Expansive Learning

"The Change Laboratory (CL) is a CHAT-based intervention method, which relies on collaboration between the practitioners of the activity being analyzed and transformed and academic researchers or interventionists supporting and facilitating collective developmental processes. The nature of collaboration is conceived as dialectic of daily work practice and its analytical and reflective distance. This article addresses issues with methodological implications on collaboration; not only as a feature of conducting the CL intervention but also as a feature of the project managing the intervention in multi-cultural and -institutional setting. The reflections and findings draw from the project around the interest in experimenting and studying possibilities of the CL method for empowering teachers in Botswana to master and design school change while implementing novel tools of ICTs. For overcoming limited effects of practice-based locality in context of global education policy markets, the paper proposes extended CL methodology in which local and global processes are viewed as a unified system of interactions and as dialectically connected for capturing the complexity of school change due to education–society relationship. The methodology appropriates the notions of “collective activity about collective activity” and “boundary object” as sorts of social arrangements and organic infrastructures.
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This preface provides an overview of the aims, scope and contents each chapter of my doctoral thesis: The Predicament of the Learner in the New Media Age: an investigation into the implications of media change for learning.

Citation:

Francis R.J (2008) The Predicament of the Learner in the New Media Age: an investigation into the implications of media change for learning: DPhil. University of Oxford. Available from: < http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A0cbd0185-c7ed-4306-b34e-993acd125e96 >

A building collapse is one of the worst safety scenarios in civil construction. These accidents involve high costs, and their analyses are traditionally based on methods which are restricted to the immediate causes. Currently there is an increasing adherence to the concepts and methods of systemic accidents analysis. Accidents are understood as events with origins rooted in the system history with an emphasis on strategic choices of technologies, materials, and organization and management of the workforce. This study aims to understand the processes that led to the accidents during an airport terminal construction and help actors to learn and reformulate the activity system of construction to prevent new accidents in the future. For this purpose, a formative intervention inspired by the Change Laboratory (CL) method was conducted. There are five principles that support the CL: cultural mediation theory of human actions, multi-voicedness of activity systems, historicity, central role of contradictions as sources of change and development, and possibility of expansive transformations in activity systems. Ethnographic data were used as mirror data, and were obtained by interviews, observations and document analysis. The CL requires the creation of a collaborative environment and that those who develop activity within the system voluntarily participate. Thus we have an activity system as the unit of analysis. The subject is the consortium and its object is the construction building. Some rules and regulations are given by the government and others internal rules are given by the consortium. Some tools mediate it like schedule, financial resources, materials, executive project, equipment, industrial instruments and meetings. The community is made up of shareholders, concessionaire, local community, stakeholders and government institutions. The division of labor is composed of constructive division, teams division, several departments such as administration, safety, engineering, planning and production. The researchers act as leaders, who is dealt with the task of organizing the collected information in accordance with the theoretical principles and the method concepts, and to support the members of the unit of analysis in their task of preparing systemic diagnosis of the situation and developing a proposal for overcoming the existing problems. To create new solutions, the mirror data supported six sessions along with fifteen participants from different departments. The method stimulates the following learning actions: a) questioning critical aspects of existing knowledge and practices, b) historical analysis of the situation and current empirical analysis explaining the problems, c) designing new solutions d) Testing and applying these solutions. Preliminary results: Many problems concerning the construction site appeared during the CL sessions with emphasis on three severe work accidents and the rise in production and time pressures resulting in work intensification, extra working hours and safety vulnerabilities. The time dimension is something important to be considered in this activity system. A contradiction was found between the rule that limits the time and the complex object which requires planning and a more detailed implementation. Contract rules set by the government defined that the airport should be built within an impractical timeline. The specified period for delivery of work was 24 months. According to participants, this would be the time required just to prepare the detailed executive project. Changes in government regulations of contracts for construction sites and the deadlines led to initiating construction without an executive project under the consortium management, which chose to outsource multiple projects, so that the development of these activities started to take place unsynchronized and in a accelerated rhythms resulting in multiple delays, rework,
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improvisations, project changes and adjustments, putting at risk the intrinsic structural safety. Therefore, the appropriate means for building a construction site of this complexity were not available in the prescribed time. The internal operating rules of the consortium also had contradictions with the object, division of labor and tools available. The consortium was formed by different companies with different cultures, tools and rules in place for interacting at the airport construction site. The building itself began to be constructed by employees of different companies working together for the first time under the context of time pressure and without management tools available to facilitate communication and coordination need to create a collaboration required for the complexity of the object. The situation was compounded by a management strategy that focused on the outsourcing of construction activities. Outsourced companies had been contracted hastily and, without the expertise and previous preparation of their own workforce, were unprepared to perform the core tasks of building. Racing against time, accidents and crises had led to further delays, which resulted in four shift of directors, generating more instability that ordered more time for the adjustments. As a result, this vicious cycle of accidents can be seen as predictable abnormalities, which may be far more serious, if it was not for the commitment of professionals who struggled daily to control and adjust the incessant crises and increasing variability. After the analysis of the contradictions of the activity system, the participants recommended as a solution to the bidding process that it should be shortened and should be based on techniques along with pricing. During the construction process there should be weekly meetings with all sectors and inside of each sector; strengthening monitoring; a more wide ranged communication matrix; reduction of bureaucracy; teamwork; specific and continuous training for all areas and improved management of outsourced companies. The CL, as a systematic learning process may help to understand and change the construction activity system. For this process to be efficient it is important that the sessions should be planned to provoke agency from the participants and stakeholders. This study is ongoing and the results presented are preliminary. At the moment an in-depth analysis is being conducted to understand contradictions and the activity system. This construction site had a short period, and many local actions could not be implemented. After the sessions, some meetings have been planned with others institutions in order to discuss the results and implement political actions. The project is supported by Research Foundation of São Paulo State (FAPESP 2012-04721-1), CNPq Foundation and CAPES Foundation.

This paper presents the culturally responsive positive behavioral interventions and supports (CRPBIS) framework. The CRPBIS framework is the first framework that operationalizes cultural responsiveness in the context of PBIS. It aims to facilitate positive, supportive, inclusive and democratic school cultures via ecologically valid and sustainable systemic transformations that are led and owned by local stakeholders. The CRPBIS framework was designed to remediate social and academic activities within schools that place specific groups of students and families at the margins. It uses the Learning Lab, a systemic transformation methodology, as the operational definition of CRPBIS. The Learning Lab methodology opens up problem-solving processes to family and community members who have been historically excluded from schools' activities. It follows five interceptive actions: (1) forming a Learning Lab; (2) determining desired outcomes; (3) empirically and culturally validating research-based practices; (4) using data for continuous improvement and innovation; and (5) systemic change.

Despite there being a wealth of educational research in extant literature there exists a disconnect between learning theories
and classroom practices. This is due to difficulty in the identification of learning spaces where knowledge construction
occurs. That is to say it is increasingly becoming difficult to measure when, why, and how knowledge construction
happens because they are actually learnt as they are being shaped, more so with today’s mobile technologies. Few learning models and mobile learning designs accommodate for these dynamic new forms of activity that are yet to be learnt, hence the divide between reality and dreams. The researcher presents how Engeström’s expansive learning theory facilitates an understanding of knowledge construction as they are being created. For instance, as learning occurs, lived classroom phenomena can be deconstructed from abstract to concrete by reconstructing the interrelationships between the researcher, teacher, learners, mobile technologies and the wider educational community. As researchers and educators it provides us a methodology to understand the various interactivities, within our activity and between overlapping networks of activities in the community, relating to our goal linking abstract theory and thesis to field work and antithesis.

Therefore expansive learning provides opportunities to understand the why, what, how and who of inter-relationships to identify the activity systems, voice, historicity, contradictions and expansive cycles of the researcher and their participants in relation to the study investigated. These multidirectional and boundary-crossing learning paradigms are the basis of expansive learning theory, which has the potential to advance educational research and practice.

The purpose of the present article is to examine the role of learning communities in the classroom, from psychological and educational perspectives. Four perspectives on learning communities are examined: Ann L. Brown’s distributed-expertise communities, Bereiter’s knowledge-building communities, Lave and Wegner’s communities of practice, and Engeström’s expansive learning communities. It is argued that the educational value of such approaches depends on engaging students in a) pursuit of complex problems, b) sharing of and creating of knowledge, c) breaking boundaries between educational and other communities, and d) promoting the development of students’ agency.

This study is about the challenges of learning in the creation and implementa- tion of new sustainable technologies. The system of biogas production in the Programme of Sustainable Swine Production (3S Programme) conducted by the Sadia food processing company in Santa Catarina State, Brazil, is used as a case example for exploring the challenges, possibilities and obstacles of learning in the use of biogas production as a way to increase the environmental sustainability of swine production. The aim is to contribute to the discussion about the possibilities of developing systems of biogas production for sustainability (BPfS).
In the study I develop hypotheses concerning the central challenges and pos- sibilities for developing systems of BPfS in three phases. First, I construct a model of the network of activities involved in the BP for sustainability in the case study. Next, I construct a) an idealised model of the historically evolved concepts of BPfS through an analysis of the development of forms of BP and b) a hypothesis of the current central contradictions within and between the activity systems involved in BP for sustainability in the case study. This hypothesis is further developed through two actual empirical analyses: an analysis of the actors’ senses in taking part in the system, and an analysis of the disturbance processes in the implemen- tation and operation of the BP system in the 3S Programme.
The historical analysis shows that BP for sustainability in the 3S Programme emerged as a feasible solution for the contradiction between environmental pro- tection and concentration, intensi cation and specialisation in swine production. This contradiction created a threat to the supply of swine to the food process- ing company. In the food production activity, the contradiction was expressed as a contradiction between the desire of the company to become “a sustainable company” and the situation in the outsourced farms. For the swine producers the contradiction was expressed between the contradictory rules in which the market exerted pressure which pushed for continual increases in scale, specialisation and concentration to keep the production economically viable, while the environmen- tal rules imposed a limit to this expansion.
Although the observed disturbances in the biogas system seemed to be merely technical and localised within the farms, the analysis proposed that these distur- bances were formed in and between the activity systems involved in the network
of BPfS during the implementation. The disturbances observed could be explained by four contradictions: a) contradictions between the new, more expanded activ- ity of sustainable swine production and the old activity, b) a contradiction be- tween the concept of BP for carbon credits and BP for local use in the BPfS that was implemented, c) contradictions between the new UNFCCC1 methodology for applying for carbon credits and the small size of the farms, and d) between the technologies of biogas use and burning available in the market and the small size of the farms.
The main  nding of this study relates to the zone of proximal development (ZPD) of the BPfS in Sadia food production chain. The model is  rst developed as a general model of concepts of BPfS and further developed here to the speci c case of the BPfS in the 3S Programme. The model is composed of two developmental dimensions: societal and functional integration. The dimension of societal inte- gration refers to the level of integration with other activities outside the farm. At one extreme, biogas production is self-suf cient and highly independent and the products of BP are consumed within the farm, while at the other extreme BP is highly integrated in markets and networks of collaboration, and BP products are exchanged within the markets. The dimension of functional integration refers to the level of integration between products and production processes so that econo- mies of scope can be achieved by combining several functions using the same util- ity. At one extreme, BP is specialised in only one product, which allows achieving economies of scale, while at the other extreme there is an integrated production in which several biogas products are produced in order to maximise the outcomes from the BP system. The analysis suggests that BP is moving towards a societal integration, towards the market and towards a functional integration in which several biogas products are combined. The model is a hypothesis to be further tested through interventions by collectively constructing the new proposed con- cept of BPfS.
Another important contribution of this study refers to the concept of the learn- ing challenge. Three central learning challenges for developing a sustainable sys- tem of BP in the 3S Programme were identi ed: 1) the development of cheaper and more practical technologies of burning and measuring the gas, as well as the reduction of costs of the process of certi cation, 2) the development of new ways of using biogas within farms, and 3) the creation of new local markets and networks for selling BP products. One general learning challenge is to  nd more varied and synergic ways of using BP products than solely for the production of carbon credits.
Both the model of the ZPD of BPfS and the identi ed learning challenges could be used as learning tools to facilitate the development of biogas production sys-
1 UNFCCC – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
tems. The proposed model of the ZPD could be used to analyse different types of agricultural activities that face a similar contradiction. The  ndings could be used in interventions to help actors to  nd their own expansive actions and develop- mental projects for change. Rather than proposing a standardised “best” concept of BPfS, the idea of these learning tools is to facilitate the analysis of local situa- tions and to help actors to make their activities more sustainable.

Purpose – Research on sustainability in higher education has focused on environmental management of the university campus, case studies and examples of good practice. Although the value and contribution of these initiatives has been articulated, little holistic and structural transformation of universities has been achieved so far. This paper aims to explore different theoretical frameworks to better understand and improve the effectiveness of organizational change processes towards sustainability in universities.
Design/methodology/approach – The combination of different theoretical approaches on organisational learning such as organisational learning theory, the idea of expansive learning at work, the ideal of the learning organisation and transformative learning theory are reviewed in this paper. These ideas in combination with leadership for sustainability and education for sustainability lead to an integrative model that links theory and practice, cultural and social aspects influencing learning, and the ability of individuals to critically reflect and challenge existing worldviews to learn and develop new practices.
Findings – The theoretical foundations and model presented seek to provide useful theoretical basis with which to better understand the process of transformation towards sustainability in higher education. This involves a continuous process of learning to rethink existing practices and worldviews by individuals within the organisation, which lead to community learning, which in turn lead to organisational learning. Six key implications for action have also been identified.
Originality/value – Little research exists that uses organisational learning to inform the design and development of the research reporting on the achievements, opportunities and challenges emerged during the change process towards embedding sustainability in higher education. The suggested framework is envisaged as an integrative theoretical framework that can help understand the “how to”, thus the learning processes associated with embedding sustainability in the core activities of universities.

The present article examines an enduring educational inequality- nondominant students’ disproportionate representation in special education programs. From a Marxist historical materialist perspective, racial disproportionality forms a systemic tension that offers a significant opportunity to deeply examine and transform school systems. I first provide a social-historical-spatial examination of racial disproportionality and disability classification process. Then, I detail how formative intervention, an activity theory-based systemic intervention model, can be instrumental in capacity building in local schools to examine and intervene racial disproportionality. The formative intervention methodology that I present in this article aims to re-mediate complex ecologies of school systems by transforming exclusionary processes with local stakeholders who reproduce and are negatively affected by those unjust processes and outcomes.

The enduring existence of disproportionate representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in special education programs and disciplinary practices creates a double bind for educators, educational leaders, and families. Disproportionality is an adaptive systemic issue that is not under any entity’s control; thus, it demands collaboration and critical dialogue among local stakeholders. This article examined the implementation of Learning Lab, a new methodology of systemic transformation, for local stakeholders to collectively examine and address disproportionality in behavioral outcomes from the ground–up. Learning Lab aims to increase equity within the local implementations of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) by opening up decision-making and problem-solving processes with local stakeholders. Designed to increase authentic collaboration and dialogue among educators, families, and community based organizations, Learning Lab offers the possibility of contextually fit, culturally responsive implementations of PBIS and building the capacity for forming adaptive and inclusive schools.

Culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (CRPBIS) is a statewide research project designed to renovate behavioral support systems to become more inclusive, positive, and supportive. CRPBIS uses an innovative methodology called Learning Lab, which provides a research-based process to bring together local stakeholders and facilitates their authentic participation in problem solving. Learning Lab addresses the outcome disparities for youth from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds and strategically includes CLD families and students and representatives from community-based organizations. Learning Labs were found to successfully create and sustain productive partnership among local stakeholders that renovated their school discipline systems. The purpose of this article is to provide specific guidelines and key considerations for practitioners how to implement Learning Labs to facilitate authentic and productive family-school-community collaboration and systemic transformation in schools.

El presente trabajo se sustenta en resultados hasta el momento hallados en el Programa de Extensión Universitaria de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, "Desarrollo Institucional de Equipos Interdisciplinarios de Salud en el marco del Programa de Salud Escolar del GCBA", así como en las investigaciones desarrolladas a partir del mismo. El Programa de Salud Escolar del GCBA está constituido por equipos de salud multidisciplinarios, que desarrollan actividades en las doce í•reas Programáticas, cada una de las cuales depende a su vez de los doce Hospitales Generales de Agudos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.  El objeto del Programa ha sido identificar las características más habituales observadas en el desarrollo de las prácticas de los profesionales de salud, así como aquellas estrategias relevantes para la instrumentación de cambios transformadores.  Los cambios se introducen a partir de la necesidad de modificar las prácticas, lo que ocurre al percibir la distancia entre las acciones desarrolladas y los efectos de éstas en el contexto de su aplicación. Estos cambios, que se inician en el hacer del profesional, luego van impactando en los elementos periféricos y luego centrales de sus representaciones sociales, o sea en aquellas que justifican y orientan su  acción (Abric, J.; 2004). Toda práctica profesional se encuentra fuertemente atravesada por determinaciones institucionales en tanto marcos regulatorios que determinan las formas de intercambio social. A esto se suman normativas organizacionales también determinadas por estas lógicas hegemónicas, que se alinean y producen como resultado una percepción del hacer del profesional difícil de transformar. Los cambios requeridos manifestados por los profesionales entrevistados e identificados como centrales en el seno de las prácticas de salud, tienen como base la posibilidad de intercambio con el otro. La referencia a las redes o a la comunidad de práctica, aluden a la necesidad de contar con espacios de intercambio y coordinación que se constituyan en potenciadores de aquellas transformaciones consideradas necesarias.  Una noción relevante en este contexto es la de capital social. Este capital es el articulador que permite la capitalización de los conocimientos que circulan y por lo tanto enriquece el quehacer cotidiano en cualquier colectivo. Es un concepto de orden cultural en tanto produce, articula y moviliza. (Etkin,J.; 2007) La capacidad  de  trabajar con otros en redes o en comunidades de prácticas permite colaborar y compartir información y conocimiento, lo cual hace al incremento de la densidad del capital social, base, como se ha demostrado en investigaciones recientes, para las prácticas innovadores en contexto. Los nuevos aprendizajes incorporados gradualmente a las prácticas, podrían considerarse artefactos construidos colectivamente con el objeto de intervenir en el


. .  . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TERCER CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE INVESTIGACIÓN de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata 210
mundo y reflejarían la experiencia transitada y transmitida consolidando el capital social existente. La socialización de estos conocimientos con otros profesionales, algunos de diversas disciplinas y sectores de gobierno, así como con la comunidad destinataria de sus acciones, podría constituirse en una pieza clave para la consolidación de nuevas prácticas profesionales orientadas a la población.  Por su parte Engestrom Y. Brown K. Engestrom R. y Koistinen K (1992) plantean que cuando un sujeto logra coordinar sus concepciones con los artefactos construidos por otros, logra establecer conexión entre sí mismo y sus colegas.  La idea del valor de la transmisión de saberes y experiencias, constituye un aspecto clave que permite al sujeto conectarse con un colectivo que desarrolla una práctica y que la ha venido desarrollando a lo largo de un recorrido histórico.  Cuando se ha alcanzado este nivel de compromiso mutuo en la práctica, en el flujo de intercambios desarrollados a lo largo del tiempo, se trasciende el aspecto meramente instrumental, para centrarse no sólo en los resultados a alcanzar sino también en el proceso mismo de gestión de la práctica, que en definitiva será la garantía de su futuro desarrollo. Este compromiso se consolida en los acuerdos acerca de la realidad, así como en la representación conjunta acerca del mundo.  Frente a la complejidad, como plantea D. Schín (1998), la tendencia a acomodar la situación práctica para que encaje en el conocimiento profesional es frecuente, muchas veces desatendiendo datos que enriquecerían la construcción del problema. Desde esta perspectiva es posible enfatizar nuevamente la importancia de un trabajo colectivo â€"interdisciplinario, intersectorial y multiactoral- que facilite la incorporación de datos y perspectivas, evitando quedar atrapados en las categorías o esquemas que intervienen en la comprensión de la realidad desde la practica profesional.

The paper focuses on the main ideas of activity-theoretical concept of expansive learning developed by Yrjo Engestrom. The aim of this current review is to outline the conceptual perspectives of applied psychological research in various areas of human work activity. The paper highlights the basic conditions and developmental stages of expansive learning concept, its methodological principles (including the basic principle, according to which intervention is considered the most effective way of exploring human activity), and key methods. The paper also describes the characteristics of the new type of historically evolved learning: expansive learning.

The purpose of the present article is to examine expansive transformation of pedagogical practices prevailing at elementary-level education. Toward that end, it addresses the dynamic interface that emerges in collaborative relations between teacher-practitioners and academic researchers. Pursuit of pedagogical innovations in the context of computer-supported learning requires interaction across the disciplinary borders that often separate practitioners and researchers in education. The article introduces the pedagogical model of progressive inquiry and describes an elementary-school students’ study project in which the model was applied by the teacher participant. Dialogues between a teacher and a researcher are used to illustrate cognitive, social and emotional challenges involved in teacher-researcher interaction, in using PI in education and in the overall pedagogical transformation that is entailed. The experiences of the project indicated that the network-based learning environment should not necessarily be considered as the space for sharing knowledge and collaborative knowledge building. Rather, at least in the present PI project, the network-based environment functioned as a space for gathering knowledge and documenting the process of knowledge building while the actual sharing of knowledge took place in the face-to-face discussion in the classroom, i.e. in the physical space.

"What it means to be a ‘professional’ in Further Education (FE) in England has been the subject of on-going debate over the last two decades. In an attempt to codify professionalism New Labour developed a package of reforms, crystallised by the introduction of professional standards and qualifications (FENTO 1999; LLUK 2006) and a new inspection framework under Ofsted. These reforms reflected a political desire to improve FE teachers’ professional skills and knowledge and prioritised teaching and learning as the main driver for ‘continuous improvement’. The observation of teaching and learning (OTL) subsequently emerged as a pivotal tool with which to evaluate and measure improvement, whilst also promoting teacher learning and development. Drawing on recent research into the use of OTL, this paper focuses on two case study colleges in the West Midlands whose contrasting OTL practices serve to exemplify expansive and restrictive approaches to professionalism in FE.

Keywords: observation of teaching and learning, classroom observation, professional learning, professional development.""""

The authors analyze and compare three models of innovative knowledge communities: Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model of knowledgecreation, Engeström’s model of expansive learning, and Bereiter’s model of knowledge building. Despite basic differences, these models have pertinent features in common: Most fundamentally, they emphasize dynamic processes for transforming prevailing knowledge and practices. Beyond characterizing learning as knowledge acquisition (the acquisition metaphor) and as participation in a social community (the participation metaphor), the authors of this article distinguish a third aspect: learning (and intelligent activity in general) as knowledge creation (the knowledgecreation metaphor). This approach focuses on investigating mediated processes of knowledge creation that have become especially important in a knowledge society.

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (also known as the Kobe Earthquake), with a magnitude of 7.3, struck on January 17, 1995, killing 6,434 people. This article aims to analyze and characterize an intervention in a hybrid earthquake-related disaster prevention education program in Kobe City, Japan, within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory and its methodology for formative interventions. From the viewpoint of the methodology for formative interventions to foster participants' expansive learning and agency, educational activities should be reconceptualized as dialogically negotiated activities in which various agents could produce new collaborative interventions , while transforming their activity systems. Furthermore, the article illuminates this kind of reconceptualization for education as a series of collaborative interventions. To do so, it takes up an activity-theoretical formative intervention pertaining to the implementation of earthquake-related disaster prevention learning and considers it as a new hybrid learning activity. This activity is carried out by a nonprofit organization in collaboration with the youth, residents, and various other agents in the local community. The analysis of such hybrid disaster prevention learning focuses on a collaborative self-intervention in which the participants were able to form a new type of agency to shed the passive role of the victim and thus create a dialogically negotiated site where they can discuss future town planning to prevent or reduce disaster damage.

Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory and expansive learning theory, this paper focuses on methodologically reexamining and transforming the linear interventions incorporated in traditional standardized pedagogy and educational research. To achieve this, the present study investigates strategies for generating formative interventions in teacher learning and development in an attempt to engage teachers in collaborative interventions to facilitate expansive learning. Teacher transformative agency can be generated and exercised through collaborative formative interventions. During this process, teachers become responsible activity agents who collaborate to independently reshape their activity systems. This paper presents the findings of a formative intervention study of teacher learning and development in school-based research involving teachers at a municipal elementary school in Japan. The participating teachers' school-based research can be characterized as expansive learning through which they collaboratively formed complex concepts, giving rise to a new vision of schooling.

The authors discuss the results of a study that was conducted on the
factors that enhance effective interaction between students and learning contents
in a technology-mediated learning environment in a higher education setting. The
results revealed that effective student–content interaction is strongly enhanced by
expansive learning through its five key elements; epistemic relation, contradictions,
digital learning content, conglomeration of views and cognitive transformation. The
intervening effect of network relations and mediating technology was also highlighted
therefore, revealing the positive impact of both factors in enhancing effective
student-content interaction. The empirical methods employed by the authors
were focus group interview (n = 12) and questionnaire (n = 500) among students in
a university. While Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the quantitative
data, the focus group interviews were analysed using categories, themes and concepts. The authors present the findings and implications of the study by way of
theory, practice and further research in the study.

T his article discusses how the key players’ multilayered collaboration may be enacted by the Change Laboratory methodology in the footsteps of Virkkunen and Newnham (2013) to address a complex issue for the benefit of adolescents. It can be defined as a group processing approach used by a group to solve a problem of its own defining. Over six months, members of a school community played an important role in participating in the modelling of classroom lessons with adolescents facing the new guidelines of the Canadian Cannabis Act in 2018. Drawing on the theory of expansive learning and the cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT), we used the Change Laboratory approach to dialogue on the problems and solutions to be implemented. T he results examine specifically how some of the school community members contributed to the co-modelling of these lessons, taking into account the adolescents’ needs in two schools. The collaboration between the members evolved over time. The vertical power hierarchy usually present in schools was modified as parents, grandparents, a medical doctor, a special education teacher, two teachers, and five students agreed to sit together to address the health issue. The qualitative analysis brings to light how the participants shared their needs and engaged in taking transformative actions to intervene directly in two high school classrooms.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a complex and multifaceted subject, including many aspects, environmental, societal, and financial. It is not a set of knowledge, which can be learned, because it is an evolving subject and in addition solutions that are successfully applied at specific locations might fail elsewhere. ESD should make students aware of the problems humankind is facing and encourage them to become active citizens. Thus, people must also have positive attitudes towards sustainability issues. In this study, we will present the results of a teaching intervention (TI) leading to a system of two expansive learning cycles. For the TI we used the topic of houses, which are a social construct, an economic entity, and have environmental influence. The researcher, an architect had to transform her knowledge to prepare the TI, thus starting an expansive learning cycle which was influenced by the outcome of the TI. The preservice teachers, who decided to use the topi...

This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learning perspective. Given the centrality of writing for both EFL learners and teachers, writing anxiety was explored through a longitudinal study spanning two years with 25 EFL learners and teachers who participated by providing comments, diaries, and documents. The participants were also observed and interviewed following Mwanza's model as a guide. The obtained data in the whole process was constantly thematized by means of a qualitative software, NVIVO 10. The main themes on writing anxiety were extracted from teachers and learners by applying contradictions as a principle of expansive learning theory. To help learners become transformative agents of anxiety, an intervention process was carried out in the form of an online collaborative writing task. The findings recommend applying contradictions as an initiative point for problem-solving and a driving impellent of activity which may lead to expansive learning. Besides, the dynamic and developmental process is hoped to help learners expand and transform their writing anxiety. Contradictions may also become an initiation for future studies on language learning.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a complex and multifaceted subject, including many aspects, environmental, societal, and financial. It is not a set of knowledge, which can be learned, because it is an evolving subject and in addition solutions that are successfully applied at specific locations might fail elsewhere. ESD should make students aware of the problems humankind is facing and encourage them to become active citizens. Thus, people must also have positive attitudes towards sustainability issues. In this study, we will present the results of a teaching intervention (TI) leading to a system of two expansive learning cycles. For the TI we used the topic of houses, which are a social construct, an economic entity, and have environmental influence. The researcher, an architect had to transform her knowledge to prepare the TI, thus starting an expansive learning cycle which was influenced by the outcome of the TI. The preservice teachers, who decided to use the topi...

Space is often designed based on the representations of user activities (i.e. lists, organograms or flowcharts) that streamline user activities in stepwise, oversimplified, representations that may leave insufficient room for future activity development. However, design can anticipate activity development if users are able to represent their own activities while participating in the design process. A case study of a medical imaging centre reveals that once users have such opportunity, their spatial practices are not only taken into account but also expanded. The designers, the
users and the researchers created a range of instruments to expand across three units of analysis: operations, actions and activities. As a result, the representations of space proffered by the designers were expanded to a space of representation for the users, where new ways of working were realized. Based on this study, an integrated model for the production of space and the development of activity is proposed.

By applying cultural-historical activity theory and expansive learning theory to educational research, this volume illuminates new forms of educational activities as collaborative interventions in schools and communities where learners and practitioners generate expansive learning so that they can collectively transform their activities and expand their agency for themselves. It covers four cases of activity-theoretical formative intervention studies conducted in Japan, which are related to: fostering children’s expansive learning in classroom lessons; teachers as collaborative change agents in redesigning schools; expanding the school activity from below; and emerging knotworking agency in community-based disaster prevention learning. This book employs activity theory as a general theoretical framework of human learning and development to connect focal data from empirical and interventional studies on real human learning in specific educational settings in Japan. In this way, the book illustrates how the general theoretical framework could be used to understand a specific socio-cultural milieu, that is, the Japanese context. It also shows the universal relevance of the Japanese context of educational activity on broader international research, analyzing concrete empirical data from specific settings in Japan. In conclusion this book creates new understanding and develops a cohesive framework of the agentic and hybrid nature of educational activities as collaborative interventions in the expansion of learning.

This chapter outlines the development and learning that emerged from  research, which explored student learning and creative practice using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in a secondary school Drama education context. Drawing on Vygotskian theoretical frames and more specifically Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and the theory of expansive learning (Engestrom 1987) the impact of an ICT based intervention was analysed.  What emerged were key contradictions, which are identified through the short narratives of two students and these also signalled contradictions for the activity and potential for learning.  The analysis of activity highlighted through two subject narratives identified key contradictions and subsequent shifts in activity which occurred.  The introduction of the digital tools into the drama process challenged institutional rules and roles around ICT use and also highlighted the importance of creative preferences and tool use in the typical drama classroom.

Abstract Teacher and librarian collaboration has relatively low priority in schools and in educational research. This is a paradox, as teachers and librarians share a common social and educational mandate of literacy education. The purpose of this article is to examine this paradox through exploring systemic contradictions in teacher and librarian collaboration within literacy education. Our data consist of discursive interaction between project leaders in an educational intervention project in Norway. The aim of the intervention is to develop teacher and librarian collaboration in two primary schools. Our analytical starting point is a critical conflict that occurred in one of the project leader meetings. The conflict arises from differing discourses of literacy education held by the local education authority and by the intervention project. We analyze how the project leaders respond to the conflict, how the conflict triggers new tensions and dilemmas within the project leader group and how the conflict creates obstacles to sustaining teacher and librarian collaboration in the project schools. We argue that sustainable change can be achieved by tracing conflicts, dilemmas and tensions to systemic contradictions within and between activity systems.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a complex and multifaceted subject, including many aspects, environmental, societal, and financial. It is not a set of knowledge, which can be learned, because it is an evolving subject and in addition solutions that are successfully applied at specific locations might fail elsewhere. ESD should make students aware of the problems humankind is facing and encourage them to become active citizens. Thus, people must also have positive attitudes towards sustainability issues. In this study, we will present the results of a teaching intervention (TI) leading to a system of two expansive learning cycles. For the TI we used the topic of houses, which are a social construct, an economic entity, and have environmental influence. The researcher, an architect had to transform her knowledge to prepare the TI, thus starting an expansive learning cycle whi ch was influenced by the outcome of the TI. The preservice teachers, who decided to use the topic of houses during their internship started their expansive cycle, which again influenced the researchers’ learning cycle. In this study, we will present the results of the TI and the implementation of the preservice teachers’ teachings of SD during their practicum. The preservice teachers reflected on their teachings in their written reports, which were used to analyze how preservice teachers chose to apply the topic ‘houses’ during their internship.

The  Lab@Future project aims at developing new possibilities for technology-based laboratory education. The project goal is to provide groups of students with mobile and distant access to experiments. The paper presents the e-learning collaborative platform being deployed in the project for implementing the Lab@Future pedagogical scenarios which are based on modern pedagogic approaches (activity theory, expansive learning and constructivism).