Journal of Natural Disaster Science, Volume 30, Number 2, 2009, pp83-96

Action Research on Disaster Reduction Education:
Building a “Community of Practice” through a Gaming Approach
Katsuya YAMORI**Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan(Received November 28, 2008 accepted June 14, 2009)
ABSTRACTThis paper reports a research study on disaster reduction education, at both a senior highschool and in a local community in Japan. The research was guided mainly by the theory of“community of practice (CoP)” proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991). This theory provided
a useful framework by which we achieved long-term and collaborative learning in disastereducation, to deal with natural disasters with a long return period. A gaming approach wasintroduced in this year-long action research project, as a key medium to realize long-termand cogenerative learning by diverse stakeholders, ranging from high school students, local
residents, local government workers, and disaster experts. This gaming approach covered
the whole process, from co-planning, co-production, and co-dissemination of game-likeeducation materials. The results suggested the clear superiority of cogenerative disastereducation (along with a transformation of CoP structure) over conventional, knowledge
internalization-oriented disaster education.
Keyword: disaster education, action research, community of practice, gaming,
collaborative learningwhich is introduced in this study as the key medium
to realize long-term and collaborative learning in a
CoP.

1. Research Background
This paper reports an action research study on
disaster reduction education in a local community inJapan. The research is guided mainly by the “community of practice (CoP)” theory proposed by Laveand Wenger (1991). This theory provides a usefulframework by which we can achieve long-term, collaborative learning in disaster education, to deal withnatural disasters with a long recurrence period of over
100 years. I begin this background section by summarizing the CoP theory. Next, I describe some ofthe disaster education issues Japanese society is now
facing, and explain why the CoP theory is consideredhelpful as one approach to tackling these issues. Finally, I outline the potential of the gaming approach,

1.1 The theory of “Community of Practice”
Lave & Wenger (1991) strongly reject the conventional view of learning processes, criticizing thisview for its primary focus on learners’ internalizationof knowledge or skill. The view depends mostly on
a conventional teacher-learner framework, in which
unilateral knowledge/skill transfer from the teacherside to the learner side is assumed. It is important tonote that this assumption stays the same in this framework even if learners’ more positive participation in
the learning process is considered important (Saeki,
1995; Wenger 1999).
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K. YAMORI

Instead, they argue that learning should be characterized as a mixture of three components. The firstcomponent is learners’ “internalization” of knowledge
or skill. The second component is the formation andmaintenance of a “community of practice (CoP)” that
includes those who teach and learn. The third component is the “identity (re-)building” of those who
become involved in the CoP. Learning is defined not
only by the first conventional component, but also by
integration and dynamic development across thesethree components.
The first component, “internalization,” has been
regarded as the major component of the learning process. However, this view is extremely narrow. Thisview assumes that a static knowledge store exists
within teachers, and that one-way transfer of knowledge takes place between teachers and learners. Thisview of learning has been very dominant across various research fields. Disaster education is no exception. For example, when a schoolteacher gives a lecture on the concept of earthquake magnitude, or whenlocal people learn how to use a fire extinguisher during a disaster drill, internalization is of central interest, even when they learn it in a participatory manner.
Neither Lave & Wenger (1991) nor the present author
neglects this component. However, different aspectsof learning can be more important, particularly when
we consider disaster education from a much broader
and longer perspective.
The concept of the CoP is a major element in
the theory of situated learning proposed by Lave &Wenger (1991). They propose that it is not sufficient
to focus on one-way, temporary transfer of knowledge
or skill. Forming and sustaining a CoP can count for
more in the long run. Both those who teach “provisionally” and those who learn “provisionally” participate in the CoP. The community allows participants
to engage in bilateral, or even multilateral, long-term
mutual learning. The idea of the CoP closely parallels
the cogenerative learning model proposed by Greenwood and Levin (2007). These researchers underscorethe cogenerative construction of learning arenas,
where outside experts and local stakeholders can cogenerate knowledge. Greenwood and Levin (2007)
emphasize the importance of a communicative learning platform for joint knowledge building rather thansimple knowledge transfer, as is the case in the CoP.
When we apply these ideas to disaster education,

we can say that it is more important to create a CoP
where all relevant stakeholders (disaster researchers,
local government officials, and local residents) canparticipate in collaborative and cogenerative learning.
Some of the recently developed participatory disastereducation procedures, such as PAFRICS (Participatory Flood Risk Communication Support System)(Takeuchi & Suzuki, 2007), the Yonmenkaigi Workshop Method (Na, Okada, and Fang, 2009), a comprehensive disaster education curriculum developed
at Maiko High School in Japan (Shiwaku & Shaw,2008), and Crossroad: Kobe Gaming (Yamori, 2007),
focus on this type of cogenerative learning.
Finally, Lave and Wenger (1991) emphasize thatlearning not only improves a person’s intelligence or
technical abilities, but also reshapes his/her whole
identity. Flexible alterations and frequent role changes
in a CoP are typical examples of identity reshaping.
The word “provisionally” that I used above implies
such identity reshuffling. Those who taught yesterday
could be those who learn today, and vice versa. The
cogenerative learning model supports a similar wayof thinking. Greenwood and Levin (2007) argue thatlaypeople’s more practical reasoning approach andexperts’ scientifically constructed knowledge should
encounter each other cogeneratively. In cogenerative
learning, neither local people nor professionals arein a superior and privileged position. Neither sideshould be locked into a particular status (i.e., local
people in the position of learners and professionals in
the position of teachers). Rather, both groups should
be co-learners and co-teachers at the same time. Theirrelationship should be dialectical rather than unilateral, in order to create both new local knowledge andnew scientific understanding. The distinction between
teachers and learners may become quite blurred overthe course of what is usually a lengthy, collaborative
relationship in a CoP (Reason & Bradbury, 2006).
These arguments apply in the case of disastereducation, as well. For example, disaster experts, whonormally take the role of teacher or supervisor, sometimes need to learn much about local knowledge, specific conditions of local hazards, or local disaster lessons handed down from earlier generations, in orderto make local disaster management more effective. In
the same manner, local residents should not be completely content with the conventional identity of thepassive learner. For example, local residents should
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tions of the disaster experts.
After the earthquake in 1995, the second mode
emerged, reflecting the lessons people learned fromthe earthquake. In this case, expert prediction was
not correct. The earthquake hit an unpredicted region
rather than the predicted and thus better-prepared regions. Citizens’ trust in engineering-centered disastermitigation was also greatly shaken when a number oflarge-scale engineered structures tragically collapsed.
Although expert performance was disappointing, local residents were eagerly committed to helping eachother within local communities. For the first time inJapanese history, voluntary and mutual assistance wasso widespread and so successful that the year 1995 isoften referred to as “The Year of the Renaissance of
Voluntarism.”
As a result of the 1995 earthquake, more people
recognized the desperate need for active and participatory disaster risk management, and the significant
distinction between “risk” and “danger” became apparent (Luhmann, 1991). “Risk” is what should be
handled jointly by many stakeholders and is something that can be managed proactively, while “danger”
is just “out there,” waiting to be identified objectively.
Thus, in the second mode of risk sense, a deeper commitment by citizens to risk assessment, evaluation,and management is highly emphasized. At this stage,
public release of risk information is not sufficient,although it is still necessary as a part of the whole risk
management process. This type of risk understandingemphasizes collaborative risk assessment and joint
risk management requiring the participation of a morediverse set of stakeholders, including not only specialists but also local citizens.
It is obvious that what has been discussed so far
is closely linked to the CoP theory and the cogenerative model of learning. The first risk sense goes very
well with the first component of learning, “internalization,” since it focuses on a one-way risk information
flow from experts to citizens. In contrast, the second
risk sense requires the second and third componentsof learning. For the second risk sense to develop,
various stakeholders should participate in a CoP as
equal risk-sharing partners. Their role identities in a
CoP should not be fixed in any conventional sense but
should be flexible, so that collaborative learning cancontinue for a longer period.
The second disaster education issue facing Japan

contribute to the further dissemination of what they
have learned from experts, down to a wider range of
local people. Local disaster education is neither solely
an outside expert’s issue nor solely a local people’s
one, but should be a joint focus of attention that is coexamined by the various parties involved in a CoP.
1.2 Current Issues of Disaster Education in JapanI will raise two current social issues that pertain
to disaster education in Japan. It is important to notethat these two issues are closely linked to the threecomponents of the learning process that I discussed
above.
The first issue is the remarkable shift that we findin the risk sense of Japanese people. Yamori (2007)shows that the concept of “risk” was virtually nonexistent until the late 1980s in Japan. Although the concept was imported from overseas as early as the1960s,
it remained almost unknown to the general public. It
enjoyed limited usage in the finance and management
professions. Since the late 1980s, however, the term
has been gradually integrated into the common wayof thinking among Japanese people. The term “disasterrisk” also appeared in public discourses during thisperiod.
It is also important to note that the basic attitude
toward disaster risks changed drastically before andafter the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995.
This earthquake was one of the most devastating inmodern Japanese history, killing more than 6,400
people. Yamori (2007) describes the change in termsof a shift from the first mode to the second mode ofrisk sense. The first mode, pre-earthquake, was a passive one in which risk was treated in much the same
way as the concept of “danger” in Luhmann’s (1991)
terminology. “Danger” is regarded as existing “outthere,” independent of human actions. Thus, dangers
should be identified and managed exclusively throughnatural scientific efforts by disaster experts. People
are not in an active position to deal with the risk, but
are just expected to wait for the results of experts’ risk
assessments and risk control strategies. From this understanding, one-way communication from experts tolaypeople is often considered enough. When experts
provide data on risk to the public, the latter are not ina positive position to commit themselves to risk communication; they simply receive risk data passively as
they are given and follow the instructions and sugges85

K. YAMORI

is how to keep the desirable results of education fora longer period. Japan must learn to deal with thosedisasters that have a long return period. It is true thatJapan is now facing more frequent natural disasterthreats that require preparation over a quicker timeframe, such as floods and landslides; however, we
also face threats that should be dealt with from a longer time perspective, such as trough-type earthquakes
and tsunamis. These types of disaster have a very longrecurrence time, much longer than their individual life
span. It is clear that individual-oriented education is
not so workable for this type of disaster. The valuable
life lessons provided by disaster experts or by those
who experienced the disasters may not span the long
periods of stability between catastrophes, if we lackeffective means and media to communicate those lessons beyond their original domain to the next generation.
As indicated by the CoP theory, building a community-based learning system is more significant thansimply promoting knowledge internalization withineach individual. Creating a lasting CoP is absolutely
vital, whereas conducting short-term and unidirectional learning is not sufficient. For this reason, flexible and quick role identity change from learner toteacher and vice versa (role (re-)shaping) is a key tosuccess. Role (re-)shaping guarantees long-term andcascading transfer of lessons from generation to generation and/or from community to community, when a
CoP expands beyond the boundary of age groups and/or beyond local communities.

saster education in Japan from the viewpoint of CoP
theory, for the following three reasons.
The first reason is the “multilogue” nature of
gaming. As Duke (1974) stressed, gaming is a very
effective context for realizing what he refers to as“multilogue,” a variety of interpersonal interactions(such as persuasion and negotiation) that occur quite
naturally among game players. Thus, a game setting
affords the opportunity to air multiple perspectives
among participants. This aspect of gaming also expands to its production processes. If game creators
wish to produce an impactful game that a wide rangeof stakeholders would consider worth playing, theymust take into account rather broad perspectives andattitudes on the topic around which they want to create the game. “Multilogue” attention and consideration is required not only when a game is played but
also when it is produced. Otherwise, a game would besingle sided, monotonous, and boring.
Thus, gaming matches quite well our emphasis on the shift from a unilateral knowledge transfer
paradigm to a cogenerative learning paradigm. It istrue that gaming is sometimes used as a knowledgetransfer medium through which learners’ internalization is promoted. However, it is not productive tolimit gaming use to such a narrow context. Gamingshows more potential to consider different perspectives on the problem at hand than do many other typesof media, such as mathematical language or computer
simulation models. The “multilogue” nature of gaming is very helpful when we try to create disaster risksharing partnerships among a wider variety of stakeholders in a CoP.
Secondly, gaming is characterized by Duke
(1974) as “the future’s language.” Game producers(as well as game players) can co-construct their future
reality by co-producing and co-playing a game. Gaming is not merely a reflection of the pre-establishedworld view of a particular person (an acknowledged
authority, for example), but is rather a communication
medium through which a feasible new social reality,and hopefully a solution to an immediate social issue,
is co-examined and co-cogenerated. In other words,
gaming has a reality-generative function as well as areality-descriptive one. When we look at gaming fromthis holistic point of view, we can conclude that gaming can lead people to engage naturally in reality-coconstructing activities. Gaming is not a medium for

1.3 The Gaming Approach
The term “gaming” is used differently from theterm “game” in this paper. Gaming is a more comprehensive and more dynamic concept than game.
Gaming refers not only to the material tools used ina game, such as game boards and cards, game settings, rules, and procedures. The concept of gaming
also encompasses the interactive actions among gameparticipants and those between game participants
and facilitators during a game session, participants’retrospective after-talk about a game, and planning/
creating by game producers. It is particularly important to note that planning and creating games is one of
the critical components of the whole gaming process.
When gaming is defined in this manner, we can claimthat a gaming approach could help us to re-think di86

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objective observation and evaluation for outsiders, but
a medium for collaborative practice for insiders.
This aspect of gaming is also parallel to our understanding of the second mode of risk sense. Every
stakeholder needs to be an inside risk partner who is
expected to share equal responsibility when handlingdisaster risks. Nobody can just wait passively forthe results of a risk assessment from outside experts.
The future reality of risks does not come by simply
following neutral predictions of natural phenomena
made by outside risk experts, but rather, disaster risk
should be co-constructed and co-handled by insidestakeholders in a CoP.
Finally, gaming is characterized by its visible andtangible nature. As I mentioned above, gaming is notcomposed of material tools alone. It is also importantto recognize that gaming is not just a vehicle of abstract knowledge and ideas stored in the human mind
but is normally by itself a concrete body of materials.
Gaming contains concrete and solid material entities,
before it functions as a medium for conveying something abstract and conceptual. This material feature is
likely to direct our attention towards how we externalize knowledge rather than towards how we internalize
it. This is especially the case in the production stageof gaming, since game creators have to make every
effort to convert conceptual knowledge stored in human minds into more concrete game materials. Thisis entirely consistent with our anti-“internalization”
understanding of learning.
Physical game materials contribute greatly tothe achievement of our goal in another way. Since
game materials are physical products rather thanmental entities, they could potentially help disastereducation efforts to survive for even longer than theywould when we rely only on knowledge transfer on a
person-to-person basis. Knowledge preserved withinhuman minds could be miscommunicated and misunderstood unknowingly, and such knowledge could
even be entirely lost with the death of the knowledge
holder. However, material products could be preserved more easily and could be handed down moresecurely from generation to generation for a longer
period with some intentional and careful modification
as needed. This characteristic provides us with a great
advantage when we must deal with natural disasters
from a longer-term perspective.

2. Action Research
2.1 Topic and Participants
The argument presented above suggests that disaster education via going through a whole sequenceof gaming is one promising way to deal with current
disaster education issues in Japan. It was also suggested that creating a long-lasting CoP that includes
diverse stakeholders is vital and that gaming could
be a key medium for this purpose. With these basic
ideas in mind, I conducted an action research study inwhich local citizens, local government workers, disaster relief NGO members, and disaster experts (including the present author) all became jointly involved.
The concrete topic that the author chose for thisresearch was what emergency goods should be stored
at home. There are two major reasons for this choiceof topic. First, public awareness is now gradually
growing toward what we in Japan call an “emergencykit.” This kit takes the form of a portable bag, generally a backpack, which contains some basic supplies
for an emergency. It is strongly recommended that an
emergency kit be prepared at home, given that Japan
has been hit by natural disasters quite frequently since
the mid 1990s. Emergency kit preparation is considered to be a basic first step towards disaster preparedness even for those who have done nothing so far.
Hashimoto High School and Hashimoto City (with apopulation of around 50,000) in Wakayama Prefecture has a relatively lower level of disaster risk whencompared with some other regions in Wakayama
Prefecture, which are predicted to suffer severe damage from a large-scale earthquake or tsunami when
the Tonankai and Nankai Earthquakes are predicted tooccur in the early twenty-first century (Mie Prefecture
Emergency Management Department, 2006). In thissense, emergency kit preparation is a good fit for a
primary startup target in this project, which was conducted in the Hashimoto region.
Secondly, the Hashimoto region is at high risk ofisolation from nearby regions should a major disasteroccur because the region is located in a mountainous
area and does not have many access roads. A landslidecaused by an earthquake or by heavy rainfall might
cut off the region from neighboring communities.
This region could therefore be facing a difficult situation, despite predictions that the region is unlikely tobe hit badly. If isolation does happen, the region must87

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survive on its own for several days without any aid
from the outside. Intensive aid directed towards more
severely hit areas might leave this region even moreisolated. This is another reason that the present author
selected emergency kit preparation as the target topic.
The participants in this action research were diverse. This was important because our goal was notto achieve a one-way learning activity in a teacherlearner paradigm, but rather to create a sustainable
CoP. The participants were classified into the following four groups. The first, the core participants, were
10 students from Hashimoto High School, aged from
16 to 18. The students participated voluntarily in thisproject. Some school teachers also participated in the
research, mostly serving as administrative gate keepers who bridged the students and the outside experts.
The second group of participants was local residents
living in the Hashimoto region, as well as some otherareas in Wakayama Prefecture. The third group was
the outside experts. They were “outsiders” from thestudents’ or local residents’ point of view. This group
included both disaster and gaming experts. These experts also contributed to this research as coordinators
who attempted to guarantee a collaborative arena forthe diverse participants. Some disaster relief NGO
staff who were familiar with emergency kits alsojoined as outside experts. The final category of participants constituted local government workers. These
individuals work for a local government office, belonging to such departments as disaster management
and school education. They took an important initiative mainly in the dissemination stage of the gaming
process.

Table 1. Overview of Action Research“Internalization Stage” (from around August 2004 to
September 2004)
Aug 27, 2004: Recruitment of high school students ascore participants in the action research
Sep 27, 2004: The 1st joint workshop: Briefing on the
project’s objective and assigning homeworkOct 4, 2004: The 2nd joint workshop: Sorting and prioritizing more than 100 emergency goods“Modification Stage” (from around October 2004 toNovember 2004)
Oct 6, 2004: Hearing from a member of the disaster
relief NGO about item selection
Oct 25, 2004: The 3rd joint workshop: Completion of
the “Primary Goods” partNov 8, 2004: The 4th joint workshop: A proposal by
the students to add a “Personal Goods” partNov 22, 2004: The 5th joint workshop: Completion of
the “Personal Goods” part
“Practice Stage” (from around December 2004 to
February 2005)
Dec 13, 2004: The 6th joint workshop: A test run of
the game with personally prepared kits
Feb 1, 2005: A study tour of the Disaster Reductionand Human Renovation Institution
Feb 22, 2005: Public announcement of the game on aschool wall poster and in its web edition“Dissemination Stage” (from around March 2005 toNovember 2005).
Mar 15, 2005: The 1st facilitation workshop by three
students with 30 disaster aid volunteers
May 12, 2005: The 2nd facilitation workshop by two
students with 100 local residents
Oct 25, 2005: The 3rd facilitation workshop by three
students with some junior students
Oct 29, 2005: The 4th facilitation workshop by three
students with 100 disaster management workers
Nov 5, 2005: The 5th facilitation workshop by three
students with 30 local residents

2.2 Procedure
This section provides an overview of the wholedevelopment of our action research program, from theplanning, production, and playing to the disseminating stages of an emergency kit game (see Table 1).
The research was conducted for more than a year,
from August 2004 to November 2005. The year-longprocess was composed of the following four stages:
the “internalization stage” (from around August 2004
to September 2004), the “modification stage” (fromaround October 2004 to November 2004), the “practice stage” (from around December 2004 to February2005), and the “dissemination stage” (from around
March 2005 to November 2005).

It should be added, however, that the understanding of sequential progress via the four stages above
is a tentative one, which might have to be changed
later. Although the author considers this sequential
understanding to be the best understanding at thepresent moment, especially when we take our theoretical background into consideration, it is normallyquite difficult to specify the development of an action
research project, even after the project seems to bereaching its goal. One of the reasons for this is that
action research is ever changing; it is constantly co88

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arranged and co-modified by a diverse set of participants, and is not planned and performed exclusively
by a researcher in a privileged position. Anotherreason is that a goal itself is sometimes changed, oreven reset in the course of development, so that themeaning of each one of the stages in a project might
be changed, depending on further developments.

that different lists of recommended items had much incommon and typically included things such as bottled
drinking water, canned food, a knife with a can opener, towels, and so on.
2.4 “Modification Stage” (from around October
2004 to November 2004)
In this stage, the students classified and prioritized more than 100 items. These joint workshops
were facilitated and supported by gaming and disaster
experts, who came from a university and a disaster relief NGO. First, the 100 items obtained during the internalization stage were classified into subcategories,
such as food, clothing, other goods needed for everyday living, and so on. The items were then prioritized,
based on how helpful and essential each would be inan emergency. These ratings ranged from highly essential, to moderately essential, to less essential. As aresult, 20 goods were selected as items that would appear on the list in the game. Eleven of the items were
judged to be highly indispensable for an emergency
kit, while the remaining nine items were categorized
as helpful but less essential as compared to the 11“must-haves.”
The 20 selected items appeared in the first partof the game, entitled the “Primary Goods” part. As
shown in Table 2, the first part took the form of aquick quiz, in which respondents are shown the listof 20 items and are asked to classify them into twogroups: highly or less essential. A player gains orloses one game point every time he or she makes acorrect or wrong answer, so that in this part of thegame, the top mark is 20 points. The more points
a player gains, the better the prize he/she gets. The
prizes could be candy, sweets, or daily necessities, forexample.
The joint teams did not include food and water
as items in this part of the game because in recent disaster scenarios, these were normally supplied quickly
and sufficiently by public organizations. This meansthat food and water are not as essential as emergency
goods stored personally at home, although thesegoods are taken into account (in a different form) inthe second part of the game.

2.3 “Internalization Stage” (from around
August 2004 to September 2004)
We call the first stage the internalization stage,
since our focus was mainly centered on knowledgetransfer from disaster experts to high school students,
and knowledge internalization in the latter. The author
recruited high school students as central participants
at a public event organized by Wakayama Prefecture,
which was aimed at raising local disaster awareness.
At the first joint workshop with the students, theauthor explained the main objective of the study bystating that this attempt was aimed at promoting local
disaster awareness, via a series of collaborative joint
workshops attended by the students and some experts.
I then disclosed a draft plan for producing game-type
disaster education materials on emergency kits. This
plan was basically supported by the students, although
not all of the students showed strong motivation toparticipate in the project from its very beginning. This
judgment is supported by some of the students’ remarks on the project shown later in Table 4.
We began our project by reviewing lessons obtained from past events. Although we do not place
our primary focus on one-way transfer of pre-existingknowledge, it is not wise to totally neglect the large
stock of knowledge accumulated by disaster experts
and veterans. With regard to what we should packin an emergency kit, experts (including researchers,
government officers, and disaster relief NGO staff)
provided us with several lists of recommended usefulgoods to have on hand under disaster conditions. We
requested that the students gather such information as
an initial step. This information is available on websites, in books, in disaster education brochures issued
by some local governments, and in other sources. The
specific request made of each individual student was
to make a list of more than 50 emergency goods, at aminimum. After a few weeks, the students had identified more than 100 items in total, after all overlaps
were eliminated. The most important finding here was89

K. YAMORI

Table 2. “Primary Goods” Part

was still lacking were things that could give people
more personalized convenience and individual comfort.
After such consideration, the team reached the final idea for the second part of the game, the “Personal
Goods” part. In this part, the respondents are asked to
add five more items to the 11 standard priority goods
that were recommended in the first part (see Table 3).
Respondents can include anything that they want tohave in their emergency kit. It is important that there
is no single correct answer for this part, unlike the first
part. Unique items that meet personal needs and solve
local issues more effectively are highly appreciated.
In the actual procedure, a pair of game participants
is requested to make a guess about what items thepartner selected, based on the partner’s demographic
attributes and what the partner had said earlier in thegame. They then disclosed their own selections andexchanged their rationale behind the selections. The
top mark that could be obtained in the second partwas 10 points, since a player gets two points every
time he/she makes a right guess. The winner with themost points took some prizes.

“Suppose you are hit by a major earthquake. You areforced to evacuate to a safer public emergency shelter
to escape from aftershock risks. You will have foodand drink supplied at the shelter, but why not prepare
other necessities for survival on your own? Take acareful look at the 20 items listed below, and judge
whether each item is essential or not as an emergency
item you pack in your own “emergency kit.”
Item list: windbreaker*, mini sewing kit*, screwdriver, vinyl trash bag*, fire extinguisher, plastic
wrap*, whistle, disposable camera, umbrella, backpack*, towel*, watch, cotton work gloves*, portablecooking stove, nail clippers, portable radio*, pen &notepad set*, army knife*, toothbrush, portable light*
The symbol * indicates 11 essential items for an emergency kit.

Much more importantly from our point of view,
the students became active enough to propose a second part of the game, in addition to the first one. The
students found that some of the pre-existing lists ofrecommended goods were too standardized and too
similar to each other. Thus, they came up with theidea that individually unique necessities should be
included in their game. For example, one student said
that a hand mirror would be a must, to check her appearance even under disaster conditions! Another student wanted to have a portable music player to entertain himself and his friends. A few students said thatthey needed extra food in case they are not satisfied
with the publicly available supply of food, and another female student needed a photo of her boyfriend.
Although such items had rarely been included inconventional lists, the disaster experts in our workshop favorably evaluated these ideas, given that itis true that different people need different supplies.
Furthermore, specific personal needs are less likely to
be met during a large-scale aid operation conducted
mainly by public organizations; for example, special
food needs for the elderly or babies, specially designed portable toilets for those with disabilities, andimportant information provided in different languages
for non-Japanese speakers. This was actually one of
the lessons that the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake
taught us. The Chuetsu Earthquake in 2004, the biggest earthquake to take place after that of 1995, also
demonstrated that basic necessities such as food anddrink are likely to be supplied quickly and that what

Table 3. “Personal Goods” Part
“In the ‘Primary Goods’ part, you learned some basic
emergency necessities helpful for almost all people ina disaster situation. However, different people needdifferent goods. For example, some might need a pairof glasses; others might need special food for their babies or elderly grandparents. With this in mind, freely
select five of your own special necessaries in this part.
Please make a quick note of the reason that the item
is necessary to you. Next, please guess your partner’s
selection.”

2.5 “Practice Stage” (from around December
2004 to February 2005)
It is true that some are skeptical about the impactof a gaming experience. Some argue that a gaming experience might improve interpersonal actions among
game participants within the gaming context, but thatgaming is less likely to cause real attitude or behavioral change in participants in the actual world (Kolb,
1983). The author has to admit that this critical viewis at least partially correct, especially when gaming isconceptualized in its most narrow sense, that is, when
only the playing stage is taken into consideration.
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However, when gaming is defined more broadly
as I have done above, this concern will be mostly
unwarranted. Gaming has sufficient power to cause
actual attitude or behavior change in game participants when gaming is thoughtfully planned to have aclose links with its implementation program, based ona more holistic understanding of the gaming process.
With this understanding in mind, our joint team attempted to put what we had learned from the experience of game creation into practice, immediately. All
the participants in this research, not only the students
but also the experts and school teachers, prepared apersonal emergency kit that included the basic supplies identified in the first part of the game. The core
students also actually played the second part of thegame. They prepared and disclosed their own selection of personal items, and discussed the reasons forthese selections. Furthermore, as stated later, a larger
number of high school students, their family members, and local community people actually preparedan emergency kit in the real world after playing thegame. These actions provide evidence that gaming
can have a positive impact in the “real world” that is
not limited to the more narrow gaming context alone.

TV station news program.
It is noteworthy that through dissemination efforts, the game the students produced was actuallyused in a local government’s education program.
Some of the game participants did prepare real emergency kits at home after playing the game. Others
talked about their game experience with nearby residents in a local community. These behaviors clearlyshow that the positive effect of gaming can extend
beyond the initial game play setting.
3. Discussion
The direct goal of the present action research
project was to plan and produce a game-type disastereducation tool. In fact, multiple stakeholders participated in a series of joint workshops to co-produce
a game-type disaster education material, which waslater used in some official workshops on disastereducation. However, as I stressed, the real goal of thepresent research was to build a sustainable CoP for disaster preparedness, where we could find all three ofthe major components of learning in harmonious balance. It should also be noted that the whole process ofgaming played a key role in achieving this goal. In thefollowing discussion, the author will first look backupon the entire sequence of the action research, andwill then discuss three important points related to CoP
formation. Finally, the author will discuss the implications of this action research for disaster education in
general.

2.6 “Dissemination Stage” (from around
March 2005 to November 2005)
At this stage, the schoolteachers and governmental officers, who were previously in a supporting role,
took a leadership role. First, the teachers introduced
the game to a larger number of students and their parents through school media. This effort was aimed atraising disaster awareness, and also at informing more
students of what the core students had accomplished.
The school also provided an opportunity for the core
students to hand their experiences down to their juniorpeers.
Secondly, local government workers provided
the team with some important chances to allow thestudents to take the role of game facilitator at disastereducation events. By making full use of the self-madegame-type educational materials, the students contributed much to efforts to boost public awareness of disaster preparedness through these public workshops.
These workshops were official ones organized by the
Wakayama Prefecture Office. One of the workshops
was so successful and attracted so much public attention in a local community that it was aired on a local

3.1 Development of Action Research
In the internalization stage of the project, highschool students, the core participants in a joint workshop, concentrated mostly on mastery of previous
knowledge. It was true that this process was absolutely necessary to serve as a platform for further development. However, the role identities of the students
at this stage were firmly fixed as passive learners,
like those in a conventional learning paradigm. They
simply lacked the more positive attitudes that would
be required to go beyond a passive learner’s role. It
is seldom that high school students give new ideas
or take leadership roles in a joint project. We can see
this passive attitude clearly in the students’ statementsfrom the open-ended questionnaire. The questionnaire
survey was conducted in December 2005, asking the91

K. YAMORI

core students to look back on what they had in mind
about the project at each one of the four periods (notitles for each of the stages were shown). Remarks
such as No. 1-1 and 1-2 shown in Table 4 clearly reflect the students’ reactive feelings at this stage.

4-3. “I was happy to see local people showing strong
interest and really enjoying the game. I also considered very seriously how the game could be improved.”
However, we should also pay attention to a different side of the story during this stage. People in theHashimoto region had never expected to experience
direct contact between high school students and disaster experts, especially those coming from outside theregion. This fact suggests that CoP building started as
early as in this initial stage, although such developments were nevertheless slight at this stage, giventhat what happened at this time mostly depended on aconventional teacher-learner framework.
In the modification and practice stages, thestudents began to gradually change their role identities. The students not only learned unilaterally fromoutside experts but also showed more positive commitment, and actively used their own voices to makefull use of their unique positions. The creation of thesecond part of the game was particularly indicative of
more active collaboration between the students andother stakeholders. When we look at the students’ attitude change from another perspective, we realize thatthe other participants (e.g., outside experts or local
government officials) also changed their role identities in the CoP. They could no longer regard the students as passive learners but rather as equal partners
in discussing local disaster risks, after they discovered
different but unique creativity and thoughtful insights
in the students’ ideas.
It is useful here to recall the idea of a cogenerative learning arena. Greenwood and Levin (2007)
stress the importance of taking advantage of the differences between parties in the arena. The asymmetry
or gap in knowledge among a more diverse set ofparticipants, in this case specifically between students
and experts, is not an obstacle to action research, but
is instead a driving force that promotes cogenerative
learning. This view of learning is naturally required
once we view learning as a dialectic process among
diverse stakeholders rather than the unilateral andstatic flow of knowledge.
Nevertheless, we must conclude that a truly dynamic CoP does not yet emerge at these stages. It istrue that the game production experience did have amore positive impact on the participants than simply

Table 4. Summary of High School Students’ Remarks
Obtained in an Open-ended Questionnaire
1. “Internalization Stage”
1-1. “I did not know what to do; I just did the assigned task passively.”
1-2. “To be honest, I was not so inclined to join thisproject. This was because I had no experience ofbeing hit by a major disaster, and because gameproduction looked a very ambiguous goal to me atthat time. But I gradually became interested after I
got an outline picture of the game production project.”
2. “Modification Stage”
2-1. “It was great to come up with the idea of the‘Personal Goods’ part.”
2-2. “Making a disaster game together gave me moreenjoyment than just playing a game, but I felt everything was over after we finished producing thegame.”
2-3. “Since I did not hit upon a good idea of surprisingly or unexpectedly useful goods in an emergency, I felt a bit frustrated.”
3. “Practice Stage”
3-1. “It was fun to gather primary and personal items,
and I found how diverse personal goods are fromperson to person.”
3-2. “I was more deeply committed to this projectfrom this time point. One of the reasons was that I
visited the Disaster Reduction Institute in Kobe andlearned much about real disaster events. It was also
nice to summarize what we learned in the reportpublished in our school newspaper. ”
4. “Dissemination Stage”
4-1. “After I had a real experience of game facilitation, I became more interested and more excited. It
was fascinating to consider how to attract participants’ attention and how to encourage more participants to prepare an emergency kit at home.”
4-2. “I felt that we had to study deeper and further
when we had feedback from one of the participants
who claimed that he appreciated our effort but it
was sometimes very dangerous to offer one correct
answer even in the ‘Primary Goods’ part. I was toldthat necessities could vary depending on factors
such as predicted disaster impact, quality and quantity of disaster relief stocks at local government offices, and so on.”92

ACTION RESEARCH ON DISASTER REDUCTION EDUCATION

playing a game would have had. This is suggested bysome of the students’ commentaries, including No.
2-1, 3-1, and 3-2 (Table 4). However, other statements
like No. 2-2 and 2-3 reveal some limitations at thesame time. The author and his collaborators, at thisstage, were not well prepared to show the students aclear future vision of the project. We should have provided the students with what would come next at eachstage, earlier than we actually did in the present research. This is one of the points that should be bornein mind when future improvements are considered.
In contrast, when the team stepped into the “dissemination stage,” significant transformation occurredin the basic structure of the CoP. First, the students
took the role of instructor or facilitator when theydisseminated what they had learned. The students
handed down what they had learned to their followers
in the high school, and at the same time contributed
richly to local disaster education, in terms of taking
a leading role in some of the official workshops withthe participation of local people. Student remark No.
4-1 (Table 4) demonstrates this transformation.
It should also be noted that this role change wasachieved not only via the students’ isolated efforts, butalso by the continuous assistance of other participantsin the CoP. Specifically, the gaming experts requested
that the school teachers and local government workers
consider the possibility of using the game in disastereducation, both in a school and in a local community.
In response to this request, the teachers and officials
set up opportunities for the students to facilitate gameplay in an official setting. This decision would never
have been made if the author had simply made an
abrupt request to do this without a preceding collaborative process in place. Had the local government
officers not understood that the game was a reliableco-product of the students’ sincere efforts and theexperts’ knowledge, the gaming process would havebeen terminated just after game production was over,without further development.

This means that CoP restructuring requires a longerterm strategy for orchestrating diverse changes in avariety of stakeholders. An action researcher needs
to have a longer-term vision for possible change indiverse scenarios, as well as the capacity to maketimely interventions. This contrasts sharply with whatneeds to be done when our focus is limited only to theinternalization component. Knowledge internalization is achieved in a much shorter period of time, andwe can check more easily and more quickly how wellthis goal is achieved compared to CoP transformation
monitoring.
The second important point is that role identitychange is not unidirectional but bidirectional. For
example, the author has stressed that the studentschanged their position from learner to collaborative
partner as the project progressed. However, the reality is not so simple. The project set the students freefrom being fixed in a conventional identity, that of thepassive learner. Instead, their identities could change
flexibly between that of learner and that of teacher.
Internalization was not completed, but was in fact
still ongoing even more profoundly after the students
became workshop instructors during the dissemination stage. For example, the students received muchadvice on the game from the disaster management experts who had played the game earlier; the local citizens also gave the students straightforward feedback.
Consequently, the students voluntarily improved how
the game was facilitated. The game was converted
from a plainer paper-and-pencil type to a more dynamic and interactive one, with actual emergency
goods displayed just in front of the game participants.
Some of the students’ remarks, such as No. 4-2 and
4-3 (Table 4), confirm that internalization continued
to occur more profoundly when their role identities
were switched bilaterally than when they remained
unchanged.
The final point is that role identity change is not
an isolated individual attitude or behavioral change,
but is instead a collective transformation of role configurations in a CoP. Not only the high school students
but also the other contributors changed their identities
over the course of the study, despite the magnitude
or direction of the change. For example, the outside
experts, who are likely to be fixed in supervising roles
in more traditional approaches, were sometimes in aposition to receive important input from the students.

3.2 Structural Transformation in a CoP
The preceding analysis suggests the following
three important points about the structural transformation of our CoP. Initially, transformation neveroccurs in a short period of time. Normally, it comes
about slowly, with a gradual and interactive change
in role identity configurations among those in a CoP.
93

K. YAMORIThe government officials also admitted afterward thatthey had never expected to play a supporting position,
helping the students to facilitate official disaster education workshops. Furthermore, as shown in Table 5,
some of the local residents were inspired to become
better prepared for disasters after witnessing common high school students playing an unexpectedly
important role in local disaster management efforts.
Through this mobilization of the CoP structure, everybody was set free from previous roles and attained
more flexible and multiple roles in the CoP.

instead. And much more importantly, some who used
to be a central position could be moving toward a peripheral position. Movement in the opposite direction
can happen as well.
Obviously, it is not appropriate to urge everybody to show full commitment in order to achieve
unanimous “central participation.” This type of community might function efficiently over a very shortperiod of time, but not in the longer term. What needs
to be done is to create a CoP with diversity and flexibility inside, enough to gain solid power for securing
its sustainability against outside or inside fluctuations.
This point is particularly important when it comesto disaster preparedness education, focused on hugedisasters with an extremely long recurrence time. Our
discussion suggests that a real threat is not a temporary decrease or loss in people’s awareness or knowledge, but immobilization of the CoP structure. We
should be fully aware that internalization- centereddisaster education might result in gains over the shortterm. However, too much focus on internalization
risks makes a CoP inactive and immobile, especiallywhen performed only in a rigid teacher-learner paradigm.
From this point of view, common concerns about
low disaster awareness, frequently shown in nationwide survey statistics like those reported by the Japanese Cabinet Office (2003), should be looked upon
differently. Lower awareness and less knowledge
about natural disasters might not be exclusively attributable to matters of personal attitude and behavior.
Rather, this might also be a matter of the collective
structure of a CoP. Dangerous indifference and risky
optimism regarding disasters, shown by the majority
with peripheral identities in a CoP, might be maintained and even strengthened when these peripheral
identities are coupled with their counterparts, theminorities whose role identities are rigidly fixed in acentral and leading position in a CoP. Such minorities
often present attitudes such as “I am a disaster expert,
so everybody should listen to me,” “I am more serious
about disaster risk than anyone else in my community,and I have a mission to enlighten people,” or “I amdoing so much about local disaster management, butvery few appreciate it.” These complaints are justifiable to some extent, but we should also acknowledge
that it might be exactly these kinds of overly paternalistic attitudes that leave the majority in peripheral

Table 5. Feedback Statements from Workshop Participants
1. “I vividly observed that participants really enjoyed
the workshop and understood how everyday goods
could be useful in disaster times. It was a very simple game, but it was very effective for knowledge
building because of the interactive conversation
among facilitators and other participants.” (A local
government worker)
2. “I was strongly impressed to know that ordinaryhigh school students facilitated the disaster education workshop very skillfully and even prepared a
guidance manual, with the assistance of university
professors. I really enjoy the workshop since it wasin a game, not in a lecture, style.” (A local resident)
3. “I am acting as a volunteer worker in my community disaster management organization. I got somegreat hints from this workshop. Thank you verymuch.” (A local resident)

3.3 Implication for Disaster Education
Research and Practice
In closing this paper, I would like to discuss how
significant it is to establish a long-lasting and flexibly
changing CoP when we deal with huge disasters overa longer time perspective. One of the points Lave andWenger (1991) stressed in their theory is the notion of“full participation” in a CoP. We must distinguish “fullparticipation” from “central participation.” “Full participation” means the collective status of a CoP where
diverse participants have diverse ways of participationand make diverse contributions. For example, some
may play a central role as leader, but others could
show just slight commitment as a passive follower.
Some might be expected to provide a community withprofessional knowledge or skill, while others might
be expected to contribute in other forms. Some may
be leaving a community, but others will be joining

94

ACTION RESEARCH ON DISASTER REDUCTION EDUCATION

status positions, and that prevent the majority’s “fullparticipation” in a CoP.
For a truly sustainable disaster education approach, a CoP must be transformable enough to allow all participants to alter their roles frequently,
adaptable enough to cope with big or slight changes
in natural or social conditions, and also wide open
enough to encourage outsiders to enter. When this isactually realized, we need not be so concerned about
short-term fluctuations in people’s interest in and preparedness for natural disasters, since we can expectthat a CoP could solve the issue in the long run. A
CoP has the potential to convert currently uninterested
outsiders into inside members, to convert temporarily peripheral members into more central ones, or toconvert a present leadership role into a more relaxed
position, with his/her responsibilities to be transferredto the next leader.
In this regard, we should notice a fine but remarkable line between cogenerative disaster education with CoP transformation and participatory
disaster management in general. These two are neverequal. The latter is just a part of, or strictly, a necessary condition for, the former. Recently, disaster researchers and practitioners have paid more attention
to participatory disaster management, under the titlesof “community-based disaster risk management”(World Bank Institute, 2005) and “citizenry-based disaster management” (Heijmara & Victoria, 2001), toname but two examples. It is true that these kinds ofefforts have much in common with our own attemptthat concerns a basic orientation. However, the author
would suggest that not a few such programs still fallwithin the framework of the conventional teacherlearner paradigm. Although they are fully aware thata traditional approach to public enlightenment led byauthoritative experts is not so effective, participatory
procedures are sometimes introduced as more userfriendly or as more generally appealing communication media. However, we should draw a sharp line
between unilateral knowledge/skill transfer in a participatory atmosphere with a user-friendly communication medium and cogenerative and collaborative colearning in its true sense with a substantial structuralchange in communities of practice. We also shouldnote that, in the worst case, a participatory procedure
is introduced merely for form’s sake and without any
substantial interaction among diverse stakeholders,just as an ineffective response to stronger social demands for citizens’ involvement.
On the other hand, we can find in recent developments of disaster education in Japan a few research
approaches and praxes that share exactly the sameline of thinking as ours. For example, Yamori (2007;2008) reports a disaster awareness-raising attempt inwhich a CoP is cogenerated by many stakeholders,using the same medium used in the present research,a game called “Crossroad: Kobe.” Yamori & Funaki(2008) discuss a case study on disaster education inwhich diverse stakeholders across three generations(elderly disaster victims who experienced the Great
Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, university students who are learning about disaster education, andprimary school kids in a community) participated ina CoP. Watanabe (1999) provides another impressive
example of the revitalization of local disaster education efforts, in which school children were converted
from passive learners to active investigators of theirown community risks. These challenges suggest thatthe present study is not an isolated case without any
related empirical evidence to support the validity of
CoP-based disaster education. The present action
research, although a small attempt, is a model casewhere we can successfully create a truly participative,cogenerative, and sustainable CoP for disaster education.
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