William E. Blanton

Effects of Participation in the Fifth Dimension on Far Transfer

The Fifth Dimension is a distributed literacy consortium comprised of after-school programs located in Boys and Girls Clubs, YM & YWCAs, recreation centers, and public schools across America, Mexico, Australia, Sweden, and Russia. The Fifth Dimension is also a mixed activity system designed to continue the projection of a second psychology [1] and to instantiate cultural-historical activity theory [2]. At the macro level the Fifth Dimension is a cultural system containing rules, artifacts, divisions of labor, and outcomes that appropriate local Fifth Dimension cultures. The four overarching goals of the Fifth Dimension are: 1) to create sustainable activity systems in different institutional settings that instantiate cultural-historical activity theory, 2) provide contexts for children to master knowledge and skills and acquire practices mediating cognitive and social development, 3) deepen our understanding of how the social and individual create each other, and 4) to provide a context in which undergraduates from disciplines such as developmental psychology, communications, and teacher education have opportunities to connect theory with practice and at the same time deliver community service to children in the local community.

A diary as a tool for mediating reading teacher activity

Abstract This study explores the use of a diary as a tool to mediate the strategic reading instruction of classroom teachers. The research is based on cultural‐historical activity theory and argues that human beings use tools to mediate their behavior. During weekly seminars, twelve teachers discussed the current literature related to research‐based reading instruction strategies. In the next phase of the study, researchers modeled how the knowledge from the literature on reading instruction could be used in instructional decision making with a basal reading program and regularly observed the teachers in their classrooms. Teachers used a diary as a tool for thinking about, planning, and implementing reading instruction. Analysis of data revealed that a diary may be an important media‐tional tool in helping teachers to access knowledge acquired during in‐service education and regulating their instructional activity.