"Labour education begins with an understanding of actual work life and moves promptly into action. It does not pause long to observe from a neutral position or to theorize. Yet complex situations like work cannot be understood without some kind of theoretical framework to hang information on and sort it out. Not just any theory will do, however. A theory that can help us understand what is going on at work has to have a place in it for conflict; a theory that masks the fundamental conflicts of work is worse than no theory at all. It also has to have a place for history. It has to enable us to study and work with the various forms of communication that happen in a workplace. Above all, it has to help us understand collective consciousness and talk about what it means for a person to be selected, or elected, out of a collective to do the job of representation on behalf of that collective in a context full of conflict. Finally, since education means change, we have to have available a way of talking about changing consciousness through education. Activity theory, or AT, does satisfy these requirements.

"In this session, we will first go over the key concepts of AT and talk about how they look in the world of labour education. Then we will take a real situation and work with it using these concepts."

Helena Worthen