Gakushu no Seitaigaku: Risuku, Jikken, Koshinraisei (Ecology of Learning: Risk, Experiment, High Reliability)

This book deals with various topics related to learning and understanding in situ beyond the scope of the “situated cognition and learning” approach. The aim is to contribute to  a more socio-anthropologically extended framework that encompasses such theoretical approaches as risk research, high reliability organization studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Some chapters deal with the ethnographic analysis of learning and cognition related to diverse workplaces such as high risk organizations (Chap. 5), psychiatric wards (Chap. 6), and emergency medical centers (Chap. 8), while other chapters dig deeper into the more theoretical issues, such as the limit  of interviewing in ethnographic research (Chap. 1), the problem with the concept of “communities of practice” in terms of failing at analyzing radical change (Chap. 2), and in offering the proper teaching model(Chap. 3). I propose a seminal “Experimental Zone of Learning” framework (Chap. 4), which has now been fully developed as a paper in Mind, Culture and Activity Journal. The diverse efforts described in this book are to be further elaborated upon in my next book on contemporary practices of technoscience, Factory of Truth, which is to be published  in 2017 from University of Tokyo Press.
 

(Written by FUKUSHIMA Masato, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2017)