Engestrom – Expansive learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization

Engestrom’s opening position is not controversial: who are the learners, why do they learn, what do they learn, and how do they learn? However, as he moves into analysis his position becomes more complex, and broadly Marxist.

Engestrom sees contradictions as a potential source of learning. Furthermore, he describes contradictions as ‘historically accumulating structural tensions’. This carries echoes of Marx’s idea of dialectical tension. Moreover, Engestrom seems keen to locate his analysis in economic and political contexts: ‘the primary contradiction of activities in capitalism is that between the use value and the exchange value of commodities’ (p. 137).

Engestrom directs his analysis to the impact of technology: ‘When an activity system adopts a new element from the outside (for example, a new technology or a new object), it often leads to an aggravated secondary contradiction where some old element (for example, the rules or the division of labor) collides with the new one. Such contradictions generate disturbances and conflicts, but also innovative attempts to change the activity’ (p. 137). This analysis overlaps with Christensen’s disruptive technology theory, in the sense that a new technology can contradict existing practices (thereby risking rejection), but also that the new technology can go on to change the practice itself.

The idea of expansive learning also features in Engestrom’s article. Traditional learning theories posit knowledge as stable. It is there to be obtained by the learner, with guidance from a teacher who has a priori possession of the knowledge. However, this can impose limits on knowledge. It becomes a stable commodity being perpetuated from one generation of learners to the next. Engestrom argues, however, that ‘people and organizations are all the time learning something that is not stable, not even defined or understood ahead of time. In important transformations of our personal lives and organizational practices, we must learn new forms of activity which are not yet there. They are literally learned as they are being created. There is no competent teacher’ (p. 137-38).

One of the implications of Engstrom’s analysis is that it complicates the communities of practice theory, because it challenges the extent to which a stable centre is a structural feature of learning. Centripetal learning presupposes a centre; Engstrom’s analysis challenges that proposition.

However, in Engestrom’s analysis there is a still a purpose to learning, or a goal. Therefore, there is movement towards an objective. What may be lacked is the expert facilitator to steer the learners towards the goal. Instead, a community of learners learns collectively, pooling resources to achieve the common goal. The advantage of this model of learning is that it brings learners to somewhere they have never been before. In this sense Engestrom proposes an exciting, pioneering learning journey.

Constructivist theories of learning position knowledge not as a stable commodity that can be acquired, but as something that is constructed, with the facilitator acting as a form of scaffolding, giving support and parameters but letting the learners do the learning, acquiring valuable skills and knowledge by that route. Constructivism therefore seems to align more closely with Engestrom’s idea than the communities of practice theory. Leaning is a journey but, crucially, a journey into the unknown.

Reference

Engestrom, Y. (2001) ‘Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 133-156.