This thesis investigates the use of action research and activity theory to promote the professional development of teachers in an Icelandic upper secondary school. The purpose of the research was to develop a new model to foster professional development through enhancing the participants’ agency to transform their practice. It was carried out with an action research group of twenty-one school professionals and an outside consultant. The group’s aim was to find ways to increase students’ sense of responsibility for their studies. The project combined the ideas behind the Change Laboratory, one of the methods of developmental work research established by Engeström and action research as elaborated by McNiff. I termed our approach the Change Room. There activity theory and the theory of expansive learning provided the participants with a conceptual framework, historical analysis and tools to analyse what changes might be appropriate in our classroom practice. The action research provided the participants with the method and tools to guide the participants when carrying out and evaluating these changes. The research focus was on tensions the participants experienced in their classroom practice. Through creative resolutions of these tensions the intention was to develop better practices and contribute to school development. The research used both action research and case study methodology. The research tools were documentary analysis, interviews, surveys, research diary and observations. The findings were analysed using deductive process based on activity theory. The teachers experienced tensions in their classroom practice between students’ active and passive learning, didactic and dialogic teaching methods, and the requirement to cover the syllabus and to promote deep learning. To resolve these tensions the teachers have developed teaching practices that enhanced active student learning and given more weight to the students’ voices. Participation in the action research group enhanced both individual and collective learning of the school professionals. Their agency to change practice was increased and they also developed more cross curriculum agency. The combination of activity theory and action research in the Change Room provides a new model for enhancing teachers’ professional development and collaboration that has potential to transform classroom practice.

State run public guardianship programs are legally mandated to provide custodial care for persons deemed incapacitated by the courts. Historically, the majority of state wards were elderly women residing in skilled nursing facilities. Today, those demographics are rapidly changing. This new incapacitated cohort has become less institutionalized, with a rising number of persons who have entered the program with criminal records and who continue to commit crimes. This exploratory study focuses on incapacitated persons (IP) with criminal behaviors in order to seek what intervention(s) might reduce their criminal activity. Relying on routine activity theory, differing levels of supervision were compared to those persons institutionalized 24 hours per day. The results of the study indicated that as levels of residential supervision decrease, criminal activities significantly increase. This study can assist administrators of public guardianship programs better understanding the supervisory needs of their incapacitated citizens as well as improve safety precautions for their respective communities.

New research shows that adult participation in children’s play is beneficial for learning and development in early childhood. It is particularly socio-dramatic narrative play, in which children and adults co-construct the play events that is beneficial. Research also shows that teachers in the Swedish preschool tend not play with children. The Swedish Education Act and the Swedish Preschool Curriculum contain goals to strive for, specifically regarding play. Greater efforts and insight is needed to pave the way to increase the benefits for children through the use of play (Broström, 2017). The purpose of this study is to develop knowledge that contributes to understanding of the relationship between pretend play and children’s’ learning and development, as well as the development of preschool didactic and pedagogical activities based on this knowledge. To achieve this aim we drew on Cultural Historical Activity Theory to develop and conduct a case study at a municipal preschool. Data was gathered through observations of preschool children and staff in two units and through individual, semi-structured interviews with eight preschool teachers. We found that the preschool teachers rarely engaged fully in children’s play; however, when they did engage with the children in play, their involvement ranged from a slight involvement, to being a stage hand in the play, or being passively engaged in joint play with children. Our cultural-historical analyses revealed mediating activities that have an effect on if and how teachers engage in play with children. We conclude by arguing that teachers need more education about what type of adult child joint play that is beneficial and that the preschool directors have an important job to help manage the preschool teachers time and provide opportunities for them to reflect and document their work in such way that more time could be set apart for them to commit to being fully engaged with children in narrative pretend play.

A particular interest of distance education researchers is the community of inquiry framework, which was developed for the purpose of taking a closer look at computer mediated communication in educational contexts (Garrison, Anderson, Archer, 2000). However, it is somewhat surprising that although the community of inquiry framework has been developed based on distance education contexts, it does not consider the complexities of the community’s global and local contexts, the potential linguistic demands of the teaching and learning contexts, and how power, agency, and identities are negotiated in these contexts. Through six cases of online instructors teaching in international contexts at the tertiary level, I explored the negotiation of teaching presence as viewed through the lens of cultural historical activity theory (Engeström, 1999, 2001). In this view, instructors are engaged in a dynamic process in which teaching presence is shaped through the mediating components of the activity system. This multi-case study employed cross case analysis drawing on data from interviews with students, program coordinators, and instructors, in addition to analyses of discussion forum transcripts, course documents, formative evaluations, student and instructor reflections, and researcher-participant observations. The linguistic challenges faced by both instructor and students for whom the language of instruction was a second or third language and instructors’ sociocultural identities, positioning, and conceptualization of the online interaction spaces were found to be important mediators in the negotiation of teaching presence. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Over the last decade digital technologies have brought significant changes to classroom music, promising support for the realisation of a musical education for all students. National curricula and exam specifications continue to embed technology more deeply. While these changes increasingly impact on music classrooms, there is a growing awareness that the presence of digital technologies may not always promote meaningful compositional development, particularly at GCSE level. A ‘musical’ curriculum seeks to promote meaningful compositional development by building upon a student’s previous musical experience and by providing practical, integrated and collaborative composing experiences. Existing empirical research demonstrates that a wide range of digital technologies are used in secondary classrooms to support students’ compositional processes. When used successfully, such technologies give rise to computer- mediated environments which promote musical composing experiences. At the same time, current models of compositional development do not adequately account for the ways in which such contextual factors mediate students’ compositional development. In response to this, the current research employs a multiple case study approach to explore the ways in which two secondary music students’ compositional development proceeds when working with digital technologies. Drawing from both symbolic interactionism and activity theory as complementary theoretical lenses, students’ own views of their developing composing process are positioned in a critical and reflexive dialogue with the researcher’s own constant analysis. Tools for data collection include a novel synchronous multiple video capture technique (SMV) developed to meet the demands of the project. The methodology draws on ethnographic techniques and the framework for analysis is based on an adapted constant comparative procedure. Set in the context of a UK secondary school the thesis explores several themes which emerge from the stories of Sam and Emily, our two student cases, and which add to current understanding of compositional development with computer-mediated environments. A theoretical model is proposed which presents the process of compositional development in terms of four connections that emerge from Sam’s and Emily’s ways of working. They are: connecting in institutional space, connecting in personalised space, connecting in emancipated space and connecting in shared space. Four developmental points are offered within these spaces: a point of enabling, a point of discovery, a point of transformation and a point of connection. Each point of development is linked to a type of development which, drawing on the literature, have been given the following titles: scaffolded development, serendipitous development, computer-mediated development and creative development. Finally, the study suggests several implications for teachers and avenues for further research relating to the nature of personalised spaces, providing varied contextual opportunities, understanding computer- mediated composing and promoting student ownership.

This work undertakes an analysis of problems in the information model by which biomedical research is communicated on the Web, and proposes a semantic model by which these problems can be resolved. It uses and develops Activity Theory and Argumentation Theory as tools in this analysis, and produces a semantic model of biomedical communication on the Web, in OWL2, which it shows can be applied to current research articles and implemented in software. It makes contributions in three areas. This work contributes to Activity Theory, a model used in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) domains, by resolving ambiguities and formalizing concepts previously obscure in the theory, and by reformulating it as an Activity Views Model. It contributes to Argumentation Theory, used in AI and Communications Theory, by integrating the work of Toulmin, Dung, and others, and applying it specifically to construct a semantic model of biomedical argumentation, which may be more generally applicable in scientific communications. And it contributes to improving scientific communications on the web, by developing a practical semantic model of biomedical communications, as arguments grounded in reproducible methods, materials and data, in OWL2.Lastly, this work demonstrates that our model can be (a) applied consistently to examples from the biomedical literature, with serialization in RDF; (b) applied independently and successfully, by biomedical research workers not specially trained in informatics; and (c) having published the model as an ontology, that it has been implemented in software, and is capable of further useful application in the biomedical communications ecosystem by others.

Studies whose focus is finding solutions to practical IT implementation issues / problems such as slow systems uptake and meaningful work improvement are few. This thesis describes how IS practitioners from government and the private sector, together with users came together to redesign the current Botswana ISD work practice in order to address this shortcoming. The result has been the incorporation of activity-based learning and reflection in current ISD practice. The study adopted Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as the framework of analysis as well as the associated Developmental Work Research (DWR) methodology as the research method. An expansive learning cycle was stimulated through change laboratory sessions with participants from government and industry. The general research question for the study is: ‘How should ISD as a systemic work activity be carried out to facilitate effective learning?’ The four sub-questions the thesis focuses on are: ‘(1) What constitutes Botswana’s ISD practice or how is ISD currently practiced in Botswana? (2) What are the users and developers learning and is the learning effective? (3) How can current practice be improved in order to facilitate effective learning? (4) What do users and IS professionals learn when collaborating in the review and redesign of ISD practice?’ The study was qualitative in nature and data collection was based on interviews, archival data, observations as well as data from change laboratory sessions. Data from the change laboratory sessions was video-taped and later transcribed for analysis. Though I used CHAT as the main theoretical tool for analysis of ISD and learning, I also used additional theoretical concepts on learning to assist with the analysis and redesign of new practice. These are concepts relating to two types of learning that are found in any setting or environment i.e. conscious / learning conscious learning and unconscious / task conscious learning as well as concepts relating to reflection-on action. Analysis of learning in current Botswana ISD practice shows that current learning is not effective because it does not provide the right balance between conscious and unconscious learning. Current learning tasks are predominantly geared towards unconscious learning. The solution to this practical learning problem, which constitutes improvement to practice, is the incorporation of activity-based learning and reflection through the introduction of learning evaluation checkpoints throughout the ISD process. Furthermore, during the collaborative redesign sessions it emerged that: 1) learning was collective and distributed agency and 2) learning was expansion of the object in multiple dimensions. The study makes both theoretical and practical contributions. The theoretical contribution is through the application of learning concepts such as the two types of learning (i.e. conscious and unconscious learning) and expansive learning to the review, analysis and redesign of ISD practice with the participation of representatives from government and the private sector. In terms of the practical contribution, a new Botswana ISD practice model that incorporates activity-based learning and reflection has been designed, and findings from examination of the model suggest that it has potential to address current learning deficiencies and thus contribute to efforts of avoiding IS failures. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Informatics / unrestricted

The sharing economy refers to the activities facilitated through the digital platform that enable people to obtain, give, or share access to digital or physical resources and services. Although the sharing economy practice in the real-world is thriving and pervasive, there is a lack of scholarly work. Sharing pets activity is not a new concept, and people shares pets on digital platforms such as websites, and digital groups on social media. Sharing pets activity is different from sharing other things. Because the motivations of sharing pets are all related to the love for pets, and it is related to accessibility, ownership of pets, and interaction and relationship between human beings and pets. These particular features deserve scholarly attention. Activity Theory is applied in this study, as it shapes the way of data collection and analysis. The sharing pets practice is analyzed as individual and collective activity systems, to understand the motiving role of digital platform in sharing activity. The finding indicates that digital platform plays a crucial role in sharing activity, and according to activity, it facilitates the activity of the sharing pet in three ways: It facilitates the achievement of motive by users in each level of activity systems; it reduces the contradiction caused by the interaction of two activity system; it also promotes the transition of motives so that users can have more motives to participate in sharing pets activity.

Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka skolchefens roll i skolans styrkedja, där hen befinner sig i både det politiska verksamhetssystemet och i det professionella. Samtidigt som hen befinner sig i gränssnittet mellan de båda (Svedberg, 2014; Nihlfors, 2003). Hur påverkar det faktumet skolchefens roll? Hur navigeras det mellan dessa båda system, där det dessutom finns olika lagar som på olika sätt styr skolans arbete och som också kan vara motstridiga? De frågor som ställs är följande: · Hur förhåller sig skolchefen till sin roll mellan två olika verksamhetssystem: det politiska och det professionella? · Vilka motsättningar uppstår i, och mellan, det politiska och det professionella verksamhetssystemet? Studien utgår från ett verksamhetsteoretiskt perspektiv där politiken och professionen utgör varsitt verksamhetssystem. I det politiska verksamhetssystemet är objektet ekonomi, och budget i balans det resultat som ska uppnås. I det professionella systemet är objektet eleven och målet elevens måluppfyllelse. Den metod som används är enfallsstudien och insamling av empirisk data sker med observationer av nämndmöten och möten i förvaltningsledningen, intervjuer med skolchef och dokumentanalys. I analysen av resultatet används verksamhetsteori som analysverktyg. Resultatet visar på målkonflikter som uppstår både i respektive verksamhetssystem och mellan dem. Skolchefen i studien visar en medvetenhet om att hen i sitt uppdrag har att förhålla sig till de konflikter det innebär att befinna sig mellan politik och profession, ekonomi och elevernas resultat. Studiens resultat bidrar till tidigare forskning genom att identifiera målkonflikter som uppstår, men även genom att visa på ett förslag på hur skolchefen, som är subjektet i de två systemen, kan spela en nyckelroll. / The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of the superintendent within the school's steering chain, where he is in both the political and the professional activity systems, while at the same time he is in between the two (Svedberg, 2014; Nihlfors, 2003). How does that fact affect the superintendent’s role? How does he navigate between these two systems, where there are different laws that in different ways govern the school's work, which can also be contradictory? The questions asked are the following: · How does the superintendent relate to his role between two different activity systems: the political and the professional? · What contradictions arise in, and between, the political and the professional activity systems? The study is based on a activity theory perspective where politics and the profession each constitute an activity system. In the political activity system the object is economy, and the result to be achieved is a balanced budget. In the professional system the object is the student, and the student’s goal fulfillment is the goal. The method used is the single case study, and the collection of empirical data is done through observations of board meetings and meetings of the administrative management, interviews with the superintendent, and document analysis. In the analysis of the result, activity theory is used as an analysis tool. The results show that conflicts arise both within the respective activity systems and between them. The superintendent in the study shows awareness that he, in his assignment, has to relate to the conflicts it entails to be between politics and profession, economics and the students’ results. The results of the study add to previous research by identifying conflicts, but also by giving a suggestion on how the superintendent, who is the subject of the two systems, can play a key role.

Problem Statement: Many developing countries are still grappling with poor health as a result of strained healthcare systems. Top among health inequalities is maternal care with maternal mortality rates being almost 19 times higher in developing countries than in their developed counterparts. mHealth presents the potential for developing countries to overcome some of the traditional healthcare challenges. However, despite the compelling evidence for the potential of maternal mHealth from the plethora of effectiveness studies, why when and how interventions work/do not work in different contexts are not fully understood. Socio-cultural factors are one of the most cited reasons for variance in uptake and utilisation of such technologies. To date, research explaining how socio-cultural factors shape mHealth utilisation is sparse. Purpose of the study: The main objective of the study was to explain how mHealth utilisation behaviour emerges within the healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context. To achieve the objective, the study identified the socio-cultural characteristics of the maternal healthcareseeking context and analysed the user-technology interaction within this context. Research methodology: Building on the foundation that human experiences are best understood in situ, the study adopted explanatory methods guided by an interpretivist paradigm. The study drew upon Activity Theory as a lens to understand the maternal mHealth utilisation phenomenon. Hence, we theorised healthcare-seeking as an activity whose cultural aspects were further understood using Hofstede typology of culture. The study used a Kenyan maternal mHealth intervention to elucidate the phenomenon. We employed semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, observations, informal discussions, and document review to gather data. The sample was purposively selected and comprised various maternal health stakeholders: maternal health clients, their partners, project implementers and healthcare professionals. Key findings: The results of the study show that the healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context which is characterised by socio-cultural attributes such as high-power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, gendered relations, and collectivism shapes mHealth utilisation behaviour in a dialectical process. This process takes place as maternal health clients shape and are shaped by mHealth within their healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context through a process of internalisation and externalisation. From an internalisation perspective, uncertainties and risks in the maternal healthcare-seeking context resulted in hesitated adoption. Contextual perceptions of usefulness of the intervention resulted in the use of mHealth to substitute other healthcare structures while having different perceptions of the role of mHealth created dissonance among the maternal health clients. With regards to externalisation, maternal health clients adopted legitimisation strategies to reduce uncertainties and to develop trust required for initial and continued use of the intervention. They legitimised both the intervention artifact, and the information. Since the mHealth intervention presented appropriate social cues, being accompanied by the expected health provider's persona, maternal health clients readily humanised the intervention. The contextual social norms around pregnancy also presented a need for the maternal health clients to make their mHealth use an ‘appropriate behaviour' by negotiating use with relevant stakeholders in the context. Finally, in response to mHealth technology paradoxes that challenged the very motive of healthcare-seeking, maternal health clients coped by abandoning mHealth, or otherwise accommodating it. Originality/contribution: This study contributed to knowledge, theory, and practice. First, the study suggests theoretical propositions that explain how mHealth utilisation behaviour emerges. These findings may be useful to similar developing-country contexts. A further contribution to theory emerges from the use of Activity Theory to understand the phenomenon. The study helps to operationalise Activity Theory concepts in Information Systems research. Second, the study provides recommendations to practise with regard to the design and implementation of mHealth interventions. These insights may be useful to mHealth designers and implementers in designing mHealth solutions that are contextually relevant. Here, we propose the consideration of mHealth intervention characteristics that will aid utilisation, involving healthcare professionals and other community stakeholders in mHealth implementation and integrating mHealth into existing healthcare structures.