Social Practice Theory and the Historical Production of Persons

Working collaboratively we and others have developed a historical, material theory of social practice that integrates the study of persons, local practice, and long term historically institutionalized struggles. We have drawn on the work of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Mead to develop this approach to “history in person.” Social Practice Theory, like Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) takes activity as a central focus. But, in contrast to CHAT, social practice theory emphasizes the historical production of persons in practice, and pays particular attention to differences among participants, and to the ongoing struggles that develop across activities around those differences. Through Holland’s ethnographic work on environmental groups in the Southeastern United States we show the integration of emotion, motivation and agency into cultural-historical activity theory by means of Vygotskian and Bakhtinian inspired ideas concerning “history in person.” Lave’s research focuses on tension, conflict and difference in participation in cultural activities in an old port wine merchant community in Porto, and looks to both local and trans-local institutional arrangements and practices for explanations

Estranged Labor Learning

This article is in praise of the labor of reading profound and rich texts, in this case the essay on 'estranged labor' by Karl Marx. Comparing in detail what Marx wrote on estranged labor with current social practices of learning and education leads us to comprehensive ideas about learning - including the  social practices of alienated learning. We then emphasize the importance of distribution in the institutionalized production of alienated learning. And we end this article with critical reflections on the importance of alienation for the relationship between teaching and learning in the social practice of scholars

Situeret læring og praksis i forandring

Resumé I et tilbageblik diskuterer forfatteren sin hensigt med Lave og Wengers monografi “Situeret læring”, og diskuterer den i forhold til den måde, hvorpå tilgangen er blevet modtaget af økonomiske og organisatoriske teoretikere. Det giver anledning til en refleksion over især begrebet praksisfællesskaber. Mange teoretikere har forstået praksisfællesskaber som harmoniske fællesskaber, som f.eks. kan facilitere innovation. Forfatteren tager afstand for sådanne forståelser og understreger, at begrebet skulle medvirke til at undgå, at en praksistilgang blev reduceret til kun at være interpersonelle transaktioner, interaktioner og problemløsende aktiviteter. Det var derfor tænkt som et analytisk begreb, en hat, der skulle omslutte begrebet om legitim, perifer deltagelse, samt dem om klasse, køn og etnicitet. De var redskaber der skulle åbne blikket for de modsigelses- og konfliktfyldte processer, hvorved samspillet mellem nytilkomne og veteraner reproducerer og forandrer praksis, og udvikler identiteter. Forfatteren understreger, at visionen om læring som engagement i praksis først kan udfoldes, når man fastholder begreber om den modsigelsesfyldte praksis i forandrin

Hacia una ontología social del aprendizaje

Introducción Los recientes intentos de desarrollar teorías sociales o culturales del aprendizaje asumen, a menudo irreflexivamente, que la experiencia vivida así entendida es “cotidiana” en su naturaleza. En la lingüística hay movimientos en esta dirección (por ejemplo, en torno a temas de la pragmática, la deixis, la sociolingüística, el uso del lenguaje como práctica social), así como en otros contextos disciplinarios (psicología, sociología, educación y estudios culturales). Estos intentos..

Slip rates on the Chelungpu and Chushiang thrust faults inferred from a deformed strath terrace along the Dungpuna river, west central Taiwan

The Chelungpu fault produced the September 1999 M_w = 7.6 Chi-Chi earthquake, central Taiwan. The shortening rate accommodated by this structure, integrated over several seismic cycles, and its contribution to crustal shortening across the Taiwanese range have remained unresolved. To address the issues, we focus our study on the Chelungpu and Chushiang thrust faults within the southernmost portion of the Chi-Chi rupture area. Structural measurements and available seismic profiles are used to infer the subsurface geometry of structures. The Chushiang and Chelungpu faults appear as two splay faults branching onto a common ramp that further north connects only to the Chelungpu surface trace. We survey a deformed strath terrace along the Dungpuna river, buried under a 11,540 ± 309 years old fill deposit. Given this age, the dip angles of the faults, and the vertical throw determined from the offset of the strath terrace across the surface fault traces, we estimate slip rates of 12.9 ± 4.8 and 2.9 ± 1.6 mm/yr on the Chelungpu and Chushiang faults, respectively. These yield a total shortening rate of 15.8 ± 5.1 mm/yr to be absorbed on their common decollement at depth. This total value is an upper bound for the slip rate on the Chelungpu fault further north, where the Chushiang fault disappears and transfers shortening to adjacent faults. Combining these results with the recently constrained shortening rate on the Changhua blind thrust reveals that all these frontal faults presently absorb most of the long-term horizontal shortening across the Taiwanese range. They thus stand as the major sources of seismic hazards in this heavily populated area. The return period of earthquakes similar to the Chi-Chi event over a ∼80 km long stretch of the Western Foothills is estimated to be ~64 years. This value is an underestimate because it assumes that all the faults locked during the interseismic period slip only during such large events. Comparison with historical seismicity suggests that episodic aseismic deformation might also play a major role in accommodating shortening

How Software Practitioners Use Informal Local Meetups to Share Software Engineering Knowledge

Informal technology "meetups" have become an important aspect of the software development community, engaging many thousands of practitioners on a regular basis. However, although local technology meetups are well-attended by developers, little is known about their motivations for participating, the type or usefulness of information that they acquire, and how local meetups might differ from and complement other available communication channels for software engineering information. We interviewed the leaders of technology-oriented Meetup groups, and collected quantitative information via a survey distributed to participants in technology-oriented groups. Our findings suggest that participants in these groups are primarily experienced software practitioners, who use Meetup for staying abreast of new developments, building local networks and achieving transfer of rich tacit knowledge with peers to improve their practice. We also suggest that face to face meetings are useful forums for exchanging tacit knowledge and contextual information needed for software engineering practice

Investigating the kinematics of mountain building in Taiwan from the spatiotemporal evolution of the foreland basin and western foothills

The Taiwanese range has resulted from the collision between the Luzon volcanic arc and the Chinese continental margin, which started about 6.5 Myr ago in the north, and has since propagated southward. The building of the range has been recorded in the spatiotemporal evolution of the foreland basin. We analyze this sedimentary record to place some constraints on the kinematics of crustal deformation. The flexure of the foreland under the load of the growing wedge started with a 1.5 Myr long phase of rapid subsidence and sedimentation, which has migrated southward over the last 3.5 Myr at a rate of 31 +10/−5 mm/yr, reflecting the structural evolution of the range and the growth of the topography during the oblique collision. Isopachs from the Toukoshan (~0 to 1.1 Ma) and Cholan (~1.1 to 3.3 Ma) formations, as well as the sedimentation rates retrieved from a well on the Pakuashan anticline, indicate that the foreland basement has been moving toward the center of mass of the orogen by ~45–50 mm/yr during the development of the basin. From there, we estimate the long-term shortening rate across the range to 39.5–44.5 mm/yr. By considering available data on the thrust faults of the foothills of central Taiwan, we show that most (if not all) the shortening across the range is accommodated by the most frontal structures, with little if any internal shortening within the wedge. The range growth appears therefore to have been essentially sustained by underplating rather than by frontal accretion. In addition, only the upper ~7 to 9 km of the underthrusted crust participates to the growth of the orogen. This requires that a significant amount of the Chinese passive margin crust is subducted beneath the Philippine Sea plate

Thinking with a New Purpose: Lessons Learned from Teaching Design Thinking Skills to Creative Technology Students

This paper reports on the insights gained from introducing design thinking into the final year of a UK university course where students created positive behavior change interventions. The rationale for the course design and teaching process are outlined, with a focus on design as engineering versus innovation process. The students took a design thinking journey using Stanford University d.school's 5-step approach of Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test, and their journey is described in detail. We found that at first students found the Design Thinking approach counter-intuitive and confusing, yet throughout the process they recognized the strengths and opportunities it offers. On the whole, students reflected positively on their learning and on their re-evaluation of the role of a (service) designer. Lessons learned from a teaching point of view are also outlined, the most poignant being the realization that it was necessary to 'un-teach' design practices students had come to take for granted, in particular the view of design as a self-inspired, linear and carefully managed process