Activity Theory

Activity theory, also called cultural-historical activity theory, is a framework for understanding human learning and behavior that originated in early twentieth-century Soviet psychology through the work of Lev Vygotsky and was developed further by his student Alexei Leontiev, treating purposeful human activity, rather than an isolated individual response to a stimulus, as the basic unit that psychology should study. The theory models an activity system as made up of a subject, the person or group carrying out the activity; an object, the goal or motive toward which the activity is directed; and mediating tools or artifacts, physical or symbolic instruments, including language itself, through which the subject acts on the object, an idea drawn directly from Vygotsky's account of culturally mediated thought. Later development of the theory, particularly by the Finnish researcher Yrjo Engestrom, expanded this basic subject-tool-object structure into a fuller model that also includes the surrounding community, the rules that govern accepted behavior within the activity, and the division of labor among participants. In education, activity theory is widely used to analyze learning as something that happens within collaborative, tool-mediated and socially organized settings, such as a classroom, a laboratory or a workplace, rather than as a purely internal, individual mental process, making it especially useful for studying how tools, including digital technology, reshape the way people learn and work together.