design aspects has the potential to build conceptual bridges between student
teachers’life worlds and institutional goals.
Without going into further detail, our notion of design draws on
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory since this is a theory of transformation, it
connects the individual to the collective, mind to social and material context, and
identifies a potentially shared object of activity as a collective motive for learning
and development (Engeström et al. 1999 ). What has recently attracted increased
interest is how individual agency relates to the collective and contextual dimensions
of this perspective. The following section addresses this issue.
49.3.2 Double Stimulation
As the complexity of learning environments increases there is a need to capture the
relationship between tasks, available resources and agency together with the
institutional affordances that are regulated by, e.g. white papers, exam guidelines or
less formal contextual conventions. In our use of design, this relationship amounts
to the most common use of a unit of analysis. In particular, we have examined how
the use of available cultural resources (material, social, linguistic) is intrinsically
linked to task challenges and responses, and how such resources are appropriated
and put to use by learners (Lund and Rasmussen 2008 ). Thus, the notion of double
stimulation can explain how subjects convert external means into object-oriented
activity. If available resources or tools do not facilitate the untangling of the
problem at hand it is simply not relevant for participants to pick them up. This
relationship is at the heart of Vygotsky’s( 1978 ) notion of double stimulation, a
principle for studying cognitive processes and development and not just results. In a
teacher education setting, typically thefirst stimulus would be the problem, chal-
lenge, task or assignment to which student teachers are expected to respond. The
second stimulus would be the available mediating tools or cultural resources.
However, it is important to note that Vygotsky described this relationship in
dynamic terms and where the second stimulus is not a discrete end point for this
process but,“Rather, we simultaneously offera second series of stimulithat have a
special function. In this way we are able to study the process of accomplishing a
task by the aid of specific auxiliary means”(p. 74, emphasis in the original). Note
that Vygotsky identifies the second stimulus in the plural—a series—as if he
somehow anticipated learning environments of high complexity.
However, we deviate somewhat from Vygotsky’s notion in two respects. The
first is related to Vygotsky’s conception of the second stimulus as being“neutral”;
that the available cultural tools (at least those used in his experiments) do not carry
any cultural-historical connotations or content. In current learning environments
including schools and teacher education we encounter a series of technological
means. Although such means may appear to be content neutral, they hold
inscriptions that point to certain organizational principles or activity, for example,
regarding division of labour and the conventions or rules that are enacted in or
730 J.M. Vestøl and A. Lund