"Ecological Psychology" is a unique theoretical appraoch to psychological science. However, it is not a complete BIG THEORY for all topics of psychological issues. There are two indepent projects, one is James J. Gibson's ecological approach to visual perception (1979), the other one is Roger Barker's Behavior Settings Theory (1968/1989).
In 2001, Harry Heft wrote a book titled Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James. He suggested that we can adopt James William's radical empiricism to connect these two projects together. He also suggested Activity Theory as a framework for socio-cultural level analysis.
I followed Heft's suggestion and started building the Ecologial Practice Approach in 2019 and worked on Activity Theory too.
Eventually, I made something about these two lines. One is about the Ecological Practice Approach, you can find the introduction here:
The Development of Ecological Practice Approach
https://medium.com/p/e0d3f3bf48a8
Gibson's theory focuses on the body-scale perception. However, his concept Affordance is a significant theoretical resouece for contemporary embodied cognition science.
My focus is abour social practice analysis. The starting point of the Ecological Practice approach is the concept of Affordance. However, I adopted other concepts from William James, George Lakoff, Donald Schön, etc. I also developed brand new concepts for my project.
The concept of "Ecologial Self" is a good theorecial concept of Ecologial Psychology. I also developed "Supportance", "Ecological Relevance" to deal with the issus of intersubjectivity.
I also developed the concept "Themes of Practice" to deal with content, media, and information.
Based on my understanding, the major claim of the ecological approach is considering 1) the “organism-environment” relationship as a whole, 2) the “action — experience” dynamics as an engagement, 3) the “potential — actual” transformation as a reality.
On the other side, I worked on the Activity U project during 2020 to 2022. I wrote a book titled Project-oriented Activity Theory in 2021. This year, I started building an independent website for Activity Theory.
Activity Analysis
https://www.activityanalysis.net/
I also developed several frameworks for practical projects. Some frameworks adopted ideas from these two accounts.
