06/01/2010 by lizit.

These notes are based on Jean Lave’s 1996 article “Teaching, as learning, in practice”.

It is an interesting article as it clearly identifies the focus of most learning research is not research on learning but “research on instruction, on depersonalised guidelines for the teaching of specific lesson-like things in school settings in order to improve learning.” Lave draws on her research of the apprenticeship practices of Liberian tailors and on Timothy Mitchell’s observations of the training of Egyptian lawyers, to come to the conclusion that learning rather than teaching is the core concept.

Starting with Scribner and Cole’s (1973) paper drawing a clear distinction between learning in formal settings and in informal settings, Lave shows that a polarity has developed which values formal schooling. This, combined with a psychological model of learning, has led to an increasing marginalisation of those who do not succeed in the school system. Putting this into the 21st century UK context it could be hypothesised that the emphasis on achieving government set targets in schools and the emphasis on increasing the number of young people entering higher education could have had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the development of an underclass amongst those young people who do not meet the targets, leading to the development of the gang culture and criminal behaviours which are increasingly in the public eye.

Lave is clear that learning is about far more than knowledge transfer. In both her examples, the apprentices, or learners, did not only learn a skill or set of concepts, but were enculterated in a multi-layered system of cultural values with their implications. Particularly in the case of the Liberian tailors, the apprenticeship and its completion was accompanied by a strong sense of worth and self-respect in stark contrast to the poverty of the society the tailors were part of.

Lave’s work led her to three changes in perspective from those espoused in traditional education models:

1. a reversal of the polarisation that school and institutional learning is positive and other forms of learning are negative
2. a focus on learners and learning rather than the transmitters of knowledge - teachers, care givers, etc
3. learning is not individual but is socially situated

In her work with Martin Packer, a tentative model to underpin learning theories was developed:

1. Telos or the idea that learning involves some kind of change or movement
2. Subject-world or the relationship between the individual or self and the social world
3. Learning mechanism which focuses on how learning happens

Lave concludes by saying: “The conditions for the transformation of persons are the same whether the telos of learning is movement towards growing up from babyhood, or adolescence, becoming a craftsperson or a philosopher, and/or becoming a marginal person in a world where participation in and thus learning divisions of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual preference, determine strongly who is consigned to the advantaged cores and disadvantaged margins of society.”

I found some the article resonated strongly with me. I have already given some thought to the marginalisation and dis-empowerment of parents of children and young people with autistic spectrum disorders and it may be that part of this stems from the fact that their knowledge of their children’s condition is situated rather than as a result of teaching. Empowerment implies a polarity as for somebody to be empowered somebody else has to be dis-empowered. In the current model, professionals hold the power (and the budgets). Would a recognition of parental learning and knowledge lead to empowerment, partnership and possibly more shared decision making?

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04/01/2010 by lizit.

Finding lots of interesting ideas in papers written some years back. Getting the background seems to involve a constant moving backwards. I can’t possibly read everything ever written, but I can read a lot of stuff and get a sense of big picture.

Brown, Collins & Duguid (1989) present some useful contrasts between different types and contexts of learning in developing their ideas about situated cognition.I find their description of the learning of ‘just plain folk’ (JPF) relates to the questions I am asking about the learning of parents of children and young people with ASDs and how they learn to provide appropriate support and care for their children.

Brown, et al, start from the “distinction between mere acquisition of inert concepts and the development of useful, robust knowledge” citing Whitehead’s 1929 treatise on the aims of education. The implication is that it is possible to possess a tool, or knowledge, and not have a clue how to use it. Similarly it is possible to have good working knowledge of the use of a tool without knowing why it works as it does. In the real world, we learn how to use tools from others and through practice. The same tool may be used differently by different communities of users - example is given of chisel which is used differently by carpenters and cabinet makers, Just as we need to learn how to use physical tools, the same is necessary with conceptual tools. As with physical tools, the conceptual tools only really make sense in the context of practice. It is suggested that learners learn through enculturation or socialisation into a community of practice.

As tools are used in authentic context they gain meaning & relevance. Brown, et al, comment that “the process may appear informal, but it is nonetheless full-blooded, authentic activity that can be deeply informative - in a way that textbook examples and declarative examples are not.” This is illustrated using Lave’s example of the apprenticeship of tailors.

Brown, et al, then consider the learning of JPFs, students and practitioners. When a JPF wants to learn something they can become an apprentice or a student. As the former, they enculturate into the community of practice. As the latter they go to school where “the general strategies for intuitive reasoning, resolving issues, and negotiating meaning (…) are superseded by the precise, well-defined problems, formal definitions, and symbol manipulation of much school activity.” Brown, et al, suggest the JPF is closer to the practitioner in learning & practice than students whose learning & practice is abstracted from real life, implying that contextualisation is vital for learning to be meaningful.

The discussion can be related to the current educational policy debates where politicians are demanding more focus on vocational education in higher education. Brown, et al, suggest that it is only in post graduate study that students begin to become practitioners through an apprenticeship process embedded in the supervisory relationship with an experienced researcher. However, there is no discussion of the thinking and analytical skills developed through the education system.

They suggest more work is needed on understanding the “relationship between explicit knowledge and implicit understanding”.
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18 (1), 32-42.

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21/11/2009 by lizit.

This will no doubt need more work, but is an attempt to capture something of the bigger picture and context against which thinking about adult learning is happening.

Posted in social learning, self-directed learning, informal learning, education, concepts, learning | Print | No Comments »

18/11/2009 by lizit.

Afraid the heading of this blog is a bit of a mouthful, but it comes out of my recent reading around self-directed learning and listening to a recording on Graham Attwell’s blog.  A phrase that jumped out of me from the recording was around how the ‘reflexivity and critique’ which is valued in formal learning can be incorporated into informal learning.  Over the last few days, I have been reading a lot around self-directed learning and one of the things that struck me about this was that in the first instance self-directed learning was something which was observed as happening - recognised in the early informal learning surveys - but then the education/social science community got hold of the concept and began to look at it in relation to formal education. Apart from the attempts to quantify self-directed learning, the emphasis appears to have been on the encouragement of independent learning in formal contexts (use of learning contracts and problem based learning) and questioning whether self-directed learning in the wild was really learning if it was focusing on skill development without the reflective elements.

Brookfield (1984) has a useful discussion about terminology - how the word ‘learning’ is understood and contrasting this with ‘education’ and ‘teaching’. Perhaps the ‘knowledge acquisition’ mentioned by Attwell should also form part of the semantic mix? Brookfield stresses the need for clarity in terminology: “one priority for thinkers in this field must be to propose clear and unambiguous definitions of learning and education in order that internal mental change is distinguished from the external collection, management and analysis of information.” Is it the continuing confusion over terminology underpinning the desire for the mental processes of informal learning to more closely resemble those of formal learning?

Is there a danger that informal learning will be undervalued in much the same way as informal care has been through the imposition of measures and standards that have little or nothing to do with the informal and all to do with something else, whatever label we give that something else?

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04/11/2009 by lizit.

Spotted a couple of interesting blogs this morning. Steve Wheeler from Plymouth was responding to a blog from Tillman Swinke in Atlantis. Swinke is discussing personal learning and contrasting formal and informal learning and the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in each.  He is basically saying that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic and asking how the passion of intrinsically motivated informal learning can be incorporated into formal learning, suggesting social learning may be a way forward. (How I find myself wondering just what he means by social learning having seen the term used in so many different ways over the past months.)

Wheeler summarises Swinke’s blog and says that we begin to learn because we are interested - intrinsically motivated - but in formal education extrinsic motivation tends to take over as we seek to keep up with our peers, attain good enough grades, etc, and asks how interest and intrinsic interest can be/is maintained in formal learning. Wheeler then advocates PLEs as a way forward.

A commentator on Wheeler’s blog has pointed to the Futures of Education project which is asking questions about the redesign of education. This brings me back to another blog read this morning, Graham Attwell’s reflections on the use of computers in exams.

At root these posts are all raising some pretty fundamental questions about the nature of learning and education and the dichotomy between them.  Others educate me, but I learn. Some of what I learn is guided by my teachers who share their passion for an idea or a subject area. Some of what I am taught is the use of essential tools to facilitate my learning - the 3 ‘R’s. Much of what I learn now is out of interest and desire to learn and explore ideas and play with them either in my mind or with my hands. Some of what I have been taught in the past, I am rediscovering through my own learning in the present.

Good thoughts to start the day!

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03/11/2009 by lizit.

There is an interesting article in the Guardian on ELQ and the costs to students http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/03/second-degrees-higher-education-funding. Although my focus is more on incidental and serendipitous learning, it strikes me that the kind of sums of money involved in taking an additional qualification deemed to be at the same level as one already held is likely to result in a number - potentially large number - of people seeking to gain skills, training, expertise other than through formal education. It also makes me realise how fortunate I have been in the funding of my own education. Even if I have groused from time to time about having to pay my own postgraduate fees, at least they have been heavily subsidised. Whatever the government might be saying about wanting to increase the proportion of the population with degree level education, the possibility of increasing undergraduate fees and the excessive cost of retraining might well prove to have unintended consequences, especially for those who will not be entering the most highly paid of jobs.

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07/09/2009 by lizit.

One of my declared interests is social change. Been musing a bit on informal learning and social change.

In a sense all learning/education is about change. There is a sense in which knowledge is power. I reckon this has particular resonance when related to informal learning and within the context of community development, community action and ’self-help’.  I’ve seen the effect of informal learning in the parent support group I am involved in; parents of children with SENs are frequently at a loss over how to best help their children. Within a parent support group, parents share their experiences of schools and discussions with education officials, learn how to complete forms, etc. Increasingly, parents find out how much they know and have learned through assisting other parents. No longer is it down to somebody like me to act as the fount of wisdom, as I know and others know that they know.

The story, as narrated by Lovett, of Liverpool EPA (a 1970s education initiative) is one of people engaging in learning from a position of being labelled as education failures - people who had left school at 15 with no qualifications and few, if any, aspirations. Through learning, or rather through discussion and gleaning information and taking new levels of responsibility, people were empowered and enabled to make choices and contribute to processes which made decisions about their lives. The same change process is evident in the community development projects of the 1970s and other community initiatives and in the various case studies described by Foley. Reading these accounts reminds me of my own work in the early 70s working with parents to set up holiday play schemes. In one, I recruited members of the neighbourhood social work team as volunteers, and in the post-project review, I recall their amazement at seeing parents they had viewed as inadequate and unable to cope with raising their own children organising large groups of children and volunteers for trips to the swimming pool or to the beach - perhaps wouldn’t be possible now in an age when risk assessment precedes just about any activity.

Although there are other  aspects of informal learning which are beneficial to the individual, the community or society more generally, the social change agenda cannot be ignored. It was that agenda which lay behind the Sunday schools, both christian and socialist, of the early 19th century. It was that which fuelled the development of trades unions and the establishment of Ruskin College. It was that which led to the establishment of the WEA. Even today, education is presented as an agent of social change in creating greater equity of opportunity by admitting more young people to universities where they are the first member of their family to enter higher education. Years ago Michael Young wrote of the rise of the meritocracy. We still haven’t seen it, but perhaps there is hope for those formerly considered failures.

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15/06/2009 by lizit.

Was chatting about the White Paper on informal learning (DIUS. (2009). The Learning Revolution. Cm7555) over supper and mentioned how easy it is to be suspicious if not even cynical about the government’s motivation in suddenly deciding to support informal education after years of decreasing the funding given to adult education, except for those classes which led to formally recognised qualifications. The white paper itself recognises this: “The Government has taken the decision to re-prioritise LSC funding on longer, more valuable accredited courses that provide real help for people to get on in work” (para 24, p. 9) and goes on to acknowledge this has led to to an ‘expected reduction in shorter courses: “Many were in areas like health and safety at work or food hygiene which are properly the responsibility of employers. Some have been in areas which, while popular, would not attract the highest priority, or where learners are willing to pay full fees. Recreational language classes used to be one of the short courses most heavily-subsidised by the LSC and many still take place, but in a different form” (para 25, p.9). So thriving adult education classes have been closed or passed to other providers and people have found other learning opportunities which are not funded by Government leading to a flourishing informal learning sector which often goes unnoticed and unrecognised.

Now if we turn the clock back 25 years or so, we find huge changes in social care provision under the Conservative government of the day. Promises of support for the voluntary sector turned to support for volunteers (when it was realised how much voluntary organisations cost) and then to informal and family carers (when it was realised volunteers do not come completely free of overheads). During those years we saw the beginning of the contracting out of social care to voluntary and private organisations,  the closure of the large mental hospitals in favour of care in the community, and the move from public sector funding of care to the lottery. OK, not all that has happened in the social care field is bad, and some people may have slightly more say in the care they receive now, but there are also many casusalties of the caring revolution.

So where will the learning revolution lead.  It is driven by economic and demographic factors - the credit crunch and the increasing number of older, economically inactive people and younger people with few employment prospects. One can almost hear the thinking, now if we can formally recognise all the work these non-funded bodies and informal groups are doing and label it learning and perhaps even accredit some of it, we can reduce the amount we spend on formal education while claiming to increase the total amount of learning happening within the UK.  We can even disguise what we are doing with our digital agenda pointing to the need to ensure everybody is upskilled for the digital age.

Call me an old cynic, but these are worrying times we live in.

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