This article defines and discusses placeless organizations as sites and generators of learning on a large scale. The emphasis is on how placeless organizations structure themselves to carry out social transformation—necessarily involving intensive learning—on a national or global scale. The argument is made that place is not a necessary component of such activity and that lack of a sense of pla...

This study is about graduate students’ discourse practices in classroom text-based synchronous computermediated discussions (SCMD). Cultural historical activity theory (in short, Activity Theory) is the primary theoretical lens through which the data are analyzed. Engeström’s (1987) Activity System model among the various theoretical positions or perspectives of activity theorists has guided th...

Classic research methods are ineffective in capturing the dynamic relationships among users, technology, and outcomes for technology integration research. Cognitive research attempts to eliminate environmental variability and test for recall and transferability of knowledge representations. Such approaches lead to arguably ineffective measures of learning. Activity theory provides a holistic fr...

This article explores conceptual and methodological challenges in researching sustainable computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) within authentic educational settings. It argues that to investigate the sustainability of CSCL in such settings, we need to understand how new innovations become enculturated as part of educational communities and the shared repertoires and practices of lea...

This paper uses a Cultural Historical Activity Theory framework to describe a social-networking online community project, “SuperclubsPLUS”, for children aged 6-12. The use of the CHAT frame enables a detailed description of connections within the project as participants work together to achieve individual and common goals. Application of this structure to the SuperclubsPLUS environment supports...

In the early part of the 20th century, a form of (social) psychology emerged that is entirely grounded in a dialectical materialist method. The dialectical materialist approach leads to a non-dualist, non-reductionist account of culture, cognition, and consciousness that begins with single-celled organisms and ends up with present-day science. In this paper, I present such an account initiated ...

This article explores conceptual and methodological challenges in researching sustainable computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) within authentic educational settings. It argues that to investigate the sustainability of CSCL in such settings, we need to understand how new innovations become enculturated as part of educational communities and the shared repertoires and practices of lea...

This paper sets out to present a novel construal of one of the notions of Vygotskian cultural-historical theory viz., zone of proximal development (ZPD) drawing upon dynamic systems theory. The principal thesis maintains that ZDP is an emergent and dynamic system which is engendered by a dialectical concatenation of psychogenesic and sociogenesic facets of human development over time. It is rea...