The need and possibility to master the historical transformation in

It appears that, as Freeman and Louca suggested (see page 63), the ICT revolution has triggered a new wave of socialization in labor processes. It will change the pro-cesses of generating work-related generalizations in many ways. It is probable that new systems of generalizing such as mass customization and co-confi guration, will develop to meet the needs of the emerging new forms of production in the era of computerization. It is also clear that the new technology will provide new tools for producing generalizations, and will affect the communities within which these are created. My analysis does not shed light on these diverse trends, but there is one rather obvious change that will have a broad and general impact on learning in and for production.

The increasing investment in research and development will cut in half cycles of business, product and production concepts, and will increasingly transform second-level learning from separate processes into cycles of expansive learning.

This will, fi rst of all, increase the need for interaction and dialogue between stra-tegic management and grass-roots operations. Secondly, the growing importance of strategic transformations will highlight the need for mastering the historical change in the conditions and elements of activities as a form of variation that has to be managed (Ramirez & Wallin, 2000). This new, emerging object of gen-eralization is in sharp contradiction with the empirical processes of generalizing typical of the three distributed systems of generalizing described above. Mastery of the historical changes in the elements of the activity system requires third-level

learning that transforms the logic and structure of the whole system instead of changing or just optimizing the way individual tasks or processes are carried out.

This calls for theoretical-genetic processes of generalization to overcome histori-cally evolved contradiction between elements of the activity systems. The forms these processes take may be very different. It is also possible that there will be not only one dominant way of producing production relevant generalization as was the case during the upswing of the motorization wave, and that the methods will be much more manifold. In the next chapter I introduce a method that supports theoretical-genetic generalization in work communities, the Change Laboratory.

9 ”Learning activity” as a historically new form of generalizing

9.1 Expansive learning actions

According to Engeström (1987, pp. 124–137), there is in our time a need and the potential for a new form of activity and learning that he calls ”learning activity”:

The essence of learning activity is the production of objectively, societally new activity structures (including new objects, instruments, etc.) out of actions manifesting the inner contradictions of the preceding form of the activity in question. Learning activity is the mastery of expansion from actions to a new activity. (Engeström 1987, p. 126)

The object of attention in learning activity is not on solving and preventing prob-lems and disturbances within current practice as such. It is rather on recurrent disturbances and individuals’ double-bind experiences that are indicative of inad-equacy or inner contradictions in the prevailing system and logic of the activity, in other words on the basic generalizations and concepts on which it is based. It involves the creation of a new generalization, a new, broader concept incorporat-ing its object and motive so that its logic also changes.

What is specifi c to this kind of generalizing is that it suggests concept forma-tion on the one hand, but on the other hand it is about changing the structure of the practical activity, including the tools, community composition and division of labor. It involves the questioning of the prevailing concepts used in mastering the activity intellectually, and replacing them with new ones. The object of the learning activity is the expansive transformation required in overcoming current or threatened crises.

Like any activity, learning activity is carried out through individuals’ intercon-nected actions that are oriented towards the same object, and in this case it is the epistemic object of fi nding a way to understand the contradictory demands and double-bind situations in the current form of the productive activity. This is done

by following specifi c epistemic lines of inquiry as to the causes of problems in the current activity, and in fi nding new concepts. Engeström calls these actions expansive learning actions.

According to Engeström, expansive learning actions can be broken down into the following basic types:

questioning actions that involve criticizing some aspects of accepted prac-tice and existing knowledge;

analyzing actions through mental, discursive or practical transformation in order to fi nd the causes or explanatory mechanisms: analysis evokes

”why”questions and explanatory principles, historical-genetic analysis seeks to explain the situation by tracing its origin and evolution, while empirical analysis does so by constructing a picture of its inner systemic relations;

modelling the newly found explanatory relationship, in other words con-structing an explicit simplifi ed model of the new idea that explains and offers solutions to the problematic situation. This happens in some publicly observable and transmittable medium;

examining the model by operating, running and experimenting with it in order to fully grasp its dynamics, potential and limitations;

implementing the new model, which means concretizing it and planning its execution by means of practical applications and conceptual extensions;

refl ecting on the process and consolidating the practice, in other words evalu-ating the new model and the process, and consolidevalu-ating its outcomes into a new stable form of activity.

In an empirical study of natural work teams Engeström analyzed the discussion in one team meeting and found that the members spontaneously took actions of questioning, analysing, modelling, and examining the model (Engeström, 1996).

Learning actions as such are not expansive because they are only parts of the learn-ing activity as a whole. An expansive solution is reached only as one potentially expansive learning action leads to another learning action, and these form a chain that leads to a change in the activity. The activity may take the form of small cycles of change in which partial resolutions of contradictions in an activity system are implemented locally in the work place in a new way that may lead to expansive transformation. The learning actions may make the understanding of the causes of problems and the creation of a new form of activity into an epistemic object for the practitioners, which then motivates further learning actions and leads to collaborative learning activity.

New solutions, new model for the practice

Intermediate conceptual tools

Mirror of everyday practice (historical and ongoing)

Activity system framework

Researchers Practitioners

9.2 Developmental Work Research – an intervention methodology for supporting learning activity

Developmental Work Research methodology is a specifi c intervention methodol-ogy developed by Engeström for carrying out learning activity in collaboration between a researcher interventionist and the practitioners.

The interventionist’s task is to help practitioners undertake epistemic actions of analyzing the need and possibilities for change in their activity, to model the historical development of the activity system and its current developmental con-tradictions, and to design a new concept as well as new representations and tools for the new activity.

The research setting is a modifi cation of Vygotksy’s idea of developmental ex-periment based on the method of dual stimulation, the purpose of which was to show that potential capabilities and emerging new psychological formations in the child could be identifi ed by analyzing the formation of new meanings, i.e. new generalizations. It provides practitioners with the tools for taking collaboratively expansive learning actions.

In the process the researcher provides the practitioners with data about prob-lematic aspects of their daily activities and disturbances in them in order to help them identify the need for change. This corresponds to the fi rst stimulus, the tasks in Vygotsky’s method of dual stimulation. The general model of an activity system is provided as an intellectual tool for modelling both the systemic cause of the identifi ed problems and a new form of activity.

Figure 9.1 The setting of developmental work research for creating generalizations (Engeström, 1991, p.76)

Activity 2 Reporting and

evaluation Activity 1 Phenomenology, delineation

Principal application of the new instrument to change the activity

Analysis of the activity - object-historical - theory-historical - actual-empirical

Formation of new instruments

The Developmental Work Research setting comprises three types of artifacts that are used as instruments of expansive learning actions. Data-refl ection is used as a ”mirror” of daily practice and especially of its problematic aspects. The general model of an activity system is used as a tool for modelling the structure and inner contradictions of the local activity, as well as for creating a model of its new form.

Analytical concepts and various representational means are used for analyzing the data in the mirror and for constructing alternative solutions for specifi c parts of the activity.

The phases of developmental-work-research-based intervention are depicted in Figure 9.2. The intervention process starts with an ethnographic analysis of current practice and of the various problems that practitioners experience in their daily work activities. This makes it possible to delineate the activity in question, and provides data to be used to mirror the practice. All of this helps practitioners to identify problems and to question aspects of current practice.

The next intervention phase consists of three types of analysis of the work activity as a historically developed local system. The purpose of object-historical analysis is to identify the qualitative changes that have taken place in the activity system and to provide an initial hypothesis concerning its current inner contradic-tions. Theory-historical analysis aims to analyze and to determine previous and current concepts that shape the local activity, and true empirical analysis to reveal and describe in detail the forms of actions and processes involved in the transfor-mation of its objects: to what extent specifi c tools, rules and forms, and actions and processes are involved in the transformation of the objects of the activity, how specifi c tools, rules and types of division of labor actually mediate the activity, and what types of disturbances, ruptures and innovative new actions occur in daily practice.

Figure 9.2 The methodological cycle of developmental work research (Engeström 1987, p.

323)

The results of the historical analysis are crystallized in a model of the most preva-lent inner contradictions in the activity system. The resulting hypothesis concern-ing the systemic causes of problems is then enriched, specifi ed and corrected usconcern-ing the data from the empirical analysis. The theory-historical analysis provides sets of concepts for describing and discussing the qualitative variation found in the practitioners’ views of their tools and processes, and in the forms of their daily ac-tivities. The analyses and the modelling of different aspects of the activity provide rich material for conceptual artefacts that practitioners can use in the production of the new concept for their activity.

The fi nal important and often time-consuming part of the intervention is the practical experimentation with the new concept and the new tools created in the preceding phases. It is in this phase that many new contradictions emerge that call for re-mediation of various aspects of the activity and its interaction with the neighbouring activities.

9.3 The Change Laboratory as a specifi c application of developmental