Biography

Eiji Tsuchikura is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social  Sciences, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan. He examines people's activities and lives from a socio-cultural perspective. 

He has worked on three main research projects. 

First, he has examined how creative activities are accomplished through the mediation of resources. For example, while a plan is a resource that allows us to anticipate the final form, it is not used in the collective creative process as a resource for faithfully reproducing that plan. So, what exactly does a plan mediate in the creative process, and how does it do so? (Tsuchikura, 2017)

Second, he has examined what kinds of actions by others mediate experiential learning in the field.  For example, he has focused on the “learning by doing” process of people engaged in childcare activities. These studies has analyzed 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 cafés. 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 traditionally viewed as mental processes by focusing  on people's activities and lives as cultural practices.


Academic Career