A second-order workplace intervention to understand the design of a socio-constructivist lesson plan: A CHAT perspective

Researchers have reported that transforming socio-constructivist teaching practices supported by information communication technology (ICT) has been slow and stagnant in Quebec and globally, because many contradictions emerged in organizational structure (c.f. Park, 2009; Sicilia, 2007). The primary aim of these case studies is to examine a five-month planned intervention in a technology rich school in order to extend the understanding of designing a socio-constructivist lesson plan supported by ICT. The intervention was designed collectively between researchers, school administrators and grade 7 and grade 8 middle school math teachers. The designed intervention incorporated the assumptions from socio-cultural and socio-constructivist theories and the assumptions found in notable change models. The intervention introduced organizational conditional and learning conditions which created new goals, resources, roles and rules to resolve contradictions found in previous studies. The organizational conditions were: resources, time, agent of change, school and teachers' historical background, and the learning conditions were: social collaboration, community-centered environment, contradictions and problem solving. During the implementation of the intervention, the teachers held bi-weekly "collaborative change meetings" facilitated by myself, the principle researcher who also assumed the role of change implementer (CI).;Keywords: socio-constructivism, change, instructional practices, intervention, cultural historical activity theory;The actions of the design and implementation of the intervention were traced within the cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) systemic framework. Findings revealed (a) although collective actions in designing and implementing the intervention created both new environmental conditions and disequilibria in existing ones, the changing conditions did not always lead to changes in teaching practices (b) teachers' internal representation of understanding socio-constructivism hindered them in designing and delivering a socio-constructivist lesson plan because they interpreted socio-constructivism as an in class activity that students solve on their own.