Module 15Activity Theory
"neither hand or mind alone suffice; the
tools and devices they employ finally shape them". ...in the end, man uses nature and the tool-kit
of culture to gain control of the world and of himself. But there is
something new in his treatment of this theme - or perhaps it is my
new recognition of something that was there before. For now there is
a new emphasis on the manner in which, through using tools, man
changes himself and his culture. Vygotsky's reading of Darwin is
strikingly close to that of modern primatology . . . which also rests
on the argument that human evolution is altered by man-made tools
whose use then creates a technical-social way of life. Once that
change occurs, 'natural' selection becomes dominated by cultural
criteria and favours those able to adapt to the tool-using,
culture-using way of life. By Vygotsky's argument, tools, whether
practical or symbolic, are initially 'external': used outwardly on
nature or in communicating with others. "Natural science, like philosophy, has hitherto
entirely neglected the influence of men's activity on their thought;
both know only nature on the one hand and thought on the other. But
it is precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as
such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human
thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change
nature that his intelligence has increased." Goals
Philosophical and Conceptual BackgroundActivity theory was developed in the Soviet Union. The philosophical underpinnings of this theory include the ideas of Hegel and Kant, as well as the theory of dialectical materialism developed by Marx and Engels. The theory evolved from the work of Vygotsky as he formulated a new method of studying thought and consciousness. Vygotsky was working on this theory at a time when the prevalent dominant psychological theories were based on reflexology (stimulus-response - which was later developed into behaviorism) and psychoanalysis. Reflexology attempted to ban consciousness by reducing all psychological phenomena to a series of stimulus-response chains. The major objection Vygotsky had to the mentalist tradition was that it confined itself to a vicious circle in which states of consciousness are "explained" by the concept of consciousness. Vygotsky argued that if one is to take consciousness as a subject of study, then the explanatory principle must be sought in some other layer of reality. Vygotsky suggested that socially meaningful activity (Tatigkeit) may play this role and serve as a generator of consciousness. When Vygotsky formulated his first ideas about the mediation of consciousness, he appropriated Marxist ideas about how tools or instruments mediate the labor activity and extended those ideas to include how psychological tools mediate thought. According to Wertsch (1981): For Marx and Engels, labor is the basic form of human activity. . .Their analysis stresses that in carrying out labor activity, humans do not simply transform nature: they themselves are also transformed in the process. . . The tools that are available at a particular stage in history reflect the level of labor activity. New types of instruments are needed to carry out the continually evolving new forms of labor activity. The other side of the dialectical coin is that each new level of tools or instruments gives rise to yet another round of ways of conceptualizing and acting on the world. [For Vygotsky] One of the main cornerstones of his psychology was the similarity between Marx's notion of how the tool or instrument mediates overt human labor activity and the semiotic notion of how sign systems mediate human social processes and thinking. In both cases the point is that instruments are not only used by humans to change the world but also transform and regulate humans in this process. (p. 134-135) Vygotsky states: Psychological tools are artificial formations. By their nature they are social, not organic or individual. They are directed toward the mastery or control of behavioral processes...just as technical means are directed toward the control of processes of nature.  This new method of thinking about consciousness, the mediation by pyschological tools was termed the instrumental method. The diagram shown above was Vygotsky's initial formulation of an instrumental act. He discussed the fact that a stimulus could play the role of an object toward which an act of behavior was directed. However, in this act, the tool could also play the role of the means by which we direct internal psychological operations to solve a problem. Whereas the link between A and B was the direct associative connection (stimulus -> response), in Vygotsky's instrumental method, both the stimulus and the tool could be considered as stimuli affecting the ultimate response. He states: Thus, in the instrumental act, a new intermediate link- the psychological tool, which becomes the structural center (i.e., the feature that functionally determines all the processes that form the instrumental act) - is inserted between the object and the psychological operation toward which it is directed. Any behavioral act then becomes an intellectual operation (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 139). 1st Generation Activity TheoryTo many of the psychologists working on the development of activity theory, this formulation was still too close to behaviorism. They took Vygotsky's idea of artifact-mediated and object-oriented action and reformulated it as follows:  An activity is composed of a subject, and an object, mediated by a tool. A subject is a person or a group engaged in an activity. An object ( in the sense of "objective") is held by the subject and motivates activity, giving it a specific direction. The mediation can occur through the use of many different types of tools, material tools as well as mental tools, including culture, ways of thinking and language. As opposed to cognitive psychology, which focuses on the study of the indivividual as a separate entity, in activity theory the unit of analysis is an activity. As Nardi (1996) explains: Context is not an outer container or shell inside of which people behave in certain ways. People consciously and deliberately generate context (activities) in part through their own objects [objectives]; hence context is not just "out there." Context is both internal to people-involving specific objects and goals-and, at the same time, external to people, involving artifacts, other people, specific settings. The crucial point is that in activity theory, external and internal are fused, unified. 2nd Generation Activity Theory
In Vygotsky's early work the unit of analysis was object-oriented action mediated by cultural tools and signs. There was no recognition of the part played by by other human beings and social relations in the triangular model of action A. N. Leontiev extended the theory by adding several features based the need to separate individual action from collective activity. The distinction between activity, action and operation was added to delineate an individual's behavior from the collective activity system. He states: A beater, for example, taking part in a primeval collective hunt, was stimulated by a need for food or, perhaps, a need for clothing, which the skin of the dead animal would meet for him. At what, however, was his activity directly aimed? It may have been directed, for example, at frightening a herd of animals and sending them toward other hunters, hiding in an ambush. That, properly speaking, is what should be the result of the activity of this man. And the activity of this individual member of the hunt ends with that. The rest is completed by the other members. This result, i.e. the frightening of game, etc., understandably does not in itself, and may not, lead to satisfaction of the beater's need for food, or the skin of the animal. What the processes of his activity were directed to did not, consequently, coincide with what stimulated them, i.e., did not coincide with a motive of his activity; the two are divided from one another in this instance. Processes, the object and motive of which do not coincide with one another, we shall call "actions". We can say, for example, that the beater's activity is the hunt, and the frightening of the game his action. (Leontiev, 1981, p. 210) As Tolman suggests: The beater who needs food for survival is engaged in actions that result in the opposite of what he is immediately seeking. Instead of closing the distance with the quarry, he is driving it away. This makes sense only if he knows that someone is waiting to achieve his goal (consciously shared with others) at the other end. The sense of his action was not in the action itself but in his relation to other members of the group. It is apparent from the description above that more than one action can be used to achieve a goal, both the beaters and the hunters in the activity system above are carrying out actions which will result in a successful hunt. But their actions are different. The third hierarchical level which Leontiev added to the theory of activity was the level of operations, which are performed automatically. As he states, when learning to shift gears in a standard automobile: Initially every operation, such as shifting gears, is formed as an action subordinated specifically to this goal and has its own conscious "orienting basis"…. Subsequently this action is included in another action, such as that of changing the speed of the automobile. At this point, shifting gears becomes one of the methods for carrying out this action-that is, it becomes an operation necessary for performing the action. It is no longer carried out as a special goal-directed process. The driver does not distinguish its goal. So far as the driver's conscious processes are concerned, it is as if shifting gears under normal circumstances does not exist. He/she is doing something else: he/she is driving the automobile from place to place, driving up steep inclines and across level expanses, bringing it to a stop in certain places. Indeed, we know that this operation can "drop out" of the driver's activity entirely and can be performed automatically (Leontiev, 1981, p. 64) So Leontiev's model of activity is reformulated as follows: "the uppermost level of collective activity is driven by an object-related motive [or objective]; the middle level of individual or group action is driven by a goal; and the bottom level of automatic operations is driven by the conditions and tools of action at hand" (Engestrom & Miettenin, 1999, p. 4). This hierarchical conception of activity was diagrammed as follows: Activity --> motives Activity SystemsAs a result of the need to consider the shared meaning of activity, the initial theory was reconfigured by the addition of rules, community and the division of labor and renamed the activity system. An activity system is a way of visualizing the total configuration of an activity as follows:  In this model of an activity system, the subject refers to the individual or group whose point of view is taken in the analysis of the activity. The object (or objective) is the target of the activity within the system. Instruments refer to internal or external mediating artifacts which help to achieve the outcomes of the activity. The community is comprised of one or more people who share the objective with the subject. Rules regulate actions and interactions within the activity system. The division of labor discusses how tasks are divided horizontally between community members as well as referring to any vertical division of power and status. Transforming the object into an outcome motivates the existence of an activity. Features of Activity TheoryThe features of activity theory are described very thoroughly in the excerpt by Kaptelinin and include:
Readings:Excerpt: Kaptelinin, V. (1996). Activity Theory: Implications for human-computer interaction. In B. Nardi, (ed), Context and Consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Excerpt: Tolman, C. (1999). Society versus context in individual development: Does theory make a difference? In Engestrom, Y, Miettenin, R., & Punamaki, R. (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory. NY: Cambridge University Press. Technology
Rich Activity Systems This PDF file is a research study which
utilizes activity theory as a method to analyze interactions within a
VR-based astronomy course. Jonassen, D. & Rohrer-Murphy, L. (1999). Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments. Educational Technology, Research & Development, 47 (1), 61-79. Activities:Activity theory is a very difficult theory to understand, due to its heavy reliance on Marxist dialectical materialism as well as its basis in German philosophy. After reading this introduction, which barely skims the surface, what aspects of activity theory seem most problematic to you. After reading the article by Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy, do you agree with them that activity theory provides a useful framework when developing constructivist learning environments? Why or why not? If you answered in the negative, what other methods would you use? The article by Barab et al. illustrates how the the activity system model can be used as a framework for research. What is your impression of this method of analysis? Do you find it useful as a method of exploring technological learning in a constructivist environment? Explain. Selected Bibliography of Resources for Activity TheoryBooks Nardi, B. (1996). Context and Consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Leontev, A. N. (1978) Activity, consciousness and personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wertsch, J.(ed). (1981). The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Articles Jonassen, D. & Rohrer-Murphy, L. (1999). Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments. Educational Technology, Research & Development, 47 (1), 61-79. Kozulin, A. (1999). The concept of activity in Soviet psychology: Vygotsky, his disciples and critics. In Lloyd, P.& Fernyhough, C., et al. (Eds). Lev Vygotsky: Critical assessments: Vygotsky's theory, Vol. I. (pp. 179-202). New York, NY, USA: Routledge. Cole, M. & Engestrom, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (ed), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations. NY: Cambridge University Press. Leontiev, A.N. (1978). Activity, consciousness and personality. NJ: Prentice-Hall. Leontiev, A.N. (1981). The problem of activity in psychology. In Wertsch, J. (ed), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Kaptelinin, V. (1996). Activity Theory: Implications for human-computer interaction. In B. Nardi, (ed), Context and Consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. (1981) The instrumental method in psychology. In J. Wertsch (ed.), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Web Resources for Activity TheoryWhat is Activity Theory? This page consists of a number of short descriptions discussing various aspects of activity theory Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research is a research unit at the University of Helsinki in Finland. They conduct research in work, technology and organizations going through transformations. Their theoretical framework is Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) See also their page on Activity System University of Denver Links to Activity theory International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory -- ISCRAT Spinning Webs of Significance Considering anonymous communities in activity systems Vygotsky and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Reading list of resources on Vygotsky and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development A Tribute to Vygotsky Extensive links to articles about Vygotsky, including many original texts The Value of Knowledge: a Miniature Library of Philosophy this site contains original documents for many philosophers throughout history _________________________________ Bruner, J. (1987) . Prologue.The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky, Volume 1. Engels, F. (1940). Dialectics of Nature. NY: International Publishers
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