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BOOK REVIEW: Teaching as a Collaborative Activity: An Activity Theoretical Contribution to the Innovation of Teaching

An overwhelming mass of studies can be cited to show that schooling is a decisive factor in cognitive development and identity formation, in the distribution of cultural capital and power, as well as in the innovation of culture. It has become clear that the way the teacher organizes classroom activities is crucial for the empowerment of the pupils. With their volume, Teaching Transformed, Tharp and his colleagues elaborate previous work (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), and offer new ideas for the debate about the organization of school learning. Tharp and his team have been studying this issue for years from a Vygotskian perspective. They view “teaching” as largely a language-based collaborative process that is closely related to meaningful activities in a community. This constitutes a major theoretical basis of their work. In their view, schools can implement this point of view in classrooms by setting up activity settings in which studentscancollaborate forachieving theeducationalgoals.Tharpandhis teamhaverecentlyadded a new dimension to this theory of teaching through activity settings, claiming that classroom teaching must be radically transformed from a model of transmission-based teaching to one which promotes learning in an inclusive community. In their volume, Teaching Transformed, they give a thought-provoking overview of their argument and present a theory-driven plan for how to transform classroom teaching. But the question remains: how convincing is their approach? In their view, the transformation of teaching should start out with a redefinition of the basic values of schooling. Most schools aim at Excellence in their pupils, but according to Tharp et al., this easily winds up reproducing cultural inequality. Schools that want to innovate teaching should also accept responsibility for achieving Fairness in the distribution of cultural capital, for guaranteeing Inclusion of all pupils in one community of learners, and for Harmony with regard to the common values and norms that are subscribed by their community. Tharp and his colleagues develop a teaching approach in this volume that claims achieving excellence in pupils in a fair, inclusive, and harmonious way. What does it mean for the classroom? The authors’ ideal classroom consists of teachers and pupils engaged in a joint productive activity where all pupils have a share in the negotiations of meanings that are brought in by pupils and the teacher regarding the content theme at hand. But the authors are also aware of the potential dangers of the situation. Every classroom activity has an MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 12(2), 165–167 Copyright © 2005, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition