Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T22:59:10.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Learning in Activity

from Part I - Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

By
Yrjö Engeström
Edited by
R. Keith Sawyer
R. Keith Sawyer
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Get access

Summary

This chapter presents an approach to the study of learning which analyzes small groups – such as a dyad, a group, a classroom – or large groups – for example, a community or a social movement. This approach is based on a situativity or sociocultural theory of cognition and learning, where learning is “situated” within complex social and material contexts known as activity systems. Sociocultural theories are related to cultural-historical activity theory, situated learning theory, distributed cognition theory, and cultural psychology. These theories suggest that a full account of learning must extend beyond individualist psychology to analyze and explain social practices, technological artifacts, interactional patterns, and the different roles occupied by the participants.

Keywords

socioculturalsituativityactivity systemssocial practiceconcept formation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences , pp. 134 - 155
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahamson, D., Trninic, D., Gutiérrez, J. F., Huth, J., & Lee, R. G. (2011). Hooks and shifts: A dialectical study of mediated discovery. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 16(1), 55–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akkerman, S., & Bruining, T. (2016). Multilevel boundary crossing in a professional development school partnership. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(2), 240–284.Google Scholar
Bal, A., Afacan, K., & Cakir, H. I. (2018). Culturally responsive school discipline: Implementing Learning Lab at a high school for systemic transformation. American Educational Research Journal, 55(5), 1007–1050.Google Scholar
Bellack, A., Kliebard, H., Hyman, R., & Smith, F. (1966). The language of the classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
Bowers, J., Cobb, P., & McClain, K. (1999). The evolution of mathematical practices: A case study. Cognition and Instruction, 17(1), 25–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. S. (1973). Beyond the information given: Studies in the psychology of knowing. New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Caldwell, H., Krinsky, J., Brunila, M., & Ranta, K. (2019). Learning to common, commoning as learning. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(6), 1207–1233.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Schaefer, E. F. (1989). Contributing to discourse. Cognitive Science, 13(2), 259–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cussins, A. (1992). Content, embodiment and objectivity: The theory of cognitive trails. Mind, 101(404), 651–688.Google Scholar
Cussins, A. (1993). Nonconceptual content and the elimination of misconceived composites. Mind & Language, 8(2), 234–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davydov, V. V. (1990). Types of generalization in instruction: Logical and psychological problems in the structuring of school curricula. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki, Finland: Orienta-Konsultit.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2015). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2016). Studies in expansive learning: Learning what is not yet there. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2017). Expanding the scope of science education: An activity-theoretical perspective. In Hahl, K., Juuti, K., Lampiselkä, J., Lavonen, J., & Uitto, A. (Eds.), Cognitive and affective aspects in science education research (pp. 357–370). New York, NY: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2018). Expertise in transition: Expansive learning in medical work. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., Nummijoki, J., & Sannino, A. (2012). Embodied germ cell at work: Building an expansive concept of physical mobility in home care. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19(3), 287–309.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., Puonti, A., & Seppänen, L. (2003). Spatial and temporal expansion of the object as a challenge for reorganizing work. In Nicolini, D., Gherardi, S., & Yanow, D. (Eds.), Knowing in organizations: A practice-based approach (pp. 151–186). Armonk, NY: Sharpe.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., Rantavuori, J., & Kerosuo, H. (2013). Expansive learning in a library: Actions, cycles and deviations from instructional intentions. Vocations and Learning, 6(1), 81–106.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2010). Studies of expansive learning: Foundations, findings and future challenges. Educational Research Review, 5(1), 1–24.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2011). Discursive manifestations of contradictions in organizational change efforts. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 24(3), 368–387.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2012). Whatever happened to process theories of learning? Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 1(1), 45–56.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y., Sannino, A., & Virkkunen, J. (2014). On the methodological demands of formative interventions. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 21(2), 118–128.Google Scholar
Engle, R. A. (2006). Framing interactions to foster generative learning: A situative explanation of transfer in a community of learners classroom. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(4), 451–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galleguillos, J., & de Carvalho Borba, M. (2018). Expansive movements in the development of mathematical modeling: Analysis from an Activity Theory perspective. ZDM, 50(1–2), 129–142.Google Scholar
Ginnett, R. C. (1993). Crews as groups: Their formation and leadership. In Wiener, E. L., Kanki, B. G., & Helmreich, R. L. (Eds.), Cockpit resource management (pp. 71–98). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2018). Co-operative action. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Greeno, J. G. (1991). Number sense as situated knowing in a conceptual domain. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 22(3), 170–218.Google Scholar
Greeno, J. G. (2012). Concepts in activities and discourses. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19(3), 310–313.Google Scholar
Greeno, J. G. (2016). Cultural-historical activity theory/design-based research in Pasteur’s quadrant. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 634–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greeno, J. G., & Engeström, Y. (2014). Learning in activity. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 128–147). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutiérrez, K. D. (2020). When learning as movement meets learning on the move. Cognition and Instruction, 38(3), 427–433.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, K. D., Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2016). Expanding educational research and interventionist methodologies. Cognition and Instruction, 34(3), 275–284.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, K. D., & Jurow, A. S. (2016). Social design experiments: Toward equity by design. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 565–598.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, K., Rymes, B., & Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 445–472.Google Scholar
Hall, R., & Greeno, J. G. (2008). Conceptual learning. In Good, T. (Ed.), 21st century education: A reference handbook (pp. 212–221). London, England: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Headrick Taylor, K. (2017). Learning along lines: Locative literacies for reading and writing the city. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 26(4), 533–574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, D. C., Lachicotte Jr, W. S., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (2001). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Il’enkov, E. V. (1977). Dialectical logic: Essays in its history and theory. Moscow, Russia: Progress.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (2007). Lines: A brief history. London, England: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jurow, A. S., Teeters, L., Shea, M., & Van Steenis, E. (2016). Extending the consequentiality of “invisible work” in the food justice movement. Cognition and Instruction, 34(3), 210–221.Google Scholar
Knorr-Cetina, K. (1997). Sociality with objects: Social relations in postsocial knowledge societies. Theory, Culture & Society, 14(4), 1–30.Google Scholar
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, V. R., & Dubovi, I. (2020). At home with data: Family engagements with data involved in type 1 diabetes management. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(1), 11–31.Google Scholar
Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Hills, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25.Google Scholar
Martínez-Álvarez, P. (2019). Redistribution of labor to prepare teachers to work in inclusive bilingual classrooms. Urban Education. doi:10.1177/0042085919873697Google Scholar
Marton, F., & Pang, M. F. (2006). On some necessary conditions of learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(2), 193–220.Google Scholar
Marton, F., Tsui, A. B., Chik, P. P., Ko, P. Y., & Lo, M. L. (2004). Classroom discourse and the space of learning. London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar
Meléndez, J. W. (2020). Latino immigrants in civil society: Addressing the double-bind of participation for expansive learning in participatory budgeting. Journal of the Learning Sciences. doi:10.1080/10508406.2020.1807349Google Scholar
Mercer, N. (1995). The guided construction of knowledge: Talk amongst teachers and learners. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (2012). Engineering concepts: The interplay between concept formation and modeling practices in bioengineering sciences. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19(3), 222–239.Google Scholar
Nolen, S. B., Wetzstein, L., & Goodell, A. (2020). Designing material tools to mediate disciplinary engagement in environmental science. Cognition and Instruction, 38(2), 179–223.Google Scholar
Nummijoki, J., Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2018). Defensive and expansive cycles of learning: A study of home care encounters. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 27(2), 224–264.Google Scholar
O’Neill, D. K. (2016). Understanding design research–practice partnerships in context and time: Why learning sciences scholars should learn from cultural-historical activity theory approaches to design-based research. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 497–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radford, L. (2020). Davydov’s concept of the concept and its dialectical materialist background. Educational Studies in Mathematics. doi:10.1007/s10649–020-09959-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resnick, L., Michaels, S., & O’Connor, C. (2010). How (well-structured) talk builds the mind. In Sternberg, R. & Preiss, D. (Eds.), From genes to context: New discoveries about learning from educational research and their applications (pp. 163–194). New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Rogoff, B. (2014). Learning by observing and pitching in to family and community endeavors: An orientation. Human Development, 57(2–3), 69–81.Google Scholar
Rubel, L. H., Hall-Wieckert, M., & Lim, V. Y. (2017). Making space for place: Mapping tools and practices to teach for spatial justice. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 26(4), 643–687.Google Scholar
Russ, R. S., & Berland, L. K. (2019). Invented science: A framework for discussing a persistent problem of practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28(3), 279–301.Google Scholar
Sannino, A. (2008). Sustaining a non-dominant activity in school: Only a utopia? Journal of Educational Change, 9(4), 329–338.Google Scholar
Sannino, A. (2015). The principle of double stimulation: A path to volitional action. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 6(1), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sannino, A. (2020). Transformative agency as warping: How collectives accomplish change amidst uncertainty. Pedagogy, Culture & Society. doi:10.1080/14681366.2020.1805493Google Scholar
Sannino, A., Engeström, Y., & Lemos, M. (2016). Formative interventions for expansive learning and transformative agency. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 599–633.Google Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2014). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schatzki, T. R. (2010). The timespace of human activity: On performance, society, and history as indeterminate teleological events. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis I. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, J. C., Christensen, A., Kackar-Cam, H. Z., Fulmer, S. M., & Trucano, M. (2018). The development of professional learning communities and their teacher leaders: An activity systems analysis. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 27(1), 49–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van de Sande, C. C., & Greeno, J. G. (2012). Achieving alignment of perspectival framings in problem-solving discourse. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 21(1), 1–44.Google Scholar
Van Wart, S., Lanouette, K., & Parikh, T. S. (2020). Scripts and counterscripts in community-based data science: Participatory digital mapping and the pursuit of a third space. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(1), 127–153.Google Scholar
Vossoughi, S. (2014). Social analytic artifacts made concrete: A study of learning and political education. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 21(4), 353–373.Google Scholar
Vossoughi, S., Jackson, A., Chen, S., Roldan, W., & Escudé, M. (2020). Embodied pathways and ethical trails: Studying learning in and through relational histories. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(2), 183–223.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 1. Problems of general psychology. New York, NY: Plenum.Google Scholar
Wells, G. (1993). Reevaluating the IRF sequence: A proposal for the articulation of theories of activity and discourse for the analysis of teaching and learning in the classroom. Linguistics and Education, 5(1), 1–37.Google Scholar
White, T. (2019). Artifacts, agency and classroom activity: Materialist perspectives on mathematics education technology. Cognition and Instruction, 37(2), 169–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×