Learning as Creation of Life : Emergence of Collaborative Activity in an After-school Educational Project

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  • 生活創造としての学習 : 放課後教育プロジェクトにおける協働活動の生成
  • セイカツ ソウゾウ ト シテ ノ ガクシュウ ホウカ ゴ キョウイク プロジェクト ニ オケル キョウドウカツドウ ノ セイセイ

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Abstract

This article analyzes an inter-institutional, collaborative after-school learning activity for children called 'New School' (NS), which is based on a partnership between a university and municipal elementary schools and involves other social actors and institutions. In the NS, these parties are involved in designing and implementing mixed grade, group-, and project-based collaborative learning activities for 'sustainable living' from the experience of agriculture through the organic cultivation of local food products and learning about ecology and about 'slow food' through cooking lessons. Using a framework of expansive learning theory, this article illuminates the emerging collaborative forms of learning activities that transform the pedagogical activity of traditional schooling that is isolated from real life and transcend the institutionalized boundaries of schools. In particular, we focus on children's group-based learning activities for creating original scripts on the theme of the local and traditional vegetables of the Osaka region and the plays they performed for the public at a city museum. Data analysis from such NS activities explores how new patterns and processes of learning emerge based on and mediated by the participant ideas and strategies concerning 'collaborative self-government.' This concept suggests a new form of pedagogy and creative collaborations through real-life activities. The findings also show that computers and the Internet can break the encapsulation of school learning that takes place within the confines of textbooks and classrooms. In this way, NS can be represented as an emerging inter-institutional activity system in which the 'object' of learning on which children are working expands into the collaborative creation of living life activities and transforms into the surrounding world, such as community revitalization.

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