Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

792 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
REFLECTIONS ON CHAT AND DESIGN
The design of complex whole learning systems, such as a classroom, as well as the learning
experiences within that system, requires a concern for the learner as s/he is situated within
the cultural-historical nature of the “whole” system. Cultural-historical activity theory offers a
framework for understanding the complexity of design in relation to cognitive development and
the design of learning experiences that provide the learner, within her/his zone(s) of proximal
development, with the psychological as well as cultural tools necessary to mediating learning.
Designers of learning environments and learning experiences may guide the design processes
by drawing on cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for responsive design As semiotic
mediational tool, design discourse is socially and culturally charged with the rules and social
languages of the respective contexts of origin. Stakeholder subjectivity is recognized as a primary
tool in the generative process of creating an idea system. The critical and developmental role
that discourse takes in mediating the creative process is made apparent as human subjectivity
challenges the existing beliefs and social structures that represent the old system. Mediating
tensions as well as overcoming dialectical boundaries set by interacting activity systems further
informs the importance of design conversation in educational systems design. Taking on
the responsibility of the main mission of educational psychology, that of design as Salomon
(1996) argues, brings to the foreground the importance of adopting new perspectives of cognition,
such as cultural-historical activity theory, and engaging in new as design experiments for
learning.
FURTHER READING
Banathy, B. H. (1996). Designing Social Systems in a Changing World: A Journey Toward a Creating
Society. New York: Plenum Press.
Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. London:
Verso.
Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Creating Complex
Interventions in Classroom Settings. Journal of Learning Science, 2, 141–178.
Checkland, P. (1981). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Checkland, P., and Scholes, J. (1990). Soft Systems Methodology in Action. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Cole, M. (1995). The Supra-Individual Envelope of Development: Activity and Practice, Situation and
Context. New Directions for Child Development, no. 67, 105–118.
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Cole, M., and Engeström, Y. (1993). A Cultural-Historical Approach to Distributed Cognition. In G. Salomon
(Ed.), Distributed Cognition: Psychological and Educational Considerations, pp. 1–46. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Engström, R. (1995). Voice As Communicative Action. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2(3), 192–215.
Engström, Y. (1991). Non Scolae Sed Vitae Discimus: Toward Overcoming the Encapsulation of School
Learning. Learning and Instruction, 1(3), 243–259.
Engeström, Y. (2000). Activity Theory As a Framework for Analyzing and Redesigning Work. Egronomics,
43(7), 960–974.
Engeström, Y., and Miettinen, R., (1999). Introduction. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, and R. Punamäki
(Eds.), Perspectives on Activity Theory, pp. 1–16. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., and Punamäki, R. (1999). Perspectives on Activity Theory. NewYork:
Cambridge University Press.
Hansen, T., Direkinck-Holmfeld, T., Lewis, R., and Rugelj, J. (1999). Using Telematics for Collaborative
Knowledge Construction. In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative Learning: Cognitive and Computational
Approaches, pp. 169–196. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Pergamon.