborative action, all participants are agents who together and intentionally
engage in a dialectical and dialogical process to critically understand and transform
each other's senses and meanings regarding literacy teaching-learning concepts and
practices, as well as the political roles played by the schools concerning students
and their cultural communities. Based on Vygotskys discussion, the Critical
Collaborative Intervention Research attempts to build an alternative learning
environment to involve researchers and participants in dialectical relations to probe a
self-reflective process as a means to foster an environment to critical understanding
and development. Therefore, this paper is organized to discuss new means to allow
participants to critically reflect on their thoughts and actions, as well as those of
others. The teacher education in service project started with a demand from the
school principal to the research group due to the students' difficulties to improve their
reading and writing since they had reached a plateau at a State Evaluation, and
were unable to overcome their scores. The project carried out fifteen one-hour
meetings every fortnight with the participation of 20 teachers, the managerial team
and 3 researchers. Data were analyzed to understand the critical collaboration
patterns built among participants and its importance in the questioning and
transforming of teaching and learning literacy practices.

17

The (im)possible emotion's transformation: sensation/expression

in the actor's work
Magiolino, Lavnia
Magiolino, Lavnia L. S.1*,
1

UNIBAN, lmagiolino@yahoo.com.br

The dynamics of sensation and expression of emotions have been object of intense
debate - since Diderot's work in the field of philosophy, for example. Recently,
Damasio, in the field of neurology, points this paradox between sensation and
expression at Hamlet. He shows the distinction between feeling, emotion dynamics
of affection, in terms of relations body and mind - body states and mental states.
Taking these notes as a provocation, we resumed Vygotsky's considerations about
the paradox of the actor and the need of the emotion's investigations take into
account the complex system of ideas, concepts, images which emotion is a part.
That is, the psychological color of system as a whole, that includes the sensation
and its external expression in the subjective experience. In our perspective (as we
argue in others works) the human emotion, as the other higher psychological
functions, develops and integrates the complex interfunctional system. In this paper,
taking some theoretical and methodological elaborations from the historical-cultural
perspective, in particular the contributions of Vygotsky (signification, catharsis and
drama) and Bakhtin (dialogical principle, instance of enunciation), we do an
analytical exercise of the empirical material collected in a research about the
emotions in the actor's work. In this material, registered by means of video recording
of a theater company's work , the process of signification of emotions is triggered
and analyzed in a situation that shows the (im)possibilities of transformation of
emotions in the ethic and aesthetic experience. We discussed, more specifically: I.
emotions in the the dynamics of the relationship between the higher functions and
the position of subjects in human activity; II. the affective dynamic (affection, feeling
and emotion): mind and body relationships in the sensation and expression of
emotions. III. catharsis: emotions in their (im)possibilities of transformation in the
dramatic constitution of subjects. We understand, in this movement, how human
emotion, in addition to physiological manifestations and body modifications (that
argues Damasio), is a complex and dialectical process, in which the cultural
characteristics are constitutive. This is a signal process (signification, sign and sense
production), impregnated with content or sense ideological and experiential.

18

The Relationship between Praxis and Methodology in Vygotsky's

Theory
Mahn, Holbrook
Mahn, Holbrook 1*,
1

University of New Mexico, hmahn@unm.edu

Recently, increased attention has been paid to the role played by praxis in
Vygotsky's theory (Chaiklin, 2011; Lantolf, 2012; Lantolf & Poehner, 2010). These
articles highlight Vygotsky's comments on the importance of practice as manifest in
applied psychology, the main driving force of the crisis [in psychology] in its final
phase is the development of applied psychology as a whole and practice pervades
the deepest foundations of the scientific operation and reforms it from beginning to
end (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 305). However, not as much attention has been paid to
Vygotsky's insistence that practice as the constructive principle of science requires a
philosophy, i.e. a methodology of science (p. 306). Without such a methodology, he
claimed applied psychology could be helpless, weak, superficial, and at times
ludicrous (p. 306). His goal as outlined in Crisis of Psychology was to develop a
methodology drawing on the work of Marx and Engels, who argued that it was not
possible to directly apply the general, philosophical tenets of dialectical materialism
to whatever is being studied, but instead it is necessary to develop an intermediary
theory based on the central concepts and categories of what is being studied. Marx
and Engels in The German Ideology developed the intermediary theory of historical
materialism to study human social formations, based on concepts and categories
such as value, commodity, production, class struggle, etc. drawn from examining the
origins and development of human societies. Vygotsky's goal was to develop an
intermediary theory to study the human psyche, a theory he referred to as
psychological materialism using concepts and categories such as thinking, speaking,
psychical processes, meaning, concept development, modes of thinking, etc. Even
though Vygotsky in Crisis clearly articulates his intention of developing an
intermediary theory to study the human psyche, this aspect of his work has not
received the same attention as other aspects of his work. This paper will look at how
the concept of praxis fits into Vygotsky theory and its relationship to his theory and
methodology as a whole, particularly in developing psychological materialism as an
intermediary theory to study the human psyche.

19

Formative intervention to the Defence Forces

Mkinen, Juha
Mkinen, Juha 1*,
1

National Defence University

This paper describes how cultural-historical activity theory has been employed within
the context of the Finnish Defence Forces. The aim of the paper is to orient the
networked subjects for the rediscovery and expansive reforging of the object the
outcome and, ultimately, the entire structure of their activity system. Secondly, the
intent is to show some problematic aspects of everyday action that is invisible to the
subjects and create the need for new kinds of solutions for developing their way of
working. The researcher acts as a catalyst and a formative interventionist in order to
provoke the networked subjects of the activity to play their influential role in the
collective move along the potential cycle of expansive learning and development.
Additionally, the paper introduces a second stimulus, the model of an activity system,
especially for the personnel of the national security sector. The paper shares the
challenge of the third generation activity theorists, developing conceptual tools for
crossing the boundaries between the interacting activity systems. According to the
principles of the activity theory, activity systems take shape and transform over
lengthy periods of time, whilst their problems and potentials can only be understood
against their own local history. Therefore, a synthesized historical analysis was
completed by the researcher, showing how both the object-historical, theoryhistorical and actual-empirical analyses are intertwined within a coherent historical
narrative of the organization in question. In this paper, the historical analysis will be
applied wherever the research process is based on interviews with the
representatives of the networked activity systems of the Finnish Defence Forces.
Local actors were challenged to reflect on the historical analysis and content
presented by the researcher, while forming an appropriate understanding of the
many kinds of contradictions being pivotal, as I would like to assume, for their multiorganizational learning. The paper provides some examples of how the CHAT
approach could be utilized, not only for the Defence/Armed Forces, but also for the
security sector in general, in the midst of global transformations.

20

Professional development in early childhood setting: Using a

constructivism approach.
Manningham, Suzanne
Manningham, Suzanne *,
1

Universit Laval

This communication presents the study Moved by quality! realized in Northern

Quebec (Canada). The research project includes observations of the quality of the
environment with the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale Revised (ECERSR) (n=112) and the Training Program using a constructivism approach (more than
200 teachers were trained). A sample of teachers was matched (n = 42) because
they are in the three stages of the study (pre training ( = 0,86), training and posttraining ( = 0,88)). First, this communication describes the comparison of the pre
and post-training observation results for this sample and the conclusion obtained
after the continuous process of training using the ECERS-R. The results show some
significant quality improvement in the environment to promote children optimal
development and a better preparation to school. Some of the most important
improvement are in the items Room arrangement for play, Space for gross motor
play, Toileting/diapering, Books and pictures, Encouraging children to communicate,
Fine motor, Sand/water, Dramatic play, Math/number, and Provisions for parents.
Secondly, the author presents the setting-up results of the Training Program. In
conclusion, the author discusses the possibility that the Training Program using a
constructivism approach is an answer to the question of maintaining the quality
improvement after the end of the training.

21

The Temporality of Cultural Translation and Intercultural

Exchange.
Manson, Margaret
Manson, Margaret 1*,
1

York University mmanson@edu.yorku.ca

This proposed paper describes an interdisciplinary ethnographic study that

investigated the kinds of questions, theoretical issues and practices related to
processes of cultural translation that emerge from the collaborative practices of
practitioners engaged in creating and performing intercultural forms of dance and
theatre in the Canadian diaspora. In order to conceptualize and theorize the dialogic
influence of diasporic locations on processes of cultural exchange (Benhabib 2002),
the study examined collaborative and creative theories and methods in South Asian
dance and Latin Canadian theatre in relation to 1) intercultural ways of knowing and
making meaning; 2) the dialogic emergence of culturally diverse forms, expressions
and representations of knowledge; and 3) from a critical perspective, the social
structures in which, and against which, processes of cultural translation are actively
engaged with in these two fields. The discussion elaborates on the concept of
cultural translation (Bery 2007) and the nature of insights that emerge from the
confluences of intercultural communication and understanding. The interrelated
tensions that emerge among issues of representation, individual agency and the
social activities of collaboration and creation prompt a consideration of what it means
to encounter 'the global dialectic of the unrepresentable' (Bhabha 1994, 317), that is,
the limits of understanding that contradict assumptions about cultural translation as a
process of coherence. The questions South Asian dance and Latin Canadian theatre
presently struggle with concern the need to negotiate existing gaps of socio-cultural
and historical knowledge and understanding, and the limits of creative articulation
encountered in diasporic spaces, in order to make more visible the intercultural
influences on work produced and performed in global and local contexts. Evidence of
communicative displacements that emerged from this study which I name moments
of cultural translation reveal the emergence of new practices of meaning-making and
forms of intercultural dance and theatre, along with the contexts that provoke and
sustain them (Cole & Engestrom 1993).

22

Pedagogy of Social Imagination in Language Learning/Teaching:

Expansive Learning/Teaching
Martinez-Alvarez, Patricia
Martinez-Alvarez, Patricia1*, Torres-Guzman, Maria1*, Ruiz-Fajardo
Guadalupe 2*,
1
2

Teachers College, Columbia University

Columbia University

A main concern in the field of multilingualism is how to better prepare teacher

candidates to teach ethnolinguistically diverse children, particularly if these children
are portrayed as being academically disadvantaged or have a learning disability. In
this session, we address Inventing the Future: Transformative Research, Imagination
and Collective Action for Social Change by sharing findings from the research
conducted on The Pedagogy of Social Imagination in Language Learning/Teaching
(PSILLT), a Title Professional Development Project, in which an interdisciplinary
team of faculty members and teacher candidates developed an expansive curriculum
to support bilingual primary students as they engaged in learning/teaching the
content of STEM fields in multilingual afterschool settings. We explore the
contradictions that multiple languages and cultures bring into classrooms and into
teacher education. We theorize these contradictions within Expansive Learning
which considers internal contradictions as the driving force of change and
development in activity systems (Engestrm, 1999, Engestrom & Sannino, 2010).
Using the idea of internal contradictions as a guiding principle of empirical research
has been possible thanks to Ilenkov's (1977, 1982, as cited in Engestrom, 2001)
conceptualizations and the work of scholars working within CHAT. This session
focuses on the findings of the first year of this three-year project. We propose to look
at a multidimensional treatment of learning/teaching, through the use of multiple
voices represented in three activity systems: the learning of the teacher candidates
(Activity System 1), of the classroom teachers (Activity System 2), and of the
children (Activity System 3). Our collective unit of analysis is the expansive learning
in the proposed activity systems. The partially shared object has been to understand
how to expand first and second grade emergent bilinguals' learning experiences in
language and science, particularly, 21 students in Spanish/English and 22 in
Chinese/English. We analyze the data using multiple methods so as to understand
the contradictions emerging in processes of teaching and learning. Overall, the
significance of this session lies in the way these three activity systems address the
issues of inventing the future by providing opportunities to reformulate what counts
as knowledge.

23

Dialogical construction of school connectedness for antisocial

youth.
Matsushima, Hideaki
Matsushima, Hideaki 1*,
1

University of Shiga prefecture. matsushiman@gmail.com

This study presents an activity theory(AT)-based analysis of how at-risk students can
connect with their school. According to recent reports, an increasing number of
students in Japan engage in violence directed at teachers and/or peers. The need to
reduce the level of this violence is a pressing issue. Many studies have found that
'school connectedness', which refers to the belief by students that adults in the
school care about their learning and about them as individuals, can contribute to the
prevention of serious antisocial behavior. This study examined how to build
relationships between at-risk students, on the one hand, and teachers and nondelinquent peers, on the other, based on data collected during 3 years of field
observations at a public junior high school. This school had been the scene of
substantial antisocial behavior (e.g., cut/skip lessons, violence among students and
between students and teachers, destruction of school property) since the beginning
of the academic year. These interactions were the primary foci of my observations.
The study yielded the following five findings: 1) The chaotic environment of this
school was a contributing factor to the antisocial behavior of at-risk students; it
ensued, in part, from the reactions of other students who were entertained by these
antisocial behaviors or who seemed indifferent to them despite private feelings of
discomfort. 2) To ameliorate this atmosphere, teachers tried to communicate with
normal students to enhance their experience of being protected and safe. 3) This
enhanced sense of protection and safety increased the active participation by normal
students and the cohesiveness of classes. 4) This cohesive atmosphere led some
at-risk youth to rejoin class activities. 5) The few students who were unable to rejoin
class activities experienced further loneliness, with the encouragement of a guidance
teacher who was always working with at-risk students regardless of their position.
These findings demonstrate that chaotic situations are not the products of at-risk
students' individual traits and that the extent to which at-risk students are integrated
in the school environment depends on the composition and cohesiveness of the
student body as a whole.

The technological production of motivation through self-monitoring

devices
Meinert Jensen, Lasse
Meinert Jensen, Lasse 1*,
1

Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen,

lasse.jensen@psy.ku.dk
The focus of this paper is how technological self-monitoring practices mediate
individual aspects of motivation. Using examples of self-monitoring from a recoveryoriented self-monitoring app for psychiatric outpatients, as well as examples from
participants in the Quantified Self-movement, I will first discuss the shortcomings of
two often encountered accounts of self-monitoring, the first of which could be called
a know-yourself-account (where monitoring is uncovering ones actual behavior or
true self) and the second an instrumental account (where monitoring is done to track
ones movement toward or away from a given goal). With outset in the empirical
cases, I will make the case for considering technological self-monitoring as practices
of self-cultivation, practices which takes place as part of persons pursuit of concerns
in their conduct of everyday life (Dreier, Holzkamp). As such, self-monitoring devices
are technologies that create new forms of engagement and shape motives. I will
discuss how a persons motives for conducting such self-cultivation are formed by
the demands of the societal structures within which their lives are situated
(Hedegaard, Leontiev), using quantifying self-monitoring practices as a case in point.
Keeping numbers on ones progress in domains such as physical activity or mood
may be a culturally promoted motive, but can also serve other purposes than
reenacting dominant cultural practices. The numbers yielded by technological selfmonitoring devices can also serve to link aspects of an individuals activities
together, providing weak resources for ordering participations and practices. As
such, standardized tools for self-monitoring may paradoxically lead to differentiation,
since their use in persons lives may mean a proliferation rather than a reduction of
meaning. In complex lives, self-monitoring devices act as tools for the production of
motivation, rather than just channels for it.

Using a Dialectic CHAT Methodology Framework for Understanding

Learning in a Participatory Budgeting Process
Melendez, Jos
Melendez, Jos1*,
1

University of Illinois @ Chicago, Learning Sciences Research Institute

This ethnographic case study focuses specifically on the Latino immigrant

community's participation in Participatory Budgeting (PB), in Chicago's 49th Ward.
This paper presents a comprehensive approach to the context; situating Spanishlanguage mediated participation in relationship to English-language mediated
participation. This situates Spanish-speaking participants in their lived-in world
context (Lave, 1988), vis-a-vis English-speaking participants. This paper focuses on
PB enactments, where establishing a communicative environment is central to the
planning and learning process. Planning environments provide a context where an
artefact, both tools and symbolic mediational means, creates new conditions for an
entirely new kind of connection between the elements of the present and the future
(Vygotsky and Luria, 1994, pg. 134). In this sense, this research defines planning as
additive, goal directed human actions that connect the present and the future. As the
editor of the Journal Planning Theory & Practice recently probed in an editorial, the
Merriam Webster dictionary defines planning as the act or process of making or
carrying out plans' while a plan is a method for achieving an end'' (Bertolini, 2011, pg
175). How this method or activity for achieving an end takes place is often times
related to how learning occurs in practice by those engaged in the planning process.
This paper presents a discourse analysis on a data set of PB with a focus on how
learning unfolds while engaging in democratic activity. Few researchers have
conducted in depth discourse analysis of the inter-relationship between language,
participation and learning (Doehler, 2002, Wells, 2011), in democratic activity
(Briggs, 1998). This paper presents findings on how moments of tension are
resolved dialectically, as evidence for learning within PB (Engestrom & Sannino,
2011). Learning in this paper refers to the change or development that occurs as a
result of the resolution of the tension that is identified in the discourse. This adds to
the literature of Dialectic CHAT (Dial-CHAT) methodology framework, Participatory
Planning, and Learning Sciences: using discourse analysis to identify contradictions
for studying participation and learning in a community-focused learning environment.

The creative process of beginners children in musical activities

Melo, Airma
Melo, Airma 1*,
1

UFPE - airmafarias2@gmail.com

Music, like language form is a human trait that is present in the human life from birth
and therefore influences the cognitive, social, emotional and affective development
of many who come in contact with it, since most an early age. On contact with the
world of sound, children recognize different sounds and are able to play them and
reinvent them. This is possible because the human being is able to imagine, create,
give new meaning to their experiences. According to the socio- historical perspective
of Vygotsky, assumed in this work, all human activity generating something new is a
creative act and the creative imagination is a process that transforms culturally
reality. As the creative imagination is present in human life early and it gives the
most varied cultural experiences, we can say that musical activities are an opportune
time to verify the manifestation of the creative action of the children and analyze the
factors affecting this action. The overall objective of the research was to understand
the creative process of children 4-6 years of age in beginners musical activities. Five
meetings were held with video record and was made an analysis of the dynamics of
the development of the phenomenon studied ( creative process ) to demonstrate its
nature and essence knowing process and, therefore, was taken as the unit of
analysis the sounds and movements performed by the children when they were
asked to improvise a sound for certain situations presented in various musical
activities experienced in the meetings. Because it is a process, the creative act must
be investigated by considering the overlap of the various relations with past
experiences with future objectifications and the demands of the present. Thus, the
analysis required a constant movement between different activities so that they could
grasp the issues involved in the creative process, manifest through the sounds and
movements performed by children, which revealed their cultural heritage and the
meanings produced during the activities. Keywords: creative process, musical
activities.

Bakhtin, Marx and Vygotskij polyphony, dialogue and

transcendance in the context of a border zone
Methi, Jan Selmer
Methi, Jan Selmer *,
My paper will connect to the topic: Being heard across borders, the interaction of
cultures in a border zone. The text is built on four articles: 'Dotojevskijs polyfone
roman i lys av litteraturkritikken', 'Dialog hos Dostojevskij' by Bakhtin,
'Problemstillinger i undervisningen og den intellektuelle utviklingen I skolealderen' by
Vygotskij and Categories in Activity Theory: Marx philosophy just in time by Jensen.
In these articles the concepts polyphony, dialogue, zone of proximal development
and transcendence of practice will be in focus. I would like to discuss the relation
between these concepts and reflect on how they can be productive in understanding
the human way of living and development. According to Bakhtin one cannot
understand Dostojevskij's heterogenic material as one unified world related to one
author conscious. If one does, the contradictions cannot be solved. The incompatible
can only be understood as independent consciousnesses within not only one
horizon, but several, complete and equal horizons. The dialogue's potential infinity is
Dostojevskij's answer to the contradictions in his novels. The word's double voice
character plays a central role on this theater. There is no end. Jensen shows how
this can be done in practice, and how it was possible for Marx to argue for a
transcendence of Civil Society. My discussion will also be based on practical
experience from a Joint Master program in Borderology (border dialog) between the
University of Nordland, Norway and Murmansk State Humanities University, Russia.
The master program is placed in the border zone between Norway and Russia. The
experience gives some idea on transcendence in a cross border relationship, and
how new knowledge is to be understood. Preliminary referensis: Bakhtin, Mikhail:
Latter og dialog. Oslo 2003. Enerstvedt, Regi Th: Mennesket som virksomhet. Oslo
1982 Seikkola, Jaakko: pne samtaler. Oslo 2012 Linqvist, Gunilla (red): Vygotskij
om lring som udviklingsvilkr. 2004 Wegerif, Rubert: Dialogic or Dialectic? 2008
Jensen, Uffe J: Categories in Activity Theory: Marxs Philosophy Just-in-time. 1999

Vygotskys theatre reviews and his cultural-historical psychology

Michell, Michael
Michell, Michael 1*,
1

University of New South Wales

Access to new and unpublished Vygotskian texts is revolutionising our

understanding of Vygotskys cultural-historical theory. Recent analysis of new texts,
notebooks and published and unpublished material from the Vygotsky family
archives are giving new insights into the development and trajectory of Vygotskys
thinking and have identified the origins of some of his later mature theories in his
early texts. With this understanding, has come a new appreciation of the
periodisation of Vygotskys work. The literary themes and preoccupations that
characterised his early writings on literature, theatre and psychology of art in the
early 1920s re-emerge after his instrumental period of the second half of the 1920s
in texts such as Thinking and Speech during his last and most productive 1932-34
period. In this context, a significant corpus of new material is a series of written
works, theatre reviews and literary essays by Lev Vygotsky, originally published in
Gomel newspapers Nash Ponedelnik (Our Monday) and Pravda of Polesie (The
Truth of Polesia) between 1922-1923, before becoming a psychologist in Moscow.
This material has been recently published online in Russian by the Dubna
Psychological Journal as part of its project to collect and publish Vygotskys
complete works and invite translation, analysis and commentary on these texts from
international scholars. Taking up this invitation, this paper presents findings of a
textual and content analysis of selected translations of Vygotskys 1922-1923 theatre
reviews. It considers Vygotskys developing theory of drama throughout the theatre
reviews, in particular; his notion of aesthetic transitions from literary to dramatic
forms the influence of the Stanislavskian school on the role and consciousness of
the actor, perezhivanie, and living on the stage links between these ideas and the
psychological concepts developed in other works. The paper argues that the reviews
show that Vygotskys life-long preoccupation with human consciousness, nascent in
his aesthetics and articulated in his later psychological construct of affect-based
consciousness in child development (perezhivanie, experiencing), had its origins and
foundations in his drama theory.

An Imperative for an Activist Stance in Cross-Cultural Research

Miller Cleary, Linda
Miller Cleary, Linda 1*,
1

Professor Emerita- University of Minnesota

Though all research is steeped in complicated methodological and ethical

quandaries, it is further complicated when a researcher crosses cultural borders.
This presentation will offer insights about respectful, cross-cultural research, with
specific attention to the imperative for an activist stance in the research and its
dissemination. The presentation is based on seventy in-depth interviews with
researchers who offered their experience, insights, and analyses of crossing cultural
borders in research. The interviewed researchers (from mainstream academia and
from marginalized groups in academia) hailed from Australia, Belize, Canada,
England, New Zealand, and the USA, and most all discussed the imperative of an
activist stance in collaborative preparation, completion, and dissemination of
research. Given the increasingly multi-cultural nature of regional research
populations and the recent global collaborations, this work is particularly important.
Many more researchers find themselves working with other-cultured researchers and
participants, especially as the concept of culture itself now reaches far beyond
ethnicity. With increasingly diverse demographics and with the increased
acknowledgement of alternative epistemologies and methodologies, researchers
need to think through activist aspects of research previously ignored by Western
tradition. The presentation will not, however, provide simple answers. Instead, by
tapping the reflexivity of interviewed researchers, it will allow the attendee to
problematize their own research and deepen their considerations of what they do
and why they do it. The imperative of an activist stance falls naturally from the
richness that cross-cultural collaborations bring to the researchers, to the knowledge
base surrounding real world problems, and to considerations of reciprocity. Author
and researcher narratives, many humorous, some heart-wrenching, some heartwarming, will contextualize complex concepts. Critical narratives (derived from very
particular times, places, and lived experience) contextualize theory, allowing
attendees to inductively review their research beliefs and plans. Whereas the author
will take the liberty to juxtapose quotes to develop complex considerations, the
interviewed researchers have acted to introduce their own themes, and they have,
by no means, been reverential. In discussing their activist stances in research, the
interviewed researchers have much to share.

Dispersibility and Homology of Community Empowerment

Miyazaki, Takashi
Miyazaki, Takashi1 *, McClenaghan, Pauline2 *, Otaka Kendo3 *, Takeda
Ruiko4 *,
1

miyazaki@edu.hokudai.ac.jp
pauline@lifestartfoundation.org
3
k_otaka@seigakuin-univ.ac.jp
4
ruiko@seisen-jc.ac.jp
2

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of community' that enables the selfindependence of its members. The fundamental function of such a community is the
transformation of the habitus (Bourdieu 1984) as a basis of self. Habitus works in the
same way as Kan'ts formula of self, but not as an idealistic imagination but rather as
a social mechanism that enables and raises everyday experience to form a total and
unified self. However, if community is unchangeable, it will function only to control
self-formation to fit the integrated mind' of the community. A community that can
emancipate participants, on the other hand, is one with a loose coupling among
participants and between participants and community. In this case, we may find what
Beach (2003) referred to as consequential transition' a process of identity change.
Our topic shares much with Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of legitimated
peripheral participation, however, our focus is concentrated on loose coupling rather
than the participation process, because in our view A developmental coupling
encompasses aspects of both changing individuals and changing social activity'
(Beach) . From this view point, a heterogeneous community of parallel distributed
units', proposed as a condition for the emergence of expansive learning by
Engestrom (1987), provides for us an analytical guideline; a guideline which for the
purposes of this paper is composed of two aspects: Dispersibility and Homology.
Dispersibility refers to distributed processes organizing learning, and homology those
that provide for the possibilities of sympathizing and synchronizing among
independent participating agents. Our task is to make clear the function,
relationships and conditions of development of dispersibility and homology in the
three cases we use to derive our hypothetical model of community empowerment.
The first and second of the three case studies are community based social
enterprises in Japan. The third case refers to the work of an organization in Northern
Ireland.

Investigating the perezhivanie of second language acquisition

Mok, Nelson
Mok, Nelson1*,
1

Monash University, kh.nelson.mok@gmail.com

The work of Vygotsky provides the foundation for what has come to be known as the
sociocultural approach to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, an
alternative to traditional cognitivist and reductionist approaches. However, the
ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of the sociocultural approach to SLA
have been shaped by SLA;s Chomskian origins, leading to research that is typically
based on observation of second language (L2) classroom settings. In this context,
research has aimed to better understand specific forms of mediation mediation (e.g.,
private speech and scaffolding), internalization, or the zone of proximal development
(ZPD). In this presentation, I argue that Vygotsky's concept of perezhivanie (lived
experience), often overlooked in the field of SLA, can provide the basis for an
epistemology and methodology that can complement current sociocultural
approaches to SLA. Specifically, I argue that an autoethnographic methodology can
provide valuable insight into mediation in the learning of an L2 while also challenging
existing epistemologies. A methodological basis in perezhivanie allows for an
investigation of the ways in which the unique histories and experiences of leaners
influence their perception of their learning activity and environment(s), which
subsequently influence the deployment and usage of mediation in their learning. This
focus on the learner's complex perceptions and interpretations of their environment
enables researchers first to avoid the tendency towards reductionism inherent in SLA
(e.g., reducing learning to either learner or environmental variables) and second, to
embrace a richer holistic elaboration of the process of learning. This alternative
methodology supports an investigation of the self-directed language learning
contexts (e.g., websites like Livemocha, Babbel, and Busuu) that are becoming
increasingly popular. Beyond the pedagogical control of formal educational
institutions, there is a need to understand not how teachers can intervene, but
instead, how learners actually manage and mediate their own learning. Supporting
this methodological argument, I discuss what can be gained through
autoethnography, drawing on a study of my own learning of Mandarin as an L2. I
situate this discussion in recent calls for the epistemological and methodological
expansion of SLA research and rejections of top-down, one-size-fits-all pedagogy.

Intergenerational family dialogues: A tool for studying development

over time.
Monk, Hilary
Monk, Hilary 1*,
1

Monash University

Intergenerational family research is both rich and complex. The choice of theoretical
and methodological approaches that afford investigation into the everyday lives of
young children, parents and grandparents can be challenging. In addition family
research commonly spans two generations, with data generated from both
generations simultaneously. Less common are projects spanning three generations.
This presentation introduces a methodological tool framed in cultural-historical theory
that enables researchers and family members spanning three generations to work
together as co-researchers using visual digital technologies to explore their everyday
lived experiences across and between generations. Studying development in motion
over time is a central aspect of cultural-historical theory (Vygotsky, 1987, 1997,
1998). Vygotsky (1997) argued that rather than investigate the end result of
development we should explore the every process of genesis or establishment ...
caught in living aspect (p. 71). This requires methods of inquiry that move away from
studying separate and developed functions to methods that are suitable when
studying multifaceted, dynamic, socially formed whole processes. The
intergenerational family dialogue as a methodological tool builds on the broad
concept of informal conversations enabling the exchange of ideas between young
children, their parents and grandparents (Monk, 2014). Family members act as coresearchers involved in the iterative process of generating and analysing visual data.
The verbal conversation and the visual data combine during the intergenerational
family dialogue meeting to provide a rich platform for the investigation of relations,
transitions and processes of learning and development occurring in intergenerational
families across time. This presentation contains illustrations drawn from a study of
three Australian families investigating their everyday family practices (Monk, 2010).
Intergenerational family dialogues were found to facilitate the exploration of family
development and learning in motion, over time and between generations. The
everyday practices of the families were found to be multifaceted expressions of
change across generations. Although the dialogues presented here are anchored in
a small number of families the findings contribute to a wider understanding of
community and societal practices.

10

Teachers learning how to teach mathematics

Nacarato, Adair Mendes
Nacarato, Adair Mendes1*, Grando, Regina1*, Lopes Celi Espasandin1*,
1

Sao Francisco University

This paper is inserted in a wider research which has as its focus the professional
development of teachers who work in the literacy cycle focusing on literacy practices.
The study was carried out with seven teachers who teach mathematics for 6 to 9year-old students. The teachers work at public schools in cities from the countryside
of the state of Sao Paulo/Brazil. The aim of the report presented herein is to identify
and analyse teachers' learning when they analyse the students' conceptual
elaboration process. The work is supported by the historical-cultural perspective,
having as a reference the studies of Lev Vygotsky and his followers, mainly in what
regards the dynamics of conceptual elaboration and the pedagogical mediations.
The practices of these teachers are centred on problem raising environments, where
students expose their ideas, listen to their colleagues' positions and negotiate
mathematical meanings. This process is monitored by the group teacher who
mediates, builds up meanings for the mathematical concepts and supports the
students' development. The analysis material consists in narratives written by the
teachers and transcriptions of the group meetings with the researchers, which are
audio-recorded and/or video-recorded. The results reveal that these teachers, when
acquiring theoretical references about literacy practices, the intentionality of the
educational act and the pedagogical measurement as the central elements for the
students' processes of conceptual elaboration, learn and validate new ways of
teaching mathematics. The analysis of the different forms of students' mathematical
reasoning, expressed in the interactive dynamics of the classroom or in written texts,
has enabled these teachers to produce new senses and meanings for school
mathematics. They could understand the importance of the dialogue and the
circulation of a mathematical discourse in the classroom as well as the need of
organizing pairs with students at similar levels of development, aiming to reach new
development stages; and they could evaluate and reflect on their actions. This
analysis reveals important levels of teachers' learning and consequently the
professional development of these teachers.

11

Working for social change: new possibilities through family

partnerships in early childhood education in Chile
Newman, Linda
Newman, Linda R1*, Woodrow, Christine2 *, Arthur Leonie M2 , Staples
Kerry2 ,
1
2

The University of Newcastle. Linda.Newman@newcastle.edu.au

University of Western Sydney

This paper challenges individualising theories and research in literacy learning. Such
research situates children and families in disadvantaged communities as in deficit in
terms of their aspirations for their children's futures, their provision of learning
opportunities, and as disinterested or incapable in terms of engagement with their
children's learning and schools as the main or only site for literacy learning.
Research shows that these views lead to deficit-based approaches to literacy
teaching, and models of literacy teaching that are skills-based and teacher directed.
Counter discourses draw on sociocultural theories to engage educators and poor
families in social change. The Futuro Infantil Hoy (FIH) program employs such a
discourse to extend the scope of use of sociocultural theories in early childhood
education by reconceptualising program delivery on a large scale. The program
design recognises social-cultural-historical aspects of children's literacy engagement
in family and community contexts. Pedagogy in the program is conceptualised as a
jointly constructed form of social practice that influences literacy learning success.
Drawing on the mediation aspect of sociocultural theory, and its emphasis on speech
and learning the program embeds the notion that human beings also shape the very
forces that are active in shaping them (Daniels, 2012, p.2). FIH is transnational and
has been implemented in Chile in a region of social disadvantage with the country's
lowest educational outcomes. Families are viewed in FIH as co-constructors of their
children's learning. Educators, children and families in twenty early childhood centres
and schools have come together within a partnership discourse to change learning
environments, pedagogical approaches, the roles of pedagogical leaders and
communication practices resulting in a repositioning of the role of the families and
stronger links to family and community knowledge. The data collected in focus
groups and a survey refutes views of families as disengaged and disinterested and
outlines the strength of family aspirations, and their perceptions of their role in their
children's education. Findings indicate that when sociocultural approaches are used
to connect researchers, educators, families and children in learning communities,
social change is indeed possible in very poor communities.

12

Using cultural-historical activity theory and critical realism to

analyze the emergence of contradictions in bilingual teacher
preparation
Nunez, Iskra
Ostorga, Alcione1*, Nunez, Iskra2*,
1

University of Texas-Pan American, Curriculum and Instruction,

aostorga@utpa.edu
2
University of Texas-Pan American, Mathematics and C&I,
nunezi@utpa.edu

The hegemonic push for accountability has reached higher education and teacher
preparation programs. The purpose of this article is to use the analytic tools of both a
cultural-historical activity theoretical (CHAT) approach and a critical realist (CR)
philosophy to explore the often-contradictory nature of a bilingual teacher
preparation program in the US-Mexico borderlands. It examines the curricular
modifications implemented during a five-year research project, which aimed to
improve the quality of bilingual teacher preparation in a university in south Texas. On
the one hand, CHAT analyses examine different components of a modified bilingual
program, as the rich unit of analysis or activity system. A longitudinal analysis of
focus group discussions traces this activity system through four expansive cycles
producing evidence of the emergence of contradictions, such as: (1) preparing for
certification versus preparing for profession, (2) additive pedagogy versus
subtractive practice, (3) additive pedagogy versus personal experience, and (4)
faculty working in isolation versus faculty working in collaboration. On the other
hand, CR analyses examine this set of contradictions within its three-level stratified
vision of reality: (1) the real accountability policies, (2) the actual borderlands
community and (3) the empirical teacher preparation program. These findings
suggest that to transform higher education and promote social change, teacher
preparation programs would benefit from developing pedagogies that are tailored to
their specific communities and participants. A conclusion is that CHAT, with its
concept of contradiction, enables an examination of the emergence of contradictions
in terms of an effort to develop a border specific pedagogy for bilingual teacher
preparation. CR, with its concept of a three-level reality, enables an examination of
such emergence as interacting in stratified coalescing. This combination of CHAT
and CR analysis may contribute to a deeper understanding of the development of
bilingual teachers by moving beyond accountability-based trends into imagining new
teacher education programs that may lead to eudemonic and egalitarian societies.

13

Formative interventions in leadership development in early

childhood education
Nuttall, Joce
Nuttall, Joce1*,
1

Australian Catholic University

This paper examines the application of the Vygotskian concept of 'double stimulation'
to the learning of leaders in early childhood services during two recent workplace
interventions in Victoria, Australia. These interventions sought to identify and resolve
systemic tensions in the organisation of the early childhood leaders' workplaces. The
participants understood these tensions to be confounding their attempts to focus on
the primary object of their work, which they identified as leading the learning of early
childhood staff in order to enhance the quality of curriculum and pedagogy provided
for children. The paper begins by describing the nature and function of double
stimulation from a cultural-historical perspective and how this was applied
developmentally during 'change labs' with the early childhood leaders. Data were
generated throughout, with the final data set taking the form of multiple audiorecorded individual interviews with the 14 participants and manual transcriptions of a
combined total of nine workshop sessions. An overview of the project's interpretivist
approach to data analysis is provided, including the application of a priori sensitising
constructs including as 'tools' and 'rules' and the identification of emergent constructs
such as 'risk'. The main part of the paper elaborates on a fundamental tension
identified by the participants in their analysis of their workplace conditions: the
struggle between 'professional desire' (to enhance the learning of others in a way
that fulfils one's identity as a leader) and 'managing risk' (to protect one's employer
from allegations of non-compliance with regulations). Efforts to identify a (somewhat
elusive) 'germ cell' that could be mobilised to resolve this tension are described,
including the process of how the participants engaged with the slippery concept of
'confidence to lead' in the workplace. Based on the description of these efforts, an
argument is made for the importance of questions as a tool for leadership in early
childhood education. The paper concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of double
stimulation in mobilising leaders' motives in early childhood education.

14

Evald Ilyenkov: An Anthropology for the Activity Approach

Oittinen, Vesa
Oittinen, Vesa1*,
1

Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

My paper will concentrate on the problem of a Marxist anthropology.Because of the

obvious insufficiency of the received interpretations of a Marxist anthropology, it was
thus not accidental, that in the 1950's and 1960's as Marx's 'Economic-philosophic
manuscripts' of 1844 after the war became more widely known, there emerged an
important discussion of possible new dimensions in Marxist concept of Man. This
new, humanistic interpretation of Marxist anthropology was at the same time
conceived as a critique of the older, prevalent view inherited from the theoreticians of
the Second International. On the other side, there emerged a bit later a reaction from
the side of Althusser, who on the contrary insisted that Marxism is not a humanism at
all. but a form of 'anti-humanism'. The 50's--60's discussion was not reproduced as
such in the Soviet Union, but there were parallel intellectual movements discernible.
E.V.Il'enkovs comments on Adam Schaff reflect the Western discussion, but Il'enkov
is attempting to give an original answer not only to the problem of alienation in itself,
but even to the main theme of the possibility of a Marxian anthropology in general.
In the Soviet Union of the 60's and 70's, Genrikh Batishchev (1924--1991) stood
maybe nearest to the Western existential-humanist readings of Marx's anthropology
and concept of activity. Il'enkov and Batishchev, which yet in the early 60's had been
close friends, became gradually adversaries, as Il'enkov could not accept
Batishchev's 'Fichtean' point of view on the human activity. Although Il'enkov does
not mention Batishchev explicitely in his assessment of Adam Schaff's analysis of
the concept of Man in Marxism, the discussions of the two Moscow philosophers
were on the background of Il'enkov's critique of Schaff. The answers given by
Il'enkov bear an important consequence as to the activity theory, too. Il'enkov's
critique of Schaff is convincing, but at the same time it seems that he has not
recognized the humanistic potential of Marx's 'Grundrisse' in a sufficient manner. In
'Grundrisse' Marx already posits the problem of alienation and human activity in an
essentially another manner than in the Manuscripts of 1844.

15

Subjective Process: teacher's formation and constitution

Oliveira, Luciana
Oliveira, Luciana1*, Tacca, Maria Carmen2*,
1

Universidade de Brasi-lia
luciana.lemes@gmail.com
2
mctacca@yahoo.com.br
Formation courses intended for teachers often receive harsh criticism for being
planned and developed disconnected to the teachers daily demands. So critics are
made about the way some teachers training courses are designed and organized.
There is a constant need for investigation on the format and content in which those
courses that are proposed. It is also demanded research about formatives moments
in which teachers are included as subjects of their own action. With this objective,
during the year 2013, this research was carried aiming to follow the pedagogical
experiences of two teachers, the theoretical discussion was based on the Theory of
Subjectivity in a Cultural Historical perspective, by Gonzalez Rey. They were
teaching on the first years of fundamental school of the public system in Brasilia,
Brazil. The study tried to identify the teachers formative demands on a daily basis as
well as their perception in the courses they had attended. They were also escorted in
a specific formative course in which the teachers were heard in order to identify the
courses defaults according to their needs. The methodology was based on the
Qualitative Epistemology of Gonzalez Rey. It is defined as having constructive,
communicative and interpretative character in appreciation of singular themes which
specifies the relationship between researcher and the object of research. With that
objective in mind, we used observation, interviews, workshops and written
production instruments as research tools. The main results were: The teachers
stated that the attended courses were good on an operative way but they did not
implicated the teacher making them impactful in the constitution of a professional
practice and the courses also did not portray them as the active subject of a more
autonomous pedagogical practice with their own positioning. The results showed that
the formative experiences cannot be distant of the possibility of the teacher as an
active subject, since that is the existing measure to create innovative pedagogical
alternatives within the daily challenges in the educative experience.

16

Social-ecological Dimensions of Learning: Implications for

educational quality and access
Olvitt, Lausanne
Olvitt, Lausanne1*,
1

Rhodes University, Environmental Learning Research Centre

Processes of learning and social change are not only recognised as socially,
culturally and historically emergent, but also as inextricably bound up in the
materiality of human practices, including (but not limited to) technologies,
architectures, geographies and workspace configurations. Drawing on new
materialist perspectives, the paper argues firstly that attention to the material
dimensions of learning throughout the life-course complements and extends insights
offered by cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) because it can give educational
researchers better purchase on contextual and relational dimensions of practice.
Building on this position, the paper argues that the concept of the sociomaterial must
itself be broadened to include the social-ecological' a perspective that highlights the
intertwined nature of society and ecological systems and reveals how human activity
is shaped by its relations with natural resources, habitats, species, landscapes and
ecosystems. These relations with the natural world are simultaneously constitutive
of, and constituted by social and cultural practices. Through illustrative examples,
framed by CHAT, of people's experiences of learning in the rural Eastern Cape
province of South Africa, the paper explores the extent to which social-ecological
realities are more than a contextual backdrop' to learning, but instead permeate and
shape teaching and learning practices often with dire consequences for social
justice, democracy and sustainable development. The paper concludes by proposing
that educational research and policy responses would benefit from closer attention to
the social-ecological dimensions of micro learning processes (such as at the
classroom level) as well as macro learning processes (such as how communities
learn to respond to socio-economic, cultural, climatic or political change, amongst
others). These insights are of particular relevance to educational researchers
working in contexts of development and change, most especially in the context of
climate change and the rapid and well-documented decline of global ecological
systems.

17

Mediation with digital artefacts building information modeling in

design collaboration
Paavola, Sami
Paavola, Sami 1*, Miettinen, Reijo 2,
1
2

University of Helsinki, sami.paavola@helsinki.fi

University of Helsinki, reijo.miettinen@helsinki.fi

Digital tools and digital objects have characteristics which seem distinct from
traditional tools and artefacts like distributedness, editability, or their unbounded
nature. Accordingly, as mediating artefacts they change the nature of human
perception, action, and interaction. In our presentation we analyze a complex digital
technology, building information modeling (BIM) and how it is changing collaboration
between design partners in multiorganizational construction projects in Finland. BIM
refers to a family of three-dimensional virtual model software which allows integration
of knowledge of various design disciplines. BIM technologies are used more and
more in construction projects in parallel with CAD technologies and paper drawings.
We will analyze theoretical concepts and approaches used for understanding what
BIM is. They include 1) information infrastructures (including the meaning of
standards), 2) BIM as a boundary object, and 3) the concept of digital and nonmaterial objects in the theories of sociomateriality. These concepts provide help in
understanding some aspects and dimensions of BIM. We maintain, however, that
they are not enough for making sense of BIM in construction projects. In our analysis
BIM models are understood as an evolving series of intermediary objects, gradually
accumulating blueprints for a building. These intermediary objects have a novel kind
of spatial concreteness. A complex digital technology such as BIM is a challenge for
the concept of mediation in activity theory. As a multifunctional system of artefacts
the functions of BIM are not easily analyzed in terms of a distinction between a tool
and a sign, or an object and means. Intermediary models are objects of
transformation and central means of collaborative design. The finalized models are
representations and blueprints of a future building and incomplete means for the
construction process.

18

The mediation of meaning in schooling young unaccompanied

refugees
Pastoor, Lutine De Wal
Pastoor, Lutine De Wal 1*,
1

Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies

The intention of this paper is to explore the decisive mediational role of schools in
supporting unaccompanied refugee minors to meet the various cognitive and
psychosocial demands they meet when resettling in Norway. Unaccompanied
refugee minors are young refugees under the age of 18, who are separated from
their parents and neither have caregivers with parental responsibility in their host
country. On arrival in Norway, most of them are between 15 and 17 years of age,
and about 80 per cent are boys. In recent years, the unaccompanied minors
primarily came from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Currently, many come from
Eritrea, Morocco and Algeria. The young refugees often come from places where
schooling has been disrupted or no formal schooling is available. Moreover, many
have been exposed to traumatic events prior to or during their flight. As a result,
most of them have high educational needs and require special attention regarding
their psychosocial needs. They are often referred to as a vulnerable group of
refugees who need special support. During resettlement, the young refugees
experience a number of critical transitions simultaneously. Three transitional
processes important in relation to schools are processes of socialization, integration
and recuperation, i.e. the construction of a meaningful life after potentially
traumatizing pre-migration events as well as the challenges life in exile brings about.
A school environment that promotes mastery, social inclusion and coherence in life
may allow refugee minors to cope successfully with the various demands
encountered towards becoming active participants in society. The paper draws on
data from a qualitative research project studying the resettlement experiences of
young unaccompanied refugees - with a particular focus on schooling. The study is
based on participant observation and interviews with the young refugees
themselves, teachers and other professionals. The sociocultural and ecological
approach employed in the paper, entails a holistic perspective (Antonovsky, 1987;
Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Rogoff, 1990; Ungar, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978). The adopted
approach views learning and development as a process that is inherently social and
cultural; and as a process whereby meaning is constructed through joint interaction
with significant others, adults or peers, in school and beyond.

19

The musical activity in the cultural-historical perspective

Pederiva, Patricia
Pederiva, Patricia 1*,
1

pat.pederiva@gmail.com

Music, even nowadays, in many educational spaces, is conceived as an activity that

favors some students denominated as talented to the detriment of those who are not.
This article deals with how musical activity can be thought through an educational
focus based on cultural-historical perspective. Mainly with the studies of Vygotsky
sought to demonstrate that it is possible to organize the musical activity educational
space in order to develop the musicality of all who are involved in the process,
without discrimination . The cultural-historical perspective helps us to think of art as
an educational activity as an evolving process, in which the more experiences,
intentionally organized for this purpose, are provided to children, more material they
will have for creation, artistic expression, artistic and human development.

20

Student-centred pedagogical reforms in Asian countries under

Activity Theory framework
Pham, Thanh
Pham, Thi Hong Thanh 1*, Renshaw, Peter 1,
1

School of Education, The University of Queensland, Australia

There is renewed interest among policy-makers in Asian countries in student-centred

pedagogies both with regard to schooling systems and the university sector (Jensen
et al. 2012). The focus on student-centred pedagogies in Asian countries coincides
with economic policies designed to shift the economy from reliance solely on labourintensive and large-scale forms of industrial production to knowledge-based forms of
employment where innovation and problem-solving are key requirements of
employees. However, despite concerted efforts by Asian governments to promote
student-centredness, most classrooms are still organised around assumptions of
teacher-centredness (Jackson 2002). One explanation offered for this lack of change
suggests that student-centred pedagogy has disparities with the socio-cultural
context of Asian countries but reformers and educators in Asia have tended to
borrow Western philosophies and practices directly without attempting to address
these disjunctures. A theoretical framework is required so that the cultural context
can be analysed and strategic action planned to implement reforms authentically in
local conditions. Such a framework will help reformers in Asian countries implement
student-centred pedagogy in line with addressing the differences between their local
educational contexts, cultures and history and those where the student-centred
pedagogies were designed. This paper applies Activity Theory to develop such a
framework. It is noted that Activity Theory has evolved through three generations of
research (Engestrom 2001) with three different perspectives. The paper will discuss,
therefore, student-centredness reforms under the perspectives offered by all three
generation models. However, the paper will focus on discussing how studentcentredness reforms in Asia should be framed by the third generation. This is
because this generation appears most useful in guiding reforms to policy and
implementation. It both reveals and addresses tensions and contradictions between
student-centredness and the socio-cultural context of Asian countries. Addressing
these tensions and contradictions, according to Engestrom (2001), is the key for
success because they are dynamic forces triggering action for change. The paper
will also especially draw upon research conducted in Vietnamese higher education
institutes to elaborate the kinds of tensions and contradictions that occurred.

21

Analyzing qualitative materials using NVivo 9. A CHAT analysis of

tasks for early grades.
Plakitsi, Katerina
Theodoraki, Xarikleia1 Katerina, Plakitsi, Katerina1
1
2

University of Ioannina, xtheodoraki@cc.uoi.gr

University of Ioannina, kplakits@cc.uoi.gr

This paper is part of a funded PhD Thesis, which try to connect Science Education
with the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). It is an innovative case study in
the field of Science Education, which focuses on designing and analyzing tasks on
magnetism and buoyancy in early grades, according to CHAT. We organize two
interventions, one for each issue, A. Grandpa Archimedes and the principle of
buoyancy and B. Uncle Thales and the magnets. Our data comes from early grade
classes and divided into videotaped material, high resolution photos and drawings of
pupils, based on buoyancy and magnetic issues. We use Nvivo 9 as a tool both for
organizing and analyzing those data. We analyze and categorize the interactive
systems resulting from the qualitative data, the effect of group members and the use
of tools. This software allows us to classify, sort and arrange information; examine
relationships resulting from data; and combine analysis with CHAT methods and
elements. Using qualitative research software helps researchers to manage,
abstraction and unstructured information in a friendly and efficient manner. The
modern socio-cultural learning environments, seek a more direct involvement of
pupils in the educational process as well as the safest and most flexible engagement
of teachers in it. Pupils are trained to interact with other pupils, and other members
of the educational community, so as to develop new skills such as cooperation,
critical thinking and understanding of scientific concepts. Development of those skills
requires changes in traditional learning environment. Our research seeks to promote
all those modern aspects in the field of Science Education. Results of the study,
suggest ways of expanding the boundaries of Science Education in the early grades
and improve the learning environment in the field of Science Education. Moreover
promote and highlights the researcher- teacher role in the class. This research has
been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund ESF)and
Greek national funds through the Operational Program 'Education and Lifelong
Learning' of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research
Funding Program: Heracleitus II. Investing in knowledge society through the
European Social Fund.

22

What colour is cancer? An Interactive Project for Primary

Education
Plakitsi, Katerina
Kolokouri, Eleni1 Katerina, Plakitsi, Katerina1
1
2

University of Ioannina, ekolokouri@gmail.com

University of Ioannina, kplakits@cc.uoi.gr

While cancer is a group of diseases that affect millions of people around the globe, it
still remains a difficult subject to discuss with children probably because of the large
emotional costs it inflicts on people. With one in three people facing a cancer
diagnosis in their lifetime, school-children are likely to be facing cancer within their
family or their circle of friends. It is therefore a major priority for school-children to
understand what cancer is and how it can be treated. The interactive project What
colour is cancer? is part of the project Fear which is organised by the Arts and
Culture Committee in the University of Ioannina, Greece. It was designed within a
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework in which knowledge is a
dynamic activity system and the participants, the institutions, the methods, the tools,
the objects are connected in a cultural, historical and social process. In this sense,
knowledge overcomes its individual identity and becomes a collective activity with
applications in science and society. Application of CHAT is regarded as an
evaluation tool of the activities in different learning environments. The project aims to
inform primary school students about the function of cells and about cancer in an
age-appropriate way. In this project, 60 primary school students at a time, watch a
presentation about the function of cells as well as the invasion of cancer cells and
the destruction of the tissue around them. Then, they are divided in six groups and
each group works for fifteen minutes at a station. With the sound of a bell they move
to the next station and thus they change until all the groups have worked at all
stations. Each station includes an activity about cell function. At the end of the
project students will have become familiar with the essential facts about cancer and
face life with courage, persistence and optimism. Feelings of anger, anxiety or even
depression that may come up and manifest in various ways will have been replaced
by positive attitudes that can have long-term effects in their lives.

Mediating artifacts in Russian teacher-training textbooks: culturalhistorical analysis

Popova, Anna
Popova, Anna 1*,
1

Australian Catholic University

This presentation raises questions around the development of cultural artifacts within
the processes of teacher education. In particular, an analysis of teacher-training
textbooks published in Russia in the period between 2000 and 2013 is presented.
This analysis is a follow-up of the research that examined the content and format of
teacher-training textbooks published in the 1970s, 1980s in the Soviet Union and in
the 1990s in the Russian Federation. This presentation raises questions with regard
to the historical production of educational ideas that assist in educating teachers in a
country that went through a political upheaval in 1991 when the Soviet regime was
changes to a Democratic one. Yet, the official change of the political status does not
necessarily lead to radical changes in educational thinking, as it is often argued.
This presentation tries to discover what kind of priorities Russia sets for itself in the
unstable global situation and what kind of teachers it aims to educate. The research
has examined the content and style of presentation of five textbooks approved by the
Ministry of Education in Russia, and compared the findings to the analysis of the
textbooks published before the year 2000. The seemingly different textbooks have a
lot of hidden similarities. There is a certain historical tenacity in the ways culturalhistorical artifacts are presented in the textbooks - uncertainty is presented in certain,
nonnegotiable terms. Ideas of humanistic education, where the development of such
values as kindness, truthfulness and beauty is central, are narrated in terms which
do not always call for negotiation.

Becoming a biologist: Laminated trajectories of literate activity and

disciplinarity
Prior, Paul
Prior, Paul *,
Lave and Wenger (1991) posited learning as trajectories of participation in social
practices; however, their account left fuzzy what such trajectories might look like
across the lifespan and over wider time-space scales. Viewing social practices as
tightly tied to particular communities, they argued that school activities (like high
school physics) are basically irrelevant to those of matched professional settings
(being a physicist). Likewise, taking an activity systems approach to the relationship
between writing in advanced undergraduate professional education (such as senior
architecture courses) and workplace writing in the related profession (working as an
architect), Medway et al. (1999) argued that differences in motives basically made
those settings worlds apart. These views strongly imply that everyday activities (e.g.,
personal reading and media viewing, hobbies, political engagements, family
activities) are irrelevant to professional practices. Challenging these narrow accounts
of learning trajectories, I first summarize sociocultural theories that see learning as
the mediated production of both person and society across heterogeneous and
laminated times, places, and activities (e.g., Agha, 2007; del Rio & Alvarez, 1995;
Hutchins, 1995; Ochs et al., 1992; Prior, 1998; Prior & Hengst, 2010; Roozen, 2009;
Scollon, 2001; Wertsch, 1991; Wittgenstein, 1953). I then turn to an ethnographic
case study of one biologist-in-the-making, a Ph.D. student writing a biology
dissertation on the neuroendocrinology and behavioral display of social bonding in
zebra finches, presenting conference talks, and publishing peer-reviewed articles.
Based on semi-structured and text-based interviews; situated observations; and a
collection of texts that reach back to her elementary school years, the analysis traces
how laminated trajectories of literate and semiotic engagements with popular,
school, and disciplinary biology, but also with other activities (e.g., musical practice
and performance; leadership of groups in high school and college), have been
woven together in her biology practices, coming to form particular ways of being-inthe-world as a biologist. I close by arguing for the importance of seeing literate and
disciplinary activity, not as narrowly bounded within specific communities of practice
or activity systems, but as complexly laminated trajectories that knot together diverse
activity across time-space scales.

ICTs in Education: Evaluating the Dublin Inner-City Schools'

Computerization project
Quinn, Elizabeth
Quinn, Elizabeth, M.1*,
1

Trinity College Dublin; quinneliz@gmail.com; quinne12@tcd.ie

The Dublin Inner-City Schools Computerization (DISC) Projects initiative was

established with the aim of achieving equality of access, opportunity and training in
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in thirty-eight inner-city schools
through innovative use of ICT in the classroom. This report seeks to evaluate the
project to include the ICT Projects Initiative and a pilot Managed Learning
Environment (MLE). Findings suggest that schools vary in their level of participation
in the DISC project overall with some schools still not engaging with the programme.
The ICT Projects Initiative has been enthusiastically embraced by some schools but
it needs to be more curriculum-relevant in order to achieve ICT integration. The MLE
pilot had some success but issues of internet connectivity; bandwidth; and school
participation need to be addressed. While some schools use ICT enthusiastically,
this was not widespread with issues such as lack of technical support and technical
difficulties negatively impacting on teacher motivation, enthusiasm, and confidence,
leading to frustration for both teachers and students. Principals, teachers and
students had very different objectives with Principals focusing on increasing
teachers' use of ICT; Teachers on using ICT to facilitate teaching or make lessons
more interesting; and students for enjoyment and connecting with others. While
students enjoyed using the MLE, meeting their peers face-to-face subsequent to
online interaction seemed very important to them: this finding may benefit from
further research. The DISC initiative has now ceased and has been replaced by
Computers in Learning Communities (CLiC). Suggestions made for the future of
DISC/CLiC (CLiC 2011) include reducing the number of schools involved; developing
an MLE to support, train and encourage participating teachers; facilitating increased
technical support to schools similar to C2k in NI; increased liaison with the
Department of Education and Skills (DES) to develop curriculum-relevant software;
and a re-launch of the DISC/CLiC programme. This report employs a mixed-methods
approach using questionnaires; semi-structured interviews; focus groups and
classroom observations. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is used as a
theoretical framework for research design and analysis.

Expansive learning actions and expressions of transformative

agency: a change laboratory in the academic library
Rantavuori, Juhana
Rantavuori, Juhana 1*,
1

CRADLE, University of Helsinki

The paper presents an analysis of learning in an intervention in which the workers of

an academic library, together with their clients, redefined the services the library
offers to research groups. A specific intervention method, the Change Laboratory,
was used to facilitate the generation of new ideas and procedures. This study is part
of a research and development project taking place in the Helsinki University Library
in 2009-2011. This developmental process is examined by using the theory of
expansive learning (Engestrom 1987). In the analysis expansive learning actions are
identified from the data. The learning actions of an expansive cycle are (1)
questioning, (2) analysis, (3) modeling a new solution, (4) examining the new model,
(5) implementing the new model, (6) reflecting on the process, and (7) consolidating
the new practice. Added to this, participants' active involvement in the Change
Laboratory process is analyzed by using the category of six expressions of
transformative agency (Engestrom 2011). The expressions of transformative agency
are (1) Resisting change, new suggestions or initiatives, (2) Criticizing the current
activity and highlighting the need for a change in the activity, (3) Explicating new
possibilities or potentials in the activity, (4) Envisioning new patterns or models of the
activity, (5) Committing to concrete actions aimed at changing the activity, and (6)
Taking consequential actions to change the activity. In the end, the relationship
between learning actions and expressions of transformative agency is considered.
In the analysis six of the seven expansive learning actions were identified in the
transcripts of the sessions. A preliminary analysis indicates that examples of most of
the expressions of transformative agency is possible to identify in the data. As a
result of the ongoing analysis our intention is to found out how particular expansive
learning actions are related to different expressions of transformative agency. One
objective of this study is to develop a new methodogy for analyzing learning during
formative interventions.

The Sunday Project: Discrimination, Community and Change for

Migrant Families
Ratliffe, Katherine
Ratliffe, Katherine 1*,
1

College of Education, University of Hawaii, ratliffe@hawaii.edu

Immigrant and migrant parents often have a significant learning curve related to
American schooling and their expected roles in their children's educations (Fuligni &
Fuligni, 2007). They also experience barriers to involvement including discrimination,
language differences, low levels of education, lack of time, poverty, and lack of
knowledge about school expectations (Turney & Kao, 2009). As well, schools often
have a lack of knowledge about diverse families' beliefs and practices regarding their
children's educations and development (Ladkey, 2007). These problems can result in
low educational achievement for children, parent disenfranchisement, and frustration
for educators. Sociocultural theory proposes that individual mental functioning has
social origins (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch & Rupert, 1993). In addition, culture is the
medium that directs how and what to think. Mediation of thinking occurs through the
use of cultural tools such as signs and symbols, interpersonal relations and
individual activities including procedures, thought methodologies and cultural objects
(Pontecorvo, 1993). These tools need to be appropriated and practiced to be
effective. This study looks at the processes and outcomes of a community-based
and parent-centered project with Pacific Island migrant parents called the Sunday
Project. Parents were introduced to school-based cultural tools such as forms and
language, and through the sharing of individual stories and struggles around their
children's schooling, learned to use the new practices. Data include observations of
the 15 weekly meetings, interviews with parents and staff, and review of documents
including meeting agendas, report cards, school letters, and other documents. Goals
of the Sunday Project were to gather, assess and address parents' concerns,
provide responsive information about the school system and parent rights, and share
specific skills and information to help children succeed in school. Sunday Project
staff shared the group's ethnicity and languages. Outcomes of the study included
the development of a community of support for parents, parent perceptions of
increased knowledge and skills to help their children succeed in school, resolution of
parent-school conflicts, and the appropriation and practice of new cultural tools such
as forms and procedures. This parent-centered model may be effective for similar
groups.

Trouble in the classroom: theorising critical events in schooling.

Reed, Malcolm
Reed, Malcolm J 1*,
1

University Of Bristol

This paper continues my project to explore and discuss within the cultural-historical
tradition the significance of particular events in secondary school classrooms.
When, for example, in a vignette of a mathematics lesson, Williams (2011, 281)
writes: 'Suddenly an argument breaks out,' we recognize that whatever the
particularity of the issue, some contradiction is taking place. Contradiction may offer
the potential for transformation (Cole and Engestrm, 1993). Hedegaard (2012, 132)
considers different activity settings in the family of (early) school-age children
'conceptualized as societal traditions realized within an institutional practice as
concrete historical events,' and opens her vignette with, 'When I arrive Emil is very
unhappy,' then reading the way institutional conflicts and tensions work through
Emil's crisis (Vygotsky, 1998). Varenne and McDermott offer a range of classroombased ethnographic observations of American schooling in order to develop the
argument that: 'It is not so much that culture determines individual behavior as it
arranges for the situated interpretation of behaviour,' (Varenne and McDermott,
1998,122). The vignette is a mode of micronarrative with heuristic potential for
uncovering interpretation of teaching and learning. I am concerned with exploration
of particular instances of tension, contestation, crisis or 'Trouble' (Bruner, 1991, 16)
as a 'creative event' (Burke, 2001, 306) signifying 'events that have congealed'
(Burke, 2001, 315). I want to read across critical traditions by considering such an
event both as a gate between structures in the tradition of 'le statut d'vnement
matrice' (Le Roy-Ladurie, 1972, 77) and as an in-between or liminal space in being,
as the site of ontological metamorphosis, in the non-Cartesian tradition of Deleuze
(Badiou, 2000). This is a deliberate attempt to consider ontological process, following
Packer (2011, 167) as a way into understanding and theorising classroom activity
within schooling.

Developing Environmental Quality

Ringsmose, Charlotte
1

Aarhus University

Child care settings offer different learning environments when it comes to space,
arrangements, selections of materials as well as different goals and attitudes. This
provides different opportunities for children's development of attention, language,
knowledge of the different subjects, self and social skills. Research on quality in
preschools focuses on what constitutes a good learning environment for children that
engage all the children in the learning process. The study focus is on quality in child
care settings. This particular research project is action based methods involving staff
observations, external observations, photo observations in child care settings
researching interactions between learning environments, children and adults. The
aim is to visualize some of the interplays that form the basis of children's
development, and how the physical and social environments are perceived by the
children. Based on observations, theory and research the project has worked on how
the physical and social environment can be improved

Cross-cultural technology transfer: a transdisciplinary approach for

Cultural-Historical Activity research
Rockstroh, Deborah
Rockstroh, Deborah1,
1

Southern Cross University

The division of knowledge into disciplinary fields has contributed towards the
scientific and technological achievements that largely benefit Western societies of
the developed world. Conversely, the challenge of transferring those achievements
so that developing societies might enjoy similar benefits, has highlighted the
limitations of knowledge and problem solving confined to any particular discipline.
The deserts of central Australia problematize the construction and delivery of
housing and educational services to indigenous communities, and remain a cause of
concern for successive governments, educators, and researchers. Examining this
concern from a cultural-historical activity perspective, a recent study found that
similar to technology and development, culture and activity are phenomena that blur
the boundaries of knowledge constructed to suit scientific discoveries; and that
understanding the problems and opportunities associated with cross- and intercultural technology transfer required a transdisciplinary research approach. This
paper discusses how a transdisciplinary approach offered a means of
conceptualizing technology as a cultural phenomenon, revealing the entanglements
of multiple cultures; and the way identities learn to shape, and are shaped by,
cultural entanglements. The paper evaluates the advantages and disadvantages
afforded by the transdisciplinary approach taken in this study, where Western
conceptions of the world were transcended to consider indigenous ways of knowing;
and which offers potential for further sociocultural research.

Preserver teacher agency in activity theory approach: a case study

Rodrigues, Andr
Rodrigues, Andr *, Mattos, Cristiano2,
1
2

Federal University of Juiz de Fora / rodrigues.am83@gmail.com

University of Sao Paulo/mattos@if.usp.br

Recent studies on initial teacher education have pointed out that researchers must
go beyond knowledge based approaches. Along with identity, belonging and
envision, agency is highlighted as a relevant aspect in preservice teachers learning.
Indeed agency is a key-concept to understand teaching activity and schooling.
Literature in this topic reveals that agency itself is a multilayer concept that unfolds in
'relational agency', 'epistemic agency', 'ethical agency' and so on. We will scrutinize
how agency is fostered and developed throughout practicum. Furthermore, we shall
discuss how preservice teachers of a science education program become more
engaged in students learning and sensitive to students' needs. Drawing on cultural
historical activity theory we frame agency in the context of preservice teacher activity
- practicum - and shed light on 'learn how to teach' in terms of mediated action,
object expansion, activity development and decision making. This study concerns a
year-long participatory observation - qualitative method - in a cohort of roughly 60
preservice teachers during the practicum in urban schools in Sao Paulo/Brazil, in
2010. We selected a case of one couple, both female, that stood out as a highly
engaged and autonomous working. Findings suggest that mutual support between
them is the core of agency. Although both preservice teachers were inexperienced in
basically all aspects of science teaching they find ways to cooperate and
progressively shape their own path for conducting the practicum tasks. In the case
selected the experienced teacher was usually absent what makes room for
preservice teacher agency and (co)responsibility in planning/conducting lessons. It is
also possible to trace the object expansion in the school-based activity over the year.
In the beginning preservice teachers were very concerned with their own
performance in the lesson delivery, all the adjustments were made in order to keep
the lesson simple enough to perform. The switch from self-performance to student
centered activity happened when preservice teachers were able to extend their
actions beyond classroom management. To sum up the case selected presents
relevant features of preservice teacher agency to discuss the objective bases of
agency in initial teacher education.

Language development and science education for deaf children

Rodrigues, Andr
Cambuhy, Jucivagno1, Rodrigues, Andre 1*, Mattos Cristiano 1,
1

Universidade de Sao Paulo

Science education for deaf children in Brazil is a demand basically unfolded by

recent inclusion policies. It is for many science teachers a new task of teaching
scientific concepts for children with all sort of disabilities, particularly deafness.
Drawing on cultural-historical frameworks, especially language studies and
developmental teaching, we will focus on scientific concept formation (astronomy)
in/with deaf children. Through qualitative research, mainly participant observation,
we trace how a physics teacher works in a bilingual school in an urban area of Sao
Paulo/Brazil. While the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is the first language,
Portuguese is the second language. This school receive roughly 80 deaf students
sorted in different grades ranging from primary to high school. We followed an
astronomy learning activity for a cohort of 20 high school student. Since most
scientific concepts and terminology are not available for deaf students either in
Libras or in Portuguese, the teacher efforts is to develop the meaning making in loco.
Moreover, astronomical concepts have low circulation among deaf community, even
in text books or printed materials. It ultimately makes the local negotiation the richest
source for meaning making. It is also important to note that this is a complex string, i.
e., an hybrid language level in which there is the concurrence of Libras, Portuguese
and Astronomy. The findings indicate that intense negotiation and collective
collaboration play a pivotal role in moving the concept formation forward. Particularly
in the early stage of the lesson in which deaf students and the physics teacher must
reach consensus about the Libras sign that better represents the concept. Indeed
Libras sign production is the cornerstone for the later astronomical concept
formation. Although it is time demanding, it is a very complex and rich process that is
worthwhile for teachers to focus on. Planet movement, solar system, universe
expansion etc. are not directly perceived concepts what demands much more
negotiation and mutual trust in the sign elaboration process. To sum up this study
provides a comprehensive picture on the role of negotiation in concept formation for
deaf students which might be quite valuable for teachers and researchers.

Intercultural Understanding through Dialogue between Japanese

and Chinese University Students
Sakakibara, Tomomi
Sakakibara, Tomomi 1*, Pian, Chengnan2,
1
2

Tokyo Gakugei University

China University of Political Science and Law

The purpose of this study was 1) to develop university classes where students
participate in intercultural dialogues through exchanging letters, and 2) to examine
the process by which students develop their intercultural understanding by
participating in these classes. In our previous study (Sakakibara, Pian & Takagi,
2012), we have conducted a series of three classes in Japanese and Chinese
universities, separately. At the beginning of the first class, students were given a
dialogue theme that focused on cultural differences. The theme of which were
the talk on a cell phone in public transportations: It is prohibited to talk on a cell
phone in public transportations in Tokyo, whereas it is not the case in Beijin. Then,
students discussed their opinions in small groups and exchange letters to their
counterparts. Through an analysis of the Japanese students' writings, it was
suggested that the arousal of students' negative emotions in response to their
exposure to different cultural values and beliefs is closely related to their
understanding of cultural relativity. Based on these findings, present study conducted
a series of three classes in Japanese and Chinese Universities, separately (21
Japanese and 20 Chinese students). In the present study, procedures were modified
to facilitate students' awareness of their own emotions. In the first class, students in
a small group wrote short stories that illustrate typical situations that a person talked
on a cell phone in a train and made other people felt unpleasant. Then, students
discussed the differences and similarities of their stories, before they were provided
with and discussed the stories of their counterpart. Analysis of Japanese students'
writing showed that, in contrary to previous study in which students struggled with
the difficulties of understanding another culture, many students in the present study
claimed that the Japan and China were more similar than they have expected. These
differences in students' intercultural understandings may have reflected the
difference in procedures between previous and the present study: Before the
intercultural dialogue starts, students discussed the cultural differences in the former,
whereas the diversity within a culture was the focus on the latter.

10

Signification of Systemic Structural Theory of Activity in

Organizational Activity Research
Sanda, Mohammed-Aminu
Sanda, Mohammed-Aminu 1,2*,
1
2

University of Ghana Business School

Lulea University of Technology

This paper discusses the signification of the relatedness of Ergonomics and Activity
Theory that has led to the evolution of the Systemic Structural Activity Theory
(SSAT) as a useful theoretical approach in organizational activity research. It is
argued that in the SSAT approach, knowledge derived from ergonomics and activity
theory is uniquely capable of engaging with different ways of knowing the world of
work, generating new knowledge, and helping stakeholders understand and
incorporate the results or lessons learned by the SSAT research. The paper
discusses SSATs parametric and systemic approaches in the study of activity.
Parametric analysis entails the study of distinct components of activity. The systemic
approach includes a morphological and functional analysis of the activity, each of
which comprises different methods. Morphological analysis is involved in the
description of the constructive features of activity, with actions and operations used
as units of analysis. In a morphological analysis, the structure of activity is a logical
and spatio-temporal organization of actions and operations performed to achieve the
goal of a task (Bedny and Karwoski, 2007). To describe the structure of activity, it is
necessary to sub-divide the work process into tasks that should then be individually
described in terms of mental and motor actions and operations. Each action has a
separate, intermediate goal, which must be reached to attain the goal of the task.
Therefore, objects of study in this case are work process and tasks. Units of
analyses are cognitive motor actions and operations. In the functional analysis of
activity, the major units of analysis are blocks, and the activity in this case, is
regarded as a self-regulative system (Bedny and Meister, 1997; Bedny and
Karwoski, 2003). This allows the identification of potential strategies of organizational
activity performance. Organizational activity in this case is regarded as an
application of systemic principles to a qualitative stage of analysis. The paper
concludes that organizational activity research, while not a new super-discipline, is
an important field in which activity theorization is guided in a new complimentary way
by multidisciplinary knowledge in ergonomics and activity theory, and which
knowledge is represented by SSAT.

11

The Curriculum in Higher Education: The dialog between College Schools.

Schettini, Rosemary Holenwerger
Schettini, Rosemary Holenwerger *,
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the implementation and evaluation of a
college whose focus is to train teachers to work in schools. The discussion will be
based on the practical implications of the pre-service teachers and their practices in
the public schools. The studies will take place in the Brazilian context and the
discussion addresses two research questions? 1) How do criteria of a college
implementation contribute or not to train future educators students? ; 2) does this
training contribute to the activity of teaching and learning in schools? The collected
data point to the need to draw a greater dialogue between the school practices and
the criteria required for the implementation and evaluation of a college. This
presentation will be based on the pillars of the Socio-Cultural-Historical Activity
Theory (CHAT) (Vygotsky, 1930/1934; Leontiev, 1977), which interprets the
constitution of subjects mediated by relationships with the world, considering the
history and culture of a particular group, a collective subject endowed with values,
ways of being, acting, manifesting, these modes that are part of a culture and a
particular historical time-space dimension. It is hoped that this discussion may
provide directives for academic, organizational, physical and even marketing
development in the area of Education. It is also expected that it suggest approaches
to training students in the college, as critical citizens to act as trainers in the school
spaces. In this reasoning the identity of a college must take into account the
implementation activities and pedagogical guidelines that gear the actions and
activities in schools. Keywords: College, training teacher, teaching and learning,
classroom activities

12

Frozen Fluidity? Digital Technologies and the Transformation of

Learning/Teaching
Schraube, Ernst
Schraube, Ernst 1*,
1

Roskilde University, schraube@ruc.dk

Learning processes do not just occur in formal institutional settings, like the
classroom; they are based on everyday dilemmas and experiential ambivalences
and happen through participation in and across the different social and technological
contexts in which the learning subjects are conducting her/his everyday life. Within
such a theory of learning from the standpoint of the learning subject (Klaus
Holzkamp) in which learning is understood as an aspect of participation in social
practice (Jean Lave), learning can not be reduced to a technique, a fixed procedure,
or an externally activated activity; it is always a contextual, situated process of
learning subjects, in which not only social but also material relations and
technological artifacts are playing a central role. With the incorporation of electronic
technologies like iPads, smart boards and electronic teaching platforms like Moodle
new digital spaces are emerging in educational practices. These digital spaces are
not only useful tools expanding human activities, they are also powerful sociopolitical forms of life (Langdon Winner) transforming fundamentally the practice of
learning and teaching as well as the students' conduct of everyday life. One central
question here is how the digital teaching platforms reconfigure the fluidity and
reciprocity of teaching and learning and expand or undermine students' participation
possibilities in determining form and content of their learning processes. Focusing on
the significance of digital learning spaces at universities (especially reform
universities with a problem-orientated approach to research and education) for the
learning activities of students, the paper tries to contribute to a sociomaterial practice
theory of learning from the standpoint of the learning subjects. Based on a
conceptual inclusion of the learning subjects and their conduct of life into the
research and a discussion of the fluidity of learning and teaching, the paper
examines the contradictory forms of participation materialized in digital learning
spaces and explores how they relate to the development of expansive learning.

13

Shared responsibility for children in care

Schwartz, Ida
Schwartz, Ida1*,
1

University College Lillebaelt

The responsibility of children in care is shared by a number of professionals placed

in different contexts. Parents are responsible for the big issues in these childrens
lives, while many professionals are involved in the childrens everyday life across
home, residential home, schools and institutions. These groups of professionals
contribute to the childrens everyday lives according to historically developed
divisions of responsibility. It is a daily challenge to professionals, how they jointly
support children in care so the children can be part of childrens communities in the
places where they live. Children in care are among the most disadvantaged groups
in our society and currently there is much concern for how these children can
achieve the same life chances as other kids. Studies have revealed that children in
care as adults do not achieve the same educational and social possibilities as other
kids. These differences are often explained by pointing at individual or family
inheritance. This paper takes the perspective that social exclusion is multidimensional, and the cross-professional structuring of childrens everyday life plays
an important role. Processes of social exclusion or inclusion are analysed as a part
of a cultural historical development of divisions of labour in professional care of
children. The professionals who possess the highest authority in childrens lives are
for example furthest away from the childrens everyday life. Professionals across
contexts creates conditions for each others work and they contribute from different
positions to their common possibilities of action. The paper applies the critical
psychological notions of inter-subjectivity, situated learning and the conduct of
everyday life across contexts (Dreier 2008, Holzkamp 1998). Conflicts between
professionals, lack of coordination and difficulties in exchanging of knowledge all
contribute to the construction of problems in the field of caring for these children. The
paper discusses how professionals in different contexts need to do something
differently and work flexible in order to contribute to the support of these childrens
participation in communities. The paper discusses how to understand cooperation
across contexts as a practice that in the same time is situated, flexible and goalorientated.

14

Narrative Conferences: As an atelier with perezhivanie for

childhood educators
Shoi, Yoshinobu
Shoy, Yoshinobu1 *,
1

Hokkaido University of Education

In the tradition of cultural-historical theory, joint-play world considered to be a source

of the prototype environment for human development. According to Vygotskys
theory of emotions, narrative and symbolic competences are developed in the
imaginative joint-play world with emotional experiencing (perezhivanie) in which
creative imagination to overcome the crisis empowered. The aim of this presentation
is to elucidate the psychological and educational meaning of narrative conferences
for childhood educators who have experienced some difficult/critical situations.
These types of conference sessions have been studied for in-service teacher
education at the Graduate School of Hokkaido University of Education for the past
ten years. After this consideration ll criticize the developmental research
methodologies in early years studies. Elementary school teachers and early
childhood educators engage in these narrative conference sessions as research
partners with voluntary participation once a month. At each session, attendees talk
freely about significant children with special needs from the perspective of inclusive
education based on cultural-historical theory. They are facilitated toward playful
narrative learning in the imaginative play-world at these gatherings, and reflect their
own social practices as well as their unique life stories. Previous research by JACROHD (the Japanese Association for Clinical Research on Human Development
and Education) has focused on such conference sessions as a way of understanding
children. Background theories to this research include those of the narrative learning
environment, (Hakkarainen, P. & Bredikyte, M.), expansive learning (Engestrom, Y.)
and the concept of perezhivanie (Vygotsky, L. S. & Vasiliuk, F. Y.). The professional
development of childhood educators should be discussed on the level of mastering
the improvisation of educational arts in playful and dramatic situations rather than
being talked about in the context of improving teaching techniques. It is also
important to focus on physiological experiencing, or perezhivanie, in multi-voiced
narrative conferences with other professionals. illustrate some examples of these
boundary-crossing conference sessions and criticize developmental research
methodologies in early years studies for childhood educators professional
development.

15

Children: Why are you always taping us?

Srensen, Hanne
Srensen, Hanne1,
1

VIA University College Paedagoguddannelsen Peter Sabroe

Ethical and methodological reflections on researching childrens physical activity play

in preschool using digital video technology. Conducting cultural-historical research in
institutions with visual methodologies always involves interactions and relations with
the studied subjects. Ethical issues should be part of the methodological
considerations in all phases of the research project. Not the least when the research
is on children. The researcher has to reflect how her participation and engagement in
the social situation may influence the observed situation and also how the research
may influence the childrens understanding of themselves and the social situation. In
this study the research methods was video observations and the analyses focused
on childrens participation in physical activities and their interactions and actions in
the social situation. Researchers can get permission from parents and pedagogues
to film children, but the permission are given on behalf of the children. So the
researcher has to negotiate with the children in the observed situation and earn the
childrens acceptance to participate and observe the social situation. Children are
active participants in their own developmental process through play and through
dynamic interactions with other persons in their institutional environment.
Pedagogues are important persons for children, but also childrens interactions with
other adults, as in example a researcher, are influential on childrens development
and self-concept. As a consequence of this theoretical understanding of child
development, the researcher has to observe carefully and understand when a child
feels uncomfortable in the observed situation, because the researcher takes part in
shaping the childrens conditions for development. In this presentation ethical and
methodological issues in researching young childrens physical activity play in
preschool are discussed. The context of the research is preschools in Denmark, but
considerations on ethics are important in child care institutions anywhere. Examples
from a study of childrens physical activity are applied and illustrate how reflections
on the ethical issues are part of the interactions between children and researcher
and should lead the researcher to consider her methodology due to childrens rights
to privacy and the need of getting the childrens acceptance of being part of a
research project.

16

Fractal development of students learning, teacher education, and

cross-curricular program.
Sugiyama, Shimpei
Sugiyama, Shimpei1 *, Nishino, Yoshiyasu2 *,
1
2

University of Fukui, s-sugiym@f-edu.u-fukui.ac.jp

Sapporo Odori High School, nishino-yoshiyasu@sapporo-c.ed.jp

As is well known, the concept of transfer is understood learning from one task later
applied to learning a new task and it continues to be influential today. Moreover, its
robustness is due in part to its association with schooling (Hanks, 1991). Although
our schools are designed with the assumption that knowledge and skills are portable
to new tasks and to students' futures beyond their confines, transition processes and
structures from schooling to working have more complicated and lengthening in rapid
social change. Increasing mobility of employment and changing values of working
causes a problem of consistency with existing systems based on premise of
'standardized life-course'. Under these circumstances, the role of existing schooling
has been questioned anew and new educational practices and theoretical
frameworks has been explored (ex. Tuomi-Grohn and Engestrom, Y., 2003).
Education prepares people to adapt to existing communities and also must prepare
them to participate in the transformation of society.Cultural-historical activity theory
raises a penetrating question about existing notion of development and advances to
reconceptualization it as mutually constitutive relationship between learners and
social organizations. Under the above circumstances, the purpose of our
presentation is to examine reciprocal change between students learning experience,
professional development of teachers, and school activity system, through an
ethnographic and developmental work research of cross-curricular program called
'Honeybee Project', including beekeeping, product development and sales and
delivery, crossing the many subjects in part-time school for 3 years. The empirical
data was collected in ethnographic field researches including participant
observations and semi-structured interviews in this project and teachers reflective
conference related it. We integrated the variety of data as fieldnotes (Emerson et al,
1995) by reference to developmental coupling as a unit of analysis which is mutual
relationship and changing individual, activities, and more macro social processes
(Beach, 2002). We will demonstrate a mutual development process and structure in
this project as 'fractal' one crossing in between working and learning. And we will
discuss how to take advantage of horizontal developmental nature beyond trying to
smooth the process by making the school more like work.

17

A CHAT perspective on pupil collaboration and teacher

collaboration
Thompson, Ian
Thompson, Ian1*, Daniels, Harry 2*,
1
2

Ian Thompson University of Oxford ian.thompson@education.ox.ac.uk

Harry Daniels University of Oxford harry.daniels@education.ox.ac.uk

Teachers often find it difficult to meet the needs of vulnerable children in their
classrooms and find themselves trying to solve complex teaching and learning
problems on their own. The demands of teaching can make them feel that they have
exceeded their personal levels of tolerance for their work leading to a reduction in
active engagement with these teaching and learning problems. We also know that
both teacher and pupil collaboration can have beneficial effects on educational
outcomes. In this paper we address the following research questions: Does
collaborative teacher activity lead to an emphasis on pupil collaboration? What is the
effect of collaborative activity for vulnerable learners? What effect does the culture of
the school have on collaboration and the attainment of vulnerable pupils? Daniels et
al (1997) have demonstrated through DfE and ESRC funded research projects in the
UK and large scale interventions in Spain and Brazil, that there is much to be gained
through supporting teachers own problem solving. Collaborative problem solving
provides schools with access to this valuable yet often untapped resource. This
activity celebrates the contribution of the teacher and seeks to enhance professional
standing and confidence. It places the teacher at the centre of educational
development and seeks to support the systematic, reflective action that is
characteristic of the best of teacher research. We view such research as a defining
theme for school improvement. When viewed from the perspective of CHAT, we
argue that changes in the division of labour (staff) give rise to changes in subject
(teacher) orientation and engagement with the object/motive of teaching. We further
suggest that such an intervention makes the likelihood of transformation in the
division of labour of pupils during collaborative activity more positive and secure.
Finally, we argue that interventions that seek to promote pupil collaboration in
learning need to attend to changes in the collaborative activity of the adults who
mediate this learning.

18

Project-based Learning and Crossing Boundaries for Collaborative

Pedagogy in School
Tomizawa, Michiko
Tomizawa, Michiko1 *,
1

Osaka University; michiko@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp

In traditional approaches to school subjects, curricula or teachers lead lessons

according to a model of step-by-step transmission-centered teaching. This model
assumes a fixed set of predefined knowledge and skills. For example, if elementary
school science calls for learning about the growth of plants, teachers may treat
children's learning processes as prescribed, linear stages during which static
knowledge contained within the textbook is transferred. If, instead, an indigenous
vegetable is treated as a material for learning about plant growth, it might be
possible to expand notions of learning beyond traditional institutional boundaries.
This paper analyzes the design and implementation of a project-based learning unit
on the theme of 'Suita Kuwai' (the Japanese arrowhead plant) for fourth-grade
children at a Suita municipal elementary school in Osaka. Such an interdisciplinary
and cross-curricular unit is focused on integrated inquiry and collaborative learning.
Drawing on the frameworks of cultural-historical activity theory and expansive
learning theory (Engestrom, 1987, 2008), the paper examines how the 'Suita Kuwai'themed integrated curriculum unit and its project-based learning broaden both the
context and the object of learning. Suita Kuwai is a local vegetable unique to Suita
City in Osaka, and has been well known for generations as a soft, sweet, distinctivetasting vegetable. Nevertheless, it nearly disappeared amidst a wave of urbanization.
In recent years, however, local farmers, citizens, and government agencies
established a network to revive Suita Kuwai. Through the integrated curriculum unit,
teachers and children can expand the object of learning toward questioning and
formulating the problem itself in relation to real life and society. In addition, this
learning can, to a great extent, be carried out in larger sets of activities that connect
various interacting activity systems. Teachers and children who get involved in such
networks may make new social connections and share the learning problem with
community members. The paper concludes that the integrated curriculum unit can be
utilized as a vehicle for teachers and children to cross temporal, spatial, social, and
disciplinary boundaries and thus jointly create and negotiate the processes of
teaching and learning.

19

Vygotsky-based CREDE Standards used to Instruct Ethnically

Diverse University Students
Trevorrow, Tracy
Trevorrow, Tracy1, Taira, Kazufumi2,
1
2

Chaminade University of Honolulu

University of Hawaii

As the United States has become increasingly culturally diverse, so have institutions
of higher education. In 2011, 45% of undergraduate came from a non-White
background (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Ginder, 2012). This demographic shift poses a
challenge for instructors to provide effective education for an increasingly diverse
population of students. The Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and
Excellence (CREDE) Standards for Effective Pedagogy are strategies of instruction
found to promote academic achievement among diverse learners, kindergarten
through high school. The CREDE Standards are based on Vygotskian notions of
social interaction between the learner and more proficient community members.
Although some educators have used CREDE in universities (e.g., Stoddard, Bravo,
Solis, Stevens, & Vega de Jesus, 2009), little is written on how the Standards can be
adapted for tertiary education. The use of the Standards is typically measured by the
Classroom Observation Rubric (COR), which measures in-class instructor behaviors
(Luning, Wyatt, & Im, 2011). The Course Experience Survey (CES) has been
recently developed to assess the adult students' experiences regarding their
instructors' use of the CREDE standards. This paper presents an analysis of the
extent to which five university instructors used the CREDE Standards at two highly
ethnically diverse universities in Hawai'i. Two of the instructors were knowledgeable
of the CREDE Standards. Twice throughout fall 2013, at times that were
unannounced, coders used the COR to assess the extent to which the instructors
used the Standards. At the end of the semester, students completed the CES to
assess their perceptions of instructors' behaviors consistent with the CREDE model.
Analysis reveals a broad range of fidelity to the CREDE model. Instructors familiar
with the Standards were rated higher and perceived by students to more consistently
execute the Standards in the classroom. The CREDE Standards have been shown
to promote increased academic success for ethnic minorities (e.g., Doherty, Hilberg,
Pinal, & Tharp, 2003; Saunders & Goldenberg, 2007). The current study suggests
that instructor training in CREDE Standards could result in noticeable changes in
pedagogy and promote greater levels of academic achievement for ethnically diverse
population of students in tertiary education.

20

Professional child-adult relations analyzed as intergenerational

practices
Ulvik, Oddbjrg Skjr
Ulvik, Oddbjrg Skjr1*,
1

Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

Children encounter various kinds of professionals in their everyday lives, like

teachers, social workers, nurses, physiotherapists etc. Due to a sociocultural
perspective these encounters should be analyzed as socially, historically and
culturally situated practices. Children and adults are social categories with fluctuating
cultural significances. Globally, there has been a judicialisation of children's position,
most clearly expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989),
which affects child-adult relations at a micro level. The new cultural conceptions of
children and children's changed legal position represent conditions and ambiguous
challenges to welfare state institutions and professionals. Likewise, these changes
represent analytical challenges to researchers. This paper deals with the question
how studies of professional practices with children could be analytically framed.
Within childhood studies, children are widely granted the analytical position of
subjects. Accordingly, children involved in professional practices could not be
analytically reduced to objects for the professional efforts. They should be analyzed
as social participants involved in sociocultural practices, which implies an
interactional perspective where both adults' and children's social contributions
become visible. Professional relations involving children represent a positional
inequality, both generationally and professionally. Simultaneously, professionals are
governed by policy guidelines, restricted by administrative routines and informed by
certain knowledge regimes. This makes a particular power relation which should be
made analytically relevant. In this paper I will discuss how professional interaction
could be analytically framed as intergenerational practices, in which the parties
perform their culturally defined positions by doing adult doing professional on the one
hand, and doing child doing client/pupil/patient on the other. Illustrating analytical
examples are drawn from some qualitative studies on professional practices with
children, from child welfare, school and habilitation. The studies are carried out in a
Norwegian context, which implies professional practices within a welfare state
regime. The analyses are inspired by the concepts generational order, which refers
to a distinct organizing principle of social relations, and positional performance,
which here refers to the performative aspects of the generational positions child and
adult (Alanen, 2009).

21

Embodied manifestations of contradictions: Boatbuilding activities

in Finland, India and Russia
Vetoshkina, Liubov
Vetoshkina, Liubov1 *, Sannino, Annalisa2 , Engestrom Yrjo3 ,
1

University Of Helsinki liubov.vetoshkina@helsinki.fi

University Of Helsinki annalisa.sannino@helsinki.fi
3
University Of Helsinki yrjo.engestrom@helsinki.fi
2

Contradictions in human activities are historical and systemic formations which can
be primarily studied through their manifestations. Engestrom and Sannino (2011)
have developed a methodological framework for identifying contradictions by their
discursive manifestations through specific linguistic cues. Speech, however, does
not play the only main role in many kinds of activities, such as crafts in which tools,
body, objects and environment also play an important role. As in recent years most
of the craft skills have gone through major changes and face a dramatic decline,
tracing contradictions in such activities appears to be important for supporting their
possible future development. This study aims at building a framework for analyzing
embodied manifestations of contradictions. The framework is based on the works of
Goodwin (e.g., 2000), who analyses language, cognition and actions within situation
of human interaction that takes into account the simultaneous use of multiple, locally
relevant semiotic resources or contextual configuration by participants. Investigation
in terms of contextual configuration has a potential to cross the boundaries between
the semiotic fields of language, body and the material world. While embodiment has
generated a great deal of interest in social and cognitive sciences recently, in
cultural-historical activity theory and research on embodied aspects of learning and
development are still rare. This paper addresses these issues. Data analyzed in this
study come from three boatbuilding sites in India, Finland and Russia. These
different cultural settings have the potential to provide a broader view on the
contradictions within boatbuilding activity today. Short video clips picturing
collaborative work from each site will be used for analyzing embodied manifestations
of contradictions. Ethnographic data and interview data will be used for depicting the
historical development of the boatbuilding activity and complement findings on
discursive manifestations of contradictions. References: Engestrom, Y. & Sannino,
A. (2011). Discursive manifestations of contradictions in organizational change
efforts: A methodological framework. Journal of Organizational Change
Management, 24(3), 368-387 Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within
situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 14891522

22

Learning during School day breaks

Waermo, Mimmi
Waermo, Mimmi 1*,
1

Stockholm University mimmi.waermo@edu.se.se

This abstract reports on methodological design considerations of a study aiming to

explore what kind of activity 10-12-years-old schoolchildren engage in during certain
time-space pockets during their time in school. Such time-space pockets are
identified as interspaces that appear in-between organized time-space such as inclass teaching and supervised group work. The breaks during the school day
constitute an important interspace and the main purpose of this study is to explore
these as sites for learning among school children. Is it possible to consider on going
activity between children during these interspaces as schooling? What kind of
learning is possible here? What do the children learn? The aim of this study is to
explore children's activity during breaks, seen as interspaces between organised
scheduled lessons, to get to know about what kind of learning is possible here. We
adopt a didactic perspective of children's activity, applying an ethnographical
methodological approach. We collect empirical material using ethnographical fieldnotes from observations, film sequences and complementary follow-up interviews
with children. The material constitutes a number of snapshots of children's activity
during breaks. The empirical data is collected at two separate schools, focusing on
6-8 children, over a period of three school terms. To explore this phenomenon
regarded as activity in a cultural historical context, an activity theoretical analysis is
carried out. Analytically, an important issue is the question of the identification of the
objects. What are the objects? How can they be identified? Another issue is the
question of the results. What kind of learning is created? The unit of analysis are
actions on an individual level and activity on a group level. The results of the study
may have effect on how we understand the role of interspaces during the school day
in children's lives. Our understanding of this phenomenon may influence how we
organise schooling in a wider perspective.

23

Doctoral supervision: Can a sociocultural approach assist in

understanding the process?
Walker, Richard
Walker, Richard A1*, Pressick-Kilborn, Kimberley 2*, Sainsbury Erica 3*,
1

University of Sydney , richard.walker@sydney.edu.au

University of Technology, Sydney ,
Kimberley.PressickKilborn@uts.edu.au
3
University of Sydney, erica.sainsbury@sydney.edu.au
2

Sociocultural theories, which have their origins in the work of Russian psychologist
Lev Vygotsky, have been important for understanding human development, learning
and motivation. As doctoral supervision involves the intellectual development (in
addition to other forms of development) of the novice researcher, as well as their
learning and motivation, it makes good sense to consider that sociocultural theories
might contribute to existing models of effective supervision. In this presentation we
develop a sociocultural approach to doctoral supervision which draws on the unified
sociocultural framework which has guided our own sociocultural writings in learning
and motivation (for eg. Walker, Pressick-Kilborn, Sainsbury & MacCallum, 2010). It
also draws on our relationships as doctoral supervisor (Richard Walker) and former
doctoral students (Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn, Erica Sainsbury). This unified
sociocultural framework explains the relevance of the following concepts for doctoral
supervision: culture and cultural practices, canalisation and self-canalisation, the
zone of proximal development, transformative internalisation and externalisation,
interpersonal relations, intersubjectivity and co-regulation. Taken together, these
concepts offer a theoretically and empirically valid model of doctoral supervision
which explains aspects of the supervision process not cohesively addressed by other
models including: how doctoral students become enculturated into the research
practices of their discipline; how supervisors adjust their support during the course of
a student's candidature; how interaction with other doctoral candidates is beneficial
for the research student; and how students develop an identity as a researcher. The
better understanding of doctoral supervision provided by the unified sociocultural
approach also provides a basis for improving the supervisory process.

24

Identity and motivation in the drama classroom

Walker, Richard
Walker, Richard 1*, Anderson, Michael2 ,
1
2

University of Sydney; richard.walker@sydney.edu.au

University of Sydney ; michael.anderson@sydney.edu.au

Sociocultural approaches to identity formation take the view that identity is a social
construction which is shaped and formed through sociocultural, historical and
institutional processes. In this regard language is seen as playing a central role in
identity construction and formation. Two main theoretical approaches to the
formation of identity can be identified the in sociocultural literature. The first can be
labelled the sociocultural discourse approach while the second can be labelled the
sociocultural psychological approach. While there are many sociocultural discourse
perspectives on identity formation, James Gees (2001: Gee & Green, 1998) work is
perhaps the best known. In summary, Gee (2001) suggests that people have
multiple identities which derive from their performances in social contexts and the
way that they are consequently recognised by other people. The sociocultural
psychological perspective on identity formation was developed by Penuel & Wertsch
(1995) and involved the integration of different elements of the work of Vygotsky and
Erickson. These theoretical approaches, however, do not attempt to explain
motivational processes from a sociocultural perspective. Walker and colleagues
have developed a unified theoretical approach to both identity formation and
motivation which draws on the work of Vygotsky and such neo-Vygotskian theorists
as Valsiner and Rogoff. The drama classroom embodies many sociocultural
pedagogical principles which underlie effective learning and motivation. It is also the
site of important opportunities for identity formation. The research presented in this
paper reports the qualitative component of a mixed methods investigation into
various aspects of the drama classroom practice, including processes affecting the
construction of identity and motivation. This research was conducted in three high
schools (a co-educational government school, and independent Anglican school, and
single-sex independent school) and is interpreted in terms of sociocultural theories of
identity and motivation.

25

Teachers reflections on using the computer for work and learning

Wetso, Gun-Marie
Wetso, Gun-Marie1*, Agic, Admir2 *, Vetso Emelie3 *,
1

Dr. Gun-Marie Wetso gwt@du.se

Admir Agic adag2151@student.uu.se
3
Emelie Vetso jiiin@hotmail.com
2

This article describes the teachers' reflections on the work to implement computers
in a Swedish school (years 2010-2014). A municipality decided to launch a one - one
project (one computer for each student and teacher). The study includes a local
primary school (grades 1-9). The school has 38 teacher and 535 students
representing 25 different languages (cultural backgrounds). The aim of the study was
to take advantage of the teachers' experiences from work in the classrooms. What
do they face during this transition period? How do they think about managing the
practice? What kind of imbalances could they see and what type of activities did they
create? Activity Theory (Leontiev sv. 1986) highlights the motives and goals of the
work. Engestrom (2001) was used to identify links between individuals, topics,
activities, and environment. Data collection was based on interviews with three
school principals and seven teachers in August 2013. Invitation was given to all
teachers at the school but an expressed preference was that teachers who
represented various school subjects would participate. The interviews were recorded
and transcribed. Classroom observations were also conducted in relation to the
study. The results were analyzed and some patterns and perspectives emerged:
Teachers talk about 1) the freedom to manage the practice, 2) and different
directions in the work 3) to discover possible ways to go, and 4) to justify why they
are handling practices in different directions. The perspective shows the teachers'
thoughts on a) meeting the children b) to use the computer in school activities, and
c) to work towards the goals of the school. Teachers' descriptions take up leadership
and how their own needs and the needs of students must be addressed. Seven
patterns were identified from the teachers' statements that positive motives for
carrying out the work. Self- innovation, broader interest, private entrance and
motivation to learn, to feel their own safety, diversity, cultural and language
backgrounds are not seen as getting in the way of the work. They saw the tangible
benefits of the work of individual students and the school when using computers in
education.

26

Knowledge in Motion. Investigating Figured worlds in and outside

school
Wiig, Camilla
Wiig, Camilla1*, Wittek, Anne Line2 ,
1

Vestfold University College. Department of Pedagogy.

camilla.wiig@hive.no
2
Vestfold University College. Department of Pedagogy.
anne.line.wittek@hive.no
Pupils participate in a range of different learning-settings, both in and outside school.
These various experiences are important sources in how young people are socially
positioned and how subjectivities and identities are formed. In recent years, there
has been a growing interest in studying the connections between contexts of
learning. However, there is not clear how teachers can bring young peoples
experiences outside school into the classroom and in what ways this strategy will
enhance in-school learning and motivation. Our interest in this paper focuses on
describing knowledge practices in organized sport activities, identify their
characteristics and compare them with learning in school. Our research questions
focus on how pupils learning experiences that cut across these contexts are
discussed in the classroom. In particular, we are interested in what ways knowing
related to out-of-school settings are negotiated and implemented by the teacher in
curriculum and school settings. This paper presents data from the on-going project:
Knowledge in Motion across Contexts of Learning, (2012 - 2016) financed by the
Norwegian Research Council. The research design is a qualitative, longitudinal case
study which follows teachers and students over the course of lower secondary
school, from eighth grade until the end of tenth grade. Videotaping classroom
interaction, field notes and interviews with pupils and teachers constitute the data
material. To analyze the data, we use the concept of figured worlds. This concept
allow us to grasp how young pupils are socially positioned, how they form
subjectivities and develop identities that both motivate and constrain their actions
and ultimately their learning trajectories within classroom activities and across
contexts such as sport activities. The paper discusses different ways that pupils
develop sensitivities to aspects of the contexts when they engage in sport activities
and in classroom interactions, and different strategies that teachers develop to
undertake links to the pupils different figured worlds. The paper intends to contribute
to a better understanding of how learning experiences (from in and out-of-school
activities) can be made relevant and authentic for pupils in order to increase
motivation.

27

Toward a Restorative English Education Pedagogy in the Third

Space
Winn, Maisha
Winn, Maisha1*,
1

University Of Wisconsin-Madison mtwinn@wisc.edu

In this study, Winn argues for a Restorative English Education pedagogy; that is, a
pedagogy of possibilities that employs literature and writing to seek justice, restore
(and, in some cases, create) peace that reaches beyond the classroom walls. A
Restorative English Education requires literacy educators to resist zero-tolerance
policies that permeate American public schools and that are being exported to other
countries that sort, label, and eventually isolate particular youth in exchange for
embracing a discourse of restoration in which all young people have an opportunity
to experience radical healing through engaging in deliberate literate acts that
illuminate pathways of resilience. Using a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)
framework, this study examines the ways in which youth and adult participation in
restorative justice practices supports responsible citizenship and civic learning in
schools and communities. More specifically this study demonstrates how restorative
justice circle processes are being used as mediating tools in schools and
communities in a Midwestern American city to support youth, teachers, and
administrators in learning how to respond to conflict and tension using open-ended
questions, consensus-building, and restorative dialogue. Ultimately, the author
argues that a Restorative English Education pedagogy invites students, teachers,
and administrators to historicize (Gutierrez, 2008) and thus humanize (Paris and
Winn, 2013) their lives through sharing and exchanging personal narratives, original
writing as well as engaging literature, film, and art that underscores the process of
transformation.

28

Figured worlds as mediators in personal trajectories of learning

Wittek, Anne Line
Wittek, Line 1*,
1

Vestfold University College

Research on teaching and learning within socio cultural perspectives typically

focuses on activities or dialogues in educational contexts and it is often underlined in
general terms that the social is transformed into individual thinking. However,
conceptualizations on these transformations as such are less visible in the body of
research. For the aim of exploring the transformation from the sociocultural to the
personal level, this paper suggests a theoretical model drawing on three core
concepts; personal learning trajectories, figured worlds and mediation. The concept
of personal learning trajectories developed by Ole Dreier highlights students
individual meaning making. Human activity is meaningful by virtue of being part of a
common social practice of which we have a more or less common understanding.
The concept of figured worlds drawn from Dorothy Holland refers to how people
constitute the horizon of meaning against how people, actions, artefacts and one`s
selves are interpreted by self and others. This concept allow figured worlds and learn
its meanings. Students become familiar with different figured worlds and learn its
meanings; they become attuned to learning experiences relevant to the world and to
people and types of people that have meaning in it. Figured worlds are important
mediational means in personal learning trajectories. However, the constitution of
figured worlds is tightly linked to institutional power and authority that may be neither
visible nor consistent with the intentions of the curriculum or the practice of teaching.
The suggested approach can help us see human activity as having a potential and
varying cross-contextual scope and reach. It also enables us to theorise on the
personal aspects of learning within sociocultural perspectives on learning. These
features are often neglected in theories about the social practice of persons and
institutions.

29

Leading an inter-professional autism specific early childhood

education and care service
Wong, Sandie
Wong, Sandie 1*, Turner, Kay 2*,
1
2

RIPPLE, Charles Sturt University, swong@csu.edu.au

SDN Children's Services, k.turner@sdn.org.au

This paper reports on findings of a study exploring leadership during the

establishment phase of an inter-professional autism specific early childhood
education and care (ECEC) service. There is a growing number of children
diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Australia and worldwide.
Children with an ASD and their families have complex and diverse needs requiring
the expertise of a range of professionals (e.g. early childhood educators, early
intervention specialists, psychologists, occupational therapists). The most effective
way diverse professionals can work with families is through collaborative, interprofessional practice. Amongst the factors identified as important for sustaining and
managing collaboration in inter-professional teams in ECEC settings is effective
leadership. Research on leadership in inter-professional teams is somewhat limited
however, and that which is conducted tends to be on established teams often
retrospectively reflecting back on the establishment phase. Such studies are limited
by the recall of the participants and may be flavoured' by hindsight. There appears to
be no published work of research that has examined, in-depth, the role of leadership
as it happens' during the establishment phase of a collaborative inter-professional
autism specific ECEC service. The project described in this paper gathered narrative
data through eight collaborative reflective sessions, each lasting up to two hours,
conducted with a leader of an inter-professional autism specific ECEC service,
during the establishment of the service overa period of 18 months. Cultural Historical
Activity Theory was used as a heuristic framework for data analysis. Analysis
highlighted the subjective nature of leadership, identified a number of factors that
mediated the leaders' ability to realise the goal of establishing an interprofessional
team, and tensions between a number of competing demands that the leader
needed to negotiate.

30

Exploring pre-service teacher mediated agency through selfreflective study

Yang, Hongzhi
Yang, Hongzhi 1*,
1

School of Education, the University of New South Wales

Increasing teacher quality is the main focus of the current State and National teacher
education reforms in Australia. However, research on teacher education indicate the
problems of establishing a link between theory and actual teaching practice. This
reflective study therefore aims to investigate the nature and extent of pre-service
teacher mediated agency in applying theoretical knowledge into teaching practice in
Australia secondary school context and identifies factors that mediate teacher
agency in reflecting teacher training and professional experiences. Sociocultural
theory and in particular the concept of internalization and the mediating role of tools
are the central theoretical framework of this study. This study focuses on how
individual pre-service teacher took agentive actions in appropriating meditational
means and internalizing the knowledge from teacher education. The nature and
extent of pre-service teacher mediated agency in applying knowledge in their
teaching is explored with respect to reflective teaching, teacher beliefs, knowledge,
and professional experience. The data presented in this paper derives from my own
reflective study of a 12-month secondary teacher education program in an Australian
university. My reflective journals and the audio-recording of my teaching during
professional experience were analysed to explore the key factors influencing a preservice teacher agency in making transformation in learning and practical
experience. In addition, interviews were conducted with the Head of the School of
Education and method lecturers in the university to explore their perceptions about
bridging the gaps between teacher knowledge and practice. Critical reflection of my
own beliefs and knowledge indicate that self-study is not only a mediating tool for
teacher internalization of knowledge but also an outcome of the teacher education
program. Besides, mentoring relationship with supervising teacher and university
liaison and my own emotional experiences perezbivanija (Vygotsky, 1994, p.339) are
also important factors influencing my psychological development as a pre-service
teacher. Recognising how pre-service teacher internalize knowledge and bridge
gaps in their access to knowledge resources would be effective in supporting preservice teacher development and education.

31

Habits and Habitats: An ethnography of a school based learning

ecology
Yeoman, Pippa
Yeoman, Pippa1*
1

University of Sydney

Networked learning is constantly evolving to accommodate emerging technologies

that offer learners new and varied ways in which to connect in computer mediated
learning environments. These changes challenge the traditional boundaries
between: formal and informal learning, mandatory schooling and voluntary tertiary
education, and learner and tutor, provoking questions about the nature of learning
networks. Situated in a primary school context, and conducted as ethnography, this
research traces the movement of people, objects and information through a blended
learning environment in which a mobile-collaborative-curriculum is enacted daily in
the activity of learners and teachers as they co-configure both the physical and the
digital. The site, Northern Beaches Christian School, is an independent pre K to 12
school on the outskirts of metropolitan Sydney, Australia, and it is shaped by a
culture of research-based practice amongst staff. In 2005 they set about reshaping
their curriculum to accommodate collaboration and differentiation using computing
technologies. Once enacted, the staff vocalised a tension between the new way of
teaching and the built environment, which they described as working against their
best efforts to effect change. In response a second phase of redevelopment was
initiated to remedy this and the resulting environments had been in operation for two
years by the time this project commenced. The focus of this study was the Zone,
home to 180 year five and six students and their team of seven teachers; it is
situated in what had been the primary school library and a number of smaller
classrooms. It is a large, open plan space laid out across two levels, connected by a
series of stairs. All students are required to have a personal-digital-device and the
school provides Wi-Fi connectivity, Internet access, and school websites through
which student's access a learning-management-systems and Edmodo, an online
educational social-networking site. Drawing on theories of materiality (Leonardi,
2012, Sorensen, 2009), orchestration (Dillenbourg, 2011) and entanglement
(Hodder, 2012) this paper examines a single episode analysing the key structural
elements that support learning, and the manner in which these elements came
together to form assemblages that influenced learners' activities (Goodyear &
Carvalho, 2013).

32

Concept zone of the proximal development in psychotherapy and

pedagogics.
Zaretskiy, Viktor
Zaretskiy, Victor1*, Kholmogorova, Alla 2*,
1

Victor Zaretskiy, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education

(MSUPE)
2
Alla Kholmogorova, MSUPE
One of the general rules of rendering of the psychotherapeutic help which it has
entered on the basis of the empirical researches of factors of efficiency of
psychotherapy, says: not to make active a problem, yet resources for its decision
until then aren't made active (Grave, 2006). However naturally there is a question:
how to create optimum conditions for activization of resources of the patient? For the
answer it is useful to remember one more rule which - in the beginning of 1930th was entered much earlier by L.S.Vygotsky, discussing an efficiency problem of the
child adult interaction in the course of training. This rule fixes the major condition at
which the help of the adult to the child is effective and useful to its development: to
work in a zone of the nearest development of the child (ZPD). It is represented to us
that both mentioned rules - activization of resources (K.Grave) and work in ZPD
(L.S.Vygotsky) - are closely connected between themselves. Moreover, the second
contains important heuristic potential for specification of conditions of realization the
first. For a substantiation of this thesis we will try to draw an analogy between work
of the psychotherapist helping the client to solve his problems, and work of the
teacher or the psychologist with the child to whom he helps in overcoming of a
certain difficulty at performance of the educational task. According to L.S.Vygotsky
training conducts behind itself development and one step to training, under certain
conditions, can mean hundred steps to development (Vygotsky, 1984). From this
point of view, concept zone of the proximal development is a theoretical key to
understanding what are these conditions - what help the child needs, what helping
actions of the adult will be useful to the child, what are useless and what can harm to
development. Using of concept ZPD in scientific researches and practical work, will
allow specialists to focus the attention to conditions at which the zone of difficulty of
an actualized problem corresponds to resources of the patient, strengthened by
support of the psychotherapist.

33

Why Do the Parenting Practices of Immigrants from the Same

Culture Differ? A Comparative Study of Two Types of Chinese
Immigrant Parents in the Netherlands
Zheng, Lijie
Zheng, Lijie1*, de Haan, Maritte2, Koops Willem3,
1

Utrecht University L.Zheng@uu.nl

Utrecht University M.dehaan@uu.nl
3
Utrecht University W.Koops@uu.nl
2

In order to question the assumption that 'the parenting of immigrants from the same
ethnicity should develop into the same parenting after migrating to the same host
society', this empirical study compares two groups of mothers from two main subgroups of Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands: economic immigrants and
knowledge immigrants. Both of them share the same cultural background. However,
they are essentially different in terms of, for instance, migration history, educational
experience and socio-economic status. This study investigates the differences
between both groups with the goal to understand their parenting practices in the
context of their personal history, including their motivation for migration, experience
with formal schooling, as well as their familiarity with Western model of parenting
pre-migration. Moreover, the Western based modernization model is criticized as a
universal model to explain changes over time, while providing an alternative model
that builds upon the Chinese history of childhood. Thirty-four parents who migrated
after the year 2000 were interviewed. Holding onto the belief that the children grow
up naturally regardless of who takes care of them, the economic immigrant mothers
seem to involve more family members or babysitters in child rearing, also due to their
busy schedule of business. They also conserved more traditional Chinese ideas
such as the traditional authority of parents. They managed their children's life,
especially out-of-school-activities, based on their own ideas instead of children's
interests. On the contrary, the knowledge immigrant mothers cultivated their
children's life more conscientiously as they believed that children needed to be
strictly disciplined and had a right to develop independently; they also valued an
equal, transparent and close parent-child relationship. Their ideologies about formal
education were also different: the economic immigrant mothers had practical goals
and concrete expectations of children, while the knowledge immigrant mothers had
non-material goals and open expectations. This study implies that the practices
parents employed are specifically rooted in their own life context, but at the same
time embedded in the broader social transition they go through as migrants.

34

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