Cultural-historical activity theory

CHAT explicitly incorporates the mediation of activities by society, which means that it can be used to link concerns normally independently examined by sociologists of education and (social) psychologists.

[10][3] The term CHAT was coined by Michael Cole[11] and popularized by Yrjö Engeström [fi][12] to promote the unity of what, by the 1990s, had become a variety of currents harking back to Vygotsky's work.

CHAT traces its lineage to dialectical materialism, classical German philosophy,[15][16] and the work of Lev Vygotsky, Aleksei N. Leontiev and Aleksandr Luria, known as "the founding troika"[17] of the cultural-historical approach to Social Psychology.

In a radical departure from the behaviorism and reflexology that dominated much of psychology in the early 1920s, they formulated, in the spirit of Karl Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, the concept of activity, i.e., "artifact-mediated and object-oriented action".

Michael Cole, a psychology post-graduate exchange student, arrived in Moscow in 1962 for a one-year stint of research under Alexandr Luria.

From here on, ISCAR organizes an international Congress every three years: Sevilla (Es) 2005; San Diego (USA) 2008; Rome (It) 2011; Sydney (Au) 2014; Quebec, Canada (2017).

In recent years, the implications of activity theory in organizational development have been the focus of researchers at the Centre for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research (CATDWR), now known as CRADLE, at the University of Helsinki, as well as Mike Cole at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) at the University of California San Diego.

The third generation, which appeared in the mid-nineties, builds on the idea of multiple interacting activity systems focused on a partially shared object, with boundary-crossings between them.

[33] Vygotsky's triangular representation of mediated action attempts to explain human consciousness development in a manner that did not rely on dualistic stimulus–response (S-R) associations.

[34][13][8] Vygotsky argued that the use of signs leads to a specific structure of human behavior, which allows the creation of new forms of culturally-based psychological processes – hence the importance of a cultural-historical context.

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.

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.

[10] In the second generation diagram, activity is positioned in the middle, mediation at the top, adding rules, community and division of labor at the bottom.

The minimum components of an activity system are: the subject; the object; outcome; mediating instruments/tools/artifacts; rules and signs; community and division of labor.

After Vygotsky's foundational work on individuals' higher psychological functions[8] and Leontiev's extension of these insights to collective activity systems,[16] questions of diversity and dialogue between different traditions or perspectives became increasingly serious challenges.

The work of Michael Cole and Yrjö Engeström in the 1970s and 1980s brought activity theory to a much wider audience of scholars in Scandinavia and North America.

[33] 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.

[44] Engeström has acknowledged that the third-generation model was limited to analysing 'reasonably well-bounded' systems and that in view of new, often web-based participatory practices a Fourth generation was needed.

From the 1960s onwards, starting in the global South, and independently from the mainstream European developmental line,[45] Leontiev's core Objective Activity concept[46] has been used in a Social Development context.

[48] 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-based perspectives allow insights into the real world.

[33] The CL method relies on collaboration between practitioners of the activity being analyzed and transformed, and academic researchers or interventionists supporting and facilitating collective developmental processes.

[33] Engeström developed a theory of expansive learning, which "begins with individual subjects questioning accepted practices, and it gradually expands into a collective movement or institution.

The theory enables a "longitudinal and rich analysis of inter-organizational learning by using observational as well as interventionist designs in studies of work and organization".

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.

[59][60][12] 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.

The book Activity Systems Analysis Methods[61] describes seven ASA case studies which fall "into four distinct work clusters.

[64] When human-computer interaction (HCI) first appeared as a separate field of study in the early 1980s, HCI adopted the information processing paradigm of computer science as the model for human cognition, predicated on prevalent cognitive psychology criteria, which did not account for individuals' interests, needs and frustrations involved, nor that the technology depends on the social and dynamic contexts in which it takes place.

[3][1] SSAT builds on the general theory of activity to provide an effective basis for both experimental and analytic methods of studying human performance, using developed units of analysis.

[68] CHAT offers a philosophical and cross-disciplinary perspective for analyzing human practices as development processes in which both individual and social levels are interlinked, as well as interactions and boundary-crossings[30] between activity systems.