Artefacts, Resources and Pedagogy—stories of International Statistics Educators

Our recent research investigated the experiences of educators teaching statistics as service courses at universities. We conducted interviews by email with participants from many countries and whose teaching reflects diverse settings, student groups and disciplines—a microcosm of higher education today. We now focus on the tools, artefacts and resources respondents identified as critical to developing their teaching. These include computer and internet technology; data sets, texts and research and human resources, such as master teachers or teaching pools. Teacher development can be characterised as “the enhancement of the knowledge and capabilities to function as a teacher” (Gordon & Fittler, 2004) and is bound up with student learning. Hence tools and artefacts harnessed by educators to develop their teaching are resources for enhancing student learning. Our approach draws on activity theory, based on the work of Vygotsky, Leont’ev and colleagues, and emphasising mastering tools in collective and individual development. Vygotsky extended the idea of physical tools as mediators of change to psychological tools or mental tools. Case studies from our investigation are used to explore how the educators constitute their teaching identities in relation to cultural tools. INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK We recently conducted research investigating the ideas of statistics educators around the world about teaching and learning statistics in university ‘service’ courses. These are courses aimed at students who are majoring in another discipline (such as engineering or psychology). We now take an activity theory approach to explore how the participating educators use tools, artefacts and resources to develop their practices and how, in a dynamic way, cultural tools contribute to shaping and transforming the pedagogies and teaching identities of these educators. Recent literature on research in education indicates the breadth and scope of activity theory as a lens for investigating educational phenomena. Activity theory is not a unified theory, and has many different facets and derivatives such as socio-cultural theory, cultural-historical activity theory, culturalhistorical psychology and others (Holtzman, 2006). Indeed, Chaiklin (2001) introduces culturalhistorical psychology as the solution to the riddle: “What is over 75 years old, but still a baby?” Originating in the theories of Vygotsky, Leont’ev, Luria and their colleagues and students from the Soviet Union, activity theory and its derivatives are being developed by contemporary western researchers in diverse contexts, fields of research and disciplines. For example, Engeström (2001) develops principles of cultural-historical activity theory to present a study of expansive learning in a hospital setting. Edwards and D’Arcy (2004) explore the relational agency of two student teachers from a socio-cultural perspective. Lawrence and Valsiner (2003) present a socio-cultural account of internalisation and externalisation processes in the context of a shoplifting event. Brown and Cole (2002) invoke principles of cultural-historical activity theory to guide the design of activity systems for enhancing the educational experience of children in after-school hours. The contemporary articulations of activity theory, though varied in focus, have philosophical commonalities including a non-dualist approach to understanding the formation of the human mind and society and a focus on the “interaction between an individual, systems of artifacts and other individuals in historically developing institutional settings” (Holtzman 2006, p. 6). The idea that physical tools are mediators of change was extended by Vygotsky to psychological tools or mental tools. To Vygotsky (1981b, p. 140): “The most essential feature distinguishing the psychological tool from the technical tool is that it directs the mind and behaviour