Biography

Eiji Tsuchikura is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social  Sciences, Hosei University in Japan. He examines people's activities and lives from a cultural perspective. 

He has worked on three main research projects. The first is fieldwork on movie making to identify the characteristics of the creative process. Thiese studies focused on the role of resources and interactions in clarifying the characteristics of the creative process. The second is action research on "learning by doing" by those who experience childcare activities. These studies focused on the utterances and actions of the caregivers that support the learning of the experiencers. The third is practical studies on the implementation of events called Science Café. These events focused on public dialogue about science. 

These research projects share a common interest in cultural practices, which are achieved through the appropriation or transformation of pre-existing cultural resources. In other words, they focus on people's learning and creation. 

People are invited into existing cultural practices. The learning and development arising from this has been viewed in terms of participation in cultural practices. While the phrase 'learning and development' may suggest that it pertains solely to children, it is applicable to individuals of all ages. For instance, becoming a parent can be seen as participation in a new cultural practice. "Doing parent” means encountering new resources in a cultural environment and learning, appropriating and creating ways of using them. Therefore, different cultural resources will change the way of 'doing parent' and parental identity. 

In this way, he has approached subjects that psychology has viewed as mental processes, as research that focuses on people's activities and lives as cultural practices.


Academic Career