Studies in Expansive Learning: Learning What Is Not Yet There

Yrjö Engeström's exciting approach sees expansive learning as the central mechanism of transformation in societal practices and institutions. For researchers and practitioners in education, this book provides a conceptual and practical toolkit for creating and analyzing expansive learning processes with the help of interventions in workplaces, schools and communities. Chapters 1-3 situate the theory of expansive learning in the field of learning science. Chapters 4-8 contain empirical studies of expansive learning in various organizational settings (such as banks, schools and hospitals). In Chapters 9-10, the author looks at new challenges and possibilities arising from rapidly spreading 'wildfire' activities (disaster relief, for example) and from the methodology of formative interventions aimed at triggering and supporting expansive learning. This book provides an integrative account of recent empirical studies and conceptual developments in the theory of expansive learning, and serves as a companion volume to Learning by Expanding.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction - learning sciences at the threshold of expansion; 2. Whatever happened to process theories of learning?; 3. Studies of expansive learning - foundations, findings and future challenges; 4. Enriching the theory of expansive learning - lessons from journeys toward co-configuration; 5. From learning environments and implementation to activity systems and expansive learning; 6. Process enhancement versus community building - transcending the dichotomy through expansive learning; 7. Expansive learning in a library - actions, cycles and deviations from instructional intentions; 8. Beyond discontinuity - expansive organizational learning remembered; 9. Wildfire activities - new patterns of mobility and learning; 10. From design experiments to formative interventions; References; Index.

About the Author :
Yrjö Engeström is Professor of Adult Education and Director of the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE) at the University of Helsinki. He is also Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. Engeström applies and develops cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for the study of transformations and learning processes in work activities and organizations. He is widely known for his theory of expansive learning and for the interventionist methodology of developmental work research. His most recent books include From Teams to Knots: Activity-Theoretical Studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work and Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research.

Review :
'This is a very important book. It brings together some of the most significant papers in Engeström's archive and provides them with a new introduction and rationale. In his first chapter he also muses on the possible future of the learning sciences. This prospective view is grounded in the legacy that is so well captured and explicated in the rest of the book. It will be of great value to newcomers to the field and serves as an invaluable source of reference for those who are more familiar with the work.' Harry Daniels, University of Oxford 'In this volume, we see the fertility of Engeström and his colleagues in the Change Laboratory. These chapters extend expansive learning to address a variety of settings from schools to hi-tech corporations. The approach's genius is in developing mediating artifacts (semiotic representations inserted into the activity system) that allow participants to see their work and relations in new ways, expanding their view, to come to fresh solutions to the problems that trouble their work.' Charles Bazeman, University of California, Santa Barbara