The challenge of change: Using activity theory to understand a cultural innovation

Abstract

This article explains how an inservice teacher education organisation in New Zealand embarked on a cultural innovation to challenge and build bicultural pedagogies, policies and practices. To understand the process and the impact of a three-year cultural innovation both intended and unintended changes need to be explored. Using a framework of second generation cultural historical activity theory, the article examines the individual and institutional changes, exposing both tensions and learning. Key successful factors included establishing a clearly recognized purpose, widening individual and group involvement, and creating flexibility to build a strong platform to support the innovation. However, tensions were created when externally imposed factors such as changes in government policy and re-prioritization of funding were introduced. The external tensions challenged the internal organisational structures and stability, which in turn affected the cultural innovation and destabilised the change process.

Revisiting Teacher Feedback in EFL Writing from Sociocultural Perspectives

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Teacher Mediated Agency in Educational Reform in China

“…Bourke and McGee ( 2012 ) conducted a study on how an in-service teacher education organisation coped with cultural innovation in New Zealand. They used activity theory to examine individual and institutional changes by analysing both tension and learning.…”