The activity of learning
at a distance:
a case study from teacher
education in Iceland
Thuridur Jóhannsdóttir
The 3rd Nordic Conference on Cultural and
Activity Research
in Copenhagen 3rd – 5th September 2004
Reframing distance learning
• Work in contemporary societies is characterized by
polycontextuality - people involved in multiple
communities of practice
• People need to learn to cross boundaries between
communities - interesting focus for study
• Frame factors – space and time resisting to change
• In distance education many of the frame factors
disappear, while others change
• Which possibilities this brings for breaking down the
isolation of traditional school learning from the
students’ actual life
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Research on distance education
• Programme for initial teacher training in the Iceland
University of Education from the perspective of
teacher students living and working in remote rural
areas
• The aim of this paper is to explore how one
particular case in teacher education can be explained
and understood with a focus on distance learning
from an activity theoretical perspective,
• Especially the concepts of boundary crossing,
expansive learning and developmental transfer
• The main unit of analysis will be the historical phase
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Methods, context, participants
• Three former distance students interviewed
• All located in fishing villages or towns ranging
from 200 to 2500 inhabitants
• The women’ narratives through an AT lens
• The possibilities of expansive learning and
developmental transfer will be discussed,
• Interpret the first phase of the distance education
programme in the light of activity theory,
especially the concepts of boundary zone and
boundary crossing
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The informants
Helena:
• principal in a small school with 30-40 pupils
• head of the organization for compulsory school
head teachers in the West-fjords.
• goal is to get into the graduate programme for school management
Elisabet:
• one of two deputy head teachers in a school of more than 500 pupils in the main
town.
• in the graduate programme for school management
• working in a school where one or more teachers have always been enrolled in the
initial distance teacher education programme and lately always somebody in the
graduate programme.
Jenny:
• teacher in a school of approximately 140 pupils serving as a leader in teaching in
the middle school, children age 10-12.
• taking graduate courses in general didactics and ICT in education
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Who and why? Actors and goal
Elisabet:
• This battle was, well, maybe because of a bad
situation of the schools in the community. It was,
well, … the school was not found to be a good
institution at that time, and we were here a few
women who were in similar situation, we had
university education although it was not teacher
education which gave us the right to call ourselves
teachers.
• …we all had our families here… could not or did
not have the courage to move to Reykjavík at that
time.
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Goal – Rules - Actors
• The admission of students were built on a societal
need for qualified teachers especially in the rural
countryside.
• In accordance to the rules the community of the
distance students became relatively homogenate;
–
–
–
–
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made up of females from the country-side,
average age 30-40,
with the experience of teaching
enthusiastic and ready to sacrifice a lot to get that
education
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Outcome – change agents
Elisabet
The teacher education we got at that time made us
more secure and enhanced our position as
teachers. We began to stand up, the teachers
without professional teacher education, just
finishing a course in didactics of social studies
and knew perfectly that we were talking about
something that made sense, knew how we wanted
to do this and said that we were not satisfied with
how things were done now, and we want it this
way
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Boundary-crossers
Helena
• When we met in Reykjavík we stayed together as a group a lot, met
a lot outside school and things like that, eating together in the
cantina, collaborating on assignments in the library. Things like
inviting the teachers to dinner with us. I am still in connection with
many of them. It was often really funny. It was interesting to hear
what all the others were doing.
• This opened up so many things, opened up so much, you see,
because they were all teachers. Because more or less they were
teachers in small schools, so you could ask them what they were
doing. You could get a lot of information, share a lot.
• If you met someone who was doing exactly what you were doing,
teaching Icelandic just like you, and then you laid your cards on the
table; that’s what I am doing; can you use anything of it? Then you
tell me. And then you return home not only with the knowledge from
the teacher college, but also what the others were doing, and in that
way you were adding to your knowledge all the time.
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Communication – ICT-tools
Jenny:
• I recall that we sent all our assignments by ordinary mail.
The e-mail was very primitive and something we were not
familiar with. And the teachers were not all capable of
using the e-mail. From some of them you never heard a
word.
Elisabet:
• At that time the information technology was very poor.
There was a sort of a tension linked to it, something was
always going wrong. We had only this one computer at the
school which we could use, we didn’t have it at home. Now
everybody has a connection from their homes.
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Collaboration
• Lack of contact to the teachers led to a
tension
• The students’ answer to that was to stick
together and collaborate
• Students learned to collaborate with their
school-mates no matter where they were
living
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Figure from the group Workplace Learning
and Developmental Transfer in Helsinki
http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/research/transfer
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Interconnecting activity systems
Helena:
• You would always adapt to your own situation. Look, this was
your world, the school, where you were teaching and you
applied all the material you got. You were always trying to
apply, asking: How can I use this in my teaching?
• And at once, when we had learned how to make a teaching
schedule and things like that. Integrate - make social studies by
integrating geography, history, home economics and things like
that, then you just organized a tourist bureau here with the
pupils.
• And everything worked out well and you went back happy [to
the community of distance learners] Yes this is fine, this is
good. And then we shared, you always shared with the others
right away.
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Boundary-crossing zone
Helena:
• Look, if you just said; look; it is really working out
well with me in mathematics if I teach it this and
that way. Then someone would come and say: Oh
god, can you [help], I heard you were teaching this
class, the 3rd grade. It is really going badly. What
is it you are doing? And then you told them what
you were doing, something like that and the
relevant person went home strengthened just
like…. And then may be you were sending material
and all kind of things afterwards.
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Developmental transfer?
• Distance students acted as boundarycrossers and change agents which resulted
in developed praxis in the schools
– And in the learning community of distance
learners?
• The importance of the culture of the school
being receptive
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Expansive learning
Elisabet:
• What we wanted to do was to change the situation, change the
image which the community had of the school. We wanted to
augment the respect for the school in the community, and
diminish some negative aspects that had created a not so good
atmosphere in the school and yes become a sort of good school
• I think that when these six women started their studies then the
other teachers began to talk together more than before… there
was a kind of renewal. There was a group of qualified teachers
here but when the rate of unqualified is so high a professional
discussion doesn’t thrive. We are quite sure that this has totally
changed in the school. The school spirit and the attitude of the
community towards the school has changed
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Conclusion
• Yes - the reframing of the distance education
programme along activity theoretical theories can
enhance our understanding of the distance
education programme of Iceland University of
Education
• My conclusion is that the concepts and models
provided by activity theory open up possibilities
for a new understanding of the kind of learning
that occurs when teacher students engage in
distance learning programmes
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Useful concepts
• Looking at students as boundary crossers
moving between activity systems
• Contradictions as a possibility for
development
• Developmental transfer understanding
learning as being horizontal, as two
interacting activity systems benefit; the
local schools and the teacher training
programme.
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