Three planes of sociocultural activity

These notes are part of a series for the book. In this seminal work, Rogoff proposes a framework for analyzing pedagogy. The framework has three planes: institutional, interpersonal, and personal.

Rogoff, B. (1995) ‘Observing Sociocultural Activity on Three Planes: Participatory Appropriation, Guided Participation, and Apprenticeship’, in Hall, K., Murphy, P., and Soler, J. (eds) (2012) Pedagogy and Practice: Culture and Identities, London, SAGE Publications Ltd. in association with The Open University.

Outline

Apprenticeship
Guided participation
Participatory appropriation

Notes

Rogoff agrees with Vygotsky in using the activity as the unit of analysis, sharing the idea that to break the unit into any smaller pieces would mean no longer looking at the same thing — in the same way that studying a water molecule cannot be done by only studying hydrogen and oxygen separately. However, she looks at each part of an activity in a foreground, keeping in mind that the other parts are in the background.

Apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation: This paper looks at them separately but they are parts of a whole. Each reflect a different plane of focus. ‘To understand each requires the involvement of the others’ (Rogoff, 1995, p.59).

Each plane is discussed in the following table. Notes:

The associated learning processes of each plane work together to transform an activity.
The article uses Girl Scout cookie sales as an example for explaining the three planes.
The items for consideration in my context are drawn from the course study guide material for this article.
See also: The associated curricula is discussed in McCormick, R., and Murphy, P. (2000) ‘Curriculum: The Case for a Focus on Learning’.

	Community or institutional plane of focus	Interpersonal plane of focus	Personal plane of focus
About	Pedagogy comes out of this plane, in the form of policies and structures.	The pedagogy that comes out of the community plane mediates this one. On the interpersonal plane, you can see the effects that the beliefs of teachers and participants about learning are put into practice and help position people within.	On this plane, you can see the interaction between people.
Associated curricula	Specified curricula: The goals and content; outlined in policies	Enacted curricula: The instruction	Experienced curricula: A recognition of students' agency; the participants and their participation (for example, learning activities and assessment)
Associated learning processes	Apprenticeship: This is an organized activity. This is a metaphor that implies more than just an expert-novice dyad. It's a group of people. This can be work-, school-, or family-based. "...[A]ctive individuals participating with others in culturally organized activity that has as part of its purpose the development of mature participation in the activity by the less experienced people" (Rogoff, 1995, p. 60).	Guided participation: This has mutual involvement. It is similar to the community level, but the emphasis is on guidance. "The 'guidance' referred to in guided participation involves the direction offered by cultural and social values, as well as social partners; the 'participation' in guided participation refers to the observation, as well as hands-on involvement in an activity" (Rogoff, 1995, p. 60). This is the process of participating and negotiating meaning.	Participatory appropriation: Changing understanding through your own participation; a transformation process that happens as a result of participation in an activity -- this is a constant, non-static state that occurs during negotiation and participation. "[T]he personal process by which, through engagement in an activity, individuals change and handle a later situation in ways prepared by their own participation in the previous situation. This is a process of becoming, rather than acquisition..." (Rogoff, 1995, p. 60). The participants become competent in the activity and other similar activities.
Activities	Activities involve purpose, cultural constraints, resources, values, and cultural tools.	These are the everyday events between people, and between people and materials. Over time, these activities make up and change the cultural practices. Communication and coordination processes are central to guided participation. To analyze guided participation, you must understand the reasons or purposes behind the activities because that is what provides the motivation that spurs people's actions in the activities.	This is a good analogy: 'The size, shape, and strength of a child's leg is a function of the growth and use that are continually occurring; the child's leg changes, but we do not need to refer to the leg accumulating units of growth or of exercise. The past is not stored in the leg; the leg has developed to be as it is currently' (Rogoff, 1995, p. 68).
Activities, examples from Girl Scout cookie sales	Purpose: Money for camp and activities Cultural constraints and resources: From the parent level of the Girl Scout organization, and from the bakeries (deadlines, forms, deliveries) Values: Tradition, sales, ethics Cultural tools: Color-coded boxes and forms	Arrangements made between pairs of Scouts, or between Scouts and their parents or siblings in collecting and delivering cookies. Ideas for organizing cookies and for doing math is passed down from one generation to the next. Negotiating the use of resources and balancing responsibilities across pairs or across the troop.	Over time during the cookie sales activity, the Scouts take on more responsibilities as they become more comfortable with activities, including management of money and delivery of cookies.
Things to consider within my context	Distribution of responsibilities between myself and newcomers How I support and structure the newcomer's activities (coaching, modeling, listening, observing) How I helped the newcomer understand the reasons for the activities (our organization, its rules, and its culture) How time and materials were deployed as activity resources	Activities where there is interaction between myself and learners The discourse and negotiation of meaning, and activities that help the community value the newcomer's competence Collaborative activities designed to build relationships, how I support that dialogue, and the balance of reification and participation How some relationships are not even or do not have parity Resources and constraints such as schedules and deadlines, policy statements, to-do lists	Activities where I help learners reflect on their interactions How the newcomer participated Factors practices provide signs of identity to the newcomer How I conduct formative assessments to evaluate the newcomer's readiness to move to related activities.

Summary

‘From my perspective, orienting our inquiry by focusing on how people participate in sociocultural activity and how they change their participation demystifies the processes of learning and development. Rather than searching for the nature of internalization as a conduit from external bits of knowledge or skill to an internal repository, we look directly at the efforts of individuals, their companions, and the institutions they constitute and build upon to see development as grounded in the specifics and commonalities of those efforts, opportunities, constraints, and changes’ (Rogoff, 1995, p. 71).