Los relieves figurativos

This section describes why activity theory was selected as an appropriate lens for the methodology design and analysis of data in this study.

The focus for this study was the nexus at which educators’

professional learning meets the mediating influence of a social network site. As established in the review of the literature, a central premise of effective professional learning is that it is a co-constructed activity that embeds knowledge development in a socio-collective experience mediated by various tools. An activity theory lens provides a well-defined window through which to view the stories of the participants. Engeström developed and refined activity theory from early studies of Vygotsky (1978) and Leontiev (1978). It is intended to describe how learning is realised by “a network of interconnected activities” (Engeström, 1999, p. 331), rather than through a single activity. In the context of a social network site, activity theory shifts the focus from the technology, a single person or action, to help explain the interaction between the different components of an activity within the system of a social network. It offers “a powerful and clarifying descriptive tool” (Nardi, 1996, p.7) to analyse the socially contextualised stories of the participants, and therefore it is appropriate within an interpretive paradigm.

Social network sites are essentially participatory, deliberately designed to allow people to work together to construct knowledge. They offer affordances that purportedly enable those socio-constructivist

approaches that are central to effective professional learning to occur. In an online environment, additional enablers or constraints come into play, such as the design and affordances of the online environment itself, the role of community, and the dynamics in the network of individuals.

This complex phenomena of individuals learning within a

studies that seek to understand the nature and dynamics of people’s

activities in social network sites, activity theory is increasingly used a lens through which to describe how these socially-constructed learning activities are enabled or constrained (Barab, Schatz, & Scheckler, 2004; Clapham, 2011; Nardi, 1995).

Activity theory provides a way to understand localised practices, their contexts and tools together with the system in which they occur. It has evolved from a well-established theoretical lineage, drawing on earlier socio-constructive theories that understand cognition as being derived from individuals’ experiences within social contexts beyond themselves. It also seeks to explain the change in people’s behaviours over time (Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki, 1999). It focuses on the way activities are “social practices oriented at objects” (Engeström, 1999, p. 380). The theory can inform examination of activity in social network sites as a way to describe how each knowledge-oriented action on the part of each member is

mediated by other users, site protocols, interactions and artefacts (Conole et al., 2011; Young, 2009). An adapted version (Figure 4) of the activity theory system has been used as a theoretical lens on the activities in the VLN Groups and to inform the analysis of data gathered from study participants.

Figure 4. Activity theory diagram for the VLN Groups. Adapted from

Engeström (1999).

The activity (the basic unit of analysis) has primacy over the subject and object, and it is the main source of development. The subject, in the case of this study, is the individual educator: they initiate, they have intentions and needs, they have agency, and “the ability and the need to act…[through] meaningful goal-directed activities” (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, p. 35) to bring about development and transformation of their practice. The key principles of activity theory state that the objects, that which they are trying to achieve, are what motivates them and gives meaning to what they are doing. Activity through technology is “embedded in meaningful context[s]” (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, p. 77). The rules are the norms, protocols and conventions that either implicitly or explicitly govern behaviours. The

community is the other participants who share in and affect, in some way,

the activity in question. Division of labour refers to aspects of an activity that are mediated by shared or coordinated participation by others.

In the context of this study, consideration of the different

members’ activities and learning as they work towards particular outcomes. This system provides a lens or crucible for naming and characterising the dynamics of the community while still preserving a sense of the network as a whole (Barab et al., 2004).

There are two distinct reasons for selecting activity theory as a lens for the study of praxis in the VLN Groups. First, it offers a way to identify and reify the components of the educators’ experiences in the VLN Groups and the way in which they work together to mediate the activity of the subject. It is important to note that each component in the system is determined by the action of each educator. The theory becomes a lens for viewing this activity. It was, however, important in this study not to use the activity theory system to compartmentalise what is actually a unified system. Rather, activity theory helps to describe the way multiple

interactions between the components of this user-centric social network site offer incessant reconstruction of activities depending on the different

components in the system (Engeström et al., 1999). The community of other people in the VLN Groups is part of the interaction, part of the activity itself. Each action is a transaction and there is no 'one' way to view each aspect of the system because it looks different, is reformed, with every activity (Barab et al., 2004). Of interest to this study is the extent to which these diverse, personalised experiences, different for each user each time, support effective professional learning experiences for the educators in the network.

Second, activity theory has been used in the study because it helps to characterise the tensions, potential failure or negative consequences in the system between the different components as they interact. The broken arrow

in Figure 5 depicts an example of a tension in an activity which might be, for example, an educator being unable to achieve their intended goals in an activity in the network.

Figure 5. Tension between an educator and their goal within an activity,

adapted from Engeström (1999).

This tension is described by Engeström as contradiction, pointing out that the system is often at its most powerful when it highlights inconsistencies and challenges within it. Contradictions can be the impetus for change, highlighting aspects that could be improved and driving system innovation (Engeström & Cole, 1993). In this study, tensions occur for educators at different points in the system and signal, for example, where there is room for development of the VLN Groups, a need to redesign professional learning, or opportunity to review the way the site is integrated into teachers’ inquiries.

Therefore, this study takes as its starting point the actual experiences of individuals, rather than an assumption of how professional learning should be done. The way in which teachers go about achieving their goals is strongly situated in their personal contexts. A key aim has been to explore the way in which components of a social network site mediate social

interactions in everyday professional dialogue. The application of activity theory to learning in social network sites addresses learning as both internalised and externalised, individually and socially managed. It

highlights the way in which the involvement of other users, the tools in use and the socially-created artefacts, such as discussions, resources and so on, mediate the way network members act. Whether each activity, as a whole, advances and supports models of effective professional discourse is the central question.