Yrjö Engeström | University of Helsinki (original) (raw)

Papers by Yrjö Engeström

Información del artículo Coordinación, cooperación y comunicación en los juzgados: transiciones e... more Información del artículo Coordinación, cooperación y comunicación en los juzgados: transiciones expansivas en el trabajo legal.

Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2020

The article outlines four generations of theorizing and research on work and learning within the ... more The article outlines four generations of theorizing and research on work and learning within the Finnish school of activity theory. The main focus of the paper is on the evolution of the unit of analysis through the four generations, from mediated action to a collective activity system, to multipleinterconnected activity systems, and most recently to heterogenous work coalitions aimed at resolving wicked societal problems. We examine how learning and agency are conceptualized in each generation, and what kinds of interventions are conducted in the projects presented as examples of the four generations. We conclude that the four generations of activitytheoretical studies of work and learning continue to co-exist. To meet the challenges of work in today's world, activity theory must seriously engage in the development of its fourth generation, building on ideas and instruments developed by the preceding generations.

Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2016

The article examines formative interventions as we understand them in cultural-historical activit... more The article examines formative interventions as we understand them in cultural-historical activity theory, and reflects upon key differences between this intervention research tradition and design-based research as it is conceived in the learning sciences tradition. Three projects, including two Change Laboratories (CL), are analyzed with the help of conceptual lenses derived from basic epistemological principles for intervention research in activity theory. In all three interventions, learners expansively transformed the object of their activity. The CL cases, however, show that this learning process included productive deviations from the researchers' instructional intentions, leading to significant outcomes, both practical and theoretical, that were not anticipated by the interventionists. Together, these cases illustrate that an activity-theoretical formative intervention approach differs from design based research in the following ways: 1) formative interventions are based on design done by the learners; 2) the collective design effort is seen as part of an expansive learning process, including participatory analyses and implementation phases; 3) rather than aiming at transferable and scalable solutions, formative interventions aim at generative solutions developing over lengthy periods of time in both the researched activities and in the research community.

Ku peRspeKtywie społecZno-KultuRowej w eduKacji pl issn 0867-0323 Yrjö Engeström, Annalisa Sannin... more Ku peRspeKtywie społecZno-KultuRowej w eduKacji pl issn 0867-0323 Yrjö Engeström, Annalisa Sannino uniwersytet w Helsinkach, finlandia badania nad eKspansywnym ucZeniem się: ZałoŻenia, wniosKi i pRZysZłe wyZwania * w artykule analizowane są badania oparte na teorii ekspansywnego uczenia się 1 pochodzącej z 1987 roku. przez ostatnie lata teoria ta wykorzystywana była w różnego typu badaniach i interwencjach. bazuje ona na fundamentalnych ideach stworzonych przez wygotskiego, leontiewa, ilenkowa i dawidowa, kluczowych postaci rosyjskiej szkoły teorii kulturowo-historycznej teorii działalności 2. badania oparte na tejże teorii ujęte zostały w sześciu rozdziałach:

Journal of Workplace Learning, 2003

The following theoretical challenges concerning learning in organizations and at work are examine... more The following theoretical challenges concerning learning in organizations and at work are examined in the study. First, organizational learning is not only the formation of collective routines; it is also tool‐creation and implementation. Second, tools evolve as they are implemented. Third, tools become powerful when they become an interconnected instrumentality and constellations. Tool‐creation and implementation are examined when a new set of tools is being appropriated for collaboration between primary and secondary health care. Boundary crossings in the interaction of the multiple providers are focused as an essential context of tool‐creation during implementation. The findings concerning the tool‐creation during implementation process include the productivity of the resistance, the importance of turning points, the formation of the new instrumentality, the discovery of gaps, and the necessity of stabilization and maintenance in organizational learning. Finally, conclusions abou...

Collective remembering, 1990

All material supplied via HELDA is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights,... more All material supplied via HELDA is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorised user.

Central European Journal of Public Policy, 2010

Abstract: The objective of this article is to introduce Change Laboratory as a new method for pro... more Abstract: The objective of this article is to introduce Change Laboratory as a new method for promoting innovation and learning in organizations and at work. Change Laboratory® represents an example of the social process of innovation during which new ideas are developed and put into action within an organization. We suggest that successful social processes of innovation can be promoted through expansive learning in Change Laboratories. Change Laboratory is based on cultural-historical activity theory and ...

Cognition and Instruction, 2016

ABSTRACT This commentary focuses on the ways the set of articles in this issue, taken together, e... more ABSTRACT This commentary focuses on the ways the set of articles in this issue, taken together, engage an important and much needed conversation in design-based approaches to inquiry: that is, what does it mean to do work in and with nondominant communities? Drawing on cultural historical activity theory, decolonizing methodologies, and indigenous perspectives, these articles seek to advance participatory design research as a means to foreground the development of socially just systems with equitable forms of teaching and learning. Specifically, the “social change making” projects exemplified reflect a generational and hybrid shift in design approaches, incorporating political and innovative dimensions of other methods with shared aims. A notable focus of participatory design research is that design and interventions are understood and addressed as part of everyday activity. In this way, change making projects are conceptualized from within the practices and commitments, and histories of communities. These new sensibilities about working with nondominant communities necessarily involve rethinking and explicitly redesigning the research and participants. subject positions across all aspects of the intervention. Finally, these emergent participatory design research projects argue that issues of race, equity, and inequality are neither sufficiently theorized or addressed by other theoretical approaches, including cultural activity theoretical approaches.

Situated Cognition, 2021

CHAPTER TW ELVE Situated Cognition in Search of an Agenda Yrjo Engestrom Michael Cole University ... more CHAPTER TW ELVE Situated Cognition in Search of an Agenda Yrjo Engestrom Michael Cole University of California, San Diego Behind the notion of situatedness lies the notion of situation. It is a decep- tively simple notion: We all know ...

Cogniciones distribuidas: Consideraciones psicológicas y educativas, 2001

Routledge eBooks, Jul 19, 2005

Chapter 3 Teachers as Collaborative Thinkers: Activity-theoretical Study of an Innovative Teacher... more Chapter 3 Teachers as Collaborative Thinkers: Activity-theoretical Study of an Innovative Teacher Team1 Yrjo Engestrom Abstract An individualist and Cartesian bias is noted in studies of teacher thinking. A more collaborative ...

Studies in Expansive Learning

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 2021

This article describes an investigation into how to build agency among growers so they take the l... more This article describes an investigation into how to build agency among growers so they take the lead in transforming their own activity of managing whiteflies. The study shows how the principle of Transformative Agency by Double Stimulation (TADS) was applied in a formative intervention based on the Change Laboratory method for developing pest management among greenhouse vegetable producers in Finnish Ostrobothnia. The data comprise audio recorded sessions, documentary data and observations produced and collected during the intervention. The results show how the collective construction of a continuous series of models during the intervention played an important role in learning, prompting TADS among the participants and working as a communication tool for the practitioners' different conceptualizations of the problem and possible solutions. The models allowed materializing and expanding the way the participants understood the temporal, functional and spatial aspects of the problem. In the study, TADS took place through conflict of stimuli and motives, first stimulus, auxiliary breaking-away second stimulus, and actions that were initiated to improve the management of the problem at hand. In conclusion, the principle of double stimulation was useful to produce transformative agency, helping transform the activity of pest management among the horticultural producers.

Aikuiskasvatus, 1985

Kehittävä työntutkimus on nopeasti kehittyvä uusi, monitieteellinen lähestymistapa työn ja koulut... more Kehittävä työntutkimus on nopeasti kehittyvä uusi, monitieteellinen lähestymistapa työn ja koulutuksen tutkimuksessa ja kehittämisessä. Sen perustana on kulttuurihistoriallisen toiminnan teorian muodostama paradigma. Tässä artikkelissa hahmotellaan pelkistetty yleiskuva tästä lähestymistavasta ja sen peruskäsitteistä. Näin ollen käsitteiden historiallinen johtaminen ja konkreetit sovellusesimerkit jäävät pakostakin niukoiksi. Tämän numeron muissa artikkeleissa annetaan esimerkkejä lähestymistavan soveltamisesta. Lähdeluettelossa mainitut tekstit puolestaan tarjoavat kiinnostuneille lukijoille mahdollisuuden tutustua seikkaperäisemmin käsitteiden perustaan.

Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning Foundations for a CSCL Community - CSCL '02, 2002

In the school year 2000/2001, we conducted a longitudinal intervention study at the Jakomäki midd... more In the school year 2000/2001, we conducted a longitudinal intervention study at the Jakomäki middle school in Helsinki, Finland. The school is located in a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood of the city, with some 30% of the students coming from recent immigrant and refugee families. The school has 30 full-time teachers, all of whom participate in the intervention. The intervention, called Knowledge Work Laboratory, was a continuation and extension of a Change Laboratory intervention we conducted in the school in 1998/99 (Engeström, Engeström & Suntio, in press). A central outcome of the intervention work in 1998/99 was a modeling of the inner contradictions of the teachers' activity system (Figure 1). "…the inner contradictions of the work of Jakomäki teachers appeared only in latent forms, as dilemmas within components of the activity system, not yet as aggravated contradictions between components causing constant manifest troubles or 'double bind' situations in everyday practice. The two lightning-shaped arrows in Figure 1 represent the latent contradictions we found salient in the teachers' activity system. The first one (within the object) was manifested in the teachers' repeated talk about students as apathetic-and in occasional utterances where they would contradict their very assessment. The second latent contradiction (within the instruments) was manifested in the teachers' repeated talk about the need to control the students' conduct-and in occasional statements suggesting that the students should be trusted."

Decision Making: Social and Creative Dimensions, 2001

Cultural-historical activity theory tCole &amp;amp; Engestrom. 1993. Engestrom. Miettinen... more Cultural-historical activity theory tCole &amp;amp; Engestrom. 1993. Engestrom. Miettinen &amp;amp; Punamiiki. 1999: Leont&amp;#x27;ev. 19781 places decision making in the context of ohject-oriented. collective and artifact-mediated activity systems constantly undergoing developmental transformations. Decisions are not made alone. the&amp;gt; are indirectly or directly influenced hy other participants of the activity. Decisions are typically steps in a temporally distrihuted chain of interconnected events. Decisions are not purely technical. they have moral and ...

Learning by Expanding challenges traditional theories that consider learning a process of acquisi... more Learning by Expanding challenges traditional theories that consider learning a process of acquisition and reorganization of cognitive structures within the closed boundaries of specific tasks or problems. Yrjö Engeström argues that this type of learning increasingly fails to meet the challenges of complex social change and fails to create novel artifacts and ways of life. In response, he presents an innovative theory of expansive learning activity, offering a foundation for understanding and designing learning as a transformation of human activities and organizations. The second edition of this seminal text features a substantive new introduction that illustrates the development and implementation of Engeström's theory since its inception.