Teaching development for doctoral students: what can we learn from activity theory?

This paper explores issues relating to programmes for doctoral students wishing to gain experience of, and develop skills in, teaching. The focus is on "Developing Learning and Teaching" - a new provision at the University of Oxford. The purpose is to exemplify how activity theory can be used to situate particular programmes and individual experiences in a wider systemic setting. The authors explain the concepts of the activity system, and use these to identify systemic tensions (analysing university-wide survey data), then to assess whether the provision has addressed these tensions (analysing data from interviews with participants).