How to analyse practices empirically

If “practice” is accepted as one of the key concepts in the analysis of operators’

performance, the next question is how to utilise the concept in empirical analysis.

Our solution is to use the method we call the Core-Task Analysis (Norros 2004).

Cultural historical theory of activity (CHAT) is one part of the Core-Task Analysis method but also other theoretical sources are important, as will be explained below. The development of the method still continues. Later (in section 6.3.4) we shall explain how practices are operationalised in the methods we use.

6.3.2.1 Affordability and prehensility as potential for activity

Practices can be characterised as regularities that enable adaptive functioning of the human-technology-environment system. Depending on the purposes of the system different possibilities and constraints become relevant. These purposes, possibilities and constraints define generic boundaries for activity (e.g. Vicente 1999). The boundaries of activity provide the “possible reasons” to act (von Wright 1998) and they also put demands for acting. In order to define the possibilities and constraints, a functional modelling of the work domain is applied in the core-task approach (Vicente 1999).

The work domain modelling also includes a definition of generic work demands, that we call core-task demands. The core task is “the shared objectives and outcome-critical content of work that should be taken into account by the actors in their task performance for maintaining an appropriate interaction with the environment (Norros 2004, p. 17). Core-task demands are psychological demands that an appropriate coping with the domain requires. The psychological core-task demands are not included in the abstraction hierarchy method used in the design of EID displays (Burns & Hajdukiewicz 2004) that otherwise closely resembles the modelling we use.

From the practice analysis viewpoint it becomes interesting, whether and according to which logic people take into account the possibilities and

constraints, and what purposes make sense to them. Hereby, we become aware of what are the “effective reasons” for acting (von Wright 1998). We also gain a possibility to identify what dispositions people have developed that enable tackling the possibilities of the environment. The definition of this potential to act in the particular environment must be accomplished by analysing persons’

real action or their conceptions of their work. On the basis of such inquiries, a generalised potential to act is described.

The relationship between the environment and people can be comprehended as a sphere of mutual potential for activity. This is the basic arrangement in the Core-Task Analysis. The arrangement is depicted in Figure 1. As may be seen in Figure 1 the concept of affordance is used to indicate the potential that the environment offers. The concept of “prehensility” (A. N. Whitehead, see D Sherburne 1995) is used to denote the human potential of making use of the possibilities of the environment. It is the potential that the human has to offer in the transaction. Defined as above, affordance is not reduced to actual descriptive characteristics of the environment or artefact, as has been shown to happen frequently (Albrechtsen et al. 2001), but rather as the potential that is available for use. Respectively, human behaviour is not merely described as it is in a particular instance, but we also identify what potential for action it contains. As a result, we may differentiate between the potential to act, i.e. a generative aspect of behaviour, and the actualised action, the particular and situation-specific aspect of behaviour.

The two processes of affordability and prehensility set a tension between the human and environment that is realised in actual action. Action is conceptualised as part of the more comprehensive system of activity as explained by the three level concept of Leont’ev (1978). To be explained, action needs to be connected simultaneously both to the societally defined activity, and to operations that ground actions to the environmental conditions. These connections are shown in the middle of Figure 27.

Operation

Figure 27. Model of analysing of practices (orientation and habit of action) in a human-environment system context and using the concept of activity (Norros 2004; Norros and Savioja 2006).

6.3.2.2 Relationships between activity, action and operation: inferring orientations and habits of action

Cultural-historical theory of activity applies the three level concept of activity by L.S. Leont’ev (1978), the levels being activity, actions and operations. (Figure 27).

According to this theory activity is the societally and collaboratively accomplished system of tasks in which people are involved. Activity is defined by its object that is the general motive of activity (objective). Actions, for their part, refer to individual person’s or group’s situation specific behaviour that is defined by goals. Operations are elements of actions that are defined by the constraints of behaviour. As is evident, the term “action” is used but conceptually it distinguishes from the information processing interpretation of the term. We see that in CHAT

“action” is considered as being constructed in a context defined by “activity”

and its societal motive, and in a context of “operations” that make use of the particular physical, societal, technical, etc. conditions and constraints of situations in which activity takes place.

In the present study the context of “activity” would indicate, for example, that the operators who perform the test scenarios have criteria for good acting and acceptable ways of doing the tasks that they have adopted in acting as process operators in their home plants and organisations. They have internalised a certain balance between aims like safety, technical efficiency and economy.

These serve as the frame also when they perform the tests. On the other hand, operators make decisions about what they should do by considering the particular possibilities and constraints that each test scenario puts forward, and have respective learned ways of reacting to the demands of the situations. What is a good drainage solution and the way of accomplishing it in one case might not be as good in another one.

As Figure 1 indicates, orientation is the relationship between action and activity (as Leont’ev teaches). In other words, orientation expresses the personal sense that the objectives of the activity make to actors in their work and local actions. Habit of action, for its part, is defined as the relationship between action and operations. This relationship expresses the actors’ consideration of the functional demands of the domain while they are reacting to situation-specific constraints. Both these relationships portray the comprehension (awareness) of the global meaning of the activity in the persons’ overt actions. (Our interpretation of Leont’ev, Norros 2004.)

In the empirical analysis of activity we, of course, register actions as normal in cognitive analyses to describe what people do. Yet, this description only reveals the sequence of observable discrete sub-goals of action. In order to comprehend the continuity of action we need to approach the behaviour indirectly, and ask about the reasons for acting (why). We propose that this should be done by analysing the relationship of “actions” to “activity”, and to “operations”, respectively. The procedure is as follows.

Via using the concept of activity we define first the purpose or object of activity and the functional demands of the domain in the functional domain and core-task modelling. We also define the societal motive or reflective intentions of activity by inquiring people’s conception of their work, as depicted in Figure 1. From these sources we infer the actors’ orientation. Respectively, with regard to operation, drawing on the domain and core-task modelling we consider the functional significance of the conditions of behaviour by relating the situation (scenario) to functional demands of the domain in “Functional Situation Models”. Then we observe the pre-reflective intentions or behavioural routines by identifying ways of using various resources. From these we infer the habits of action. Also these connections are depicted in Figure 27. Both steps of analysis described above inform us of why people act, i.e. they unveil the meaning of actions, on the reflected and non-reflected sense.

By combining descriptions of orientation and habits of action we may character-ise practices. They portray the generic regularities that become overt in singular actions. Hereby we have described how people act.

6.3.3 Experimental design and its adaptation to qualitative analysis