Intervening for transforming: The horizon of action in the Clinic of Activity

Abstract

The article provides an account of the theoretical and methodological principles of the interventionist approach called the Clinic of Activity. A case is presented of educators working within a youth judicial protection service in centers for emergency placement of minors. As an intervention, the case did not proceed as expected and could be regarded as a failure. Ultimately what was commissioned to be an intervention for developing the professional profile of the educators in the organization became an analysis of the organization's institutional crisis. The diagnosis proposed by the interventionists was that the impersonal dimension of work-that is, its institutional features-was underdeveloped while at the same time personal defenses among educators were increasingly manifesting themselves as ways to indicate the unbearable crisis in the organization.

Adult education and the planetary condition

“…If sustainability and interpretativeness (as continuous learning making new connections between phenomena) are increasingly needed in work, then we need new dialogic methods to support the learning of this interpretative way of working. As the focus of interpretativeness in robotic surgery is in situational and gestural activities, we turn to the Vygotskian-based French tradition of work psychology, work analysis and professional didactics (Clot 2009;Clot & Kostulski 2011;Kloetzer 2012;Pastré 2011). Together with activity theoretical work on instruction and learning (Engeström 1994), these sources may help in seeing the connections between individual and society, which are so badly needed in research in order to achieve sustainable development (Seppä-nen in press).…”

Learning the Secrets of the Craft Through the Real-Time Experience of Experts : Capturing and Transferring Experts’ Tacit Knowledge to Novices

“…We used an approach which is based on the Russian stream of Activity Theory (Leontiev, 1978 ;Nosulenko & Rabardel, 2007 ;Rubinstein, 1922 ;Savoyant, 2005), the Perceived Quality Approach (Nosulenko & Samoylenko, 2001), the subjective evidence-based ethnographic paradigm (Lahlou, 2011), and verbalisation techniques (Bisseret, 1981 ;Brommel, 1983 ;Clot & al., 2001 ;Clot & Kostulski, 2011 ;Ericsson & Simon, 1980 ;Falzon, 1991 ;Flaherty, 1974 ;Leplat & Hoc, 1981 ;Mollo & Falzon, 2004 ;Theureau, 2003 ;Titchener, 1912). These four approaches form the core of the methodology, which aims to highlight various elements of an expert's knowledge of a professional gesture that are considered to be important for transmission purposes.…”

“…From a learning and training perspective, it is fundamental to access and collect internal data which affects reasoning since it allows apprentices to understand the underlying rationale of the gesture and greatly facilitates the internalisation of the knowledge required for the gesture's execution. 53 We used two verbalisation techniques adapted from the series of existing methods in the field of ergonomics and work psychology to enable a subject to talk about her/his work activity (Bisseret, 1981 ;Clot & al., 2001 ;Clot & Kostulski, 2011 ;Ericsson & Simon, 1984 ;Falzon, 1991 ;Gherardi, 1995 ;Leplat & Hoc, 1981 ;Oddone & al., 1981 ;Rix & Lièvre, 2008 ;Theureau, 2003 ;Urquhart & al., 2003 ;Vermersch, 2009). …”

“…We observed that discussions helped to share practices, to externalise knowledge, and to clarify the best and clearest way to explain the gesture. 58 The individual self-analysis interview (Ginsburg & al., 1985 ;Pinsky & Theureau, 1987 ;Theureau, 2003 ;Von Cranach, 1982), the "allo-confrontation" interview (Mollo & Falzon, 2004), the group self-analysis interview (Clot & al., 2001 ;Clot & Kostulski, 2011), and the re-situ interview (Rix & Biache, 2004) are variants of subsequent verbalisation techniques which provide access to the operator's cognition after performing a professional gesture. Their aim is to immerse the operator ex-post in her/his own activity by confronting her/ him with the video recording of her/his activity as (s)he verbalises her/his cognitive processes.…”

“…To achieve this aim and overcome the limits of knowledge transmission, we designed a method that combines : (1) tools of visual ethnography, particularly the first-person perspective digital ethnography (Goldman & al., 2007 ;Knoblauch & al., 2006 ;S. Lahlou, 2011 ;Omodei & al., 2005 ;Pea, 1994 ;Rix-Lièvre & Lièvre, 2010) provided by a subcam (subjective camera) (Lahlou, 1998) which is a small digital camera worn at eye-level by the expert himself ; (2) theoretical and methodological frameworks drawn from ergonomics and work psychology, especially Activity Theory (Daniellou & Rabardel, 2005 ;Leontiev, 1978 ;Nosulenko & Rabardel, 2007 ;Nosulenko & Samoylenko, 1997) and Perceived Quality Approach (Nosulenko & Samoylenko, 2009) ; and (3) verbalisation methods (Bisseret, 1981 ;Brommel, 1983 ;Clot & al., 2001 ;Clot & Kostulski, 2011 ;Ericsson & Simon, 1980 ;Falzon, 1991 ;Flaherty, 1974 ;Leplat & Hoc, 1981 ;Mollo & Falzon, 2004 ;Theureau, 2003 ;Titchener, 1912) in order to analyse occupational expertise embodied in human activity.…”