Learning as socio-environmental design: Toward the research on equity and power in learning in the context of Japan

Abstract

Power ubiquitously shapes what is learned, how learning happens, and who learners become through learning. In recent years, the centrality of equity and power in learning has been rigorously discussed in the community of the learning sciences, especially as a critical expansion of sociocultural and sociohistorical approaches to learning. This shift in the field not only helps us to examine various contexts of learning that have been previously overlooked, but also fundamentally urges us to reconsider the meaning of learning that has been historically treated as apolitical and non-ideological. In this article, we review the recent development of studies on learning that re-center power, equity, and justice. Our review documents the conceptual shift on learning and discusses major methodological frameworks to study the relationships between power and learning. Based on our review, we maintain that learning can be reconceptualized as socio-environmental design where learners agentively alter the material and ecological functioning and geopolitical mapping of oppression and injustice. Our view of learning as socio-environmental design could open a new horizon on studies on learning, attending to heterogenous and conflicting histories and voices rooted in the particularities of geopolitical environments that have been understudied. Bringing back the central thesis that learning is contextually bound, we call for future studies on learning as socio-environmental design that reflect a macro-micro continuum arising from the geopolitical matrix of power situated in the post-industrial and post-developmental society of Japan.