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My Philosphy
From my dissertation proposal:
Cultural-Historical School
All the information on this site will be situated in the cultural-historical school of psychology. Cole defines the cultural-historical school as “the structure and development of human psychological processes [that] emerge through culturally mediated, historically developing, practical activity” (Cole, 1996, p. 108). Cole goes on and summarizes the key concepts of the cultural-historical school:
1. Mediation through artifacts. The initial premise of the cultural-history school is that human psychological processes emerged simultaneously with a new form of behavior in which humans
modified material objects as a means of regulating their world and one another.
2. Historical development. In addition to using and making tools, human beings arrange for rediscovery of already-created tools in each succeeding generation. Becoming a cultural being and arranging for others to become cultural beings are intimately linked parts of a single process called enculturation. … Culture, according to this perspective, can be understood as the entire pool of artifacts accumulated by a social group in the course of its historical experience.
3. Practical activity. The third basic premise of the cultural-historical approach, adopted by Hegel by the way of Marx, is that the analysis of human psychological functions must be grounded in human’s everyday activity. (1996, p. 108-110)
Social Learning Theory
Although this site will use the cultural-historical school of thought for looking at human activity, it will also use Wenger’s concept of social learning theory and communities of practice. Wenger believes that learning is social participation. Wenger (1998) states “participation here refers to not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (p. 4). The four components of Wenger (1998)’s social learning theory are meaning, practice, community, and identity. Meaning is “a way of talking about our (changing) ability – individually and collectively – to experience our life and the world as meaningful” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5). Practice is “a way of talking about the shared historical and social resources, frameworks, and perspectives that can sustain mutual engagement in action” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5). Community is “a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognizable as competence” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5). Identity is “a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in context of our communities” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5).
Community of Practice
A practice, as Dr. Linda Polin (2002) of Pepperdine University defines it, “is a full-blown domain of expertise; it has a productive value. The following are practices: architecture, professional French Horn, oral surgery, health insurance processing, Pokemon trainer,
scriptwriter” and others. Wenger (1998) defines practice as the following. In a sense, practice is always social practice. Such a concept of practice includes both the explicit and the tacit. It includes what is said, and what is left unsaid; what is represented and what is assumed. It includes the language, tools, documents, images, symbols, well-defined roles, specified criteria, codified procedures, regulations, and contracts that various practices make explicit for variety of purposes. But, it also includes the implicit relations, tacit conventions, subtle clues, untold rules of thumb, recognizable intuitions, specific perceptions, well-tuned sensitivities, embodied
understanding, underlying assumptions, and shared world views. (Wenger, 1998, p. 47)
Each of these practices belongs to a social community, which is called a community of practice. “Communities of practice [CoP] are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 4). Everyone belongs to one or more communities of practice whether it is in our family life, work, education, or profession. This study will look at the IT profession through the lens of CoPs and the cultural-historical school lens of activity. Communities have histories, artifacts, and activities that allow members to participate. The community decides the competence of its members through changes in member identity. Members in a community of practice exist at different levels of participation. The newcomers sit on the periphery in the beginning (legitimate peripheral participation) and start moving towards full participation as they change their identity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Older members of the community of practice provide newcomers with models of performance for newcomers to replicate. Communities of practice have reproductioncycles in which newcomers enter the community of practice and become full participants, and eventually “old timers”, through their changing identity in the practice.
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) or Activity Theory
Since participation in a community of practice is about activity, activity theory is a model for analyzing the community’s activities. This study will treat IT work, also known as knowledge work, and education as activity systems for analysis. Members of a community think, act, and
learn together as a system. Activity theory is a framework in the cultural-historical tradition that looks at activity as the basic unit of analysis. Activity is the relationship between a member’s or subject’s action in pursuit of a goal of transforming some object, which is mediated by artifacts/tools, and/or signs. The subject is the person or groups of people who are initiating and performing the activity. The mediating artifact can be tools or technologies such as physical tools, instruments, signs, people, and others. The mediating artifact allows a subject to transform some object into a goal or outcome. An object can be a physical entity or a problem space. Rules are the methods, laws, procedures, and processes that subject follows to transform an object. The community is the collective that are the stakeholders in the activity. Individuals do not act in isolation but in relation to a community. The division of labor is the organization of the labor in the activity as related to the transformation of the object. Figure 1 illustrates the model of an activity system (Engestrom, 1987).
An example of activity is designing and implementing a software product for a customer. The subject of the activity is the team who develops the software product. The object is the project of developing a software product. The outcome is a fully functional software product. The mediating artifacts are the software tools, procedures, computers, and other artifacts needed to transform the object into an outcome. The rules are the norms of the community such as how the software is written, and what methods are being used. The community is the development team, the customer, and the management. The division of labor is the different duties and roles
each team member plays on the team. There is a hierarchical structure of activity. “Activities are oriented by motives, that is objects that are impelling to themselves. Each motive is an object, material, or ideal, that satisfies a need. Actions are the processes functionally subordinated to activities; they are directed at specific conscious goals. Actions are realized through operations that are determined by the actual conditions of activity” (Kaptelinin, 1996, p. 108).
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