A Companion to Research in Teacher Education

understand how purposes and motives are embedded in practices and are revealed
in what we do in the activities that make up a practice (Leont’ev 1978 ). Key
concepts for him were theobject of activityandobject motive. These can be seen as
the task being worked on and the motive for action that it calls forth. The object
motive arises through an interaction of the person with the task, where the actor
interprets and responds to the demands of the task using the concepts that matter in
the practice in which they are located. For example, a parent, a teacher and a
football coach may see the same child in very different ways and therefore want to
work on their developmental trajectory differently.
Like Vygotsky, Leont’ev was concerned with the connection between individual
and society, recognising that the individual motives shaping actions on tasks arise at
the level of society. Hedegaard has drawn on Leont’ev to create a useful heuristic
(Fig.37.1), which allows us to see the relationship between societal purposes, how
they are mediated by the motives embedded in institutional practices and are played
out or worked around in individual actions in activities (Hedegaard 2012 ).
The four analytic planes in Fig.37.1 are: societal priorities reflected, for
example, in policy documents; institutional practices such as those found in schools
or university departments, each with their own motives or objectives; activity
settings such as a classroom or team meeting where each activity will carry
demands, which may or may not be recognised by participants; and the intentional
actions of individuals in the activities.
If we use Fig.37.1to consider what teachers do in a teaching activity we can ask
useful questions about the vertical alignment of motives, purposes and priorities in
the third column. The answers can sometimes reveal considerable discrepancies
between planes, for example where national policies based on high-stakes testing
inhibit the use of teaching methods such as talk in group work in English language
classes. If we also use the model to examine alignment in purposes across col-
laborating organisations such as a school-university partnership we are likely tofind
large horizontal discrepancies between what matters in institutional practices. For
example, creating tomorrow’s teachers might be the major motive in the initial
teacher education (ITE) practices of the university department; while recruiting
good science teachers might be the major motive for a school science department

Entity Process Dynamic

Society Political economy Societal needs/conditions

Institution (e.g. a

school, department ,

team ...)

Practice Values/motives /objectives

Activity setting (e.g.

a lesson, meeting ...)

Activity/situation (with

potential for individual

learning)

Motivation/demands

Person Actions in an activity (which

may or may not give rise to

learning)

Motive/intentions

Fig. 37.1 Planes of analysis (after Hedegaard 2012 )

558 A. Edwards