1. Service as activity A cultural historical approach to service learning
Christopher G pupik dean

2. Why sociocultural theories?
Suggestions of the need to examine practice through sociocultural lenses:
Levine & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2010
McIntosh & Youniss, 2010
Torney-Purta, Amadeo, & Andolina, 2010
Why?
We have: examined knowledge, skills, dispositions
We need to examine the ways that knowledge, skills, dispositions are being put to use in civic engagement (practice)
Goals:
Provide some background on these theories
Illustrate how they can add to SL & CE research

3. Sociocultural Theories
Building off Vygotsky:
Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT or activity theory) (Cole & Engeström, 1993; Engeström, 1987)
Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

4. Vygotsky

5. Mediating artifacts/tools
Are social
Are historical
Are cultural
Are material/ideal
Are transformed over time

6. CHAT
Doing school – school going
Engestrom, 2001

7. Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Novices  Masters
Butchers (Lave & Wenger, 1991)
Teachers (Tsui & Law, 2007)
Service Learning Students?

8. Summary:
Subjects interact with the world through the use of meditational artifacts (tools)
These tools are:
Socially, culturally, and historically developed (and continuously developing)
Within systems
Consisting of communities
With particular rules & divisions of labor
New tools can be appropriated (or old tools modified) when systems interact

9. So how is this helpful? A structure for focusing on practice:
Identify and examine the transformation of tools of civic engagement (where knowledge, skills, dispositions interact)
Examine the rules and communities that structure tool use
Consider historical development of the tool
Look for: LPP, boundary crossing, and boundary objects
A change in the unit of analysis:
From individual development to development of systems
2 layer analysis:
Individual phenomenological perspectives
Outsider 30,000 ft view

10. Using sociocultural theory to explain phenomena
Students in a 10th grade SL class (tutoring 1st graders) exhibited a change in how they talked about the teachers they worked with:
Initial tool: critical stories of classroom practice:
yelling, disorganization
Subsequent tool: more positive orientation to classroom practice
Teachers care, have tough job, know individual student needs
But maintained an orientation that teachers are the problem in public education
Lazy
In it for the money (unions)
WHY?

11. Knowledge, Skills, Mindsets
Teaching is hard
These teachers care
Skills:
Tutoring in a classroom
Talking about classroom practice
Mindsets:
The teachers care
Teachers are the problem

12. Sociocultural
Initial tool: Teachers are the key to educational success
History: developed in own experience, stories of others about public schools
Community: privileged, high value on ed, teachers held in great esteem
Rules: value teachers in our school, maintain prestige of own ed
Boundary crossing/LPP: engaged in classroom practice, not in larger issues
Closing tool: Teachers are key… this school is an exception
(does not contradict the model)
Object of discourse did not connect

13. References
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Cole, M., & Engeström, Y. (1993). A cultural historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 1–46). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy. Retrieved from
Engeström, Y. (1993). Developmental studies of work as a testbench of activity theory: The case of primary care medical practice. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectices on activity and context (pp. 64–103). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward and activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.
Engeström, Y., & Miettinen, R. (1999). Introduction. Perspectives on Activity Theory (pp. 1–18). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. New York: Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, Youth, and Crisis (1st ed.). New York: Norton.
Fenwick, T., Edwards, R., & Sawchuk, P. (2011). Emerging Approaches to Educational Research: Tracing the Socio-Material. London: Routledge. Retrieved from
Levine, P., & Higgins-D’Alessandro. (2010). Youth civic engagement: Normative issues. In L. R. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. A. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (E-Book.). Wiley.
McIntosh, H., & Youniss, J. (2010). Toward a political theory of political socialization of youth. In L. R. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth. New Jersey: Wiley.
Rhoads, R. A. (1997). Community Service and Higher Learning: Explorations of the Caring Self. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Torney-Purta, J., Amadeo, J.-A., & Andolina, M. (2010). A conceptual framework and multimethod approach for research on political socialization and civic engagement. Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (E-book.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Tsui, A. B. M., & Law, D. Y. K. (2007). Learning as Boundary-Crossing in School-University Partnership. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 23.
Youniss, J., & Yates, M. (1997). Community Service and Social Responsibility in Youth. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.