Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is a theoretical framework which helps to understand and analyse the relationship between the human mind (what people think and feel) and activity (what people do).
It traces its origins to the founders of the cultural-historical school of Russian psychology
L. S. Vygotsky[Yasnitsky, A. (2018)]
Vygotsky: An Intellectual Biography
London and New York: Routledg
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/ref> and Aleksei N. Leontiev. Vygotsky's important insight into the dynamics of consciousness was that it is essentially subjective and shaped by the history of each individual's social and cultural experience. Especially since the 1990s, CHAT has attracted a growing interest among academics worldwide. Elsewhere CHAT has been defined as "a cross-disciplinary framework for studying how humans purposefully transform natural and social reality, including themselves, as an ongoing culturally and historically situated
{{dictionary
In artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the term situated refers to an agent which is embedded in an environment. The term ''situated'' is commonly used to refer to robots, but some researchers argue that software agents c ...
, materially and socially mediated
''Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It'' is a non-fiction book by anthropologist Thomas de Zengotita published in 2005 by Bloomsbury about the effect of the media in the Western world.
Summary
''Mediated'' aim ...
process". Core ideas are: 1) humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate in and via their actions; 2) humans make, employ, and adapt tools of all kinds to learn and communicate; and 3) community is central to the process of making and interpreting meaning – and thus to all forms of learning, communicating, and acting.
The term CHAT was coined by Michael Cole and popularized by to promote the unity of what, by the 1990s, had become a variety of currents harking back to Vygotsky's work.
Historical overview
Origins: revolutionary Russia
CHAT traces its lineage to dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world con ...
, classical German philosophy
German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy in the German language or (2) philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Gottfried ...
, and the work of Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
, Aleksei N. Leontiev and Aleksandr Luria, known as ''"the founding troika"'' of the cultural-historical approach to Social Psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
. In a radical departure from the behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
and reflexology
Reflexology, also known as zone therapy, is an alternative medical practice involving the application of pressure to specific points on the feet, ears, and hands. This is done using thumb, finger, and hand massage techniques without the use of ...
that dominated much of psychology in the early 1920s, they formulated, in the spirit of Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
's Theses on Feuerbach
The "Theses on Feuerbach" are eleven short philosophical notes written by Karl Marx as a basic outline for the first chapter of the book ''The German Ideology'' in 1845. Like the book for which they were written, the theses were never published i ...
, the concept of activity, i.e., "artifact-mediated and object-oriented action". By bringing together the notion of history and culture in the understanding of human activity, they were able to transcend the Cartesian dualism Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descartes—from his Latinized name ''Cartesius''. It may refer to:
Mathematics
*Cartesian closed category, a closed category in category theory
* Cartesian coordinate system, moder ...
between subject and object, internal and external, between people and society, between individual inner consciousness and the outer world of society. Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
, who created the foundation of cultural-historical psychology, based on the concept of mediation, published six books on psychology topics during a working life which spanned only ten years. He died of TB in 1934 at the age of 37. A.N. Leont'ev worked with Lev Vygotsky and Alexandr Luria from 1924 to 1930, collaborating on the development of a Marxist psychology
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
. Leontiev left Vygotsky's group in Moscow in 1931, to take up a position in Kharkov
Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine. . There he was joined by local psychologists, including Pyotr Galperin and Pyotr Zinchenko
Petr Ivanovich Zinchenko (Russian: Пётр Иванович Зинченко) (12 July 1903 – 17 February 1969) was a Soviet developmental psychologist, a student of Lev Vygotsky and Alexei Leontiev and himself one of the major representatives ...
. He continued to work with Vygotsky for some time but, eventually, there was a split, although they continued to communicate with one another on scientific matters. Leontiev returned to Moscow in 1934. Contrary to popular belief, Vygotsky's work per se was never banned in Stalinist Soviet Russia. In 1950 A.N.Leontiev became the Head of the Psychology Department at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
(MGU). This department became an independent Faculty in 1966 due mainly to his hard work. He remained there until his death in 1979. Leontiev's formulation of activity theory, post 1962, had become the new "official" basis for Soviet psychology. In the two decades between a thaw in the suppression of scientific enquiry in Russia and the death of the Vygotsky's continuers, contact was made with the West.
Developments in the West
Michael Cole, then a young Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
psychology post-graduate exchange student, arrived in Moscow in 1962 for a one-year stint of research under Alexandr Luria. Keenly aware of the gulf between Soviet and American psychology, he was one for the first Westerners to present Luria's and Vygotsky's idea to an Anglo-Saxon public. This, and a steady flow of books translated from the Russian ensured the gradual establishment of a solid Cultural Psychology base in the west. Another American scholar, James V. Wertsch, after completing his PhD at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in 1975, spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in Moscow to study linguistics and neuropsychology. Wertsch subsequently became one of the leading Western experts on Soviet Psychology. Principal among the groups promoting CHAT-related research is Yjrö Engeström's Helsinki-based CRADLE. In 1982 an Activity Conference, claimed to have been the first of its kind in Europe, organized by Yrjö Engeström to concentrate on teaching and learning issues, took place in Espoo
Espoo (, ; sv, Esbo) is a city and municipality in the region of Uusimaa in the Republic of Finland. It is located on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, bordering the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, Kirkkonummi, Vihti and Nurmijärvi ...
(Fl), with the participation of experts from both Eastern and Western European countries. This was followed by the Aarhus
Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwest ...
(Dk) Conference in 1983 and the Utrecht (Nl) conference in 1984. In October 1986, West Berlin's College of Arts hosted the first ISCAR International Congress on Activity Theory. This was also the first effort to bring together under one roof researchers, theorists, and philosophers working in the tradition of the Soviet psychologists Leontiev and Vygotsky. The second ISCRAT congress took place in Lahti
Lahti (; sv, Lahtis) is a city and municipality in Finland. It is the capital of the region of Päijänne Tavastia (Päijät-Häme) and its growing region is one of the main economic hubs of Finland. Lahti is situated on a bay at the southern e ...
, (Fl) in 1990. ISCRAT became a formal legal organization with its own by-laws in Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
, 1992. Other ISCRAT conferences: Rome (1993), Moscow (1995), Aarhus
Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwest ...
(1998) and Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
(2002), when ISCRAT and the Conference for Socio-Cultural Research merged into ISCAR. From here on, ISCAR organizes an international Congress every three years: Sevilla
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spain, Spanish autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir, River Gua ...
(Es) 2005; San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
(USA) 2008; Rome (It) 2011; Sydney (Au) 2014; Quebec, Canada (2017).
In more recent years the implications of activity theory in organizational development have been promoted by the work Yrjö Engeström's team at the Centre for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research (CATDWR) at the University of Helsinki
The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...
, and Mike Cole at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognitio
(LCHC)
at the University of California San Diego campus.
The three generations of activity theory
In his 1987 ''"Learning by expanding"'', Engeström offers a very detailed account of the diverse sources, philosophical and psychological, that inform activity theory. In subsequent years, however, a simplified picture has emerged from his and other researchers' work, namely the idea that (to date) there are three principal 'stages' or 'generations' of activity theory, or "cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Whilst the first generation built on Vygotsky's notion of mediated action, from the individual's perspective, and the second generation built on Leont'ev's notion of activity system, with emphasis on the collective, the third generation, which appeared in the mid-nineties, builds on the idea of multiple interacting activity systems focused on a partially shared object, and boundary-crossings between them.
First generation – Vygotsky
The first generation emerges from Vygotsky's theory of cultural mediation Cultural mediation describes a profession that studies the cultural differences between people, using the data in problem solving.
It is one of the fundamental mechanisms of distinctly human development according to cultural–historical psychologi ...
, which was a response to behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
's explanation of consciousness, or the development of the human mind, by reducing "mind" to a series of atomic components or structures associated primarily with the brain as "stimulus – response" (S-R) processes. Vygotsky argued that the relationship between a human subject and an object is never direct but must be sought in society and culture as they evolve historically, rather than in the human brain or individual mind unto itself. His cultural-historical psychology attempted to account for the social origins of language and thinking. To Vygotsky, consciousness emerges from human activity mediated by artifacts (tools) and signs.
This idea of semiotic mediation is embodied in Vygotsky's famous triangular model which features the Subject (S), Object (O), and Mediating Artifact triad: in mediated action the Subject, Object, and Artifact stand in a dialectical relationship whereby each affects the other and the activity as a whole. Vygotsky argues that the use of signs leads to a specific structure of human behavior, which breaks away from mere biological development allowing the creation of new forms of culturally-based psychological processes – hence the importance of (cultural-historical) context: individuals could no longer be understood without their cultural environment, nor society without the ''agency'' of the individuals who use and produced these artifacts. The objects became cultural entities, and action oriented towards the objects became the key to understanding the human psyche. In the Vygotskyan framework the unit of analysis, however, remains principally the individual. First-generation activity theory has been used to understand individual behavior by examining the ways in which a person's objectivized actions are culturally ''mediated''. Besides a strong focus on material and symbolic mediation, internalization of external (social, societal, and cultural) forms of mediation, another important aspect of first generation CHAT is the concept of the zone of proximal development
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a concept in educational psychology. It represents the distance between what a learner is capable of doing unsupported, and what they can only do supported. It is the range where they are capable only with ...
(ZPD), meaning, as advanced in ''Mind in Society'' (1978), ''"the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers"''. ZPD is one of the major legacies of Vygotsky's work in the social sciences.
Second generation – Leontiev
While Vygotsky formulated practical human activity as the general explanatory category in human psychology, he did not fully clarify its precise nature. The second generation moves, beyond Vygotsky's individually-focused to A.N. Leontiev's collective model. In Engeström's now famous graphic depiction of second-generation activity, the unit of analysis has been expanded to include collective motivated activity toward an object, making room for understanding how collective action by social groups mediates activity. Hence the inclusion of ''community'', ''rules'', ''division of labor'' and the importance of analyzing their interactions with each other. Rules may be explicit or implicit. Division of labor refers to the explicit and implicit organization of the community involved in the activity. Engeström articulated the clearest distinction between classic Vygotskian psychology, which emphasizes the way semiotic and cultural systems mediate human ''action'', and Leontiev's second-generation CHAT, which is focused on the mediational effects of the systemic organization of human ''activity''.
In insisting that activity only exists in relation to rules, community and division of labor, Engeström expands ''the unit of analysis'' for studying human behavior from that of individual activity to a collective ''activity system''. The collective ''activity system'' includes the social, psychological, cultural and institutional perspectives in the analysis. In this conceptualization context or activity systems are inherently related to what Engeström argues are the deep-seated material practices and socioeconomic structures of a given culture. These societal dimensions had not been taken sufficiently into account by Vygotsky's, earlier, more 'simple' triadic model: in Leontiev's understanding, thought and cognition should be understood as a part of social life – as a part of the means of production and systems of social relations on one hand, and the intentions of individuals in certain social conditions on the other.
In his famous example of th
'primeval collective hunt'
Leontiev clarifies the crucial difference between an individual ''action'' ("the beater frightening game") and a collective ''activity'' ("the hunt"). While individuals' actions (frightening game) are different from the overall ''goal'' of the activity (hunt), they all share in the same ''motive'' (obtaining food). ''Operations'', on the other hand, are driven by the conditions and tools at hand, i.e. the objective circumstances under which the hunt is taking place. To understand the separate actions of the individuals, one needs to understand the broader ''motive'' behind the activity as a whole: this accounts for the three hierarchical levels of human functioning: ''object''-related motives drive the collective activity (top); ''goals'' drive individual/group action(s) (middle); ''conditions'' and ''tools'' drive automated operations (lower level).
Third generation – Engeström et al.
After Vygotsky's foundational work on the individual's higher psychological functions and Leontiev's extension of these insights to collective activity systems, questions of diversity and dialogue between different traditions or perspectives became increasingly serious challenges, when, especially in the post-1990s, activity theory 'went international'. The work of Michael Cole and Yrjö Engeström in the 1970s and 1980s – mostly in parallel, but occasionally in collaboration – brought activity theory to a much wider audience of scholars in Scandinavia and North America. Once the lives and biographies of all the participants and the history of the wider community are taken into account, ''multiple activity systems'' need to be considered, positing, according to Engeström, the need for a "third generation" to "''develop conceptual tools to understand dialogue, multiple perspectives, and networks of interacting activity Systems''". This larger canvas of active individuals (and researchers) embedded in organizational, political, and discursive practices constitutes a tangible advantage of second- and third-generation CHAT over its earlier Vygotskian ancestor, which focused on mediated action in relative isolation Third-generation activity theory is the application of ''Activity Systems Analysis'' (ASA) in developmental research where investigators take a participatory and interventionist role in the participants' activities and change their experiences.
Engeström's now famous diagram, or ''basic activity triangle'', – (which adds rules/norms, intersubjective community relations, and division of labor, as well as multiple activity systems sharing an object) – has become the principal third-generation model among the research community for analysing individuals and groups. Engeström summarizes the current state of CHAT with five principles:
# The activity system as primary unit of analysis: the basic third-generation model includes minimally two interacting activity systems.
# Multi-voicedness: an activity system is always a community of multiple points of views, traditions and interests.
# Historicity: activity systems take shape and get transformed over long stretches of time. Potentials and problems can only be understood against the background of their own histories.
# The central role of contradictions as sources of change and development.
# Activity Systems' possibility for ''expansive transformation'' (cycles of qualitative transformation): when object and motive are reconceptualized a radically wider horizon opens up.
Most often, learning technologists have used third-generation CHAT as a guiding theoretical framework to understand how technologies are adopted, adapted, and configured through use in complex social situations.
Informing research and practice
Leontiev and social development
From the 1960s onwards, starting in the global South
The concept of Global North and Global South (or North–South divide in a global context) is used to describe a grouping of countries along socio-economic and political characteristics. The Global South is a term often used to identify region ...
, and independently from the mainstream ''European'' developmental line, Leontiev's core ''Objective Activity'' concept has been used in a Social Development context. In the Organization Workshop's Large Group Capacitation
Large-group capacitation is an adult education and social psychology concept associated with the Brazilian sociologist Clodomir Santos de Morais, and grounded in the "activity" of the individual and the social psychology of the large group.de ...
-method, ''objective/ized activity'' acts as the core causal principle which postulates that, in order to change the mind-set of (large groups of) individuals, we need to start with changes to their activity – and/or to the object that "suggests" their activity. In Leontievian vein, the Organization Workshop is all about semiotically mediated activities through which (large groups of) participants ''learn how to manage themselves and the organizations they create to perform tasks that require a complex division of labor''.
CHAT-inspired research and practice since the 1980s
Especially over the last two decades, CHAT has offered a theoretical lens informing research and practice, in that it posits that learning takes place through collective activities that are purposefully conducted around a common object. Starting from the premise that learning is a social and cultural process that draws on historical achievements, its systems thinking
Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective actio ...
-based perspectives allow insights into the real world.
Change Laboratory (CL)
Change Laboratory (CL) is a CHAT-based method for formative intervention in activity systems and for research on their developmental potential as well as processes of expansive learning, collaborative concept-formation, and transformation of practices, elaborated in the mid-nineties by the Finnish Developmental Work Researc
(DWR)
group.
The CL method relies on collaboration between the practitioners of the activity being analyzed and transformed, and academic researchers or interventionists supporting and facilitating collective developmental processes. On the basis of Engeström's theory of ''expansive learning'', the foundation of an interventionist research approach at DWR was elaborated in the 1980s, and developed further in the 1990s as an intervention method now known as ''Change Laboratory''. CL interventions are used both to study the conditions of change and to help those working in organizations to develop their work, drawing on participant observation, interviews, and the recording and videotaping of meetings and work practices. Initially, with the help of an external interventionist, the first stimulus that ''is beyond the actors' present capabilities'', is produced in the Change Laboratory by collecting first-hand empirical data on problematic aspects of the activity. This data may comprise difficult client cases, descriptions of recurrent disturbances and ruptures in the process of producing the outcome. Steps in the CL process: Step 1 Questioning; Step 2 Analysis; Step 3 Modeling; Step 4 Examining; Step 5 Implementing; Step 6 Reflecting; Step 7 Consolidating. These seven action steps for increased understanding are described by Engeström as ''expansive learning'', or phases of an outwardly expanding spiral, while multiple kinds of actions can take place at any time. The phases of the model simply allow for the identification and analysis of the dominant action type during a particular period of time. These learning actions are provoked by contradictions. CL is used by a team or work unit or by collaborating partners across the organizational boundaries, initially with the help of an interventionist-researcher. The CL method has been used in agricultural contexts, educational and media settings, health care and learning support.
Activity systems analysis (ASA)
''Activity systems analysis'' is a CHAT-based method, discussed in / and in Cole & Engeström, 1993, for understanding human activity in real-world situations with data collection, analysis, and presentation methods that address the complexities of human activity in natural settings aimed to advance both theory and practice. It is based on Vygotsky's concept of mediated action and captures human activity in a triangle model that includes the subject, tool, object, rule, community, and division of labor. Subjects are participants in an activity, motivated toward a purpose or attainment of the object. The object can be the goal of an activity, the subject's motives for participating in an activity, and the material products that subjects gain through an activity. Tools are socially shared cognitive and/or material resources that subjects can use to attain the object. Informal or formal rules regulate the subject's participation while engaging in an activity. The community is the group or organization to which subjects belong. The division of labor is the shared participation responsibilities in the activity determined by the community. Finally, the outcome is the consequences that the subject faces because of his/her actions driven by the object. These outcomes can encourage or hinder the subject's participation in future activities. In Part 2 of her video "''Using Activity Theory to understand human behaviour''", shows how activity theory is applied to the problem of behavior change and HIV and AIDs (in South Africa). The video focuses on sexual activity as the activity of the system and illustrates how an ''Activity System Analysis'', through a historical and current account of the activity, provides a way of understanding the lack of behavior change in response to HIV and AIDS. In her eponymous book ''"Activity Systems Analysis Methods."'', describes seven ASA case studies which fall ''"into four distinct work clusters. These clusters include works that help (a) understand developmental work research (DWR), (b) describe real-world learning situations, (c) design human-computer interaction systems, and (d) plan solutions to complicated work-based problems"''. Other uses of ASA: Summarizing organizational change; Identifying guidelines for designing Constructivist Learning Environments; Identifying contradictions and tensions that shape developments in educational settings; Demonstrating historical developments in organizational learning., and Evaluating K–12 school and university partnership relations.
Human–computer interaction (HCI)
When HCI first appeared on the scene as a separate field of study in the early 1980s, HCI adopted the information processing
Information processing is the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process that ''describes'' everything that happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock (a change in posit ...
paradigm of computer science as the model for human cognition, predicated on prevalent cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
criteria, which, it was soon realized, failed to account for individuals' interests, needs and frustrations involved, nor of the fact that the technology critically depends on complex, meaningful, social, and dynamic contexts in which it takes place. Adopting a CHAT theoretical perspective had important implications for understanding how people use interactive technologies: the realization, for example, that a computer is typically an object of activity rather than a mediating artefact means that people interact with the world through computers, rather than with computer 'objects'. A number of diverse methodologies outlining techniques for human–computer interaction design have emerged since the rise of the field in the 1980s. Most design methodologies stem from a model for how users, designers, and technical systems interact. Bonnie Nardi produced the – hitherto – most applicable collection of activity theoretical HCI literature.
Systemic-structural activity theory (SSAT)
SSAT builds on the general theory of activity to provide an effective basis for both experimental and analytic methods of studying human performance, using carefully developed units of analysis SSAT approaches cognition both as a process and as a structured system of actions or other functional information-processing units, developing a taxonomy of human activity through the use of structurally organized units of analysis. The systemic-structural approach to activity design and analysis involves identifying the available means of work, tools and objects; their relationship with possible strategies of work activity; existing constraints on activity performance; social norms and rules; possible stages of object transformation; and changes in the structure of activity during skills acquisition.This method is demonstrated by applying it to the study of a human–computer interaction task.
Future
Evolving field of study
The strengths of CHAT are grounded both in its long historical roots and extensive contemporary use: it offers a philosophical and cross-disciplinary perspective for analyzing diverse human practices as development processes in which both individual and social levels are interlinked, as well as interactions and boundary-crossings. between activity systems More recently, the focus of studies of organizational learning has increasingly shifted away from learning within single organizations or organizational units, towards learning in multi‐organizational or inter‐organizational networks, as well as to the exploration and better understanding of interactions in their social context, multiple contexts and cultures, and the dynamics and development of particular activities. This shift has generated, among others, such concepts as "networks of learning" and "networked learning Networked learning is a process of developing and maintaining connections with people and information, and communicating in such a way so as to support one another's learning. The central term in this definition is connections. It adopts a relationa ...
", coworking
Coworking is an arrangement in which workers for different companies share an office space. It allows cost savings and convenience through the use of common infrastructures, such as equipment, utilities and receptionist and custodial services, a ...
, and knotworking. Industry of late has seen strong growth in nonemployer firms (NEFs), thanks to changes in long-term employment trends and developments in mobile technology which have led to more work from remote locations, more distance collaboration, and more work organized around temporary projects. Developments such as these and new forms of social production or commons-based peer production
Commons-based peer production (CBPP) is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler. It describes a model of socio-economic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively; usually over the Internet. Commons-based p ...
, such as e.g. open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
development and cultural production in peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
(P2P) networks, have become a key focus in Engeström's more recent work.
"Fourth generation"
The rapid rise of new forms of activities characterised by web-based social and participatory practices,
, phenomena such as distributed workforce
A distributed workforce is a workforce that conducts remote work. A distributed workforce is dispersed geographically over a wide area – domestically or internationally. Via technology, distributed companies enable employees located anywhere to ...
and the dominance of knowledge work, prompts a rethink of the third-generation model, bringing with it the need, as suggested by Engestrōm, for a new, ''fourth generation'' activity system model. which activity theorists indeed have been working on in recent years. In fourth generation CHAT, the object(ive) will typically comprise multiple perspectives and contexts and be inherently transient; collaborations between actors, too, are likely to be temporary, with multiple boundary crossings between interrelated activities. Fourth-generation activity theorists have specifically developed activity theory to better accommodate Castells's (and others') insights into how work organization has shifted in the network society Network society is the expression coined in 1991 related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. The intellectual origins of the idea can be trac ...
: they hence will focus less on the workings of individual activity systems (often represented by triangles) and more on the interactions across activity systems functioning in networks.[For an example of a fourth generation analytical diagram see ] The 2017 ISCAR congress (August, Quebec City) has the following theme: 'Taking a 360° view of the landscape of cultural-historical activity research:The state of our scholarship in practice''.
See also
* Activity theory
Activity theory (AT; russian: link=no, Теория деятельности) is an umbrella term for a line of eclectic social-sciences theories and research with its roots in the Soviet psychological activity theory pioneered by Sergei Rubinste ...
* Aleksei N. Leontiev
* Bonnie Nardi
* Community of practice
A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educat ...
* Cultural-historical psychology Cultural-historical psychology is a branch of psychological theory and practice associated with Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria and their Circle, who initiated it in the mid-1920s–1930s.Yasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R., & Ferrari, M. (Eds.) (201 ...
* Expansive learning
* Kharkov School of Psychology
{{Use dmy dates, date=October 2015
The Kharkov school of psychology (''Харьковская психологическая школа'') is a tradition of developmental psychological research conducted in the paradigm of Lev Vygotsky's "sociocult ...
* Knowledge sharing
Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge (namely, information, skills, or expertise) is exchanged among people, friends, peers, families, communities (for example, Wikipedia), or within or between organizations. It bridges the ind ...
* Large-group capacitation
Large-group capacitation is an adult education and social psychology concept associated with the Brazilian sociologist Clodomir Santos de Morais, and grounded in the "activity" of the individual and the social psychology of the large group.de Mo ...
* Legitimate peripheral participation Legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) describes how newcomers become experienced members and eventually old timers of a community of practice or collaborative project . LPP identifies learning as a contextual social phenomenon, achieved through ...
* Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
* Organizational learning
Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge. This knowledge is bro ...
* Organization workshop
* Social constructivism
Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge according to which human development is socially situated and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others.
Like social constructionism, social constructivism states th ...
(learning theory)
* Vygotsky Circle The Vygotsky Circle (also known as Vygotsky–Luria CircleYasnitsky, A. & van der Veer, R. (Eds.) (2015)Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies London and New York: RoutledgeYasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R., Aguilar, E. & García, L.N. (Eds.) (201 ...
* Zone of proximal development
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a concept in educational psychology. It represents the distance between what a learner is capable of doing unsupported, and what they can only do supported. It is the range where they are capable only with ...
Publications
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* – Chapter 25 in: Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Y.K. Lal, B., Williams, M., Schneberger, S.L., Wade, M., 2009, Handbook of Research on Contemporary Theoretical Models in Information Systems, IGI Global, 2009,
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References
External links
Blunden, A. The Origins of CHAT.
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Blunden, A. Concepts of CHAT Action, Behaviour and Consciousness (ppts).
Blunden, A. Genealogy of Cultural Historical Activity Theory
(chart)
Boardman, D. Activity Theory
Interview with Professor Yrjö Engeström: part 1
Interview with Professor Yrjö Engeström: part 2
Introduction to Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) Nygård
Leontiev works in English
Robertson, I. An Introduction to Activity Theory
* Spinuzzi, Cla
"All Edge: Understanding the New Workplace Networks"
(Powerpoint Presentation)
The Future of Activity Theory
van der Riet Part I Introduction to Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)
van der Riet Part II Using Activity to Understand Human Behaviour
Vygotsky archive
Yamagata "Activity Systems Analysis in Design Research".
(Powerpoint Presentation)
{{Psychology
Adult education
Cognitive psychology
Learning methods
Social change
Training