Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research

Reijo Miettinen, Professor

Email: reijo.miettinen@helsinki.fi
Tel.: +358 9 191 44575
Fax: +358 9 191 44579

Postal address:
Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research
Department of Education
P.O. Box 26
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Current Activities

Working for a decade in a big public research center, the Technical Research Center of Finland, I continuously faced the problem of organizing research work and groups and of promoting innovations in collaborative networks. My research work is oriented to creating understanding and practical tools to solve these problems.

I share with my research group an interest in two lines of research. The first one is the network interaction and learning in innovations processes, especially the conditions and means of producer-user collaboration. The second line of research focuses on the organization and transepistemic network collaboration of research groups and especially the transformation of university research in the changing society. This research has been inspired by an attempt to pursue dialogue between activity theory and the approaches to studying research practices within Science and Technology Studies (STS), such as actor network theory, symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology.

In addition, I have three personal areas of scientific interest. The first one comprises the comparison of different concepts of practice and activity as solutions to the Cartesian dualism in human and social sciences. Thus far, I have elaborated on the relationships between activity theory and actor network theory as well as on the complementarities between the concept of practice in Chicago pragmatism and activity theory.

The second area concerns conceptions of learning and critical study of the theoretical bases of adult education theory. Presently I am evaluating the meaning of the concept of constructivism in educational discourse.

The third personal area of interest concerns the problem of creativity in science and technology, which has connections to several issues in science studies, such as the possibility of the logic of discovery, the nature of problem solving, and the significance of the transepistemic arenas for the emergence of novelty.

Short Biography

I graduated majoring in psychology at the University of Helsinki in 1976. From the year 1980, I started working as an educational planner in the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT) being in charge of the in house-training of (about 1500) researchers, comprised mainly of engineers and natural scientists. This work posed a challenge of helping research laboratories organize their work and develop the capabilities of researchers. In trying to face this almost impossible tasks, I started to follow up and read the literature and results of science and technology studies and set to transform some of their key ideas into means and contents for the training and in-house consultation of the laboratories. I also made my first empirical study on research work at the VTT Reactor Laboratory.

In 1990, a Group for Technology Studies was founded in the Center. I in it as a researcher worked during the years 1990-1994 initiating studies on research-based innovation processes. The first study was on the research work of cellulose degrading enzymes in the VTT Biotechnology Laboratory and their use in pulp and paper industry. My interest in developing an approach inspired by activity theory and I also utilized the ideas of the constructivist sociology of science, especially actor network theory's idea of innovation as a simultaneous development of an artifact and network of actors related to it.

I went on working with the problems of learning in working life and organization of training and development of capabilities in work organization. I conducted a study on the work of the supervising teachers in a commercial college. The study included an experimental intervention of two years in the college, based on the idea of developmental work research. The end report of this study, covering an analysis of a five year period of development project in the college constituted my dissertation. I defended it in 1994 in the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Helsinki. My interest in networks of learning crossing the boundaries between schools and other societal practices stems from this project.

In 1995 I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, in the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition. After my return to Finland I took charge of the professorship of developmental work research at the Department of Education at the University of Helsinki at the Center of Activity Theory and Developmenatal work research. Presently I hold a professorship for Innovation and Research Work at the University of Helsinki.

Documents

		Selected List of Publications rm_pub.html	Web Page 13.25 KB