AT provides a method of understanding and analyzing a phenomenon, finding patterns and making inferences across interactions, describing phenomena and presenting phenomena through a built-in language and rhetoric. The object of activity theory is to understand the unity of consciousness and activity." Sometimes called "Cultural-Historical Activity Theory", this approach is particularly useful for studying a group that exists "largely in virtual form, its communications mediated largely through electronic and printed texts." Cultural-Historical Activity Theory has accordingly also been applied to genre theory within writing studies to consider how quasi-stabilized forms of communication regularize relations and work while forming communally shared knowledge and values in both educational and workplace settings.AT is particularly useful as a lens in qualitative research methodologies (e.g., ethnography, case study). According to ethnographer Bonnie Nardi, a leading theorist in AT, activity theory "focuses on practice, which obviates the need to distinguish 'applied' from 'pure' science-understanding everyday practice in the real world is the very objective of scientific practice. The motive for the activity in AT is created through the tensions and contradictions within the elements of the system. This system includes the object (or objective), subject, mediating artifacts (signs and tools), rules, community and division of labor. The unit of analysis in AT is the concept of object-oriented, collective and culturally mediated human activity, or activity system. One of the strengths of AT is that it bridges the gap between the individual subject and the social reality-it studies both through the mediating activity. It accounts for environment, history of the person, culture, role of the artifact, motivations, and complexity of real-life activity. It considers an entire work/activity system (including teams, organizations, etc.) beyond just one actor or user. It became one of the major psychological approaches in the former USSR, being widely used in both theoretical and applied psychology, and in education, professional training, ergonomics, social psychology and work psychology.Activity theory is more of a descriptive meta-theory or framework than a predictive theory. These scholars sought to understand human activities as systemic and socially situated phenomena and to go beyond paradigms of reflexology (the teaching of Vladimir Bekhterev and his followers) and classical conditioning (the teaching of Ivan Pavlov and his school), psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Some of the traces of the theory in its inception can also be found in a few works of Lev Vygotsky. It was later advocated for and popularized by Alexei Leont'ev. Wikipedia Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votesĪctivity theory (AT Russian: Теория деятельности) is an umbrella term for a line of eclectic social-sciences theories and research with its roots in the Soviet psychological activity theory pioneered by Sergei Rubinstein in the 1930s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |