Engestrom et al. (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory (3)

People working in education in the UK can get taken aback by the continuities between education in 2011, and education as it took shape in the context of the Education Act of 1870, which made education compulsory for children aged 5 to 13. 

The essential, if unstated, purpose of the Act was to prepare children to function as adults in an industrial economy. Hence there was a time to arrive at school, a time to depart, a clear focus of authority in the classroom with all the students facing the same way, and sanctions (brutal, in general) for anyone deviating from the norms. Consequently, children entered industrial production with a clear sense of the expectations held of them. Their personal or class collective contributions to the development of industry, society and culture were not sought.

Mietinnen’s chapter identifies key features of present day learning and teaching: ‘School learning is characterized by memorization and reproduction of school texts. It is accompanied by an instrumental motivation of school success that tends to eliminate substantive interest in the phenomena and knowledge to be studied. The fundamental problem is that knowledge learned in such a way is difficult to use and apply in life outside the school’ (p. 325). School learning still appears to be modeled on the economic and political needs of an industrial society, yet the external contexts have changed, which makes school learning more irrelevant to the world outside school than it ever has been.

Miettinnen uses the language of Activity Theory to identify a particular problem with school learning: ‘the most important artifact of the school institution: decontextualized, independent text’ (p. 326). Online technologies offer a different artifact and, possibly, enhanced relevance to learning.  

At present, the disconnect between the structure of school learning and the wider social structure results in, ‘the historical isolation of school from other societal activities… Passive reception and memorization produce the paradoxical combination of slavish dependence on books and a real inability to use them.’ (p. 326).

The structure of school learning conjures up images of a monorail, with a point of departure, a point of arrival and no opportunity for deviation. Hence we have, ‘the unique inertia and conformity of classroom teaching and interaction… Teacher talk dominates, and students’ activity is largely limited to answering questions formulated by the teacher’ (p. 327). Furthermore, the structure of school learning bleaches communication of its power to create and enhance valuable learning: ‘In ordinary oral language, questions are used to request information and action. In schools, questions are asked to which the teacher already knows the answers’ (p. 329).  

Hence, when students arrive at university and are expected to take more responsibility for their own learning, they may understand what a deadline is, and its importance, but they may not understand how to construct knowledge, understanding and meaning for themselves, as they are successful graduates of a system that encourages the reproduction of what is already held to be known. Positing technology as learning ‘s saviour is reductive, but at least technology can comprise a clear link between the world of the classroom, and the world outside. Therefore, by positioning technology as the artifefact (tool), educators can change the other nodes in the Activity System, and thus change learning for the better.

Reference

Miettinen, R. (1999) ‘Transcending traditional school learning: Teachers’ work and networks of learning,’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory, Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 325-346.

Prof Eric Thomas at JISC11: ‘Financial Challenges, Digital Opportunities’

The keynote at the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Conference 2011 in Liverpool was given by Prof Eric Thomas, Vice Chancellor, University of Bristol, and Universities UK President-Elect.

Prof Thomas gave some sense of the seismic change in higher education in the UK over the last 50 years by pointing out that, in 1961, 4.2% of 18 yr olds went to university. Conversely, in 2011, 44% of 18-30 yr olds will go to university. Continued expansion in student numbers is, however, countered by a climate of cutbacks. Cuts of 1 billion to the H.E. sector were announced in Dec 09, with a further cut of 200 million in Spring 2010.

Prof Thomas reminded the audience of the proposed terms of loan repayment arising from the Browne review of H.E., which will involve students paying 9p in the pound of their earnings, once their earnings exceed 21k. Therefore, the previous State system for H.E. was free at the point of access, with repayments via the taxation system (though spread across the whole working population). Similarly, the new system will mean higher education is still free at the point of access, and still repaid via the tax system, but with more of the repayment falling on the individual. However, while Prof Browne’s analysis tots up, it does gloss over the argument that society as a whole benefits from an educated population. More broadly, the H.E. sector in the UK is shifting from a state run system to a consumer-led, lightly regulated market in which consumers will be seeking value for money.

The social impact of the new, market-based system will be arguably its most significant feature, posing the questions of how lower-income families will respond, and how debt-averse communities will respond. Prof Thomas said he had spoken with Princeton University who, following the imposition of a similar system, found that people from the bottom 10% of incomes stopped applying to come to the university.

Where Prof Thomas’s analysis deviated from most predictions of the post-Browne settlement was in his analysis of the range of fees likely to be charged for H.E.. In the aftermath of the Dearing Review (1997) and the introduction of fees, the maximum fees allowable quickly became the standard fees charged by all H.E.I.s, and institutions charging less than the maximum were perceived as second rate. There is a perception that the same will happen post-Browne, and that all universities will charge 9k per year (Oxford and Cambridge will, predictably, do this, but Exeter, Durham and Surrey have announced that they, too, intend charging the maximum). However, Prof Thomas argued that people won’t necessarily pay the highest fees, and will be more informed consumers. More specifically, he argued that there will be a marked increase in people’s expectations of H.E. (increased fees will further embed the customer metaphor), that more students will study at their local H.E.I. because of cost, and that students will want to know the employability rates of the courses they might attend.

Prof Thomas developed his argument with reference to the expansion of Higher Education provision in the Further Education (F.E.) sector, and to the expansion of private provision in H.E.. He used the analogy of budget airlines, pointing out that they account for only 10-15% of the market, but have fundamentally changed the market itself, with established airlines re-branding themselves as more high-end. Transferring the analogy back to H.E., it seems likely that individuals to whom fees of 9k annually are not a disincentive will opt to attend established universities. However, fees of 9k annually will also create a large area of non-consumption, pricing some sections of the population out of the mainstream sector. Therefore, F.E. colleges and private providers will be in the interesting position of competing against non-consumption, a niche in which the Open University gained success previously, by offering H.E. to sectors of the population to whom it had previously been inaccessible (Archer et al. 1999). Furthermore, there is a similarity between the current position of F.E. colleges and private providers on the one hand, and the position of Polytechnics in the 1970s on the other, with new entrants to the H.E. market expanding their curricula, and offering many of the same qualifications as the mainstream H.E. sector.

Prof Thomas gave the hypothetical example of a private provider offering a law degree in 2 yrs for 5k a year. This will be good value for money for the student, and will enable entry to the law profession, perhaps at the level of local town solicitor rather than London barrister, but an attractive career proposition regardless.

Prof Thomas also pointed out that the sector itself will not necessarily benefit from the post Browne settlement, as student fees will not comprise additional income for the universities, but will supplant the income from the State which is being withdrawn. A further point opened up by Prof Thomas was the likelihood of mergers and acquisitions in the sector. He pointed out that there are currently 44 providers of H.E. in London. He argued that there won’t be less provision, but there will be fewer institutions.

Overall, Prof Thomas offered a persuasive argument concerning likely future developments within the sector. His analysis broadly accords with other prognoses (such as Lord Mandelson at the 2010 Dearing conference, or Stefan Collini in The London Review of Books), but where he deviates is in his predictions concerning the range of fees that will be charged. The upper level of 9k annually will price some individuals and (more worryingly) communities out of Higher Education, but it will also create an opening for local F.E. colleges and specialist H.E.I.s offering degree-level quality at a much lower price, thereby enabling wider access to H.E.. Once that happens, established H.E. brands like Oxford, Cambridge et al. will not have a problem retreating to the high end of the market, but the mid-range H.E.I.s, and especially the post-92 institutions, will need to move rapidly to create distinctive identities for themselves in the squeezed middle.

Reference
Archer, W., Garrison, R. and Anderson, T. (1999) ‘Adopting Disruptive Technologies in Traditional Universities: Continuing Education as an Incubator for Innovation,’ Canadian Journal of University Continuing Education, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 13-30.

Avis (2009) ‘Transformation or transformism…’

Avis (2009) engages with Engestrom’s idea of co-configuration, ‘an emerging type of work in which customers and producers become partners and in which there is interdependency between multiple producers’ (p. 153). Avis draws on the work of Victor and Boynton (1998) who cite Microsoft as an example of co-configuration. New iterations of Windows are informed by user feedback on previous iterations, and forums (both inside and outside Microsoft’s control) enable users to identify and resolve problems. Avis, however, is sceptical of how much co-configuration actually goes on, suggesting organisations are re-imagined as open systems, not re-configured (2009, p. 154). Hence, the involvement of users is, Avis’s argument suggests, more of a marketing strategy to generate the sense of a community, rather than a community in practice.

For Avis, co-configuration, and Engestrom’s metaphor of knotworking, ‘imply dynamic processes in which groups form, break up and re-form with different partners’ (p. 154). In this context, ‘groupings may form to pursue a particular project and then dissolve’ (p. 154). Online campaigns, via Facebook and other media, can assemble and then disperse without prior or subsequent allegiance. Organisations can assemble teams for particular projects, the team dispersing once the project is completed, with a new team formed for a new project, in which the same individuals can occupy different roles.

Avis points out that co-configuration is similar to Marx and Engels’s reading of the bourgeois epoch: ‘Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguished the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away…’ (Marx and Engels 1973, p. 38, cited in Avis, p. 156). Hence, it may be the case that co-configuration comprises the rebranding of a pre-existing practice, or that co-configuration reproduces the social relations of the economic base of the society within which the co-configuration occurs.

Engestrom uses a triangular structure to show how activity happens. There are three focal points: a subject, a purpose, and tools. Where a collective pursues an object, the division of labour becomes an important factor. Moreover, the activity occurs within a specific historical context, comprising a further determinant. Learning occurs through the questioning of current practices, leading to ‘new conceptualizations and forms of practice’ (p. 159). This is Engestrom’s Expansive Learning: ‘Such learning carries with it the development of new forms of knowledge and identity as well as changes in the division of labour’ (p. 160).

Avis ties down a specific definition of Engestrom’s idea: ‘expansive learning is tied to the resolution of contradiction at the site of a specific activity system or cluster’ (p. 161). However, for Avis, as for Hayes (2003), Engestrom’s development of Activity Theory eschews Marx’s analysis: ‘Engestrom’s AT veers towards becoming a form of comfort radicalism, its transformative rhetoric has a progressive appeal but ultimately it readily lends itself to becoming no more than a management technique’ (p. 161). Hence, for Avis, Engestrom articulates how the formation of new knowledge can happen, but avoids the implications of his own analysis, whereby subjects can challenge the practices they have inherited, and use the tools at their disposal to construct new analyses, new concepts, and new practices.

References
Avis, J. (2009) ‘Transformation or transformism: Engestrom’s version of activity theory?’ Educational Review, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 151-165.

Hayes, D. (2003) ‘New Labour, new professionalism’, in Discourse, power, resistance: Challenging the rhetoric of contemporary education, ed. Satterthwaite, J., Atkinson, E. and Gale, K., Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham.

Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1973) ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in Selected Works, London, Lawence and Wishart.

Victor, B. and Boynton, A. (1998) Invented here: maximizing your organisation’s internal growth and profitability, Boston, Harvard Business School.

‘Becoming individual in education and cyberspace’ (2004)

Krejsler advocates project work for assessment: ‘the purpose of the project is to build up knowledge about the phenomenon investigated and to mediate that knowledge to others to whom it might be useful. A further purpose may be to take action on a knowledge-based background’ (p. 490). In the digital age, an online space (a blog, for example) comprises a canvas on which a range of project activities can be undertaken.

Building on the work of Foucault, Krejsler sees institutional learning as confined by a distinct hierarchy and values: ‘populations are made into useful individuals in various institutions that operate according to similar principles no matter whether we talk about prisons, schools, factories or nucleus families. Each institution represents an enclosure that subjects individuals to specific criteria for entry into and exit out of the enclosure’ (p. 492). The Community of Practice theory is interested in the subject’s movement from entry to exit, but less interested in entry and exit criteria. Krejsler imbues the community with sinister undertones, as its boundaries become associated with containment and constraint.

Krejsler argues we are in a post-Industrial age in which the structure of our institutions has changed: ‘Culture, marketing and service that respond sensitively to the whims of fashion and markets in a globalized economy with a high-speed turnover increasingly replace the production of basic goods, which moves to the Third World. The job market is no longer stable. One cannot anymore expect long-term steady employment on the basis of a diploma from an authorized educational institution’ (p. 492). Krejsler’s analysis challenges the Community of Practice theory because the community itself becomes unstable and febrile; individuals cannot rely on continued membership of the community, as the community’s terms of membership may shift. This was not a problem in the original communities of practice (eg, Yucatan midwives, West African tailors) studied by Lave and Wenger (1991). As Krejsler argues, ‘Enclosure within the disciplinary institution is replaced by individualized anxiety. It is expected that one can constantly market one’s competencies so that they match at any given time the volatile needs of the job market. One is constantly und pressure to convince one’s employers that one is indispensable’ (p. 493).

Krejsler cites Deleuze (1990), who ‘distinguishes between the individual, who has an indivisible identity within a certain enclosure, and the dividual, who is under constant pressure to simultaneously divide his/her attention between several different projects, environments, and relations’ (p. 494). Individuals have multiple personae for different institutional contexts and, in the twenty-first century, these personae are digitised.

Krejsler suggests learning in the digital age can threaten institutions: ‘Learning that is organized in accordance with military principles of hierarchy, obedience and discipline increasingly dissipates into more volatile forms. Computers and the internet threaten to distribute knowledge and learning from the authorized enclosures of school to a virtual ubiquitous space’ (p. 495). Furthermore, the digital age learner has a new set of resources: ‘When access to the Internet, chat rooms and e-mail is part of project work, the student is constantly subject to the temptation to surf out into spaces that genuinely interest and excite him/her’ (p. 497). Therefore, Krejsler argues, the institution cannot be assured of full control over learning.

Kejsler’s analysis is frequently dystopian, yet he accurately describes classroom encounters, and the power relations that underpin them. Describing the teacher responding to off-message behaviour by the student, ‘he/she applies the tactics of the lifted eyebrows at first, seasoned, if necessary, with joking or slightly ironic comments. This should make the students aware that they are leaving the path of the virtuous.’ Next, ‘The teacher, being trained as an expert in communication, here asks the students to explain how their work proceeds, whether something blocks their learning or whether they are inadvertently being led astray from the formulated goals of their project. The students decode the situation and the futility of taking recourse to any other outlet than confessing that they are astray. They therefore express that they have already realized their wrongdoing and are rapidly returning to what they are expected to do. The teacher wraps up his/her absolution in informal and joking language. Employing an inescapable logic of reason, however, he/she leaves no doubt about what is expected of the students’ (p. 498).

Most people could recognise teacher behaviour along these lines. However, Krejsler argues that what he calls a ‘logbook’ (‘blog’ is better suited to the digital age) ‘makes us enter a foggy area where it becomes difficult to distinguish private from public matters, where the role of the student gets thoroughly intertwined with the role of the private person… [enabling] the student to enter spaces of reflection and wondering resembling the diary as a point of departure for challenging dialogues’ (pp. 498-99). A log, digital or otherwise, allows personal factors, including emotions, to be brought into institutional learning contexts in which emotions have not always been welcomed.

Having conducted a gloomy analysis, Krejsler concludes with a more uplifting quote from Morss (2000, p. 196): ‘learning can be an eventfulness whereby the teacher is not “empowering” students (as though power were something in the students’ future), but where their learning is already an expression of their own power, energy and joy.’

Krejsler’s focus is on how knowledge is managed and controlled in institutional settings. He does not mention Communites of Practice but it applies, because he is interested in entry and exit criteria for institutions/communities, and what people have to accomplish to meet the criteria. He does not examine, however, the nature of knowledge itself. Knowledge is not stable, and its effects are not predictable. The subversive potential of knowledge is intrinsic to knowledge; the educator may have a clear sense of what values they wish to convey, but students may form their own interpretation of the information in front of them, even if they have to suppress their own insights in an institutional setting, for their own good. For example, a teacher may tell students that Lear is mad when he says, ‘Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pygymy’s straw doth pierce it,’ but the student may yet interpret the statement as saying the rich and powerful get away with it, and the poor get screwed. That could be a useful insight.

References

Deleuze, G. (1990) Postscript on the societies of control, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Krejsler, J. (2004) ‘Becoming individual in education and cyberspace’ Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, vol. 10. no. 5, pp. 489-503.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Morss, J. R. (2000) ‘The passional pedagogy of Giles Deleuze,’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 185-200.

Bringing in the Excluded?…

Nickson et al.’s article in the Journal of Education and Work (2003) contributes to the communities of practice discussion, because it explores potential barriers to entry to a community, before the individual can even be considered a peripheral participant: ‘A key consideration is the possibility that certain potential employees will be excluded from these “style” labour market jobs, and indeed more general employment involving interactive service work. This exclusion arises firstly because employers determine who is aesthetically acceptable during recruitment and selection processes’ (p. 186).

The authors’ focus is the service industry, and the idea that applicants have to hold particular persona attributes before they can be allowed entrance to the community (Wenger and Lave [1991] are interested in what happens within the community, but less interested in what the individual has to do in order to gain entry). In addition, the authors pick up on Nolan’s (2001) concept of the Hourglass Economy, characterised by ‘an expansion of high skill, high wage, high value added work at the top end of the labour market and the expansion of low skill, low wage, low value added work at the bottom end’ (Nickson et al, p. 187).

In common with Jewson (2007), the authors have a dystopian vision: ‘there will be cyber workers who enjoy their time musing in and able to afford high price lattes and cappuccinos at the style bars, cafes and restaurants. And they will want these places, its hardware (that is the physical environment) and software (that is the people serving them), to be pleasing to them’ (p. 191).

One of the questions explored in the article relates to who is most likely to gain entrance to these communities of practice. For the authors, following-on from the argument of Langlois and Lucas (2002) the role of higher education is important in this regard: ‘Students who have access to higher education, in particular, may undergo a process of socialisation that allows them to further refine and develop the cultural capital which may be inherent anyway from their largely middle-class backgrounds’ (p. 194).

The authors attempt a balanced conclusion, noting that ‘hospitality and retail can offer rapid career progression, often without formal qualifications’ and suggest that individuals would benefit from cultivating ‘masks for tasks’ (p. 201). Individuals adjusting their personae to suit particular contexts is probably as old as human civilisation, but possessing a niche set of attributes as a precursor to entering a certain employment sector is a marked feature of the Hourglass Economy, and the correlation between those attributes and a particular social class gives an advantage to the class that has been socialised in those behavioural patterns from infancy. Service sector communities of practice can offer rapid centripetal progress, but the gatekeepers to those communities exercise considerable power, leading to closed communities of practice, or maybe Lodges of Practice.

References

Langlois, M. and Lucas, R. (2002) ‘Knowledge and skill in the labour process: student workers in hospitality’ 20th Annual International Labour Process Conference, April, University of Strathclyde.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Cullen, A.M. and Watt, A. (2003) ‘Bringing in the Excluded? Aesthetic labour, skills and training in the “new” economy’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 185-203.

Nolan, P. (2001) ‘Shaping things to come’ People Management, 27 December, pp. 30-31.