Activism: A Category for Theorizing Learning

In the continued efforts of rethinking science education, activism has been proposed as a context for learning science. In this article, I go one step further. I propose activism as a theoretical category as an extension of the category of activity that forms the heart of cultural-historical activity theory. Much more so than the ambiguous English term activity, which conflates two very different concepts that its originators had created in German and Russian, activism returns our curriculum theorizing to Karl Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach, which states that it is not the understanding of the world that matters but its transformation. True, practical understanding is the result of the (ideal) reflection of the process and product of materially transforming the world. That is, activism implies not just knowing something abstractly but being able to concretely and knowledgeably bring knowing to the problems at hand. In concluding, I show how activism is connate with an ethics of care more typical of the ways in which the First Peoples of Canada related to their world.