Abstracts - Earli

a regional level is still not established. In a conclusion, it is emphasized that it is crucial tostimulate cooperation on a regional level. So that successful local educational initiatives couldserve as a best practice examples for implementation of educational changes in different regions inCroatia and south-east Europe.New forms of agency in school: Toward improving student learning and achievementKatsuhiro Yamazumi, Kansai University, JapanMichiko Shimada, Kansai University, JapanDaisuke Itoh, Kansai University, JapanThis paper addresses new forms of agency in school to improve student learning and achievementfrom the framework of cultural-historical activity theory and the notion of expansive learning as anew form of pedagogy. In the paper, a students’ after-school activity project in elementary andjunior high schools in Osaka, Japan is illustrated and analyzed. It is an inter-organizational, multiactivitycollaboration in which elementary and junior high schools, families and communitiesoutside the school, and a university cooperate to improve student learning and achievement. Theaims of this paper are to consider how such multiple different actors as school teachers, parents,experts and community members outside the school, and university students for internships andresearchers/staff involved in the students’ after-school activity project are engaged in shaping andsustaining expansive learning to redesign and implement new forms of learning activity toimprove students’ learning and achievement in schools. By crossing the boundaries of eachactivity system involved in the project, such expansive learning leads a collaborative selforganizationin which participants learn school innovation together and become collaborativechange agents of their own lives and futures in the school. The research project is conducting aseries of laboratory sessions as empirical intervention research based on activity theory to facilitateparticipant expansive learning for designing and implementing new activities. The analysis of thisempirical intervention research suggests that the process and cycle of participants’ expansivelearning in the after-school activity involved the creation of new tools, concepts, and rules for theemerging forms and patterns of multiagency and cross-school working to improve student learningand achievement. The findings of this paper argue that such multiple learning challenges throughcollaboration can create knots to act together crossing boundaries and shape multiple distributedagency.– 670 –