TY  - UNPB
AV  - restricted
Y1  - 2012///
EP  - 323
TI  - Critical realist activity theory (CRAT)
N1  - Thesis: (PhD) University of London Institute of Education, 2012.
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
UR  - http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.630834
N2  - This thesis develops a theoretical-interpretive scheme, a Critical Realist
Activity Theory (CRAT). It is argued that learning is a passage through
the dialectic, the logic of emancipation and for self-emancipation. The
structure of CRAT follows the 1M-5A Bhaskarian dialectical schema to
show how the theories of Collaborative Learning, Cooperative Learning,
Supplemental Instruction, and Activity Theory (AT) function in a pluralist
sense to account for the main critical realist categories of reality
? 1M: learning as product (non-identity), 2E: learning as process (negativity),
3L: learning as process-in-product (totality), 4D: learning as
product-in-process (transformative agency), and 5A: learning as emancipatory
intentionality (reflexivity). In particular, CRAT engages the
basic tenets of Critical Realism to provide a philosophical foundation
and simultaneously, a resolution to various dualisms that AT suffers
from. An immanent critique of AT, as a method of argumentation, is
particularly effective for this purpose since it involves taking a theory
and its claims about the world and using them to show that the theory
is inconsistent with itself. Then CRAT goes on to show, at the
level of omissive critique, that a key element that is absent from the
historical development of the activity-theoretical approach and explains
its dualisms is the omission of a critique of empiricism, i.e., a critique
of Humean philosophy. Thereafter, CRAT goes on from the immanent
and omissive critiques, a step further with an explanatory critique as a
means by which to reincorporate the absent element in AT in order to
reclaim and strengthen our perception of emancipatory human praxis.
The result from cementing this tradition in a critical realist philosophy
is a move through dialectical learning.
ID  - discovery10020004
A1  - Nunez, Iskra
M1  - Doctoral
ER  -