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Purpose: To draw on an activity theory approach to derive fundamental pedagogical principles to assist learners.
References: 45, 69, 76, 80
- Focussing on the learning activity system:
- Are the relationships among the elements made clear? [i.e., object, tools, rules, community, division of labour; including power relationships and how learner is positioned with respect to them; possible reasons why activities are undertaken in a certain way; tensions and contradictions in the system and between elements]
- Do the learners have opportunities to connect meaning and activity, and to understand the culturally situated and historically transient nature of meaning at a point in time in a setting?
- Are the relationships among the learning activity system, other activity systems in which the learner is involved, and the wider community explored?
- Does the activity:
- proceed from the learner’s sense of vocation [including relationships between work and non-work goals and meanings]?
- occur in settings or activity systems where the function and purpose of the learning are clear and explicit, related to vocation; and collective motives and personal goals are related? [i.e., situated in concrete, functional, purposive settings]
- focus primarily on developing the capacity-to-do, where learners seek to accomplish goals?
- involve shared meaning [visibility of activity system, sharing alternatives, reconciling different forms of meaning (including intuitive and tacit), learning based on direct concrete experience; building connections with texts, manuals, etc.]?
- involve building connection among meanings and different renditions of meaning [together with a facility of operating upon such interconnections]?
- Is there a focus on knowledge construction?
- Is there a supportive learning environment where learners feel free to take risks?
- Is the activity about solving the problems of adaptation to new settings or new aspects of received settings? [As learners generate a workable solution, they must develop, transform or extend the kinds of meanings they bring to the problem at hand.]
- Does the activity involve reflective thinking? Is the learner becoming consciously engaged in reflecting on knowledge already acquired; modifying or extending current knowledge?
- Do activities support and develop learners’ metacognitive skills [i.e., making explicit the learning processes which are occurring]?
- Is the activity about communication? [By expressing ideas, learners use their own and importantly the voices of others who are more knowledgeable in order to generate new meanings and patterns of thinking]
- Is the activity multivalent? [Learning is about transformation of thinking and behaving; so numerous alternative approaches are needed in the learning context]
- Regarding transfer:
- How do learners know which prior knowledge is appropriate to select and apply, and which is not? [These considerations are related not only to the nature of the tasks themselves, but also to ideas of what is culturally appropriate in the setting of the activity.]
- How does knowledge construction enable productive use of existing tacit and explicit knowledge?
- If the purpose of deriving meaning through learning is to develop the capacity to engage in appropriate practice based on experience, how are sense [i.e., personal significance to the individual] and meaning [i.e., collective understanding such as comprehension of the shared collective historical understanding captured in language and other social artefacts] developed?
- How are learners supported to connect richly the meanings conveyed by personal, direct experiences with other forms of meaning [including those conveyed by verbal and other symbolic concepts, various visual models and their verbal descriptions, and senses of values and aesthetics]?
Meanings as expressed in verbal and other symbolic ways (e.g., as concepts) need to be understood not only in connection with personal meanings and concrete tools and materials, but also in relation to various contexts. [69, p. 12]
- How are rich connections made so that what can be done in a new situation becomes apparent through connection with personal meanings and concrete tools and materials, but also in relation to various contexts, linking different ways of affording meaning?
- Learner development:
- Are the specified knowledge and skills that make up the prescribed course outline seen as items in the cultural tool-kit to be used as means in carrying out activities of personal and social significance, rather than an end in themselves?
- Are the outcomes both aimed for and emergent, dependent upon emergent properties of the situation — the problems encountered and the human and material resources available for the making of solutions?
- Do the activities include the solving of new problems which allow for diversity and originality of possible solutions?
- Are the learners involved in a negotiated selection of activities that challenge them to go beyond themselves towards goals that have personal significance for them?
“… the choice of experiences that provide the topics for investigation is critical. Not only must they be such as to arouse student interest, engaging feelings and values as well as cognition; but they must also be sufficiently open-ended to allow alternative possibilities for consideration, thus providing challenges appropriate to individual learners’ current abilities while at the same time encouraging them to collaborate with others in constructing shared understanding that is both practical and theoretical. In other words, there need to be experiences that generate real questions.” [80]
- Is the learner required to extend his or her understanding in action — whether the artefact constructed is a material object, an explanatory demonstration, or a theoretical formulation?
- Is the activity real for the learner/s — do they really care about finding a solution? [Instructors’ questions or questions suggested in texts that learners are reading can become equally real, if they correspond to or awaken a wondering on the part of the learner.]
- Does the activity allow for questions that have occurred quite spontaneously and unexpectedly in the course of reviewing work carried out to date to be incorporated?
- Are all tentative answers are taken seriously and are investigated as rigorously as the circumstances permit?
- Is there a balance between theoretical and practical modes of knowing (including instrumental, procedural, substantive, aesthetic, & theoretical)?
A substantive mode of knowing makes possible joint planning and reflecting and the consideration of alternative, hypothetical actions and states of affairs.
Aesthetic knowing can be thought of as the first mode in which knowing became self-conscious and deliberate, with myth serving as the prototypical, integrative tool. [80]
- Regarding dialogic inquiry in education:
- Are activities treated as situated and unique, acknowledging that the coming together of particular individuals in a particular setting with particular artefacts, all of which have their own histories which, in turn, will affect the way in which the activity is actually played out?
- Are the activities organised in ways that enable participants to draw on multiple sources of assistance in achieving their goals and in mastering the means needed in the process?
- Does a dialogic approach (as the principal means of arriving at a common understanding of whatever question is at issue) prevail?
- Is knowledge regarded as being created and recreated between people, as they bring their personal experience and information derived from other sources to bear on solving some particular problem?
- Is knowledge regarded as both the enhanced understanding of the problem situation gained by the participants, on the one hand, and the representation of that understanding that is produced in the process, on the other?
- Are there, wherever possible, opportunities for gaining first-hand, practical experience of tackling problems in the relevant domain so that there will be a perceived need for the theoretical constructs that provide a principled basis for understanding those problems and devising solutions to them?
- Is there an interplay between theory and practice, involving different and complementary modes of knowing?
- Does the scaffolding provide opportunities for the learner to start with their own understandings and move within the zone of proximal development [ZPD]?
- Does the activity involve:
- Learning through participation?
“Participation involves being drawn into a setting that includes a programme directed to the realization of values and goals, forms of social interaction and co-operation in an institutional context, and the use of cultural resources. In such a setting, productive action and understanding are dialectically related and interpersonal transactions create patterns of meanings, values, and cognitive structures.” [76, p. 274]
- Orientation toward ideal forms?
“Vygotsky’s concept of zone of proximal development pre-supposes the presence of ‘ideal forms’ towards which professional development may be oriented and directed. … ideal forms are based on the central cultural meanings (values, goals) attached to the core activities in the activity system.” [76, p. 274]
- Attuning a public standard to personal motives in relation to [aspired] vocation?
“The presentation of ideal forms should be combined with explicit attention to exploration of personal ideas and motives. Needs exploratory space.” [76, p. 275]
- Interaction between performance and assignment of meaning?
“The interplay between action and meaning. Observation, design and planning, and evaluation of practical action and performance are all guided by a reflection on ideal [vocational] forms representing values and goals.” [76, p. 275]
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