Learning in Likely Places
Varieties of Apprenticeship in Japan

The volume seeks to displace the current focus on school achievement in Japan with a broader understanding of the social context of knowledge acquisition.

John Singleton (Edited by)

9780521480123, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 September 1998

396 pages, 5 b/w illus. 3 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.731 kg

"...offer an interesting contrast, not only in disciplinary perspective, but also in the way in which these descriptions of learning are painted on quite different cultural backdrops. These two books, carefully studied, can serve to broaden our view of the possibilities. I recommend them for that purpose." Teaching and Learning Medicine

Likely places of learning in Japan include folkcraft village pottery workshops, the clubhouses of female shellfish divers, traditional theaters, and the neighborhood public bath. The education of potters, divers, actors, and other novices generates identity within their specific communities of practice. In this collection of nineteen case studies of situated learning in such likely places, the contributors take apprenticeship as a fundamental model of experiential education in authentic arenas of cultural practice. Together, the essays demonstrate a rich variety of Japanese pedagogical arrangements and learning patterns, both historical and contemporary. The volume seeks to displace the current focus on school achievement in Japan with a broader understanding of the social context of knowledge acquisition. The cases demonstrate both the power of formal apprenticeship and the diversity of learning arrangements and patterns in Japan which transmit traditions of art, craft, work, and community. All cases respond to the call for an alternative focus on 'situated learning', an educational anthropology of the social relations and meanings of educational process.

List of contributors
Series foreword
Preface
Introduction: situated learning in Japan: our educational analysis John Singleton
Part I. Actors, Artists and Calligraphers: Learning in the Traditional Arts: 1. Transmitting tradition by the rules: an anthropological interpretation of the iemoto system Robert J. Smith
2. The search for mastery never ceases: Zeami's classic treatises on transmitting the traditions of the no theatre J. Thomas Rimer
3. Education in the Kano school in nineteenth-century Japan: questions about the copybook method Brenda G. Jordan
4. Seven characteristics of a traditional Japanese approach to learning Gary DeCoker
5. Why was everyone laughing at me? Roles of passage for the kyogen child Jonah Salz
Part II. Potters, Weavers, Mechanics, Doctors and Violinists: Learning in Artisanal Apprenticeship: 6. Learning to be an apprentice Bill Haase
7. Craft and art education in Mashiko pottery workshops John Singleton
8. Craft and regulatory learning in a neighborhood garage Kathryn Ellen Madono
9. Developing character in music teachers: a Suzuki approach Sarah Hersh and Lois Peak
10. Becoming a master physician Susan O. Long
11. Weaving the future from the heart of tradition: learning in leisure activities Millie Creighton
Part III. Work and Community Socialization: Diversity in Learning Arrangements: 12. Moneyed knowledge: how women become commercial shellfish divers Jacquetta F. Hill and David W. Plath
13. The self-taught bureaucrat: Takahashi Koreikiyo and economic policy during the Great Depression Richard J. Smethurst
14. Learning at the public bathhouse Scott Clark
15. Growing up through matsuri: children's establishment of self and community identities in festival participation Saburo Morita
Part IV. Appropriations of Cultural Practice: 16. Learning to swing: Oh Sadaharu and the pedagogy and practice of Japanese baseball William W. Kelly
17. Good old boy into alcoholic: Danshukai and learning a new drinking role in Japan Stephen R. Smith
18. Did an ox wander by here recently?: Learning Americanized Zen Maureen W. McClure
19. Learning to be learners: Americans working for a Japanese boss Jill Kleinberg
Epilogue: Calluses: when culture gets under your skin David W. Plath
Selected glossary
General bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Educational psychology [JNC]