Critical Perspectives on Activity

Peter H. Sawchuk is Professor of Sociology & Equity Studies in Education as well as Industrial Relations at University of Toronto. He is the Chair of the International Advisory Committee for the Conference on Researching Work and Learning. He is also a founding member of the University of Toronto's Centre for the Study of Education and Work. Newton Duarte is a full professor in Philosophy of Education at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) in Brazil where he is the Director of the PhD Program in School Education. He holds large-scale grants from the Brazilian National Governmental Institution for Scientific and Technologic Development and has won post-Professorial honors at UNESP. Mohamed Elhammoumi is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, College of Social Sciences at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Saudi Arabia. He has published numerous papers on child development, cultural psychology, and the role of culture and family structures on the development of mental abilities, proportional reasoning and cognitive development including “Socio-Historicocultural Psychology: Lev Semenovich Vygotsky: A Bibliographical Notes”.

• Part I: 1. Introduction: exploring activity across education, work, and everyday life Peter H. Sawchuk, Newton Duarte and Mohamed Elhammoumi; Part II. Critical Perspectives on Theory: 2. Is there a Marxist psychology? Mohamed Elhammoumi; 3. The cultural-historical activity theory: some aspects of development Joachim Lompscher; 4. Epistemological scepticism, complacent irony: investigations concerning the neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty Maria Celia Marcondes de Moraes; Part II. Education: 5. The importance of play in pre-school education: naturalisation versus Marxist analysis Alessandra Arce; 6. Estranged labor learning Ray McDermott and Jean Lave; 7. Our working conditions are our students' learning conditions: a CHAT analysis of college teachers Helena Worthen and Joe Berry; Part III. Work: 8. Contradictory class relations in work and learning: some resources for hope D. W. Livingstone; 9. From labor process to activity theory Paul S. Adler; 10. Values, rubbish and workplace learning Yrjö Engeström; Part IV. Everyday Life: 11. Education as mediation between the individual's everyday life and the historical construction of society and culture by humankind Newton Duarte; 12. Activity and power: everyday life and development of working-class groups Peter H. Sawchuk.