CHAT Technical Reports No.01
3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency:
An Activity-theoretical Study of Advanced Networks
of Learning in New School Project
Center for Human Activity Theory,
Kansai University, Japan
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
INTRODUCTION
As the world’s workplaces and organizations continue to radically change these days,
the forms of human social practical activity are rapidly moving to inter-organizational
networking, collaborating, and building partnerships across cultural, organizational,
and occupational boundaries. Learning and development in the workplace occur in
increasingly complex, continuously changing multi-organizational fields that require
horizontal movement for responsible and inclusive practices. Therefore, for practitioners,
the challenge of collaborative learning suggests the potentiality of inter-organizational,
inter-professional, and boundary-crossing learning that generates dialogical configuration
knowledge and activity between those who learn, work, and live together.
A new generation of organizational and professional learning in the workplace focuses
on networked learning that exceeds such ‘encapsulated’ learning as traditional learning
that exists within institutional boundaries, creating a new object-oriented interagency
of social networks and collaborative change agents. My central question is, first,
how can networked learning between schools and the outside world advance beyond
‘encapsulated’ learning that exists within institutional boundaries such as traditional
school environments? Secondly, what kind of learning can generate critical and creative
agency among learners? Such agency will help people shape their own future.
In this paper, creating new forms of pedagogic practices will be discussed based on
the conceptualization of networked learning, boundary-crossing, and collaboration after
investigating a university research center’s after-school activity for children called New
School at the Center for Human Activity Theory, Kansai University from the viewpoint of
cultural-historical activity and expansive learning theories (Engeström, 1987).
In the following sections, I will start by discussing the Center for Human Activity
Theory and its activity-theoretical research. Secondly, I will introduce our center’s current
international joint research project with the University of Helsinki and the University of
Bath, which shares an activity theory framework in a modern changing society. Finally, a
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
new landscape of expansive learning in the field of pedagogic practice will be discussed
based on our New School project as an after-school activity for children which attempts
to create a new hybrid activity system and its sustainability.
THE CENTER FOR HUMAN ACTIVITY THEORY AND ITS ACTIVITYTHEORETICAL RESEARCH
The Center for Human Activity Theory (CHAT) was established at Kansai University
in Osaka, Japan in April 2005 as a center that focuses on educational research and
development and the development of human activity based on a practical approach to
learning and education. From 2005-2009, CHAT will be involved in a joint research
project entitled “International Joint Research in Innovative Learning and Education
System Development: The Creation of Human Activity Theory”, which has been awarded
by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as an “Academic
Frontier” Project.
The Center endeavors to establish new hybrid approaches that combine a broad range
of activities for human development in the field of human sciences, and particularly in
research fields targeting human learning and education. The central aim of CHAT is to
develop a new system of education and innovative learning for practitioners in various
fields of human activities, such as schools, sciences/arts/cultures, diverse types of work
74
and organizations, and communities, through participation in international joint research
projects based on inquiries into activity theory.
Activity theory is a theoretical framework for designing new human activities based on
the study of new concepts and models of human activity, and an intervention methodology
for promoting and supporting innovative collaborative learning by practitioners. In
practice, activity theory promotes long-term intervention studies that instigate, support,
and follow the expansive learning cycles of practitioners in the activity system being
studied. This encouragement and support aids the creation of places where people can
learn together ‘what is done, and why’ with regard to the individual efforts of practitioners
confronted with real activity subjects. That is, intervention based on activity theory aims
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
to encourage and support expansive learning by the practitioners themselves to facilitate
the discovery of new ‘use value’ in practical activities, and the resulting conversion and
new creation of activity forms. This intervention is above all based on the agency of
practitioners and clients.
This sort of expansive learning cycle is modeled by Engeström as shown in Figure 1.
Expansive learning first starts when individuals taking part in a certain collective activity
begin questioning the existing practices that they experience every day (i.e., cultural
practices that are historically prescribed). This should confront the individuals and the
group with the so-called ‘double-bind’ inconsistencies in relation to the current state of
this practice. However, these problems themselves involve the analysis of contradictions
and collective/collaborative discussion. Also, the act of learning in order to overcome
such contradictions, specifically, the modeling of activities into developmentally new
forms, is brought about as a collective project. At the next step, the new model should be
verified, and gradually implemented in practice. In this way, new practices will go through
the stages of consolidation and proliferation, and will undergo reflective evaluation. This
is the helical progression of expansive learning.
QUATERNARY
CONTRADICTIONS
REALIGNMENT
WITH NEIGHBORS
6. REFLECTING ON
THE PROCESS
7. CONSOLIDATING
THE NEW
PRACTICE
5. IMPLEMENTING
THE NEW MODEL
TERTIARY CONTRADICTION
RESISTANCE
PRIMARY CONTRADICTION
NEED STATE
1. QUESTIONING
SECONDARY CONTRADICTIONS
DOUBLE BIND
2A. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
2B. ACTUAL-EMPIRICAL
ANALYSIS
4. EXAMINING THE
NEW MODEL
3. MODELING THE NEW
SOLUTION
◦ Figure 1. Ideal-typical expansive cycle of epistemic learning actions (Engeström, 2001, p. 152)
The intervention and support of expansive learning is geared towards practitioners
learning and creating new ‘use value’ of objects and activity aims and motives of the
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
form of ‘what is done, and why’ as mentioned above. Also, by opening up the creative
possibilities of this sort of ‘use value’, more participants will become concerned
with efforts to transform their own practices. That is, the activity will undergo social
proliferation. This should develop the practitioners’ and clients’ own innate ability.
Yrjö Engeström is a director of the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental
Work Research at the University of Helsinki. Since this Center was founded in 1994, its
researchers have been internationally promoting their ‘developmental work research’
(DWR) which aims to analyze and practically transform work, technology, and
organizations using cultural and historical activity theory as a powerful toolkit for social
science (Engeström, 2005, Engeström, Lompscher & Rückriem, 2005). DWR is an
original methodology that applies activity theory to practical situations by employing
a long-term interventional approach. In this way, the researchers are building critical
dialogues and partnerships with the organizations that the research is applied to.
Engeström urges caution with regard to the fact that these dialogues and partnerships are
not the same as consulting.
CHAT is a research and education location that takes on the challenge of developmental
work research by giving rise to critical learning and dialogue in collaboration with
practitioners between various creative human activities such as schools, sciences/arts/
cultures, diverse types of work and organizations, and communities, thereby building
mutually beneficial partnerships. But what sort of learning is needed to give rise to
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creative activities in schools and workplaces whereby people become leading agents who
shape their own futures by their own efforts? CHAT aims to form a place for research
and education that responds to and challenges this question while hoping for new forms
in society to come.
Activity theory provides a framework for analyzing and understanding human actions
and practices. Above all, it deals with actions aimed at objects and actions where human
actions are mediated by cultural artifacts, tools, and symbols. In other words, activity
theory is a structure wherein conceptualized ‘activities’ are linked to and associated
with various actions directed at ‘objects’ (purposes and motives) in an environment. An
‘activity’ is a form of human action and practice that is constructed culturally, historically
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
and socially. In this activity theory, an ‘activity’ is an integral unit of a person’s social life,
and is regarded as a unit of the everyday social actions of humans motivated by purposes
and objects. This can be referred to as ‘object-oriented activity’.
Engeström (1995, 1996a) discusses the historical development of activity theory based
on the idea of ‘three generations’.
The first generation is represented by Lev Vygotsky (1978), who regarded human
behavior as actions directed at purposes and objects, and who showed that the development
of this behavior is above all mediated by the creation and use of ‘instruments’ such as
tools and languages, symbols, ideas, and technology. This leads to a way of thinking
where human behavior is understood as ‘practical social activity mediated by culture and
history’.
The second generation started with Alexei Leont’ev (1978). The novelty of his ‘activity’
concept was that it associated activity with the new elements of division of labor and
cooperative work, and showed that activities motivated by purposes and objects are
established not in the individual dimension but in a collective dimension. Engeström goes
on to develop a systematic model of the understanding of human activity opened up by
these two earlier generations, i.e., the group understanding of ‘activity’ directed towards
objects (purposes and motives) mediated by artifacts (tools and signs, concepts, and
technologies). This is the ‘activity system’ model shown in Figure 2. This is a model of a
system of ‘object-oriented activity’ mediated by ‘artifacts’, ‘communities’, ‘rules’, and
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‘division of labor’.
Instruments:
tools and signs
sense
Subject
meaning
Rules
Community
◦ Figure 2. Model of an collective activity system (Engeström, 1987, p.78)
Outcome
Division of labour
3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
This model of the collective activity system clearly shows that human cognition,
learning, emotion, and volition are socio-historical processes that occur in the context
of a culturally mediated activity system, and that human mind and consciousness are
conditioned, held separately and shared out in an activity system. That is, human learning
is achieved through collective activity, and learning involves not only learning within the
activity system, but also learning about the activity system.
The current third generation of activity theory aims to exploit and challenge new latent
potentialities of activity theory by expanding on the two previous generations mentioned
above. It therefore goes beyond the limits of a single activity system and takes as its
unit of analysis a plurality of different activity systems that mutually interact, promoting
practical research to design networks, dialogue, and collaboration between these systems.
Engeström (2001) models this new third generation perspective as an ‘interactive
networking activity system’ as shown in Figure 3.
MEDIATING
ARTIFACTS
OBJECT 2
MEDIATING
ARTIFACTS
OBJECT 2
OBJECT 1
OBJECT 1
SUBJECT
78
RULES
SUBJECT
COMMUNITY
DIVISION
OF LABOR
DIVISION
OF LABOR
COMMUNITY
RULES
OBJECT 3
◦ Figure 3. Two interacting activity systems with a partially shared object (Engeström, 2001, p. 136)
Two activity systems expand from object 1 to object 2 by means of a ‘dialogue’. This
expansion approaches both objects and outcomes in a partial overlap. In this crossboundary object ‘exchange’, a new object 3 appears. This ‘third object’ gives rise to a
‘seed of transformation’. In other words, the newly-appeared ‘third object’ gives rise to a
driving force for the transformation of the original activity system by means of feedback
to the respective activity systems.
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
At present we are developing a theory of expansive learning in schools in an
international joint study with the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work
Research at the University of Helsinki, which clarifies the active role schools play as
social ‘change agents’ (see Engeström, 1991, Yamazumi, Engeström & Daniels, 2005).
We are also continuing with discussions relating to new forms of transfer to the practice
of school learning (Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003).
Terttu Tuomi-Gröhn of the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work
Research at the University of Helsinki states that from an activity theory viewpoint, this
transfer of learning is brought about through interactions between multiple different
activity systems (Tuomi-Gröhn, 2005). Taking internships as an example, she perceives
the transfer of school learning to practice as a process that occurs when schools and
workplaces are both engaged in collaborative interaction, with both parties learning
new things from each other. This sort of transfer occurs from negotiation and exchanges
between disparate cultures. According to Tuomi-Gröhn, an internship is a place where
a school plays a new role as a change agent. This applies particularly to internships in
projects where workplaces are developed. For the pupils, students, practitioners, and
teachers to take on the challenge of a project, it is probably necessary to develop new
knowledge and skills. This can be achieved by constructing and connecting networks
where disparate entities are mixed together.
In these places and zones, i.e., the structural connective networks where disparate
entities are mixed together, there occurs a ‘developmental transfer’ to the practice
of school learning that is brought into focus by Tuomi-Gröhn. She calls these places
‘boundary zones’. Also, in the sense that it is possible to discover and construct
new practices from two different yet interrelated activity systems (i.e., schools and
workplaces), these activities can be referred to as ‘boundary zone activities’. This is
represented as shown in Figure 4.
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
Other
organisations
Other
organisations
Expert 1
Boundary
zone activity
Other
sources of
knowledge
Boundary
object
Expert 2
Boundary practice
School
Workplace
◦ Figure 4. Boundary zone activity between school and workplace and network related to it (Tuomi-Gröhn, 2005, p.34)
Also, these ‘boundary zone activities’ are given meaning in the following way.
The aim of the collaboration between the school and the work is to create a
new boundary practice, developmental project at the workplace, which is at the
boundary zone between them, not belonging to each of them. The prerequisite
of the boundary practice is the creation of new meaning, reshaped object of
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the work, which further produces an entirely new activity system: boundary
zone activity. The subject of this activity is a collaborative team of boundary
crossers: student, mentor at the workplace and teacher. (Tuomi-Gröhn, 2005,
p.35)
STUDYING NEW PRACTICES OF CREATIVE COLLABORATION BETWEEN
SCHOOLS, COMMUNITIES, AND VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS OUTSIDE
SCHOOL: A NEW INTERNATIONAL JOINT RESEARCH PROJECT
The theme of this joint research project in the group between the Center for Human
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
Activity Theory (CHAT) at Kansai University and the Center for Activity Theory and
Developmental Work Research at the University of Helsinki is “School as societal change
agent: Models of productive collaboration between school and other actors in Japan and
Finland.”
Our objective is to theoretically analyze and to model success cases of new practices
in productive collaboration between schools, communities, and other organizations in
Japan and Finland. We will examine cases of schools participating and collaborating with
various actors to change society in some way such as to revitalize a community, to create
new culture, to innovate on the economy, and to improve the quality of civil life.
In our project, which is mainly concerned with schools developing as agents for social
change through productive collaboration between actors both inside and outside the
school, we are clarifying the successful examples and models of new pedagogic practice
at these boundaries within the framework of third-generation activity theory. This is aimed
at modeling and building new boundary zone activity system models for schools as agents
for social change.
We are currently researching the following types of practical models in the research
group of CHAT, and are proceeding with case studies.
● Cross-school working in practice
We are promoting an international joint study with Harry Daniels of the Centre for
Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research at the University of Bath, and Anne Edwards
of the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford. The main topic of
this study is the development of pedagogic practices in this sort of cross-school working
(see Daniels & al., 2006, Edwards, 2005).
Daniels et al. (2006) have been studying cross-school working and the associated
professional learning of practitioners with the aim of building collaboration and
partnerships across schools in order to encourage creative learning activity across the
curriculum. Cross-school working signifies the birth of new forms of school between
different schools, between schools and society, and between schools and diverse
partnership organizations, i.e., community organizations, businesses, expert groups and
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
social groups both within and outside schools.
It goes without saying that an essential requirement for cross-school working is the
professional learning of practitioners. In other words, cross-school working aims to
stimulate expansive professional learning of practitioners in new cross-school pedagogic
practices, i.e., pedagogic practices that cross boundaries and build lateral connections
between schools and with diverse extra-mural community organizations, specialist groups
and social groups. In the parlance of activity theory, this sort of cross-school working
creates ‘boundary zone activity’ and gives rise to ‘hybridized activity systems’. Here, it
can be considered that new meaning is created in school work, and that its objects are
expansively worked over.
The policy of ‘links to various organizations’ does not automatically bring about
change. It is essential for diverse experts to study together on the creation of collaborative
work between various organizations (for the development of professional learning of
diverse experts between various organizations: see Daniels & al., 2005). This is essential
not only for the creation of policies, but also for the actual creation of new forms of work
that go beyond these policies.
In traditional school education, there are broadly speaking three ‘barriers’ that get in
the way of creative curriculum development. The first of these is the ‘barrier’ that exists
between different schools. The ‘barriers’ that are discovered here are ‘barriers’ of tradition
and culture between different organizations and institutions, and ‘barriers’ between the
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work of teachers belonging to different schools. Integration is an educational practice that
overcomes these ‘barriers’, and creates new collaborative activity systems.
The second ‘barrier’ is the ‘barrier’ between different experts. School curricula that
overcome this ‘barrier’ could be developed by considering the creative learning of science
and art activities that progress through collaboration between, for example, teachers and
scientists, or teachers and art groups.
Finally, the third ‘barrier’ is the ‘barrier’ of the narrow demarcations between different
subjects. Curriculum integration aims to make curricula more interdisciplinary by
overcoming subjectism. This involves developing new ground in curricula and classes
to develop children’s creativity across a range of subjects. This approach differs from
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
traditional curricula, and is not necessarily very familiar.
An interdisciplinary curriculum is developed together with diverse partnerships of
schools towards creative pedagogic practice. This is what one might call expansive
learning, which aims to overcome the boundaries of traditional school learning and
transform it into collaborative networking activities (see Yamazumi, 2005).
In this project, we are working on a developmental study of cross-school working in
order to achieve total care of the path taken by children’s development by taking into
consideration not only creative learning activities spanning across the curriculum, but
also a variety of risks and needs. Here, we are concerned with the study of how to care for
the path of development so as to improve children’s life chances by taking various risks
and needs into account. This involves transforming care practices from social exclusion to
social inclusion, and working at the creation of boundary zone activities between schools
or between interrelated actors inside and outside schools so that children and households
have equal access to social resources for developmental support.
● The practice of after-school educational activities
Through the practice of after-school educational activities, we are modeling productive
collaboration between universities, primary schools, extra-mural expert groups,
community organizations, households, and regions to develop the concept of expansive
learning for children whereby actual daily-life activities are synergistically networked
together. The development of these so-called “New School” after-school educational
activities enables the creation of new forms of pedagogic practice by means of boundary
zone activities where extra-mural community activities, productive practice and daily
activities can interact and form networks. In other words, it allows the discovery of
new school modes in the sense of a ‘network organization’ that supports the ‘cyclical
production of knowledge’.
In the New School project, based on the practical development of after-school
educational activities that have been tried out over the last year between CHAT, primary
schools, households and regions, we are currently developing the concept of new activities
where primary school students engage in a fun, creative learning process on the subject
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
of ‘food’. Our aim is to make children’s learning activities interact, connect, overlap,
engage in discussion and mix with the community activities and production practices of
producers and distributors such as farmers and fishermen, nutritional science experts and
organizations specializing in ‘food’, such as Slow Food Kobe. Through this sort of afterschool educational activity, it is hoped that the children and their teachers and guardians
will achieve new realizations and agencies relating to the creation of eating habits while
developing critical and creative learning.
These New School activities are aimed at expansive learning that goes beyond the
boundaries of traditional school learning and constructs a progressive learning network.
These activities also lead to the pursuit of active roles and meaning as a ‘change agent’
for schools by linking up with activities that change communities for the better.
NEW SCHOOL PROJECT AS AN AFTER-SCHOOL ACTIVITY FOR
CHILDREN: CREATING A NEW HYBRID ACTIVITY SYSTEM
AND ITS SUSTAINABILITY
New forms of boundary zone activities and expansive learning
In the research group at Kansai University’s Center for Human Activity Theory
(CHAT), we are engaged in a new joint research project on the practical development of
after-school education activities. This project aims to develop the concept of ‘expansive
84
learning’ for children whereby actual daily-life activities are synergistically networked
together by modeling productive collaboration between universities, primary schools,
extra-mural expert groups, community organizations, households and regions, based on
the practice of after-school educational activities. The development of these so-called
“New School” (NS) after-school educational activities enables the creation of new forms
of pedagogic practice by means of ‘boundary zone activity’ (see Tuomi-Gröhn, 2005)
where extra-mural community activities, productive practice, and daily activities can
interact and form networks. In other words, it allows the discovery of new school modes
in the sense of a network structure that supports the cyclical production of knowledge.
In the NS project, based on the practical development of after-school educational
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
activities that has been tried out over the last year between CHAT, primary schools,
households and regions, we are currently developing the concept of new activities
where primary school students engage in a fun, creative learning process on the subject
of food. By exposing children to the community activities and production practices of
producers and distributors such as farmers and fishermen, nutritional science experts and
food-related expert community organizations like Slow Food Kobe, this concept aims
to bridge the gap between children and learning activities with interaction, connection,
superposition, discussion, and intermixing. Through these after-school educational
activities, it is hoped that the children and their teachers and guardians will achieve new
realizations relating to the creation of eating habits while developing their active, critical,
and creative learning skills.
These NS activities are aimed at expansive learning that goes beyond the boundaries of
traditional school learning and constructs a progressive learning network. These activities
also lead to the active pursuit of roles and meaning as a ‘change agent’ for schools by
linking up with activities that change communities for the better.
NS is a practical project aimed at the creation and sustainable development of learning,
play and cultural exchange activities between primary school students and university
students. These activities are held at CHAT every Wednesday after school. Using a
cultural-historical activity theory framework as an analytical tool, we are analyzing,
designing, developing, putting into practice and reflecting on new ‘activity systems’ for
after-school education as a new form of school to be created between university and
primary school.
As an active theoretical study of school education, the NS project aims to critically
analyze the traditional standard activities of school learning, which are being reverted
to formal mechanical rote learning of fundamental skills and passive absorption of text
books, and to strive for a transformation into expansive learning activities that overcome
the inconsistencies of traditional methods. Expansive learning involves creating new
networks and collaborations in learning activities to go beyond the systematic confines of
school education by transforming encapsulated school learning activities from within.
Previous studies of school curricula, lessons and learning have only concerned
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
themselves with teaching as a means of transferring the contents of text books into
children. The various systems of school education form a tightly closed activity system,
and have virtually no bearing on community activities out in the real world. However,
this theoretical study of school education activities teaches us to redefine and expand
the substance of ‘work’ in school education, including the children’s learning and
development (i.e., the children’s own ‘work’). That is, it makes it possible to steer the
learning and practice of school education towards the creation of historically new school
education activity forms and patterns, and towards the reformation and innovation of
structures and systems.
Creating a hybrid activity system
Mixed activities
The NS project goes beyond the structure of curricula and lessons in traditional school
learning, and is putting project-based learning into practice with primary school students
and university students by means of interdisciplinary collaboration and networking
between many different activity systems such as CHAT, primary schools, extra-mural
expert groups and community organizations, households and geographical regions. By
invoking a conceptual framework of third-generation activity theory as discussed in the
previous sections — i.e., a model with at least two interacting activity systems (see Figure
3) — we will try to employ a representation of New School as a new hybrid activity
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system as shown in Figure 5.
Object 1
Object 1
University
Family
Object 3
Object 1
Object 1
New School
Object 2
Community
◦ Figure 5. New School as a new hybrid activity system
School
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
In NS, the following different actors participate voluntarily:
• Primary school students: Learning collaboratively by means of play and cultural
exchanges
• University students: Learning and practicing teaching work and education/care
programs
• Researchers/practitioners: Researching the learning, development and education
practice of children
• Extra-mural expert groups and related organizations: Raising awareness of
community activities and productive practice, engaging in dialog and interaction with
consumers, and contributing to children’s educational activities
• Households and geographical regions: Extra-mural education and care of children
However, these multiple different actors do not participate as separate individuals. For
example, in the concept of fun, creative, food-related learning activities in NS, Slow Food
Kobe and nutritional science experts contribute to and connect with children’s learning
activities as part of community activities for promoting awareness and activity relating to
the creation of people’s individual eating habits. Also, the agricultural producers who we
plan to collaborate with have gained experience in farming and organic cultivation and
are aiming to advance into new farming practices from concepts such as welfare farming,
cultural exchanges between cities and farms, branding of farm products, and promoting
the consumption of local produce. In other words, these new types of farm produce are
aimed at new farm produce on the basis of participation by consumers through dialog
and interaction with consumers, and in this respect they lead to and contribute towards
children’s learning activities.
Thus, in NS, new ‘mixed activities’ are created through broad-ranging overlapping
and interconnection between after-school ‘play’ activities of primary school students, the
‘learning’ activities of university students, and the ‘work’ of researchers and practitioners.
The large number of actors that link together and collaborate in NS basically
perform object-oriented activities that are geared towards the intrinsic objects (aims
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3　Learning for Critical and Creative Agency: An Activity-theoretical Study
of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
and motivations) in each activity system to which they inherently belong. However, in
participating in NS, the object of these sorts of activities is expanded, causing them to be
fused and mixed together. That is, in NS, multiple different activities mutually interact,
connect, overlap, engage and mix. NS creates a new hybridized place for activities where
disparate entities are mixed together.
NS, which creates a hybrid mixed activity system, highlights the important and
significant role that schools play as an agent for social change. That is, practical
community activities that create new communities and improve existing ones (e.g.,
improvement of community activation, cultural creation, economic reform, civic
responsibility, etc.) are created by schools linking up and collaborating with diverse extramural structures and communities. This is the idea of school as a societal change agent.
In NS where we are envisaging ‘a fun, creative learning process on the subject of food’,
we are trying out activities that involve learning, play and cultural exchange activities
with primary school students and university students with the intention of pioneering new
farming-related productive practices where universities, primary schools, extra-mural
specialist groups, community organizations, households and geographical regions can
link up and collaborate to create new eating habits and stimulate dialog and interaction
between producers and consumers.
Engeström (1987) places these learning activities within a social network of human
activity so that they become clear in the theory of expansive learning. Learning activities
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do not exist in isolation separately from extra-mural community activities, productive
practices and daily-life activities. According to Engeström, learning activities lie in
between ‘academic/artistic activities’ and ‘productive practices (work activities)’, and
the development of human activity is creatively studied to facilitate historically new
productive practices.
The ‘activities’ analyzed in activity theory are object-oriented activities. In other words,
when analyzing human actions and practices, the aim is to discover the purpose and
motive — i.e., ‘what’ was done, and ‘why’ — as the object of the activity. The object of
an activity is, so to speak, a problem space. Engeström says that with regard to ‘learning
activities’, these “objects” include the following.
CHAT Technical Reports No.01
The object of learning activity is the societal productive practice, or the social
life-world, in its full diversity and complexity. The productive practice …
exists in its present dominant form as well as in its historically more advanced
and earlier, already surpassed forms. Learning activity makes the interaction
of these forms, i.e., the historical development of activity systems, its object.
(Engeström, 1987, p.125)
Thus, if they are repeated, learning activities are in a network of society and various
other activities and the work of community activity. Learning activities that are networked
with science, art, and productive community practices are situated in the context of the
practical application of things that are learnt. This goes beyond school education which
is separate and isolated from the diverse realities of society, and joins learning activities
with collaborative social activities (fresh daily activities).
From practical communities to conceptual communities
At the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition in the University of California,
San Diego (LCHC, UCSD), a research group centered around the director Michael Cole
has been working continuously since the mid 1980s on the practice and development of a
“Fifth Dimension” (5D) children’s after-school education program (Cole, 1996). 1
5D involves extra-mural children’s after-school educational activities involving the
design of collaborative learning activities using the medium of computers and the
Internet. To promote autonomous learning, this program uses original methods to
link learning to play. One of the main concepts of 5D is ‘learning through play, and
playing through learning’. Furthermore, 5D supports practices whereby UCSD students
participate as mentors for children. Participation in 5D takes place in the form of lessons
embedded in the communication science course, and the students on this course take part
in after-school educational activities held in off-campus locations such as churches, boys’
and girls’ clubs and primary/junior high schools, where they take field notes and submit
reports.
Regarding this 5D program, Engeström’s analysis (Engeström, June 2004) is that it is
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developing while constructing a heterogeneous infrastructure between multiple different
activity regions and structures, including universities, schools, care organizations, and
libraries. Here, this heterogeneous infrastructure itself involves no more than the initial
local concepts and identities. However, as it matures, concepts of a more complex nature
will start to appear in 5D. These include concepts such as multiculturalism, bilingualism
and design.2 In this way, the practitioners will create and work with more complex
concepts and identities through the course of this work. That is, a practicing community
develops concepts and communities that create and advance new practices and concepts.
One might refer to this as the creation of new ‘joint learning communities’.
Like 5D, the purpose of NS is to design new modes of autonomous, collaborative
mutual learning activities through a diversity of people and organizations that expand
beyond the boundaries of work, organizations and cultures. It aims to implement a hybrid
learning activity system that is generated by the collaborative voluntary efforts of a
diverse range of people. To achieve this, it is necessary to loosen the ties of structural
boundaries and systems, and to make every effort to allow many diverse actors to become
involved and associate freely to facilitate open collaboration giving rise to new modes,
patterns and systems of practical activity. Figuratively speaking, this could be described
as “amoeba-like activity”, where activities abundantly take root and grow sustainability.
Third place
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As a hybrid interdisciplinary activity, NS aims to create an activity system that mixes
and fuses together learning, play, work and cultural exchanges; learning activities,
productive practices and the everyday world; technology, media and art; scientific
knowledge and everyday knowledge;3 theory, practice, and altruism. These concepts are
based on the idea of the horizontal expansion of activities by crossing over boundaries
and bridging between different subjects. In this way, it should break through the rigid
dichotomy that has traditionally existed, and should resonate with new trials of social
practice.
The so-called boundary practices that break through this dichotomy give rise to a
‘third place’ where disparate entities are mixed together and joined seamlessly. Here, an
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expansive re-forging will occur of new practical concepts and objects based on work and
structure.
In the field of building construction and town planning, the ‘third place’ is contrasted
against the ‘first place’ of households (personal spaces with a warm atmosphere) and the
‘second place’ of cold officialdom (workplaces, schools and systematized institutions).
The ‘third place’ is a public space, but it also an individualized, friendly place (it is useful
to think of a Starbucks café as an example of this sort of ‘third place’).
From April 2006, NS will be put into practice at the CHAT project incubation lab (Photo
1).
The physical space of this project will be
shared by a gathering of children, university
students, guardians, practitioners, experts,
and researchers. This space will be provided
with tables and chair for each group, PCs with
printers and Internet connections, projectors,
liquid crystal displays, a mini-kitchen, wall-
◦ Photo 1. CHAT project incubation lab
mounted white boards, bookshelves, cabinets,
sofas, and the like, offering a wide variety of tools and equipment for all sorts of
activities. Also, as a multimedia telecommunications device, CHAT will be equipped with
a server to construct a ‘CHAT collaboration system’. In terms of activity theory, these
facilities could be described as tools that mediate activities in an activity system.
However, this space is not just a physical entity. It is used by the participants, and
the participants engage in activities through this space. In this sense, the space exists
as a medium for the participants’ own individual understanding, plans, and powers of
imagination. Furthermore, it is likely that the existence of this space will change with
time, not only physically but also imaginatively.
For example, this space not only exists as a space where primary school students and
university students can learn together, but could also transform in an instant into a space
where they can play together or take part in cultural exchanges. The work of practitioners,
experts and researchers is also mixed in. In other words, through their temporally
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expanding mutual actions, participants in the project contribute to the creation of a ‘lived
space’ where study, play, work and cultural exchange blend seamlessly together.
In this sense, there is no unique definition of how the NS space is used. That is, there
is no pre-prepared script to dictate how this space should be used by the participants. The
nature of this space will undergo substantial changes and transformations over time. Or to
put it another way, this space could be described as a new space where ‘something new’
is always being created. For the participants, this ‘third place’ of the NS space could be
described as an expansive location where the powers of imagination and creativity are
cultivated.
Cyclical production of knowledge in a network structure
During 2006, the NS project will aim to give rise to the practice of ‘project-based
learning’ by primary school students and university students on the abovementioned
theme of a ‘fun, creative learning process on the subject of food’ through interdisciplinary
collaboration and interactive networking between different activity systems such as CHAT,
primary schools, extra-mural expert groups and community organization, households and
geographical regions.
The design of children’s learning activities by ‘project-based learning’ has
fundamentally different characteristics to those of learning based on an educational
curriculum. Lilian Katz and Sylvia Chard (Katz & Chard, 2000) have proposed a form of
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project-based learning activity which they call the ‘project approach’.
Katz and Chard define the project approach as ‘the extended in-depth study of a topic’ (p.
175), and state that school curricula and teaching methods can be broadly classified into
two types: ‘systematic instruction’ and ‘project work’.
However, ‘systematic instruction’ and ‘project work’ do not feature in the overall
composition or coordination of school curricula. In other words, ‘project work’ cannot
be thought of as covering the entire curriculum. Instead, it is closely interrelated with
the systematic subject learning of language (including foreign languages), math, science
and art where literacy can be put into practice (acquiring written culture and a symbolic
expression system). Project-based learning is a lateral approach to the curriculum that
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supports and complements subject learning.
The project approach employs learning activity designs that are fundamentally different
from ‘graded lessons’ where specific knowledge and skills are transferred to children. At
its core, it involves progressive real-world research activities that grab children’s attention.
The topics of learning activities include real-world subjects (e.g., trucks, bicycles,
toys), living things (e.g., pets, birds, horses), processes (e.g., milk production/distribution,
post distribution), and industrial production (e.g., shoes, furniture, food). Project-based
learning involves creating high-level composite learning activities using these subjects as
progressive topics.
The children mainly work together in groups to perform an in-depth study of a specific
topic over an extended period of time. In these studies, the children can often achieve a
level of depth in their studies that surprises adults and specialists. In this sort of projectbased learning, it is important to carefully integrate the knowledge contained in each topic
in the fields of math, reading and science.
Project-based learning could thus be described as a new mode of school learning
activity where groups take part in long-term in-depth research and presentation
projects on topics that are networked with the creation of the everyday real world and
community activities. This is aimed at the compilation of school curricula that develop
children’s creative potential, and is a new design for a learning activity system that aims
to encourage the creative use of knowledge and skills. At the same time, project-based
learning is intended to allow schoolchildren to learn in a ‘context with real meaning’.
Project-based learning should create local communities in the classroom where study
topics are shared and researched. However, it is important to note that this in no way
diminishes the ‘standard’ of school education.4 In other words, project-based learning
will thereby make high-level composite science and art content the ‘standard’ of school
education.
NS is aimed at the development and practical application of new learning activity
modes and systems. In doing so, it raises the important research topic of how to create
project-based learning and study activity within the school curriculum. NS is a hybrid
‘network structure’ that creates boundary zone activities as shown in Figure 5, and the
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of Advanced Networks of Learning in New School Project
Katsuhiro Yamazumi
basic concept of development in NS is from ‘closed autonomy’ to ‘networked hybridity’.
This being the case, the project-based learning and study activities in NS may be thought
of as activities in which knowledge is produced while being circulated, mixed and fused
together in a ‘network structure’ comprising CHAT, primary schools, Slow Food Kobe,
nutritional science experts, places where the production and distribution of farm and
fishery products are put into practice, households and geographical regions, and the like.
The introduction of telecommunication technology such as the Internet is resulting
in an ever-expanding range of learning for students, teachers, and staff in all kinds of
school systems. Learning is no longer something that takes place within the confines of
text books, and has come to draw on a wide range of different sources of knowledge.
At most schools, current social issues and future possibilities form an essential part of
the curriculum. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important for schools to build
partnerships with extra-mural community organizations, businesses, expert groups,
community organizations and the like, and to allow them to contribute to the curriculum
and lessons. In these partnerships, the teachers and students get involved with themes
they are interested in by studying them outside of the classroom. Conversely, the extramural partners might come to the school and engage in discussions with the students
and teachers. In this way, the partnerships between schools and extra-mural actors build
mutually beneficial relationships where knowledge that is learnt together is created and
shared.
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On the other hand, it is probably worth heeding the warnings of Daniels (2006), who
pointed out that in approaches based on the use of so-called ‘progressive’ lessons in
the United States, this experimental learning was not necessarily linked to scientific
knowledge having cultural force. If project-based learning is confined to the domain of
everyday activities, then the learner will have no access to so-called ‘cultural capital’
such as theoretical reasoning or the ability to analyze scientific knowledge. Therefore,
the point that school education helps students to go beyond the constraints or limitations
of everyday objects is not realized. For children, it is important to attain both scientific
knowledge and everyday concepts.
For the ‘cyclical production of knowledge in a network structure’, which is pursued by
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NS, the acquisition of knowledge by children can be implemented according to a strategy
whereby their academic knowledge and understanding is enriched by their knowledge and
understanding built and acquired through their participation in productive collaboration
with actors in extra-mural and school environments. Daniels (2001) cites the opinion of
Moll and Greenberg (1990) with regard to this strategy, which is that schools should make
it their aim to allow guardians and geographical regions, and extra-mural actors to make a
social and conscious contribution to the development of children.
CONCLUSION
As an interface between learning activities and socially productive practices, New
School (NS) acts as a way of interacting with, connecting to, overlapping with, engaging
in dialogue with and mixing with the real world, and in the joining together of these
intellectual resources, it aims to cyclically produce and acquire new knowledge and
understanding. When NS develops new learning activity modes and systems and puts
them into practice, this constitutes the creation of learning activities by ‘the cyclical
production of knowledge in a network structure’. It goes without saying that these
learning activity systems could be called a sustainable context that promotes and supports
collaborative learning between participants. NS also aims to form motives for, and create
possibilities that actively contribute to, the personal development of children. This is
because learning plays a leading role in the formation of one’s own future.
1 The name“Fifth Dimension”is intended to imply a dimension of meaningful learning in addition to the
three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time. 5D is designed to provide informal educational
meetings that can be developed in many different ways.
2 In the LCHC at UCSD, since 1989, a group centered around Olga Vásquez (Vásquez , 2003) has been
applying the 5D model to the development and practice of an after-school education program (called“La
Clase Mágica”) for economically and socially disadvantaged children of Mexican migrant households. Based
on 5D, the core activities of La Clase Mágica are collaborative studies employing the Internet and educational
computer software.
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Katsuhiro Yamazumi
The biggest feature of La Clase Mágica is that, together with the Hispanic (Mexican) children, it creates a
bilingual and bicultural learning environment where literacy is developed in both Spanish and English. In other
words, the basic concepts of La Clase Mágica are‘bilingual education’and‘multiculturalism’
．Accordingly,
the core of these activities is‘learning through computer activities in a bilingual and bicultural setting’
，and
its aim is to‘develop cognitive abilities relating to language, numbers and science’
．
La Clase Mágica also has another key concept besides bilingual education. This is the realization of‘fair,
high-quality education’to support children from economically and socially disadvantaged households. That is,
La Clase Mágica is also designed to be a community of educational support activities for children from lowincome inner-city households. This builds upon the 5D objective of providing diverse multi-dimensional afterschool education programs.
That is, based on the concept of implementing fair, high-quality education for all children, it supports the
learning and development of economically and socially disadvantaged children in cooperation with schools
by crossing over and blurring the boundaries between people and organizations with different allegiances.
By working towards inclusive communities while protecting the realization of fair, high-quality education,
respecting the dignity of individuals, and responding to a wide range of different needs, these trials present
such people with new challenges. The creation of a“community where people study together”gives rise to
a new“hybrid activity system”of education. The basis for such a system is the collaboration of voluntary
actions that link together across boundaries of work, organizations and cultures.
3 This classification is described by Vygotsky (1987).
4 Meier (2002) is strongly opposed to the‘standardization’of school education while placing the education
of citizenship based around‘habits of mind’at the center of literacy education in the school curriculum.
However, she asserts that it is important to have‘standards’in school education, separately from
‘standardization’．This is expressed in the creation of independent and individual communities for group
learning by schools as‘small schools’
．
▲
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