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Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023): Activity theory in technology enhanced learning research

The use and value of cultural historical activity theory in institutional educational technology policy

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.06989392
Submitted
9 August 2026
Published
15-08-2026

Abstract

Institutional educational technology policies in Higher Education Institutions can help or hinder the objectives of faculty and administration staff. In many national contexts, these policies typically result from a top-down unilateral canonical decision-making process  and or/retroactive heuristic models of investigation. However, research utilizing and advocating multilateral non-canonical approaches and more sociocultural models of investigation in institutional educational technology policy decision-making are novel.

This paper stems from a project which used a formative Change Laboratory intervention to affect real meaningful change in institutional educational technology policy at one university in South Korea. Participants, including Korean faculty, international faculty and administration staff participated in multilateral, non-canonical workshops over a period of 7 months to explore and redesign their own activity.

Central to this formative Change Laboratory intervention was Engeström’s Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The study utilized CHAT as a practical lens/toolkit to expose/examine contradictions and collectively transform institutional educational technology policy-practice activity. CHAT’s activity system models helped participants identify, shape and question ‘normal’ or ‘routine’ practices in shared activity. As a result, participants realized how unilateral canonical policies inhibiting research and pedagogy objectives might be questioned and changed for the better.

This paper reflects on the use and value of CHAT as a more sociocultural approach to institutional educational technology policy. Rather than presenting a paper that just ‘happens’ to use activity theory, this paper discusses my reasons for using CHAT, how it was used, how I collected and analysed data, my experience of using it, and prevailing criticisms. This paper will be of particular interest to researchers who are interested in using CHAT to conduct research on topics related to technology enhanced learning.

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