Combining Sociocultural Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in Teacher Learning Communities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Teachers, Agency, and Systems: A Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Perspective

Abstract

Teacher learning communities are complex activity systems in which teachers engage as learners and as instructors in their own classroom activity system. This paper combines ideas from Engeström’s Distributed Activity Theory perspective and Lave and Wenger’s Situative and Communities of Practice perspective to develop a methodological framework that can better understand the how teachers shape and are shaped by their learning communities. This paper also advances an alternative perspective on Distributed Activity Theory that can more flexibly analyze activity systems and provide potentially greater insight into interacting activity systems. These approaches are explored from the perspective of two related studies, and the two approaches are shown to be complementary and mutually supportive.

Author

• Shaffiq N Welji, University of Georgia