ABSTRACT
In the twenty or so years since Cole’s observations, cultural-historical approaches to learning and development have become more widely understood and the limitations of the dualism found in terms such as context and situation have been increasingly acknowledged. As a result, we are now clearer about what these shifts in terminology mean and can see that that are not simply a matter of substituting one word for another. In this chapter I examine how cultural-historical theory employs the ideas of activity and practice and consider the implications of this approach for how we might think about: transitions between practices; changing practices and creating new ones; and collaboration across practices on complex problems. In working through these examples, what is fore-grounded is the constant dynamic of agency with the historically formed, yet future-oriented, demands in the practices.
