Contributions of Yrjö Engeström’s Model to the Theoretical Development of University Teaching

Abstract

This article shows the epistemological and conceptual contributions of chapters IV and V of the doctoral thesis titled The Integration of ICT’s in Teaching at UCR:  A study from a complex-systemic approach of the faculty who got certified in the course Teach to the Future, university version in the timeframe 2003-2006, which was disserted in 2013. For this reason, the model for a system of teaching and learning developed by Yrjö Engeström (University of Helsinki) is discussed. This model integrates the principles of Systems Theory, Complexity Theory, the Sociocultural Paradigm and the Activity Theory (AT). The contributions of this model to the description, explanation, and understanding of university teaching, conceived as a “particular human activity” occurring within a “system of teaching and learning”, governed by structures, functions and relational dynamics are also reviewed. As well as how they define and make it possible to determine internal and external contexts which are, in turn, complex. Assuming teaching as a phenomenon of high complexity, but approachable to scientific research through Engeström’s model, opens limitless possibilities to the development of technologies –understood as applied scientific knowledge– to solve fundamental problems of teaching in contemporary higher education. Today, the need to define profiles and create strategies for the academic professors of universities has become one of the biggest challenges in the management of change and innovation in higher education. Hence, another relevant aspect of theoretical models is the ability to overcome the traditional, reductionist and mechanistic teaching practices in higher education in order to find realistic, effective and consistent solutions for emerging educational demands and new profiles of the university faculty, driving entry into a new phase of socio-historical development, known as the Information and Knowledge Society.