Analysing institutional effects in Activity Theory: First steps in the development of a language of description

This paper explores the benefits that might arise from an appropriate fusion of the version of Activity Theory being developed by Yrjo Engestrom and the sociology of the late Basil Bernstein. It explores the common roots of the two traditions and on the basis of empirical work carried out in British special schools formulates an approach to the development of a language of description which would extend the analytical power of Activity Theory

A Proposed Program Of Physical Education For Freeman High School, Caldwell, Texas

The real purpose of the school today is to train an individual for complete living. Training for citizenship in the dynamic universe, should include making the student not only well informed but, well and strong, physically, mentally, and socially so that he will be able to find his place in modern civilization. Physical education has many things in common with all other phases of education and in many cases, the experiences gained in physical education hsve more carry-over value than any other subject in the curriculum. Physical education relates to those aspects of instruction in schools intended to improve the physical fitness of boys and girls. It contributes to general education by developing efficiency in activities that promote health, teach physical and recreational skills, attitudes, knowledge, habits of conduct, and safety practices. Caldwell, Texas, a small city with one Class A high school has a total enrollment of approximately three hundred students, one hundred and ten in the high school department, forty-eight boys and sixty-two girls. Approximately one-half of the high school enrollment must be transferred by bus while the rest live in the surrounding community

The knowledge that matters in professional practices

We draw on the analytic resources of cultural historical activity theory and the work of (Basil) Bernstein and Knorr Cetina to examine evidence from a study of inter-professional practices in children's services in three English local authorities (local government systems). The study traced the horizontal (e.g. cross service) and vertical (e.g. between strategy and operation) integration of services for children including social work and educational psychology at time of reductions in local authority funding. Interviews and meetings, structured by the principles of developmental work research, required senior local authority staff to identify the objects of activity that shaped the work of the services for which they were responsible, to reveal how those objects were threatened by changing configurations of services and to reflect on what features of the services should be taken forward in these reconfigurations. The study therefore made visible the motives that become evident when professional knowledge is brought to bear on problems of professional practices. In examining the interplay between professional knowledge - which includes notions of the service ideal - and objects of activity, we identified 'what matters' in practices within services and 'what matters' when practices intersect and objects of activity are negotiated across practice boundaries. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Testing of disability identification tool for schools

There has been an ongoing concern about the lack of reliable data on disabled children in schools. To date there has been no consistent way of identifying and categorising disabilities. Schools in England are currentlyrequired to collect data on children with Special Educational Need (SEN), but this does not capture information about all disabled children. The lack of this information may seriously restrict capacity at all levels of policy and practice to understand and respond to the needs of disabled children and their families in line with Disability Discrimination Act (2005) and the single Equality Act (2010). The aim of the project was to test the draft tools for identifying disability and accompanying guidance in a sample of all types of maintained schools in order to assess their usability and reliability and whether they resulted in the generation of robust and consistent data that could reliably inform school returns for the annual School Census

Prácticas de exclusión en culturas escolares inclusivas en Reino Unido

A tension has emerged in the United Kingdom over the last 30 years between policies designed to achieve educational excellence and policies seeking to achieve inclusive practice. The introduction of devolution across the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom has led to differences in practices developed from what were originally a common set of cultural and historical values and beliefs. Policy changes in England in particular have resulted in perverse incentives for schools to not meet the needs of students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and which can result in their exclusion from school. We illustrate the working of perverse incentives through a cultural historical analysis of the ways that professionals from different services may have different object motives. We argue for practices of inter-professional co-configuration and knotworking in order to meaningful relations and patterns of communication that join services around young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.En los últimos 30 años ha surgido una tensión en Reino Unido entre las políticas diseñadas para alcanzar la excelencia educativa y las políticas que buscan promover una práctica inclusiva. La descentralización y consiguiente traspaso de competencias a las cuatro jurisdicciones de Reino Unido ha llevado a diferencias en las prácticas desarrolladas a partir de lo que originalmente era un conjunto común de valores y creencias culturales e históricas. En particular los cambios de política en Inglaterra han resultado en incentivos perversos para que las escuelas no satisfagan las necesidades de los estudiantes con necesidades educativas especiales y discapacidades y pueden terminar en su exclusión escolar. Ilustramos el funcionamiento de estos incentivos perversos a través de un análisis histórico cultural de las formas en que los profesionales de diferentes servicios pueden tener diferentes motivos de objeto. Abogamos por prácticas de co-configuración interprofesional y el trabajo en nudos con el fin de lograr relaciones y patrones de comunicación significativos que unan a los servicios para jóvenes con discapacidades y necesidades educativas especiales

Analysing trajectories of professional learning in changing workplaces

In order to study the mutual shaping of action and institutional setting there is a need for a method of analysing data which provides a window on the contingent and sequential emergence of new ways of thinking and speaking in specific institutional contexts. This paper addresses this challenge through a consideration of the developments that were made during a 4-year study of professional learning in settings which were subject to new legal requirements for multiagency working in children’s services in England. </jats:p

Situating pedagogy: moving beyond an interactional account

In this paper, I discuss a development within the cultural historical tradition in social science that makes a contribution to our understanding of pedagogy and thus to research in education. This departure involves the incorporation of a sociology of pedagogy into the post-Vygotskian formulation of the social formation of mind. In so doing, it seeks to extend the understanding of pedagogic practice beyond the analysis of dyadic or small group interactions so often found in studies which acknowledge the formative influence of Lev Vygotsky's writing and develops further the analytic and descriptive capacity of the various versions of activity theory developed in the wake of A. N. Leontiev's early work.No Full Tex

An enquiry into different forms of special school organization : pedagogic practice and pupil discriminations

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DX191899 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Institutional culture, social interaction and learning

This paper is concerned with the the development of a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of the cultures of institutions and the patterns of social interaction within them as they exert a formative effect on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of learning. It does this through the development of an approach in which a dialectical relation between theoretical and empirical work draws on the strengths of the legacies of sociological and psychological sources to provide a theoretical model which is capable of descriptions at levels of delicacy which may be tailored to the needs of specific research questions. The paper provides an introduction to a model of description that may be used to study the way in which societal needs and priorities and/or curriculum formations are recontextualised within institutions such as schools. Institutional structures are analysed as historical products which themselves are subject to dynamic transformation and change as people act within and on them.Full Tex