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L I T E R A C Y  &  N U M E R A C Y  S T U D I E S  V O L  1 9  N O  1  2 0 1 1  3 
 

The Use of Activity Theory in Literacy Research: 
Working and developing a vocational portfolio and 
the interaction of the two activities 
 
ZOE NIKOLAIDOU  

  

Abstract 

In this paper, I show the relevance of using Activity Theory in the 

study of situated literacy. In order to do that, I draw on ethnographic data 

collected during a six-month period that focuses on the literacy practices of a 

warehouse administrator who studies on a work-basis for the completion of a 

National Vocational Qualification in the UK. The employee’s work context 

and the process of studying for a qualification are examined here as two 

distinct activity systems, within which various literacy events are enacted and 

literacy practices are developed. The result is a detailed study of the 

interaction of these two activity systems, and it becomes clear that work 

practices and qualification practices are connected in many ways. One of the 

most important connecting factors is the vocational portfolio, which acts as a 

boundary object between the two distinct yet highly recontextualising activity 

systems. 

Introduction 

In this paper, it is suggested that the study of literacy as a social skill 

can be better understood with the help of Activity Theory (AT) as a heuristic 

framework. Because of its socially constructed nature, literacy is often 

witnessed in multi-contextual environments, where people engage with more 

than one parallel activity. In such cases, it is often difficult to understand and 

describe the multiple reading and writing processes that take place and the 

purposes of the texts being produced. An example of such a case is 

vocational education, where people are often working and studying at the 

same time. By examining work and vocational studies as two distinct activity 

systems and by performing an activity system analysis we can examine, in a 

more systematic way, what is going on when these practitioners/students read 

and write.    

Literacy is understood in this paper as a contextualised activity and is 

examined within the framework of the New Literacy Studies (NLS). The 

field of NLS is central to any study of context ‘since almost all contexts are 

in some way textually mediated’ (Satchwell and Ivaniç 2007:305). In a 

similar fashion, AT places context at the heart of every human action. 

Human actions are interpreted when taking into account the elements that 

constitute the context of an activity system. For AT contexts are neither 

perceived as ‘containers of behaviour’, which human agency has not affected 



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in the least, nor as purely linguistic and symbolic entities that can be created 

independently of the deeper socio-economic structures (Engeström1990). On 

the contrary, AT perceives context as a situation under the complete control 

of individuals and therefore Engeström argues that contexts are ‘constructed 

by humans, not by superhuman agents’ (1990:78). An activity system 

consists of one or more subjects, the aim (object) the subjects wish to 

accomplish and the mediating means they use in order to achieve this aim. 

Equally important elements are the community that surrounds and takes part 

(directly or not) in the activity, the division of labour between the subjects 

and the rules that underpin the whole system. 

The study of literacy practices under the prism of AT is given a new 

light. At a methodological level, AT gives the researcher tools with which to 

analyse and interpret ethnographic data. By viewing literacy events within the 

framework of an activity system, it is possible to gain a clearer understanding 

of the actors involved in the literacy events and the aim they wish to 

accomplish. The concept of the community helps interpret the role of other 

actors that are, directly or indirectly, involved in the activity. Brandt’s (1995) 

sponsors of literacy, for example, can be analysed as part of an activity’s 

community and therefore provide a clearer picture of the role they play in 

creating and shaping literacy practices. Finally, the mediating factors of rules 

and division of labor have a major role to play in developing the practices of 

both the system as a whole and the actions of the individual. Embedding AT 

therefore in the study of literacy results in a more accurate contextualisation 

of literacy events and in a more valid interpretation of the meaning of literacy 

practices. It can be even argued that AT provides the researcher with the 

necessary tools to move from the identification of literacy events to that of 

literacy practices, exactly because events are not examined as isolated 

activities but as the part of a bigger whole.  

An additional aspect of literacy research that is given new light under 

the use of AT is the changing nature of literacy practices. An activity system 

is a situation of human actions that involves multiple and ongoing 

contradictions and consequent expansions. One of the major principles of an 

activity system is historicity, the fact that every activity system has a past 

and possibly a future and that during its lifetime the activity has taken 

various forms and meanings. Studying literacy events and practices within an 

activity system, the researcher is given the possibility to follow the trajectory 

of literacy practices and, maybe more importantly, to interpret the reasons 

for change. The introduction of a new working system in a workplace, for 

example, can result in a dramatic alteration of the literacy practices drawn 

upon by the employees. The same can happen in the case of the introduction 

of new work roles or new working rules, of staff changes or even more minor 

changes like venue, schedule, etc. All these factors influence the development 

of literacy practices within an activity and therefore explain their ongoing 



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changing nature. By examining therefore the use of literacy within an activity 

system it is possible to contextualise it not only in place but also in time and, 

if so wished, to trace the historic changes that literacy practices have 

undergone.  

Earlier studies have already made a combined use of literacy research 

and AT. Sylvia Scribner (1997:231) argued that: ‘we may conceptualize 

literacy as a set of activities satisfying distinctive motives related to the 

written language: creating distinctive genres of communication, for example, 

or transmitting information over time and space’.  More recently, Russel 

(2005) found that common in the two theories are the central role of textual 

mediation, the situated character of local events and practices, the range of 

studies beyond formal schooling (e.g. in workplaces, homes, neighbourhoods, 

etc) and the focus on multimodal texts. In a study of the literacy practices 

involved in a house-building project in South Africa (Kell 2006) AT is used 

as the basic unit of analysis. Kell problematizes the size of an activity system 

and asks the question of where such a system begins and ends. In a study of 

the literacy practices of students in Further Education, Ivanič (2006) uses the 

framework of AT in order to discuss the formation and transformation of the 

students’ identities. In a different study, Keating (2005:115) argues that 

identities ‘are being forged in the tension between the subjectivities that 

emerge from the way the activity is being performed at a particular time, 

space and social configuration’.  

The above studies have made use of AT and literacy research and have 

brought the two together in various ways. What could be missing, however, 

is a detailed description of the way situated literacy practices can be analysed 

within the AT framework. This is, therefore, my aim in this paper, that is, to 

suggest an empirical way of using these two theories of context under one 

common framework.  

The study 

The case study discussed here originates from a six-month long 

ethnographic study, in which I set out to examine the literacy practices drawn 

upon by National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) candidates when 

developing a competence-based vocational portfolio. What I was mainly 

interested in finding out was whether the literacy practices existing at the 

candidates’ workplace had an impact upon the practices drawn upon when 

developing the portfolio and vice versa. The research involved an 

ethnographic study of two work-based NVQ candidates, who were observed 

and interviewed while at work and while developing their portfolios.  

Here I will discuss the case of Derry, a warehouse employee who was 

also a candidate for an NVQ on Business and Administration. During this 

study, Derry had a twofold role: he was a warehouse employee and at the 

same time an NVQ candidate. I therefore consider Derry as the main subject 



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in two distinct activities, the ‘workplace activity system’ and ‘the 

qualification activity system’. Such a distinction enables me to examine the 

two activities in depth and to reach results concerning the interaction and 

interdependence of the two activities. What is important to note is that 

Derry’s work tasks and his work on the qualification are studied here as two 

activities because he perceived them this way. He considered his job as a 

completely different process from the work he did on his NVQ portfolio, and 

he tried to keep the two activities separate from each other.  

The workplace activity system 

The activity system described here takes place in the administrative 

department of the warehouse and focuses on Derry, the actions he performs 

in order to complete his work tasks and the mediating tools he uses in order 

to reach this goal.  

Derry was a man in his early forties working in the administration 

department of a warehouse. His work role involved a variety of tasks, but his 

main role was to receive faulty products returned to the warehouse by 

retailers or individual customers, and to assess their faults. He had been in 

this post for seventeen years and so far he had not obtained any other 

qualifications or degrees.  

The object of an activity has been described by Leontiev (1978) as the 

key to understanding the activity and he has argued that the object is driven 

by people’s needs. The object in this specific activity is to process the 

administrative tasks in an effective way and to ensure the good functioning of 

the department. Derry, as part of a larger work community, has a certain role 

in the activity and that is to assess the faulty products. He contributes to the 

common goal by performing a variety of tasks, e.g. communicating with 

clients, logging products in the software, assessing products, etc. At the same 

time, Derry has an individual object which is to complete his own tasks as 

effectively as possible and to respond to the demands placed on his work 

role. A question that could be asked here is why Derry and everyone else in 

the activity is interested in the good functioning of their department. This can 

be answered by Kaptelinin’s (2005) distinction between the object and the 

motive of an activity. An individual motive can be identified easier than a 

collective one and in Derry’s case it has to do with his need to keep his job 

and possibly advance further in it.  

The semiotic and symbolic tools within an activity system mediate 

between the subjects and their object. When examining the mediating tools of 

the administrative department, a rich inventory of literacy practices drawn 

upon by the community members emerges. For example, a major part of 

Derry’s work tasks involved correspondence as he exchanged letters and 

emails both with clients and retailers. Additionally, he worked with 

specialized computer software in order to document his decisions. Software 



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was also used when processing the stock that was returned to the warehouse 

and also in order to communicate internally with other branches or with the 

central offices of the company.  

The tools in an activity system are not restricted to signs but equally 

refer to the material objects present in any activity. In the administrative 

department, the list of material artifacts is a long one and here I take into 

consideration only those that Derry mentioned during our discussions. The 

actual products that he assessed play an important role in his everyday 

material encounters. The whole process of returning the products from and to 

the warehouse is also highly materially mediated. Apart from the 

correspondence, Derry used envelopes, prepaid bags and parcels, in order to 

complete the transfers.  Other objects such as barcode scanning devices, file 

cabinets, shelves and boxes complete the picture of a modern and materially 

mediated workplace. 

The community of the warehouse at a workplace is a rather extended 

one. Derry is just a member of a large number of staff in the administrative 

section of the warehouse. Some of the people who form his immediate 

community are his line manager, his colleagues in the administration and the 

retailers. All these members have different roles in the activity (division of 

labour), but all contribute to how it functions effectively. The community 

plays an important role also in shaping the literacy practices present in the 

activity, as a lot of the members participate in the literacy events together 

with Derry and therefore have an impact upon their shape and meaning. 

Finally, the administrative department’s activity system is penetrated by 

rules, which influence Derry’s and the other members’ work practices, 

including literacy practices. According to Derry, new rules are introduced in 

the department regularly, as for example new communication systems. In the 

following section, I show how such new rules create contradictions and 

subsequent expansion in the activity and how they influence the community’s 

literacy practices. 

Contradictions and expansion in the workplace activity 

The identification of contradictions within an activity system is an 

important analytical step. Contradictions are described by Engeström 

(2001:137) as: ‘historically accumulating structural tensions within and 

between activity systems’.  Contradictions are seen as having a positive 

impact on activity systems as they are often the cause for transformation and 

progress. 

A basic contradiction in this workplace activity system took place 

every time new software was introduced for internal and external 

communications. In this case, all staff in the administrative department had 

to learn how to work on the new system and the fact that this had happened 



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rather often in the last couple of years had created some frustration. When I 

discussed the new software with Derry, he gave me the following answer: 

 

I wasn’t fully in to it to start with and you’re just learning a lot 

of things when you’ve done them a few times you start to 

remember and you pick it up and you get into … and then once 

you get into it you get more speed up and you get more quicker 

and more confident in yourself […] experience means a lot 

really. (Interview extract) 

 

The process of learning was a tiresome one and Derry was initially 

frustrated because he did not agree with these changes. He thought the old 

system was more effective and therefore found it even more difficult to learn 

the new one.  At the end, when Derry and the other members of the activity 

came to grips with the new system, what was previously a contradiction led 

to the activity’s expansion. The activity was not the same anymore as a new 

mediating tool was introduced, which had an impact upon the division of 

labour, that is, on the old work structures. New social practices had 

developed and within them new literacy practices, as the new system required 

more written and less oral communication.  

The qualification activity system 

In this section, I discuss Derry’s attempts to obtain an NVQ as a 

separate activity system. Even though Derry works for his qualification on a 

work-basis (as opposed to being a student in a vocational college), the 

activity is discussed as a different one from his workplace activity. This is 

mainly because the objects of the two activities are different and there are 

new members involved and new rules penetrating the qualification process. 

The similarities of the two activities are the focus on Derry as a member of 

the activity (even though new members are involved), the space where the 

activity is taking place and some of the mediating tools, which however have 

a different function in this new activity.   

In this activity system, Derry is again the primary subject since he is 

an employee studying towards completing an NVQ in Business and 

Administration. A tutor visited him at the warehouse every fortnight and 

helped him build his vocational portfolio, which was an absolute requirement 

in order to obtain the qualification.  

The object of this activity therefore is the development of Derry’s 

portfolio and the possible outcome would be the certification. Derry’s 

individual motivation for entering this activity is described here vividly: 

 

My NVQ, I can apply for positions that before I couldn’t apply 

for. You see, quite often you see jobs advertisements in the 



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newspapers, it’s all about themselves, what the work involves 

and then at the end of it perhaps it might say must have NVQ 

level 2. So obviously if you don’t have an NVQ then you can’t 

apply for that job because it’s put in a direct straight way. 

Whereas I’ll get my NVQ and I’ll see an advert that says ‘must 

have an NVQ level 2’ well I’ll have one, therefore I can apply 

for the job and go along and have an interview and perhaps I 

might be fortunate and get the position, whereas if I didn’t have 

the NVQ I wouldn’t even go that far. So it’s another string in 

my bone so to speak. (Interview extract) 

 

As the main drivers of the activity, objects tend to remain stable within 

activity systems. However, a shift in the object of activity is not rare and 

Derry’s case demonstrates that within an activity new objects can be created 

that can co-exist together with the initial ones. The new object will be further 

discussed under the expansion of the activity.  

 The vocational portfolio that is required for an NVQ should 

demonstrate prior professional knowledge and experience. The texts added in 

the portfolio are analysed as mediating artifacts. For the portfolio, Derry had 

to complete two mandatory units and three optional ones. Each one of the 

units had a set of performance indicators and knowledge criteria for which 

Derry had to provide evidence. This meant a large number of texts, which 

Derry had to arrange in a folder. The evidence could be anything from work 

emails up to his descriptions of his work tasks and tutor observations. In the 

following extract, he describes some of the texts he had to produce as 

evidence for his portfolio: 

 

He [the tutor] asked me to do various documents and print-

outs and screen dumps of my daily working tasks, inspections, 

response system, demand system so I had an illustration and 

then do a little write-up about it, a little caption of what both 

diagrams, meetings, saying that this is what I’ve processed, 

functions, defective goods, etc. And then do a brief statement 

about it and then after I did all these captions … then I did 

storyboards of my job, [...] step by step guide really, putting 

into texture that somebody can read, get the gist of what I 

actually do on a day basis. (Interview extract) 

 

In this extract, it can be seen that the role of literacy as a mediator for 

the portfolio creation is central. Derry got involved in numerous literacy 

events in order to produce texts that he would use as evidence for his 

portfolio. Even the act of putting the portfolio together was a literacy event 

and indeed a rather complex one.  



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Oral interaction was also frequent within literacy events. Before 

working on each unit, Derry had a meeting with his tutor, discussed the 

criteria with him and clarified uncertainties. One reason for the increased role 

of oral communication is probably the fact that the performance indicators 

were not followed by any written guidelines. Therefore, interaction with the 

tutor was the only way that Derry could make sense of what was required of 

him in order to successfully complete the portfolio. In the following extract, 

he comments upon the written statements he was asked to create:     

 

Yes, it was a new style of writing for me and … it wasn’t so 

difficult, because explaining something that I’ve done and I 

know so well […] I’m fully aware of what I’m doing, 

inspections and other things, so when I come to actually 

writing down what I do, this is what I do. Yeah, you just flow it, 

I was OK at doing that I was quite … quite good. I did make 

several notes first of all … I did little notes of what I did and 

then read through it all and then altered one or two little 

sentences around, so that it sounded better when actually 

reading it. (Interview extract) 

 

The community involved in the qualification activity system is indeed a 

learning community. More workers in the warehouse were working their way 

towards a similar qualification and the workplace could be described as a 

learning environment. The HR department encouraged the employees to 

register for qualifications and welcomed research projects, similar to mine. 

Derry’s line manager was particularly helpful with the creation of the 

portfolio and gave the NVQ candidates the opportunity to work on it during 

work hours when necessary. In this way, even the rules of the activity were 

helpful mediating elements, as they enabled Derry to work on the portfolio in 

a more effective way. The community of this activity is extended even 

outside the workplace and reaches the college where Derry was registered as 

a work-based student. The warehouse worked closely with the college and the 

college tutor was familiar with the majority of the workers. In the following 

section, I will show how this learning community resulted in influencing the 

whole activity and making learning the main mediating tool and eventually 

the object of the activity. 

Contradictions and expansion in the qualification activity system 

The strongest contradiction in the qualification activity system lies 

between the NVQ candidates and the portfolio as a mediating tool. Even 

though Derry found it easy to write descriptions of his work tasks, the 

situation changed when he was asked to write about situations outside his 

familiar job routines. For the last unit of the portfolio, he had to provide 



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evidence for performance indicators that were relevant to mutual respect, 

diversity and effective communication practices. In this case, Derry was not 

sure how to approach the evidence collection: 

 

I would say things like team working and communication is 

relevant to my work, we should write about, but the other 

aspects, especially diversity and stuff, it’s not … in the job 

tasks, I’m doing story boards about something not being fully 

aware of it. (Interview extract) 

 

In this case, Derry was asked to get involved in new literacy events. 

His texts would not be about situations that were familiar to him, but about 

new concepts and this meant that he had to do some additional work. Another 

way of thinking is that these concepts cannot have been new to an 

experienced administrator, but they were presented in a new discourse, that 

of performance indicators. Derry found it difficult to decipher the discourse 

and translate it to a language and to situations that were familiar to him.  

In order to meet the demands of this unit, Derry decided to look for 

help outside the workplace: 

 

on the last couple of units I have done a bit of revising and 

looked for a bit of help from library books […] Yes I decided 

to, because I thought struggling all on my own I wasn’t putting 

it probably in any good context, you know, professionally it’s 

not good, so I did a little bit of studying and looked and made a 

few notes. (Interview extract) 

 

Derry had started working at the library early in the process when he 

realised that he could not concentrate at work. He thought that his two 

activities (working and creating a portfolio) were separate from each other 

and did not like it when one took time and space from the other. The library 

was a good place for him because he did not have a computer at home. Later 

on, his eagerness to ‘work professionally’ on his NVQ led him to the decision 

to buy a computer and a printer at home: 

 

and then I decided to get my own pc, I’ve got my own pc now so 

the going to town stopped and now I can do it in my own 

luxury, you know, I’m home, get a cup of tea, come home from 

work and I do it on the pc now. I type it at home and I found 

I’m doing more work now because I’ve got more access to it, I 

give a little bit more time. (Interview extract) 

 



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Despite having a computer at home, Derry continued going to the 

library in order to get some help with his writing. This resulted in the 

development of new literacy practices, since Derry had now learned how to 

use the library in an effective way. According to Engeström (2001:137), 

expansion within an activity system is accomplished when ‘the object and the 

motive of the activity are reconceptualised to embrace a radically wider 

horizon of possibilities than in the previous mode of the activity’. In this 

activity, Derry is dealing with new horizons as learning takes over and 

becomes a mediating means in itself. It is through engaging in new 

communicative and literacy practices that he is finally able to complete the 

final unit of the portfolio. Within the activity system one can distinguish new 

mediating means, new members in the learning community, new rules and 

new roles. As an inevitable result, the object is no longer just the 

certification. Now it has to do more with being professional and learning: 

 

because I’ve studied things and looked up and revised things a 

little bit, it’s given me more knowledge, you see, it improved me 

as a person and then I’ve done a storyboard on why 

communication is important and diversity and stuff like that, so 

each single subject has given me some knowledge of it. 

(Interview extract) 

 

In an adaptation of the activity system triangle made by Ivanič, the 

concept of ‘learning’ is placed at the very heart of the triangle. Learning is 

described as an activity ‘always embedded in the word ‘doing’’ (Ivanič 

2006:9) and the model is schematically represented in the following figure:

  

  

 
Activity System as adapted by Ivanič 2006 

 

In Derry’s case, learning constitutes the major expansion in the 

activity system in which he was participating. By collecting the evidence for 

his portfolio, or else by ‘doing’, he reached new levels of knowledge and new 



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meanings for his work practices. As a subject in the activity, Derry used 

literacy related mediating means in order to achieve his object, the 

completion of the NVQ and to reach his wider purpose that is, the possibility 

to apply for a better job. Learning was not one of his initial goals in this 

system, but was nevertheless achieved in the process. Learning can also be 

explained here by Derry’s participation in simultaneous activities. A different 

analysis would be to argue that Derry was acting within different 

communities of practices (Wenger 1998). Boundary crossing between 

multiple communities of practice, as opposed to constantly acting within one 

and the same community, can result in more possibilities for learning (Fuller 

and Unwin 2004).  

The final expansion within this system took place when Derry 

overcame his fears about his knowledge and decided to apply for a different 

job: 

 

and I made a phone call last night to jobs advertisement and 

it’s about credit control, but I don’t know what that fully 

involves, but it says full training it doesn’t say anything about 

NVQs, but I have got the knowledge of pc work and I’ve got the 

knowledge of the administrational things, whereas previously I 

didn’t have that in my job role. So therefore it’s given me more 

confidence, so I rung up last night and someone will be ringing 

me back this evening. (Interview extract) 

 

The fact that Derry found the confidence to apply for a better post 

shows that the learning that took place in the qualification activity system 

had a strong influence upon the workplace activity. The interaction and 

interrelationship of the two activities is an issue explored in the following 

section.   

Network relations between the two activity systems 

I have examined so far two activity systems with different objects and 

outcomes, but with a common subject acting within them. The two activities 

seem to share more than Derry as an actor. They share texts as mediating 

means and some of the community members. However, we are indeed dealing 

with two separate activities, as their objects are very different: in the first 

case the object is work related, whereas in the second case the object is 

related to education and learning. The question I ask here is if and how these 

two activities interact. Going back to my literacy interest, I wish to know if 

the new literacy practices developed in each activity remain within the 

boundaries of the activity or if they move out of them, enter new activities 

and possibly change form and meaning in the process.   



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The concept of polycontextuality is discussed by Engeström, 

Engeström, and Kärkkäinen (1995:320) as a situation where participants of 

activity systems engage ‘not only in multiple simultaneous tasks and task-

specific participation frameworks within one and the same activity. They are 

also increasingly involved in multiple communities of practice’. In this way, 

polycontextuality refers not only to actions but also to entire activity systems 

in which subjects participate simultaneously. In fact, some close connections 

have been found between AT and Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice 

and an activity system has been described as ‘a complex and relatively 

enduring ‘community of practice’ that often takes the shape of an institution’ 

(Engeström, Engeström, and Kärkkäinen 1995).  

Derry was a member of the community of practice of his workplace 

and more specifically of his department, since he had the same work routines 

and goals as the rest of his colleagues. At the same time, he was a member of 

the NVQ community of practice, collaborating with his tutor and colleagues 

towards the completion of the portfolio. Derry moved from his familiar 

workplace community towards the new and complex activity of vocational 

qualifications. ‘Crossing boundaries involves encountering difference, 

entering onto territory in which we are unfamiliar and, to some extent 

therefore, unqualified’ (Suchman 1994:25). For AT, boundary crossing is a 

consequence of contradictions and expansion inherent in the activity system. 

For example, there was a strong contradiction in the workplace activity, since 

the warehouse was soon going to close down. Consequently, Derry decided to 

register for an NVQ in order to more easily get a new job. The expansion of 

the workplace activity system led Derry to be involved in a new system, that 

of the qualification, where he encountered difference and was initially 

unqualified.  

Boundary crossing takes place when subjects move across multiple 

activity systems and transfer tools, ideas and discourses. In Derry’s case, the 

element most frequently transferred from one system to another is texts. The 

process of recontextualisation is described by Barton and Hamilton 

(2005:23) as texts that ‘move across context, often changing their meanings 

and functions but nevertheless providing a fixed reference point in different 

events’. In the two activity systems under discussion, recontextualisation 

takes place with a direction from the workplace to the qualification system, 

as Derry uses familiar work related texts and uses them with a different 

meaning as evidence for his portfolio.  

These texts take the role of a ‘boundary object’. Boundary objects 

have been defined by Star (1989) as: ‘objects that are both plastic enough to 

adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, 

yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites’. As the texts 

are transferred from the workplace to the portfolio, they lose their initial 

function - texts used at work - and acquire a new role, that of evidence for 



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the performance criteria for Derry’s portfolio. Therefore these texts are 

plastic enough since their function changes, but they are also robust enough 

as their format remains the same. At the same time, the whole portfolio is 

also a boundary object, moving between the workplace and the learning 

activity. It starts as a collection of evidence of Derry’s knowledge and 

experience but at the end it expands into something more substantive. Derry 

started reflecting on the textual artefacts produced at work and the practices 

that these communicate. The workplace texts had taken a new meaning and 

through the creation of the portfolio they became part of new and more 

meaningful literacy practices.   

Polycontextuality and boundary crossing between activities often 

result in ‘hybrid’ systems. The multivoicedness and the final expansion of the 

two activity systems attribute them with the status of hybridity. The 

qualification activity system is penetrated, to a large extent, by the workplace 

activity system and vice versa. Derry’s job role defined the NVQ he 

registered for and he often had to go back to his work tasks to draw evidence 

for his portfolio. Additionally, he later used his NVQ when applying for a 

job.  

The hybridity of the two activities is also evident in the mediating tools 

that constitute them. The portfolio is a hybrid creation as it contains texts 

coming from a variety of sources and used for a variety of purposes. Even 

though Derry created certain texts only for the purposes of the portfolio, e.g. 

screen dumps and written statements, the portfolio would not serve its 

purpose if evidence from the actual work practices was not included. At the 

same time, the portfolio cannot stand on its own in any of the two activities. 

It is created within the qualification activity, but it only acquires meaning 

once it has been transferred to the workplace activity, as it is only there that 

Derry can use it as proof of prior knowledge. Therefore, hybridity penetrates 

most elements of both activities and defines their shape and their function.  

Having as a starting point both activity systems and continuously 

moving across them, Derry creates a third space between qualification and 

workplace: ‘From the perspective of activity theory, the third space might be 

considered an expanded activity in which the object of activity and the 

activity itself is reorganized, resulting in new opportunities for learning’ 

(Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez and Tejeda 1999:287). The creation of a third 

space here takes the form of learning. Derry drew resources from both 

activities and became skilful in new communicative and literacy practices. 

These practices are likely to exit the boundaries of the two activities and 

accompany Derry in his involvement in new activity systems. 

Concluding comments  

In this paper, I have shown an example of analysing literacy practices 

within the analytical framework of AT. By focusing on a case study of a 



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warehouse employee who creates a portfolio in order to obtain an NVQ, I 

have been able to discuss the uses of literacy within two activity systems and 

their interaction. More specifically, I have argued that literacy practices are a 

primary mediating tool in most activity systems, as literacy is present and 

plays a significant role in most expressions of current social practices. AT is 

useful in that is helps place literacy in a wider context, enabling the 

researcher to take into account factors that influence the development of 

literacy practices, such as the object of the activity, the rules that penetrate it, 

the roles that define it, and the contradictions that underpin it.  

In this case study, literacy learning plays a dominant role as it takes 

place in the interaction between two activities. Derry developed new modes 

of communication brought about by his need to recontextualise some of the 

work texts with which he was very familiar. By entering a new activity and 

engaging in a learning community, he was forced to approach the same texts 

from a different perspective and find new uses and meanings for them. The 

portfolio became a boundary object and obtained a hybrid meaning, shaped 

by the two activities which influenced its creation.  

The importance of AT in understanding the nature of the portfolio and 

the portfolio texts is significant. These texts were created in the interaction of 

two activities and this would be a difficult result to reach without the parallel 

analysis of the activity systems. An AT analysis provided me with the tools 

to analyse the same texts as mediating means in one case (the workplace 

activity) and as activity objects in the other case (the qualification activity). 

This parallel examination led me to the question of what changed the use of 

these texts from mediating tools (workplace texts) to activity objects 

(portfolio texts). The concept of recontextualisation becomes clearer with an 

activity system analysis, as it makes it easier to understand not only why the 

use and the meaning of texts change but also what happens to them once they 

have changed. In this way, it becomes possible to study not only the 

trajectory of certain texts, but most importantly the historic development of 

literacy practices as they move from one activity system to the other. We 

follow literacy practices as they become robust boundary objects that can 

even penetrate new activities, they can change them and get changed by them 

and start, in this way, a new circle of recontextualisations.  

 

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