Studies in Expansive Learning: Learning What Is Not Yet There

Yrjö Engeström

Aug 2016 · Cambridge University Press

About this eBook

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.

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 books include From Teams to Knots: Activity-Theoretical Studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work (Cambridge, 2008) and Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research (Cambridge, 2014).