|
Yrjö
Engeström
The cultural-historical
theory of activity was initiated by a group of revolutionary Russian
psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s. The approach was Lev Vygotsky
(1896-1934) and his colleagues A. N. Leont'ev and A. R. Luria. They
formulated a completely new theoretical concept to transcend the prevailing
understanding of psychology which was then dominated by psychoanalysis
and behaviorism. This new orientation was a model of artifact-mediated
and object-oriented action (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 40).
The relationship
between human agent and objects of environment is mediated by cultural
means, tools and signs. Leont'ev introduced an emphasis on the division
of labor as a fundamental historical process behind the evolution
of mental functions. Mediated by tools, work is also "performed in
conditions of joint, collective activity." The distinction between
activity, action and operation became the basis of Leont'ev's model
of activity.
|
Liam
Bannon
Activity
Theory was mainly a result of a larger effort to develop a new psychology
based on Marxist philosophy, an effort which started soon after the
Russian revolution of 1917. Several programs for restructuring psychology
on a Marxist basis were formulated in the 20's and 30's, and very heated
debates between proponents of different approaches were not uncommon
at that time. One of the first postulates Soviet psychologists agreed
upon was the so-called "principle of unity and inseparability of consciousness
(i.e., human mind) and activity". The meaning of this principle was
that human mind comes to exist, develops, and can only be understood
within the context of meaningful, goal-oriented, and socially determined
interaction between human beings and their material environment.
Activity Theory
is not a "theory" in the strict interpretation of the term. It consists
of a set of basic principles which constitute a general conceptual
system which can be used as a foundation for more specific theories.
These basic principles of Activity Theory include object-orientedness,
the dual concepts of internalization/externalization, tool mediation,
hierarchical structure of activity, and continuous development. The
principle of object-orientedness states that human beings live in
a reality which is objective in a broad sense; the things which constitute
this reality have not only the properties which are considered objective
according to natural sciences but socially/culturally defined properties
as well.
Activity Theory
differentiates between internal and external activities. The traditional
notion of mental processes corresponds to internal activities. Activity
Theory emphasizes that internal activities cannot be understood if
they are analyzed separately, in isolation from external activities,
because there are mutual transformations between these two kinds of
activities: internalization and externalization It is the general
context of activity (which includes both external and internal components)
that determines when and why external activities become internal and
vice versa.
The Activity Theory
emphasis on social factors and on interaction between agents and their
environments explains why the principle of tool mediation plays a
central role within the approach. First of all, tools shape the way
human beings interact with reality. And, according to the above principle
of internalization / externalization, shaping external activities
ultimately results in shaping internal ones. Second, tools usually
reflect the experiences of other people who have tried to solve similar
problems at an earlier time and invented/ modified the tool to make
it more efficient. This experience is accumulated in the structural
properties of tools (shape, material, etc.) as well as in the knowledge
of how the tool should be used. Tools are created and transformed
during the development of the activity itself and carry with them
a particular culture - the historical remnants from that development.
So, the use of tools is a means for the accumulation and transmission
of social knowledge. It influences the nature, not only of external
behavior, but also of the mental functioning of individuals.
|
Liam
Bannon & Susanne Bødker
In human
activity theory, the basic unit of analysis is human (work) activity.
Human activities are driven by certain needs where people wish to achieve
a certain purpose. This activity is usually mediated by one or more
instruments or tools (the concept of mediation is central to the whole
theory).
The carpenter
uses a saw and a hammer to produce a house out of wood and the like,
the teacher uses language, books, pictures, maps etc. to teach her
pupils geography. However the carpenter building a house is not alone
in the world. He works together with other carpenters, as well as
with other building workers. The ensemble of carpenters divide their
work between them. The ways of doing work, grounded in tradition and
shared by a group of carpenters, nurses or the like, we call practice
or praxis. When getting trained as a carpenter or nurse one gets to
share this praxis. At the same time each individual who holds a praxis
continues the praxis, and he or she changes it as well, by coming
up with new ways of doing things. It is this praxis that allows us
to talk about more than just individual skills, knowledge and judgement,
and not just about a "generic" human being. In other words, we can
talk about the appropriateness of a certain tool for a certain praxis.
Human beings mediate
their activity by artifacts: The carpenter uses a hammer to drive
a nail, the nurses use language and records to coordinate their actions
towards the patients and each other, etc. Tools, means to divide work,
norms and language can all be seen as artifacts for the activity:
they are made by humans and they mediate the relations among human
beings or between people and the material or product in different
stages. One of the major contributions of Vygotsky was that he also
viewed language and symbol systems as psychological tools for developing
the human condition. Artifacts are there for us when we are introduced
into a certain activity, but they are also a product of our activity,
and as such they are constantly changed through the activity. This
"mediation" is essential in the ways in which we can understand artifacts
through activity theory.
|
Martin
Ryder
In its
simplest terms, an activity is defined as the engagement of a
subject toward a certain goal or objective. In nature, an activity is
typically unmediated. Picking a berry from a bush and eating it is a
simple, unmediated activity that involves direct action between the
subject and object. In most human contexts our activities are mediated
through the use of culturally established instruments, including language,
artifacts, and established procedures. Picking mushrooms in the forest
and eating them is an activity that is ill-advised without some form
of mediation. Our subject would prudently appropriate some prior knowledge
- a field guide, prior education in mycology, the direct advice of an
experienced mushroom forager, or some other embodiment of human experience
with mushrooms. Some means is necessary to bring the prior experience
of history into the current activity. Animals have only one world, the
world of direct objects and situations, mediated only through instinct.
Humans have the vicarious worlds of other humans that they can invoke
into the present through the use of language and artifacts. (Luria,
1981)
An activity is
undertaken by a human agent (subject) who is motivated toward the
solution of a problem or purpose (object), and mediated by tools (artifacts)
in collaboration with others (community). The structure of the activity
is constrained by cultural factors including conventions (rules) and
social strata (division of labor) within the context. Engeström calls
attention to the mediational role of the community and that of social
structures including the division of labor and established procedures.
In our mushroom example, a more knowledgeable forager could serve
in the capacity as foreman, dictating which mushrooms to pick and
which to leave alone. More likely, the expert would serve in the capacity
as a tutor or coach, explaining the criteria she uses to discriminate
between the edible mushrooms and the poisonous. Or the necessary knowledge
could come in the form of a structured set of rules which clearly
specify the detailed procedures that must be followed in the selection
of edible mushrooms. It is concievable to make use of some exotic
instrument which can sample a piece of the mushroom and perform necessary
chemical analyses to detect poisonous substances. The knowledge which
is necessary in an activity system can emerge in any one or a combination
of instruments, artifacts and mediational roles.
|
Reijo
Miettinen
According
to Vygotsky, a human individual never reacts merely directly (or merely
with inborn reflects) to the environment. The relation between the human
agent and the object is mediated by cultural means or artifacts. The
basic types of these means are signs and tools. During socialization,
an individual internalize, by participating in common activities with
other humans the means of culture: language, theories, technical artifacts
as well as norms and modes of acting. Thus consciousness doesn't exist
situated inside the head of the individual but in the interaction -
realized through material activity - between the individual and the
objective forms of culture created by the labour of mankind.
Later Activity
theory developed further the ideas of Vygotsky. A.N. Leontjev, a disciple
of Vygotsky stressed that activity is also socially mediated: consciousness
and meaning are always formed in joint, collective activity (Leontjev
1978). As a result, the unit of analysis in studying human mediated
activity, is an activity system, community of actors who have a common
object of activity (Engeström 1987, Cole & Engeström 1994). In
this model social mediatedness is characterized by division of labour
and rules mediating the interaction between the individuals in the
activity system. The collective activity system as unit of analysis
connects the psychological, cultural and institutional perspective
to analysis. The study of activity ceases to be psychology of an individual
but instead focuses on the interaction between an individual, systems
of artifacts and other individuals in historically developing institutional
settings.
|
Maximina M. Freire
The attempt
at correlating context, participants and texts as interactants in communicative
events suggests the possibility of interpreting their interrelationship
by applying the tri-stratal analysis of social activity (Leontiev, 1981:
59-69). This framework helps us to understand activities, actions and
operations performed by participants and to reveal their motives, goals
and instrumental conditions, respectively.
For Leontiev,
the concept of activity answers to a specific need of the active agent:
it moves toward the object of this need and terminates when it is
satisfied. Consequently, the concept of activity is necessarily connected
with the concept of motive.
Activities are
translated into reality through a specific or a set of actions which
are subordinated to the idea of having a conscious goal. Comparatively,
activities and actions are genuinely diverse realities which do not
coincide: one action can be instrumental in realizing different activities;
conversely, one motive can give rise to different goals and, accordingly,
can produce different actions.
Actions are developed
through operations which are concerned with conditions. The distinction
between actions and operations emerges clearly in the case of actions
involving tools: while actions are connected to conscious goals, operations
are related to routinized behaviors performed automatically, without
including the same level of consciousness.
|
Bonnie
A. Nardi
Activity
theory is a powerful and clarifying descriptive tool rather than a strongly
predictive theory. The object of activity theory is to understand the
unity of consciousness and activity. Activity theory incorporates strong
notions of intentionality, history, mediation, collaboration and development
in constructing consciousness. Activity theorists argue that consciousness
is not a set of discrete disembodied cognitive acts (decision making,
classification, remembering...) and certainly it is not the brain; rather
consciousness is located in everyday practice: you are what you do.
And what you do is firmly and inextricably embedded in the social matrix
of which every person is an organic part. This social matrix is composed
of people and artifacts. Artifacts may be physical tools or sign systems
such as human language. Understanding the interpenetration of the individual,
other people and artifacts in everyday activity is the challenge activity
theory has set for itself.
In activity theory,
artifacts are mediators of human thought and behavior; they do not
occupy the same ontological space. People are not reduced to "nodes"
or "agents" in a system; "information processing" is not seen as something
to be modeled in the same way for people and machines. Activity theory
proposes that activity cannot be understood without understanding
the role of artifacts in everyday existence, activity theory is concerned
with practice, that is, doing and activity, which significantly involve
"the mastery of ...external devices and tools of labor activity".
|
More Definitions:
|