教育改革中各類教學方法與策略不斷推陳出新，活化成了教學改革熱門議題。本文從文化歷史活動理論的視野，探討人類活動的特性，藉以闡述教學活化及活化教學的概念。首先就文化歷史活動理論的發展，說明教學活動是社會實踐的生產過程，包含多元系統，教學活動永遠處於歷史之中。其次說明教學活化，活化並非巧合或偶發的生物性，而是人類演化過程展現的生成作用，教學本身即具有文化歷史的活化本質及特性。接著討論活化教學，活化作為動詞，是催化教學改變的動力。文中探討國外及臺灣教學研究發現，藉以說明活化有賴主體敏察教學系統的擾動因子、視矛盾為活化契機、珍視交會的多元聲音、持續內化-外化的教學轉化與展化學習歷程，主體在人類活動中，不可免地也參與了教學再創歷史。

Responding to educational reforms brought up by professionals in the last decade, all manner of teaching methods or strategies have been implemented in school teaching. Activating teaching has been one the popular issues in the reforms. This article aims at exploring both concepts of “activation of teaching” and “activating teaching” by investigating them with the perspectives of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). First, it describes the historical development of CHAT. Then it elaborates that teaching activities with multiple systems are in fact related to some socially and historically practical processes. Secondly, it states that the activation of teaching is not of any coincidental nature of biology, but a generation of cultural history shown by the human evolution process. The teaching per se has the essence of activation with cultural history. Next, the activating means to catalyze the motivation of teaching change and several elements for activating teaching should be included, such as awareness of the disturbances in teaching systems, the viewing of contradictions as activating opportunities, cherishing the multiple voices in teaching systems, the continuous internal-external transformation and expansive learning. Any teacher who connects to human activities indispensably has been likely participating in the reconstruction of cultural history of teaching.