13 - Expansive Agency in Multi-Activity Collaboration

Summary

Yrjö Engeström(1987) developed cultural-historical activity theory and its interventionist methodology in modeling expansive learning in and for the collaborative production of new object-oriented collective activity systems. Engeström's formulation of activity theory has laid the cornerstone of developmental research to reconceptualize humans as creators and transformers. In this way, human agency is a central focus of activity theory.

From the viewpoint of activity and expansive learning theories, the concept of human agency is briefly described as the subject potentialities and positions of creation of new tools and forms of activity with which humans transform both their outer and inner worlds and thus master their own lives and futures (Engeström, 2005a, 2005c, 2006b). The account of new forms of agency in activity theory brings the Vygotskian heritage alive with regard to the future of human freedom (Yamazumi, 2007).

Today, new forms of human activity are experiencing accelerated paradigm shifts from mass-production-based systems to new systems based on interorganizational collaboration, building partnerships, and networking across cultural, organizational, and occupational boundaries. As human activity rapidly changes to partnering and networking among diverse cultural organizations, we need to ask ourselves whether schools and other contexts devoted to learning are equipped to prepare people for such practices. We also need to consider what kind of learning can generate critical and creative agency among learners. Such agency will help people shape their own lives and futures, which are gradually undergoing transformation.