From Talk to Action: Experiencing Interlocution in Developmental Interventions

Abstract

This article explores how to analyze and conceptualize the dynamics through which conversations in Change Laboratory research interventions lead to envisioning and implementing material changes in activities. Leont'ev's concept of personal sense is used as a theoretical lens for tracing these dynamics and to provide a means to relate local conversations to overall transformation of professional practices. In addition, the article tests the potential of Vasilyuk's theory of experiencing and Trognon's interlocutionary logic for analyzing Change Laboratory conversations from the point of view of how talk is experienced by the interlocutors. Experiencing is seen as a dialogical process that connects ongoing conversations and future-oriented actions, and through which interlocutors overcome critical situations. The analysis of Change Laboratory discussions in a Finnish middle school provides ground for looking at Change Laboratory as a research setting and a practice of intervention which can enrich our understanding of how change unfolds through discourse. The article concludes that interventions such as Change Laboratory could benefit from identifying systematic procedures for facilitating experiencing and interlocution. Within the perspective of seeking such methodological procedures, the article opens up a discussion on complementarities and possibilities of integration between the Change Laboratory and another interventionist approach called the Clinic of Activity.