In this research project, academics with expertise in work-integrated learning (WIL) and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) in South Africa and Sweden collaborated on knowledge development to enhance WIL practices. The cross-border CHAT-inspired ‘contradiction analysis’ workshop collaboration aimed to enhance understandings of the difficulties which universities experience in conducting WIL, and how such difficulties may be addressed and potentially overcome. The methodology used to conduct this research drew on CHAT as a tool to highlight contradictions within the structure and processes of WIL. In short, the elements of the activity system (Figure 1) which guide the analysis refer to what the participants understand they are working on making happen within the university (the object or raw material); what they are using to do this work (tools); who else is involved with working on the object (community); and how the work of the participants (the subjects) is governed by the rules/culture they operate in, and how the roles are divided up and who holds the most authority (division of labour or DoL) (Engeström, 2015). The structure of each contradiction analysis workshop was as follows:

1- Participants were given an introductory course on CHAT through being initiated into the activity system mode of analysis (Fig 1);

2- Each participant drew a triangular depiction of their WIL system and populated the activity system elements (Fig 1);

3- Participants identified two to three main contradictions in their system and shared these with the group as a whole;

4- Participants Collectively discussed the emerging contradictions; 5- Participants reflected on the contradiction analysis process.

A key aspect to this research was encouraging the workshop participants to understand WIL in all its often-contradictory material and social relations, and that participants themselves were multi-voiced thus requiring some form of ‘polyphonous orchestration’ (Engeström, 2015, p. 248). Such dialectical thinking also encouraged participants to identify contradictory pressure points, not as barriers to progress, but as opportunities for future changes. When seen in this way the relatively time-limited CHAT workshops set the scene as an easy and accessible introduction to change laboratory work towards the development of new and improved WIL concepts and processes. A change laboratory is a CHAT-inspired methodology in which workshop participants collectively raise issues from working life and, through the use of CHAT tools, develop their agency to transform these issues into potentially productive outcomes. A key component of agency development is participants’ recognition of difficulties as historically influenced and systemic contradictions within their organization (Sannino & Engeström, 2017). The need for change laboratory work emerges in organizations as they confront increasing complexity in their interconnectedness with other work units and with broader societal issues (Engeström and Sannino, 2010), and are in need of major transformations (Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013). However, organizational members do not necessarily recognize what is at stake nor that they have the potential to provoke change through collective, agentic and often lengthy processes such as the change laboratory. Dinh and Sannino (2024) suggest that an activity theory analysis of current workplace contradictions can impel organizational members to confront difficulties and embrace the possibility of embarking on a change laboratory to challenge the status quo. In this article the authors support the above authors’ submission through the scrutiny of a number of activity theory-inspired ‘contradiction analysis’ workshops in which participants expressed motive and interest to move further with a fullscale change laboratory. There were two main research questions:

1- Did the contradiction analysis workshops assist practitioners in gaining a systematic understanding of WIL issues?

2- Were the WIL practitioners inspired to embark on more large-scale change laboratory work?

Altogether five two-hour contradiction analysis workshops were conducted in 2023 at university WIL units and academic conferences/seminars attended by WIL practitioners in which participants grappled with pressing WIL issues in their institutions. The contexts and locations of the workshops were different but, in each case, the same process of conducting contradiction analyses was followed. Despite these contextual and geographical differences many similar contradictions and suggestions for ways forward for WIL practices emerged