Months ago I tried very hard to understand Activity Theory. After I attended Prof. Thorne's presentation, I read a sociocultural book and took note from the chapters. At that time, I feel that it will be useful for my research, but it's not clear at the beginning stage. This is the link to the previous post about activity theory http://tsreadinglog.blogspot.com/2007/11/activity-theory-on-contradictions-in.html
Today I had a look at it again and found more research relavances. I want to study this sociocultural model again as well as read research articles which present this model as the framework.
Activity theory is used as a framework to identify, examine and describe how the socio-cultural factors support a technology integration. Previous studies mentioned the advatages of using Activity Theory as a theoretical framework to analyse effective IT integration in classroom environment.
Researchers have agreed that Activity Theory has a potential to describe sociocultural factors affecting teachers' integration of technology. As the a matter of fact, the centre of classroom learning and teaching is the teacher. Learning is not from textbooks, materials, activities, or technology; otherwise, learning occurs when teachers engage their students in making sense out of ideas, contents, and related tools including IT.
My research focus is on teacher cognition about their technology use in EFL classroom. Teachers interact with the tool (computers) and they perceive the tool within its relevant environmental context. Therefore, teachers' thinking and how they interact with technology and its context should be analysed in the particular setting in which the activity is taking place.
3 comments:
Activity theory can be useful in analyzing educational practices. Have you read Yrjo Engestrom's work in this area? He points out that teachers and students are not involved in the same activity because they have different objects, and thus they are not part of the same community. (Expansive) learning occurs, according to Engestrom, when the object of one activity becomes a tool in another activity.
Dear Charles,
Thank you very much for you comment and suggestion.
Tessie
I am currently busy with a case study and i would like to use activity theory as a framework to show how the whiteboard can be utilized in the classroom to enhance learning. Currently i am struggling to understand Activity theory.
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