From context to contextualizing

Although context is rapidly becoming one of the core concepts in modern educational thinking, this notion still remains ill-defined in literature. This article aims at contributing to the definition of the notion of context and examining its value for research and development of educational praxes. The article starts out from a general conception of context, identifying its basic intentions as particularization of meaning and providing for coherence. In this article the activity approach to context is explored more particularly. It is argued here that one consequence from this approach is, that context should be conceived of dynamically, i.e. in terms of context-making (contextualizing). Reasoning from this activity approach, several new research questions arise.