Contextualizing Learning: How Activity Theories Can Change Our Conventional Research Practices In The Study Of Development

摘要

This volume has a strong 'Dutch accent' as it represents the careful scholarship on crucial issues in science that historically have emerged from the 'Low Lands'. The book provides its readers with a multivoiced yet integrated look at the learning processes that is refreshing in its intellectual foci and international representation. The latter-the authors of the 20 chapters in the book come from 8 countries (The Netherlands, USA, UK, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Denmark, and Mexico)-is not surprising; the book is a result of the 2002 congress of the International Society for Research in Activity Theory (now known as ISCAR) in Amsterdam. However, books based on materials from large conferences usually lack intellectual depth and conceptual integration. Contemporary academia is moving from being an epistemic market to that of a yard sale of endless images from fancy power point presentations thrown at large audiences for the shortest periods of time. Hence a book with a clear orientation to providing in-depth coverage of the issues, theoretically oriented (yet open to practical concerns in research and education) and internationally representative-such as The Transformation of Learnings-constitutes a refreshing reading for any serious scholar.