“To successfully complete their dissertation, participants needed to learn various practices for operating in these different systems. In some cases, the systems did not effectively socialize students to help them acquire practices necessary for successful completion of the dissertation. In other cases, students were successful because the systems provided explicit socialization of these practices, instances that suggest ways for improving the overall experience” (491). “In constructing themselves as agents within a new activity, students began to recognize the differences between the objects and motives of research universities as opposed to other university/community college systems” (505).
Dissertation
“It is assumed that by maintaining high standards of production for writing the dissertation, that only those candidates who can achieve these standards would be entering an over-crowded market…In the job market system, the dissertation not only acts as a tool in training, it also acts as a tool in evaluation of competence and a tool in hiring” (484-6).
Activity system
“An activity theory analysis serves to highlight the ways in which contradictions arise in these systems given their conflicting objects/motives, rules, tools, and division of labor” (507). “Each of these systems is driven by different objects and motives” (486). “Complicating this landscape is the fact that these systems are continually in flux as new forms of disciplinarity, genres, and research paradigms challenge and replace the old, only to be subject to new challenges” (486).
Genres
“Understanding the uses of genre tools entails perceiving how they afford or mediate systems” (489). Genres can also be a space for “establish[ing] agency within systems” (489). For instance,
the dissertation genre as tool to ‘position’ themselves within these potential systems, positioning that entails active
participation in presenting conference papers, networking with members of a field, publishing, and challenging status quo
perspectives…In some cases, students are merely "passing" (p. 101) through their programs by completing assignments
or engaging in "procedural display" (Bloome, Puro, & Theodorou, 1989, p. 266). Others display “deep participation” (p.
102) through participation with faculty or peers in collaborative research projects or writing, leading to a sense of agency,
status, or being included in important events (Wenger, 1998) as valued participants in graduate school. (489-90)
Learning
The authors use Gregory Bateson’s (1972) model of three levels of learning:
- “Learning I involves a behaviorist rote learning” (487).
- “Learning II entails a reflexive learning how to learn, particularly in response to contradictions and double blind situations" (487).
- “Learning III involves dealing with contradictions within situations in which learning habits do not always work, requiring the development of new, alternative habits and practices…In Learning III, the learner recognizes and addresses the problem based on the need to resolve the contradictions operating at Learning II, often through collective action…In Learning III, the subject gains an awareness of a practical mastery of whole systems of activity in terms of the past, the present, and the future. This awareness leads to a reworking and restructuring of activity through ‘learning by expanding’… the old into the new” (487).
Construction of new knowledge:
"[T]he construction of ‘created new’ activity involves several phases. Initially, a person experiences a ‘need state’…associated with competing object/motives involving the experience of contradictions in a system…[Contradictions] leads to analysis, inner dialogue, and reflection associated with an awareness of the double bind. This reflexive element is a central aspect of Engeström’s concept of the double bind. Triggered by a set back, disturbance, or surprise, learners recognize, define, and reflect on the double bind in order to begin entertaining ways of coping with the double bind…In facing these contradictions, students recognize that they are caught in a double bind, requiring the creation of new activities" (488).
In the conclusion, they assert the following about dissertation:
- “All of this suggests that the purpose of the dissertation and its role in engaging students in the practices of the academy - such as becoming a faculty member, conducting research, and teaching in higher education - must be examined at the level of activity systems analysis to identify how these systems’ objects and motives shape the dissertation-writing activity” (508).
- “student advising and mentoring needs to honestly acknowledge the inevitable double binds created by contradictory objects of different systems. Through such challenges and accommodation to these challenges, these systems themselves evolve, creating new objects and motives. Further research needs to examine the forces shaping the historical evolution of these systems” (508).
Key Terms
- Laminated or layered activity theory: “multiple activity footings co-exist, are immanent, in any situation. When one activity system is foregrounded (e. g., school learning), other activity systems (e. g., of home, neighborhood, government, business) do not disappear” (485).
- Perspective: the ways coparticipants [act] in an activity and coordinate differently configured activity
- Genres: “social actions or tools driven by participation with the objects/motives of activity systems” (488).