A new blog to read

It turns out Jyri Engestrom has a blog. I'm not sure how Jyri is related to Yreo (if at all), but I imagine I'll get it figured out. I read a recent post of his about what makes "good" social software and he drew Activity Theory into the conversation. I think there will be some interesting things coming from him.

At the boundaries

I was reading a paper offering an Activity Theoretical perspective on writing genres. The author used "classroom" as an example of an activity system that is "at the boundary". The specific example was a higher ed classroom and the idea was that the classroom was at the boundary of the profession/discipline. Classrooms, especially higher ed, use written texts from the profession (think research articles, for example) and ask students to engage in activities present in the profession/discipline. Moving back and forth between professional activities and "school" activities requires higher ed students to go back and forth across these boundaries.

This idea can certainly apply to preservice teachers' portfolios, I think. Not only does the portfolio draw from the profession, but it documents the preservice teacher's excursions into the profession and back. The preservice teacher's portfolio sometimess serves a gatekeeping function into the profession as well. That's certainly a boundary activity! I'm not sure (yet) where to go with this idea, but it's a perspective I want to consider further.

Broad Outline

I downloaded and skimmed two dissertations from the University of Helskinki. Both use Activity Theory. Both have 11 chapters - quite a different structure from the 5-chapter format we typically see.

1. Chapter 1 introduces the study and situates it in the field.
2. Chapter 2 offers a literature review
3. Chapter 3 describes theoretical starting points
4. Chapter 4 varied. One put themes, hypothesis and research questions in the fourth chapter. The other described the setting or research site.
   
5. In both dissertations, Chapter 5 discussed methodological issues.
6. Chapters 6 - 9 focused on findings. It appears one chapter was devoted to each research question.
   
7. Chapter 10 focused on conclusions.
8. Chapter 11 was titled Epilogue for one of the dissertations and "Reflections on Research" for the other dissertation.
   

There are some aspects of this structure I like and I've started thinking about how my own work might be structured.

• Of course, having an introduction makes a lot of sense.
• I plan to include a bracketing/reflexivity section, but I'm not yet sure where it should be placed.
• I like the idea of doing one chapter on portfolios and another on Activity Theory, because I want my dissertation to have a tutorial on CHAT. However, I also like that I'm beginning to get a good handle on synthesizing the two areas - finding examples of CHAT concepts in other people's work - and this nudges me in the direction of just doing one combined chapter to avoid redundancy. For the moment, I still think two separate chapters is the better idea. I just need to be attentive to doing it well so the readers doesn't think it redundant.
• I need to incorporate methodology. Wolcott suggests putting it at the end because it's not interesting, but I like the idea of weaving it throughout the data collection and analysis sections as I've seen it discussed in several of the qualitative books I've been reading. And of course, it's usually put as chapter 3 of 5.
  
• For my dissertation, I think a chapter on Home Brew U and a separate chapter for Vendor College (with a description of the context, analysis, and findings in each) makes sense.
• These two chapters should be followed by a cross-case analysis and discussion.
  
• Conclusions
• I think it's an interesting idea to include Reflections on the Research Process, but don't know if I will want to do it.
  

Visibilization - Engestrom's Made Up Word

This is Engestrom's word - not mine. In a footnote, he explains that he prefers it to visualization to describe making work visible. Since he's already documented this word, I can use it.

Today, I read "Expansive Visibilization of Work - An Activity-Theoretical Perspective." This 1999 paper was published in Computer Supported Cooperative Work, vol 8, p. 63-93. I read this paper on the recommendation of Dr. Robert Bracewell - a professor at McGill University - when I asked for methodological advice. This was an excellent recommendation.

For me, the most important idea in this paper was the four-step process toward visibilization:

1. Focus on troublesome situations and represent them.
2. Connect trouble spots to the activity system.
3. Design new actions.
4. Analyze the new actions.

I want to do at least two things with these steps, although I'm not confident I'll get the results I hope to find. Succeed or fail - it's worth exploring. First, I want to review Chris Hartmann's dissertation to see if I can find evidence of these steps in his subjects' actions. (I think I'll be able to do so). If not, I can review his SITE 2004 paper to see if there's more information there. Engestrom used his work with hospitals to illustrate these steps. I hope to use Hartmann's work to illustrate these same steps in the CHAT chapter. I think that'll be a tidy way to integrate portfolio literature with CHAT literature.

Second, I want to keep my eyes open for evidence of the people I visit at my research sites going through similar steps as they approach their work. At the AERA workshop last week, Stanton and Natalia told us to always watch for "change" as we try to apply Activity Theory to our work. These stages will give me a framework for the interview probes.

Note to self: Do not shoehorn the data into a theory - make sure it's actually there! I can run it by the DAG if I think I'm in danger of seeing things that aren't there.

Girl Scout Cookie Sales & Activity Theory

As I mentioned in my last post, Natalia helped me figure out how to move back and forth between units of analysis by offering a citation to Barbara Rogoff. I just finished reading Rogoff (et al)'s 2002 paper in Social Development, 11(2) titled "Mutual Contributions of Individuals, Partners, and Institutions: Planning to Remember in Girl Scout Cookie Sales" (full-text available from UCF databases). It made me long for some Thin Mints cookies, but other than that - it was a delightful read. For example, they mentioned difficulties resulting "from siblings eating boxes of cookies they had not paid for."

This paper had several key ideas I want to remember:
* Functional pattern analysis
* Foreground and background related to focus of analysis
* Discussion on cognitive tools and their evolution
* Analysis of a key artifact (the cookie order form)

A couple of months ago, I read a blog pointing me to "Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design." It stayed in my mind as a way to look at qualitative data. It's probably not a comprehensive list, but the Rogoff article brought it to mind. His lenses include:
* mind
* proxemics
* artifacts
* social
* ecological

It seems to me Rogoff used most of these same lenses:
* mind - discussion of distributed cognition, esp. related to the order form and colors of cookie boxes and cases
* artifacts- her discussion of the order form, discussion of cookie box and case colors, and money collection envelope
* social - how tasks were distributed and roles of involvement
* ecological - I think I can make this case by pointing out Rogoff's discussion of how the authors and a number of the cookie customers had themselves participated in Girl Scout cookie sales along with a broad history of cookie sales. They even included a photo from 1932.

An interesting side note: The last sentence of the photo's caption said "(Reprinted by permission of Midge [now Mason]; if Virginia Marley's whereabouts are known, Midge would like to be in contact)." Do you know Virginia Marley?

AERA & CHAT

This was my first AERA. While there, I learned that AERA has a SIG interested in Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). This simple fact has already been beneficial to me and given me several insights for my dissertation. My time at AERA was very well spent and I can't wait to go back.

The first session I attended was a collection of three paper presentations focusing on Activity Theory. The first, by Dr. Robert Bracewell, was theoretical in nature. The other two were applications - one by a linguist who found CHAT to be powerfully explanatory regarding the work he was doing and the other - a teacher in a Korean preschool located in Montreal who was studying language acquisition. All were useful with insights for more reading and ideas for representing my work (multiple triangles!) All three presenters are from McGill University in Canada.

I also attended the CHAT SIG business meeting and learned (lucky me!) that there had been three cancellations for a Thursday afternoon mini-course on CHAT. I gleefully paid my fee and got one of those now vacant seats. The workshop format was interesting. The SIG chair had arranged for 8 AT faculty to work with groups. I joined the "self-identified novices" group and spent a couple of hours talking about our projects and getting some of my specific questions answered.

I had been struggling to identify the "unit of analysis" (an important idea in CHAT) and was able to run my "almost coherent" thoughts past Natalja - one of the profs working with my group. Turns out I had the right ideas, just lacked the language to talk about them in a way that made sense. It took her about 30 seconds to give me the terms I needed to speak about this - along with a citation to add to my reading list. Of course, now that I have it, it sounds so easy. I just need to move things back and forth between the "foreground" and "background" as a write about and talk about the system. This concept allows the mediational aspect that is placed in the background to contine to influence the system, even though it is not the main interest for the moment. I like the fact that it's not "separated" or "deconstructed".

As I've been reading about the CHAT framework, I've been rather overwhelmed by the rich background in Soviet Psychology. What a relief it was when Stanton (the other professor) said "You don't need to read all of that to understand CHAT - just read Mike Cole's book, Cultural Psychology. It will tell you everything you need to know." It's a 400 page book, but much easier than reading 100 books translated from Russian to English!

Folks mentioned the XMCA mailing list at both the business meeting and at the mini-course. I had found it in one of my Google searches and didn't realize it is open to the public. It has a several important names listed as members and I didn't know they would accept rookies on the list. It turns out they welcome rookies with open arms. The mailing list is quite active. I spent about an hour reading the April postings and have already signed up. I had wanted to ask faculty at the mini-course to suggest a dissertation to serve as an exemplar of the theory and methodology, but we simply ran out of time. If I don't find something like that in the mailing list archives, I will ask that in my first posting to the list as I introduce myself.