ICHS-JOURNAL

Edition January/ 2010

Online-Journal of the Website

WWW.ICH-SCIENCES.de

Among human sciences the activity theoretical approach of the cultural-historical school tradition is a relatively young discipline. For its further development and dissemination it therefore calls for an intensive theoretical discourse concerning not only basic methodological problems but above all problems of its practical use and application.

This e-journal of ICHS aims at being especially conducive by providing an interactive opportunity to publicly discussing outlines of new research contributions, ideas of immediate interest, approaches or theses although in a blueprint stage, and before publishing them in the official forums of scientifical disciplines.

Particularly this journal would like to depict a vital picture of activity theory in Germany. It therefore reports on the annual Ohrbeck conference, initiated and organized since 2004, where mostly German speaking activity theorists present and discuss their research works on e.g. development in early childhood, speech and dialog, identity development, New Media, learning activity, education and teaching, support strategies with handicapped, as well as on anthropology, theory history or methodology.

In doing so the journal deliberately follows the tradition of former Ohrbeck conferences: to consequently specify its genuine approach within the variety of existing alternative approaches and to demonstrate its openness to and its interface with all those approaches – just because of its giving priority to application oriented research. Its basic principle of interdisciplinarity helps avoiding to neither ignore or exclude nor absorb other approaches.

The journal is explicitly directing at young scientists in giving them a forum for presenting and discussing their innovative and creative ideas without any proof of their affiliation in particular.

At least we extend the publishing offers of our website “ICH-SCIENCES.de”, which up to now contain the ICHS-series, documentation of classical texts, archive of contributions as well as the yearbook of the German Luria Society, starting this year.

Hartmut Giest and Georg Rückriem