ABSTRACT

An individualist and Cartesian bias is noted in studies of teacher thinking. A more collaborative approach, based on cultural-historical activity theory, is suggested and elaborated. On this view, thinking is seen as embedded in practical collective activity, thus essentially as interactive, dialogic and argumentative. The activitytheoretical framework is applied in a study of a teacher team. The planning of a curriculum unit by the team is analyzed as a cycle of collaborative thinking. The planning discourse was characterized by a lack of pauses and conventional turntaking, by a prevalence of conditional statements and strings, and by continuous circling back and repetition of issues. This open-ended, spiral-like mode of planning may be characterized as ‘imagining together’. It was connected to the teacher team’s rejection of pre-packaged materials and its almost exclusive reliance on oral means of thinking.