Download Free Activity Theory And Social Practice Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Activity Theory And Social Practice and write the review.

Through the contributions of anthropologists, philosophers, and psychologists, Activity Theory and Social Practice demonstrates the potential of a multidisciplinary approach towards the study of activity.
This ground-breaking book brings together cutting-edge researchers who study the transformation of practice through the enhancement and transformation of expertise. This is an important moment for such a contribution because expertise is in transition - moving toward collaboration in inter-organizational fields and continuous shaping of transformations. To understand and master this transition, powerful new conceptual tools are needed and are provided here. The theoretical framework which has shaped these studies is Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). CHAT analyses how people and organisations learn to do something new, and how both individuals and organisations change. The theoretical and methodological tools used have their origins in the work of Lev Vygotsky and A.N. Leont’ev. In recent years this body of work has aroused significant interest across the social sciences, management and communication studies. Working as part of an integrated international team, the authors identify specific findings which are of direct interest to the academic community, such as: the analysis of vertical learning between operational and strategic levels within complex organizations; the refinement of notions of identity and subject position within CHAT; the introduction of the concept of ‘labour power’ into CHAT; the development of a method of analysing discourse which theoretically coheres with CHAT and the design of projects. Activity Theory in Practice will be highly useful to practitioners, researchers, students and policy-makers who are interested in conceptual and empirical issues in all aspects of ‘activity-based’ research.
Activity Theory in Education: Research and Practice brings together cutting-edge scholars from a number of continents. Through in-depth case studies the authors highlight how Activity Theory is used in education and discuss the theoretical as well as pragmatic use of Activity Theory frameworks in a range of contemporary learning contexts. The first section of the book focuses on empirical research on using Activity Theory in analysing students’ and teachers’ experiences of learning and teaching in face-to-face and online learning contexts. The second section contains insights in identifying historical and systemic tensions in educational contexts using Activity Theory. The third section discusses conceptual and contextual aspects of educational contexts through Activity Theory, and Section four discusses the application of Activity Theory in understanding teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge and curriculum development. In spite of the widespread and rapidly increasing use of Activity Theory in educational research, few collections of this work are available. Activity Theory in Education: Research and Practice is such a much needed collection of practical experiences, theoretical insights and empirical research findings on the use of Activity Theory in educational settings.” – Yrjö Engeström, Centre for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE), The University of Helsinki.
This book is a collection about cultural-historical activity theory as it has been developed and applied by Yrjö Engeström. The work of Engeström is both rooted in the legacy of Vygotsky and Leont'ev and focuses on current research concerns that are related to learning and development in work practices. His publications cross various disciplines and develop intermediate theoretical tools to deal with empirical questions. In this volume, Engeström's work is used as a springboard to reflect on the question of the use, appropriation, and further development of the classic heritage within activity theory. The book is structured as a discussion among senior scholars, including Y. Engeström himself. The work of the authors pushes on classical activity theory to address pressing issues and critical contradictions in local practices and larger social systems.
This eight-volume encyclopedia brings together a comprehensive collection of work highlighting established research and emerging science in all relevant disciplines in gerontology and population aging. It covers the breadth of the field, gives readers access to all major sub-fields, and illustrates their interconnectedness with other disciplines. With more than 1300 cross-disciplinary contributors—including anthropologists, biologists, economists, psychiatrists, public policy experts, sociologists, and others—the encyclopedia delves deep into key areas of gerontology and population aging such as ageism, biodemography, disablement, longevity, long-term care, and much more. Paying careful attention to empirical research and literature from around the globe, the encyclopedia is of interest to a wide audience that includes researchers, teachers and students, policy makers, (non)governmental agencies, public health practitioners, business planners, and many other individuals and organizations.
"Developmental work research is an innovative approach to the study and reshaping of work and learning. It expands cultural-historical activity theory by bringing it to the domains of work, technology and organizations. The world of work is in turmoil, increasingly dominated by 'runaway objects' generated by globalization and greed (global markets are such massive objects out of control). Yet it is the object that motivates work and generates visons of better future. The use values of objects have not vanished, although they are more difficult to grasp than perhaps ever before. Developmental work research rediscovers and expands use values in runaway objects. In workplace interventions it engages practitioners in expansive re-forging of the objects of their work."--Cover.
Although workplace design and management are gaining more and more attention from modern organizations, workplace research is still very fragmented and spread across multiple disciplines in academia. There are several books on the market related to workplaces, facility management (FM), and corporate real estate management (CREM) disciplines, but few open up a theoretical and practical discussion across multiple theories from different fields of studies. Therefore, workplace researchers are not aware of all the angles from which workplace management and effects of workplace design on employees has been or could be studied. A lot of knowledge is lost between disciplines, and sadly, many insights do not reach workplace managers in practice. Therefore, this new book series is started by associate professor Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands) and postdoc researcher Vitalija Danivska (Aalto University, Finland) as editors, published by Routledge. It is titled ‘Transdisciplinary Workplace Research and Management’ because it bundles important research insights from different disciplinary fields and shows its relevance for both academic workplace research and workplace management in practice. The books will address the complexity of the transdisciplinary angle necessary to solve ongoing workplace-related issues in practice, such as knowledge worker productivity, office use, and more strategic workplace management. In addition, the editors work towards further collaboration and integration of the necessary disciplines for further development of the workplace field in research and in practice. This book series is relevant for workplace experts both in academia and industry. This first book in the series focuses on the employee as a user of the work environment. The 21 theories discussed and applied to workplace design in this book address people’s ability to do their job and thrive in relation to the office workplace. Some focus more on explaining why people behave the way they do (the psychosocial environment), while others take the physical and/or digital workplace quality as a starting point to explain employee outcomes such as health, satisfaction, and performance. They all explain different aspects for achieving employee-workplace alignment (EWA) and thereby ensuring employee thriving. The final chapter describes a first step towards integrating these theories into an overall interdisciplinary framework for eventually developing a grand EWA theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003128830, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Activity theory -- a conceptual framework originally developed by Aleksei Leontiev -- has its roots in the socio-cultural tradition in Russian psychology. The foundational concept of the theory is human activity, which is understood as purposeful, mediated, and transformative interaction between human beings and the world. Since the early 1990s, activity theory has been a visible landmark in the theoretical landscape of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Along with some other frameworks, such as distributed cognition and phenomenology, it established itself as a leading post-cognitivist approach in HCI and interaction design. In this book we discuss the conceptual foundations of activity theory and its contribution to HCI research. After making the case for theory in HCI and briefly discussing the contribution of activity theory to the field (Chapter One) we introduce the historical roots, main ideas, and principles of activity theory (Chapter Two). After that we present in-depth analyses of three issues which we consider of special importance to current developments in HCI and interaction design, namely: agency (Chapter Three), experience (Chapter Four), and activity-centric computing (Chapter Five). We conclude the book with reflections on challenges and prospects for further development of activity theory in HCI (Chapter Six). Table of Contents: Introduction: Activity theory and the changing face of HCI / Basic concepts and principles of activity theory / Agency / Activity and experience / Activity-centric computing / Activity theory and the development of HCI
This work brings together a collection of 13 contributions that apply activity theory - a psychological theory with a naturalistic emphasis - to problems of human-computer interaction. It presents activity theory as a means of structuring and guiding field studies of human-computer interaction.