The Messy Web of Teaching and Learning

Huiling Ding: “The Use of Cognitive and Social Apprenticeship to Teach a Disciplinary Genre”

David R. Russell: “Looking Beyond the Interface”

First, I just want to say that I’m completely blown away by the inner workings of the NIH grant process. I knew it was a complex and competitive, but I had no idea just how complex and competitive. Ding’s strategy for apprenticeships to initiate new grant writers to the process not only makes sense, it seems necessary.

So, when Russell writes that activity theory “understands learning not as the internalisation of discrete information or skills by individuals, but rather as expanding involvement over time – social as well as intellectual – with other people and the tools available in their culture” (65), he is providing a justification for apprenticeships as a teaching and learning model. He also presents an alternate model, the behaviourist or stimulus-response model, as a way of highlighting the strengths of Engeström’s multi-dimensional activity theory model, comprised of subject, object/outcome, tools, rules, community and division of labor.

By viewing teaching and learning as an activity system, both Ding and Russell are able to demonstrate that a simple watch-and-learn method is insufficient for many purposes. If the NIH grant-writing process described by Ding is any indication, the more complex and high-stakes the object/outcome, the more important it is to understand the entire activity system and all of its associated genre systems rather than just the genres or genre systems that appear to be the most pertinent. Of the advantages to teaching the entire genre system (or is it systems since the students are experiencing the genre system of the proposal writer and the genre system of the reviewers?), Ding writes that “it demystifies the grant-seeking processes by making every step visible, learnable, and accomplishable” (23). By understanding the context of the grant review process, students are able to improve the entire grant package

If I’m understanding the activity theory principles correctly, they can relate to genre characteristics in that they also include purpose, participants, context, theme and form. In addition, both the tool aspect and the outcome include one or more genres, while the remaining nodes provide context that can be helpful in understanding and describing the activity system. However, Russell reminds us that “context is not a container for a learner [participant, tool, etc], but rather a weaving together of the learner with other people and tools into a web or network of sociocultural interactions and meanings that are integral to the learning [object/outcome]” (68). In this model, nothing stands alone, so it is important to consider everything as a contributing factor.

While both articles pertained specifically to teaching and learning as activity systems, I suspect that some teaching and learning elements will surface in our review of the activity system of a publication.

As an unnecessary aside, stimulus-response reminded me of 7^th grade biology with Mrs. Johnson. Her chalkboard drawings of single-celled organisms captivated my best friend Ann, who finally found something she could draw and proceeded to do so with a vengeance. Unfortunately, I think I returned her amoeba cartoons to her several years ago, but I’ve recreated some paramecium art. Perhaps someone should explore the informal teaching/learning peer-sustained activity system that ensured that I remember that paramecia have cilia even though I have no practical application for that knowledge.