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Building on cultural‐historical activity theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the service system of car‐service advisors as an activity system that evolves through cycles of expansive learning.

An ethnographic study involving participant observations, informal conversations, and interviews among car‐service advisors provides insights into how expansive learning takes place.

Expansive learning refers to a gradual process whereby individuals act collectively to reconfigure existing activity systems. Contradictions in the activity system can trigger learning and an awareness of the historical and socio‐cultural contexts of service systems is indispensable for an understanding of the development of those systems.

Managers need a thorough understanding of the structure of their service system and the contradictions that exist in it, as they constitute opportunities for development. Moreover, the study shows that social bonds between employees should be promoted and that frontline contact persons should be seen as integral resources in service development.

In contrast to much research on service systems, which has largely focused on the structure and characteristics of service systems, this paper offers a novel dynamic theoretical framework of a service system as a constantly evolving activity system in which learning takes place through the resolution of contradictions.

The second paper in a two‐paper series, this article seeks to consider how the ideas of cultural historical activity theory were used in a learning programme for managers to examine and apply leadership as a collective phenomenon usually referred to as distributed leadership.

The main elements of the programme are presented along with examples of application by learners.

A key learning point that stood out is the identification of the social, historical and cultural context of leadership, rather than being focused on an individual. As learners move from actions of individuals to the activity system as a whole, distributed leadership is considered as the exertion of influence that can be inspired, distorted, subverted or ignored.

Activity systems are understood to be multi‐voiced and multi‐layered, subject to disturbances and flux that result in tension, contradiction and paradox which need to be understood and utilised to find ways of improving organisation performance.

A case study on the experience of learners attempting to consider distributed leadership is provided.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors contributing to the dynamics in healthcare work practices and how health workers cope with the emerging dynamics. By focusing on these aspects, the study seeks to inform the design and implementation of health management information systems (HMIS).

An ethnographic study of HMIS work practices in Tanzania was conducted. The collected data were analysed using concepts from Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT).

The complex and dynamic demands placed upon static healthcare information systems cause unregulated and inconsistent changes to off‐systems work practices. CHAT is a useful framework for identifying emerging gaps within existing information systems (IS).

This study builds upon a research and development project known as the Health Information Systems Programme (HISP). HISP aims at addressing the problems of fragmentation, multiple data standards and lack of tools for data management in HMIS in low‐income countries. The findings from this study have practical implications for the design and implementation of IT‐based IS within the healthcare industry in general and within the HISP initiatives in particular.

The paper offers a new perspective for conceptualizing the dynamics in healthcare work practices by looking at the means and solutions that health workers produce, not only as products of dynamics but as factors that inform and shape the design and implementation of new IT and IS.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how, from 2004‐2006, a New Zealand research team experimented with the “change laboratory” learning process to create a new method of government policy development and implementation, referred to as “practice‐making”. The apple industry in Hawke's Bay was chosen because of the level of tension among government agencies and small/medium‐sized firms in the industry, particularly around the scarcity of seasonal labour, amid growing concerns about the possible collapse of the industry.

The team stimulated a cycle of expansive learning among the network of activity systems in the industry. Laboratory participants were growers, labour contractors, pack house operators, quality controllers, horticultural consultants and government officials. The expansive learning cycle is a core concept in developmental work research (DWR) and cultural‐historical activity theory (CHAT).

Participants created a shared “object” for apple production and its government policy and regulation built around quality, making a substantive shift from adaptive learning to transformational learning, and creating a major redesign of the industry. Many of the new practices are now being implemented in the industry and government.

The CHAT/DWR approach seems particularly well suited for complex problem solving in any network where there are intractable systems contradictions and a strong desire among participants to make real change.

It is understood that this is the first time a change laboratory process has been used for government “practice‐making” with industry, in contrast with traditional policy development and implementation that frequently does not address systemic problems.

Technological innovation and the flexibilisation of labour markets have expanded the pool of workers engaged in globally distributed work. This paper aims to propose an analytical framework to understand and support the productive professional learning of those engaged in global work. Drawing on the theory of expansive learning in the cultural-historical activity theory tradition the study aims to stimulate and enrich the conceptual notion of work as a learning space in the discussion of workplace learning particularly in global work.

Iteration between theory and data is applied to identify the dimensions of expansion for the configuration of learning spaces in global work. Data are drawn from the experiences of 10 professionals selected by purposive sampling in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Singapore.

Six dimensions of expansion are identified as challenging and potentially empowering for professionals’ configuration of learning spaces in global work: social-spatial, material-instrumental, moral-ethical, political-economic, personal-professional and temporal-developmental.

The conceptual framework for the dimensions of expansion of learning spaces provides the broad strokes for reflexive curricula that democratise the learning and development of professionals in global work, who are currently underserved given the national orientation of vocational education and training and professional development ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to older workers (OWs)’ subjective engagement in working and learning in the manufacturing industry. Workplace learning (WPL) literature rarely considers the subjective side of learning from a cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) account.

The paper adopts a CHAT-influenced perspective: learning is a cultural and collective process and a dimension of activity. Subjectivity is conceptualized through the ideas developed by A.N. Leontiev. The design takes the form of multiple embedded case studies, within two companies which approximate two types of production strategies, mass production and flexible specialization. OWs were interviewed about their professional lives.

The subjective side of WPL is differentiated by the two types of production strategies. These strategies, together with other life experiences, create different opportunities for the OWs’ subjective engagement. Motives for WPL are linked to the needs for learning in the workplace, and to the ideal image that OWs have of their workplace.

The theoretical framework requires an interdisciplinary study and leads to conclusive remarks which overcome the boundary of the educational field. More investigation is needed about the gender issue.

This paper enlarges the view on WPL for OWs by using the concept of the “object of activity” to connect industrial practices and OWs’ subjectivities. This concept has been used to explore the motivational aspects of learning in an original way. The findings of this paper will assist policy-makers to better understand WPL and the production strategies implications supported through industrial policies.

This chapter considers ways in which lesson study may be introduced and sustained within the school–university partnerships that already exist within an initial teacher education (ITE) course. In particular, the authors describe the challenges and opportunities associated with ITE lesson study partnerships and ways in which lesson study can deepen and even transform the nature of the school–university partnership. The authors draw on third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2001) to highlight pre-service teachers’ roles as ‘boundary crossers’ between the activity system of the university ITE course and the activity system of the school department in which they are placed. The authors argue that pre-service teachers, despite their inexperience as teachers, have an important opportunity to introduce the practices of lesson study that they are learning about into the schools in which they are placed. They are also able to promote approaches to lesson planning and observation that support the values of the course and thus, through mentor development, strengthen the school–university partnership more widely than the specific lesson studies carried out. The authors outline three models for productive ITE lesson study partnerships, and argue that even a relatively small number of lesson study events throughout the school year can establish the beginnings of a transformation in the school culture away from a performative focus on evaluating the teacher and towards a more productive focus on school students’ learning. This, in turn, deepens the partnership between university and school by aligning both parties more closely around a shared focus on studying learning.

There is an identified need in higher education research for methods which have the capacity to generate conceptual insights grounded in concrete local practice but with wider applicability in understanding and facilitating research-based change. This chapter outlines an intermediate approach to qualitative data analysis which can support theoretical knowledge advancement from practice-based research, which I call the difference-within-similarity approach. It involves a particular way of conducting dialogues with our data: of interanimating similarities and differences within our qualitative datasets. The approach outlined involves first identifying a similarity, then systematically examining differences within that similarity to generate theoretical explanations. Drawing on sociocultural theorising, particularly dialogic theory and cultural–historical activity theory, the approach is based on the idea that new meanings arise from a comparison of multiple perspectives on the ‘same’ phenomenon. The tensions between such perspectives are seen as a key driver for change in educational practice. Therefore, articulating and examining such tensions in our data gives an opportunity to simulate the possibility of change in our analysis and, hence, develop insights which can inform change beyond local settings. Important here is that the differences examined are bound together by an analytically productive similarity. Through multiple research examples, the chapter identifies and illustrates a range of ways of articulating productive analytical similarities for comparison in our data: through theory/literature, through forward and backwards processing of data itself and through a process termed ‘weaving’.

Co-teaching is a foundational mentoring model used in teacher residency programs in urban classrooms throughout the United States of America. Beyond the basic understanding of co-teaching in categorizing classroom models, the purpose of this qualitative case study is to investigate the dialectical tensions manifested in mentored co-teaching activities through the lens of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT).

Designed as a qualitative case study of 17 pairs of teaching-residents and mentor-teachers, the authors used thematic analysis to scrutinize archival interview data in an urban teacher residency program located in the largest megalopolis of the USA Northeast. The authors used CHAT-based concept coding to analyze the interview narratives from participants across different secondary school placements as they reflected on their co-teaching philosophy and the relationships they built.

The authors found that for teaching-residents and mentor-teachers to co-develop as co-teachers, they jointly must learn to resolve the dialectical tensions of unbalanced classroom ownership vs added co-working responsibilities, breaking from routine so that a partnership can grow. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the prefix co- should be understood as (1) shifts in thinking that transcend the status quo and (2) the orchestration of human capital to change norms.

This new understanding of the prefix co- allows teacher education programs to better mediate the dialectical tensions experienced by co-teachers in a mentored co-teaching activity, from individual teacher learning (e.g. a pair/dyad comprising one teaching-resident and one mentor-teacher) to collective co-learning across activity systems (e.g. partnership-based teacher education).

This paper aims to explore how opportunities for learning clinical skills are negotiated within bedside teaching encounters (BTEs). Bedside teaching, within the medical workplace, is considered essential for helping students develop their clinical skills.

An audio and/or video observational study examining seven general practice BTEs was undertaken. Additionally, audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. All data were transcribed. Data analysis comprised Framework Analysis informed by Engeström’s Cultural Historical Activity Theory.

BTEs can be seen to offer many learning opportunities for clinical skills. Learning opportunities are negotiated by the participants in each BTE, with patients, doctors and students playing different roles within and across the BTEs. Tensions emerged within and between nodes and across two activity systems.

Negotiation of clinical skills learning opportunities involved shifts in the use of artefacts, roles and rules of participation, which were tacit, dynamic and changing. That learning is constituted in the activity implies that students and teachers cannot be fully prepared for BTEs due to their emergent properties. Engaging doctors, students and patients in reflecting on tensions experienced and the factors that influence judgements in BTEs may be a useful first step in helping them better manage the roles and responsibilities therein.

The paper makes an original contribution to the literature by highlighting the tensions inherent in BTEs and how the negotiation of roles and division of labour whilst juggling two interacting activity systems create or inhibit opportunities for clinical skills learning. This has significant implications for how BTEs are conceptualised.