Explaining CALL through Activity Theory and vice-versa

1
Explaining CALL through Activity Theory and
vice-versa

• Vilson J. Leffa, UCPel
• Brazil
• leffa_at_via-rs.net
• http//www.leffa.pro.br

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Main points

• Need for a unifying theory in CALL
• Introduction to Activity Theory (AT)
• Structure
• Principles
• Hierarchical levels
• Merging AT with CALL
• A new paradigm in CALL research?

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Need for a unifying theory in CALL

• Many nos
• No reliable conceptual framework (Levy, 1997,
  p. 3)
• No recognition as an area of research (Keegan,
  1990, p. 51)
• No unifying theory (Holmberg, 1982 Kelly, 1990
  Smith, 1980)
• The tutor/tool dichotomy
• Challenge How to incorporate opposites and
• fragments into a unified theory

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Activity Theory (AT)

• AT is a philosophical and cross-disciplinary
  framework for studying different forms of human
  practices as developmental processes (Kuutti
  1996)
• Historical materialism
• HCI Hospitals Schools
• Social practices
• Development

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Structure

• Segmentation for explanatory purposes
• How does the subject appropriate the object?

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Mediation

• A tool
• empowers the subject
• materializes an object
• imposes limitations
• modifies the subject
• cannot be discarded

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Object - Outcome

• Object
• Content to be internalized
• Outcome
• Content actually internalized
• Possible conflicts
• Phases of the Moon
• Teachers expectation Versus students
  realizations

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Contextualization

• The immersion process
• Vulnerability
• Inside / outside
• Distributed cognition
• Part of a whole

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The whole picture
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Principles

• object-orientedness
• mediation
• development
• internalization/externalization
• unity of consciousness and activity
• contextualization
• hierarchical structure

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Object-orientedness

• The object may be
• physical, chemical, biological, social, cultural
• may involve
• feelings, ideas
• colonialism, brotherhood
• but always treated as objective reality

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Principle of mediation

• Tools as extension of our organs
• Tool organ functional organ
• Transmission of knowledge
• Accumulation of knowledge
• We need more than our hands and our mind to learn
  and change we also need the tools we have
  created (Bacon)

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Principle of development

• AT develops continuously
• Supports fast methodological updates
• Requires a view of historical development
• Does not allow re-inventing the wheel

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Internalization/externalization

• No boundary between what is inside and what is
  outside
• Activities are externalized on objects
• Objects may be indispensable
• No piano sonata without a piano
• Simulation hypothesis
• Internalization and ZPD

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Hierarchical levels
(Harris)
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A CALL activity

• If AT did not exist we would have to invent it to
  explain CALL
• AT can account for the diversified nature of CALL
• Any component in the structure can be replaced
• AT can account for the historical development of
  CALL
• Any theory is seen as part of an evolutionary
  process

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Freezing a moment
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Structure

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The tool issue

• Beyond computer
• Screen is not a sheet of paper
• Undue emphasis on technology?
• Demands on the user
• The tutor/tool dichotomy

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Object-oriented

• A beater in a primeval collective hunt,
  frightens a herd of animals and sends them
  toward other hunters, hiding in ambush.
  (Leontyev, 1981 209-210).
• Sometimes a students action does not coincide
  with the final objective
• Importance of consciousness

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Tool mediation

• Any piece of courseware ... carries with it a
  teacher in the machine, a projection of the
  personalities of the designers, programmers,
  materials developers (Hubard, 1996 21)
• People anthropomorphize computers, treating the
  machine as if it were a person (Schaumburg, 2001
  Reeves Nass, 1996)

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Externalization/ Internalization cycle

• We externalize what is inside us through words
  and gestures
• Words and gestures can be saved and reproduced
• Images, movement, and interactivity can be added
  to amplify our gestures
• Under certain conditions (ZPD etc.) what is
  externalized can be internalized

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CALL is dynamic

• Computers change continuously, requiring
  activities to be developed and re-developed
• Computers facilitate change

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The hierarchical issue

• Operation level (below consciousness)
• Typing skills
• Eye-hand synchronization
• Action level (conscious)
• Answering a question
• Activity level
• Cloze
• Chat session

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Final comments

• AT as a simple and visual way to explain the
  complexity of situated CALL
• We learn and change through the instruments we
  create
• Playing with different identities
• Possibility of starting a new research paradigm
  if all lose ends in CALL are put together