Week 3 Post

Figured Worlds

In coming to the concept of figured worlds, I am exploring the idea of considering different spaces, contexts or worlds I occupy as uniquely constructed entities or "realms" as Holland et al (1998) describe them. Within each of my distinct yet often overlapping figured worlds, I co-construct, along with other agents (people) the amount of importance that is assigned to certain specific actions through the emotions and feelings assigned to those actions.

Whew, is that a lot to try to hold still?!?

With that working definition, then, I am seeing a clear link (relatively clear, as all this is :)) between activity theory and figured worlds. In their description of the intersection of these ideas, Holland et al (1998) refer to figured worlds being "formed and re-formed" as we engage in everyday activities (p. 53). They go on to discuss the ways in which figured worlds serve as abstractions. So, for example, in considering the figured world of academia, specifically the space we occupy as part of the figured world of doctoral students in the College of Education at Mizzou, no one activity in which we engage (e.g., gathering important theoretical knowledge via coursework; teaching undergraduate courses to gain experience, etc.) is the definition of that figured world. Rather, it is the increasingly abstract nature of these activities together that shape the way we come to know, describe and move through our shared figured world.

I found it insightful that Holland et al (1998) emphasized the importance of analyzing people's activities rather than trying to "theorize at the figured world level" (p. 57). Last week in our small group, Sarah, Edwin and I were discussing how one would take up activity theory in an educational space. Which activities do you observe and why? How many activities inside of activities inside of activities are necessary to observe and study in order to say we can make some claims about our observations? I think that I was posing some of those questions because I, unknowingly, was emphasizing theoretical conclusions at the figured world level, rather than focusing on the importance of individual activities (which certainly are embedded within and amongst one another). This week's readings are helping me rethink those initial questions. 

Materiality

As I try to incorporate ideas of artifacts and materiality into figured worlds, I want to focus my discussion here around objects as tools. I do this intentionally because my analytic gaze (thanks for introducing that phrase to me last week, Angie!) so often emphasizes d/Discourse. While clearly I want to maintain the importance of talk, discourse and body language as central to the conversation of artifacts, I also want to push myself to think more about materiality this semester. So, in thinking specifically about how artifacts contribute and subsequently help create the figured world of life as a doctoral student in the College of Ed at Mizzou, I'm specifically drawn to thinking about the role that my laptop, specifically the brand of my laptop, played in helping to construct that world.

Before I began my doctoral work, I had always been a PC user. The first computer my parents bought was a Gateway. I had a Dell in college and subsequently was given another Dell while working for my prior school district. I walked into my first doc seminar and noticed something as I sat with and among my peers. There were Macs everywhere! I read this artifact/tool/object as something that contributed to the construction of this figured world I was just entering. By the end of the course, I had invested in my own Mac (about which I have absolutely not regrets). To me, this artifact speaks to the ways in which materials shape figured worlds. 

                                      

Identity, Agency, POWER

"Identity is one way of naming the dense interconnections between the intimate and public venues of social practice" (Holland et al, 1998, p. 270).

I found this to be an important idea as I was wading through the ways that identities are co-constructed (maybe that's even too dualistic sounding…multiply constructed?) within figured worlds. First, I found the idea of historical landscape to be particularly important when discussing identity. Holland et al (1998) point to the importance of recognizing that history exists within the landscape of a society but also at the individual level of a person. Therefore, I do not completely reconstruct my identity from scratch each and every time that I enter a new or existing figured world. Rather, I bring with me both my historical and overlapping identities as well as the conscious or subconscious history of society (perhaps too broad a term).

To unpack these ideas, I found myself arriving at the dichotomy between the concepts of "positional identity" and "narrativized or figurative identities" (Holland et al, 1998, p. 127). I'll use the same example of life as a doc student to discuss how I'm thinking about each of these.

So, in this doctoral figured world, my positional identity would be my understanding of the ways my social position shifts and changes depending on the other players in my world. I select and choose specific linguistic forms to which I have access in order to navigate the daily instances of power and power structures that I encounter. Perhaps I do this through a specific set of predictable actions (e.g., I remember which professors want to be called by their full title and which are cool with first names; I jump through the hoops of forms and paperwork; I pump egos that seem to need pumping, etc.) but, sometimes, I use agency in a way that requires me to improvise (Holland et al, 1998). My improvisations, then, are unpredictable but not uninformed. I use agency in ways that are interconnected to the identity I've formed with artifacts, power structures and other characters in my figured world. 

My narrativized or figurative identity within this space, then, might be related to the stories that exist within the figured world. As Holland et al (1998) describe this identity, they describe it as the "generic" version. So, as I'm thinking about this description of identity, I'm wondering if it would fit the way that students are discussed collectively or perhaps even individually in faculty meetings. Perhaps this would also include the way my identity is interpreted by others, since positioned identities are interpreted by self (but that could be an overgeneralization). Even more broadly, perhaps my figurative identity doesn't include much about me, specifically, at all. Perhaps my figured identity is more about the ways a doctoral student passes through the university and creates a narrative of the experience alongside other seemingly homogeneous doctoral experiences.

Further Wonderings

As we really delved into talking about different ways to describe identity this week, I'm wondering how everyone else is thinking about the concept of "self." Last spring, in Philosophical Perspectives of Social Science Research, we spent a lot of time discussing whether or not each of us has an actual "self," a core at the center of us. Is there something that stays consistent within us over time or are we constantly using aspects of certain identities that intersect with new identities and at the center, there is just this mess of identities? I'd love to hear how others might think about this idea.

            

Week 2 Blog Post

I have to admit from the outset of this post that I've never before dabbled in any readings of activity theory. That said, it took me reading and re-reading sections of each of the articles we read this week in order to begin to (maybe) grasp some of the ideas central to this theoretical perspective. The visual I keep coming back to below from Bomer (2003), though I understand as an oversimplification of a set of circles that must be viewed as constantly overlapping in a much messier fashion, has helped me to begin to grasp the complex layers of activity theory. I pair this figure with a line from the first page of the piece by Sannino, Daniels and Gutiérrez (2009) who wrote, "Activity theory seeks to analyze developments within practical social activities" (p. 1).

Given these 2 ideas which I recognize as generalizations, I am beginning to construct my working definition of activity theory as a way of looking at human life through the lens of the activities in which we engage at macro and micro levels. Something I took as particularly essential to this sort of lens is the importance of "object-oriented activities" (Sannino, Daniels and Gutiérrez, 2009, p. 3). It is the combination of participating in activities, then, that are mediated by tools, actions and d/Discourses that ultimately guide our lives, moving us toward some larger purpose.

As I begin to think about the ways in which these activities are mediated, I find myself drawing on much of what Bomer (2003) wrote about Vygotsky's concept of mediation (p. 225), which, simply put, involves the ways that media and tools are used for thinking. The definition of mediational means as being a way that something we represent in our internal state of mind becomes shaped, modified and represented in some sort of external or visible activity through the example of tying a knot in a handkerchief was particularly helpful for me in visualizing a concrete example of this concept.

In transitioning from this relatively arbitrary example of a handkerchief, I took with me from the Bomer (2003) piece the importance of seeing tools as both local representations that are situated in larger contexts or activity systems as vital when considering the way that Martínez-Roldán (2003) discussed narratives as a mediating cultural tool (p. 495). For me, this piece brought to light that really anything can mediate our activities, ranging from the smallest, most practical and frequent daily activity to the way that activity is situated not only in our lives but within local and global contexts. Martínez-Roldán (2003) added a piece through her research that I didn't find as explictly in the other two pieces which was that these mediations that we experience are developed not only through tools that we use but also through the "mediation of others" (p. 515). So, while much of that research project concentrated on Isabela's narratives and the way she mediated her identity through narrative which can serve storytellers in "establish[ing] a coherent sense of who they are," (p. 498) the piece also outlined the ways in which Isabela's narratives and identity were co-constructed and modified through not only the texts in the classrooms but the students with whom she shared her narrative (and, presumably, the materials and tools at her disposal, though these were not the focus of the research)

In completing these readings on activity theory, I was reminded in particular of an experience I had while reading the Bomer (2003) piece, specifically the line, "A user must interpret a tool in order to use it" (p. 238). I'll keep the story short and condensed for the purposes of this post. However, as I share, I am thinking about the way this particular event was situated in a single activity for the purposes of the story which has implications for a variety of larger activities.

As a speech-language pathologist working in a secondary setting, I had the privilege of getting to know Peter. Peter was one of my favorite students. He loves music and tossing around peace signs. He likes slap-stick comedy and jokes, food and goofing around. Peter and I have a lot in common.

Peter is a young man, now in his sophomore year of high school, who had received a variety of educational and medical diagnoses and labels. Some of these included: intellectually disabled, limited verbal output, gross/fine motor impairments along with others that fell away or were added in over the course of his 16 years.

In terms of communication, Peter and I began working together to implement an augmentative and alternative communication system (AACS) during his daily life to address one of those labels I listed above: limited verbal output. Peter used oral language to say the following words: "why," "Peter [last name], "yes," "no," "ok," and "thank you." As you can imagine, Peter had much more to say than these words, but they weren't accessible to him via oral language, which is the expectation in school activities. We began slowly throughout the course of the school year, during which time Peter made great gains. I'm going to digress here to get to the point of this story in the context of this post, but Peter's communication is important to the event.

On occasion, Peter, like everyone, got aggravated. Often, though, Peter could not express his frustration through words in the way his dominant communication environment expected. This led to other modes of communication which included crying, yelling, attempting to eat objects that were inedible (e.g., tissues or grass), hitting and pinching. Peter was communicating. He was sharing his emotions. My job was to figure out what he was telling me. Often, I inferred based on my limited ability to enter into Peter's communicative world, that Peter was hungry, thirsty or tired. I say I inferred these things because water, snacks and rest often appeared to alleviate Peter's frustration.

One day, Peter became extremely upset as the school day came to a close. Peter made it to the bus but became extremely agitated. I don't know why. Eventually, working with my team of colleagues, Peter came back inside to the classroom in which he spends most of his day. This classroom, often referred to as the "Life Skills Classroom" but also known by a variety of other labels, includes a kitchen. As Peter entered the space, he walked over to the stove, on which sat a skillet. Next to the skillet sat a salt shaker. Peter walked over to these two "tools," and my mind began immediately interpreting the variety of ways that Peter might decide to use these tools.

You see, as in Bomer's (2003) piece, I interpreted these tools for uses that were not necessarily aligned with the way their creators had intended them. Immediately, given that Peter had demonstrated actions that I inferred as aggressive (e.g., hitting, dropping to the ground, spitting, etc.), I assumed he was approaching these tools to be used as weapons. Would he throw the salt shaker at me from across the room? Would he pick up the skillet and begin swinging it at me? As my mind raced to figure out how to position myself and what tools I might use around me to protect myself, Peter picked up the salt shaker. Before I had a chance to react, Peter grabbed the handle to the skillet. But he didn't pick it up. Instead, he held the handle much like I do when I'm keeping the whole pan from moving while I cook. He took the salt shaker in his right hand and began vigorously shaking the salt shaker over the skillet, salting and salting and salting the pan until nearly 3/4 of the content of the salt shaker lay haphazardly across the surface of the skillet.

This story reminds me so concretely of the way an activity plays out based on the interpretations of the players. Had I been Peter in this scenario, I would have interpreted and used the tools for actions that were much different than the way Peter interpreted and used them. The larger discourse happening here was expressing anger. For me, I suppose I assume that means becoming violent when unable to communicate. For Peter, it meant finding a familiar task that he good do with vigor to release pent up energy. Almost immediately, Peter's shoulders began to relax. He turned with surprise as no one in the room had reprimanded him for "wasting" all of the salt. For Peter, the salt shaker became a tool for releasing anger, frustration, anxiety and a variety of other emotions to which I don't have interpretive access. The action Peter used in his interpretation of the tool during this activity allowed him to achieve the same goal I wanted for him.