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GLOSSARY INQUIRY: ACTIVITY THEORY
Activity Theory consists of a set of basic principles rooted in the works of Vygotsky, Luria, and Leont’ev that serve to explain how children learn, by looking holistically at activity systems.
In its simplest terms, an activity is defined as the engagement of a subject toward a certain goal or objective. In most human contexts our activities are mediated through the use of culturally established instruments, including language, artifacts and established procedures.
An activity is undertaken by a human agent (subject) who is motivated toward the solution of a problem or purpose (object), and mediated by tools (artifacts) in collaboration with others (community). As a result, the unit of analysis in studying human mediated activity, is an activity system, a community of actors who have a common object of activity.
Activity Theory provides educators with a framework to understand an important aspect of complexity in education, namely, the ongoing processes of mutual specification, or dynamic structural coupling, that occur between agents (learners), systems of artifacts (tools, language, signs) and other individuals.
See related terms: Nestedness.
