24/01/2010 by lizit.

I’ve been looking at an interesting article (Solomon, et al, 2006) on everyday learning taking place in the spaces between work activities in a workplace context. Following on from previous thoughts about the home as the workplace for some parents with a child with SEN, it made me start thinking about where the in-between spaces are there.

The idea of  in-between spaces relates to third places as described by Oldenburg and Brissett (1982), where they reflect on societal changes which have led to a tendency for modern lifestyles to polarise between home and work with very few areas of neutral territory for discourse. Some more recent articles (Steinkuhler, 2006, Peachey, 2008) have suggested that such third places may now be found in various virtual environments. The nature of third places is the provision of neutral territory where identity and status are irrelevant, but ideas can be shared and debated within a social context. It may well be that some online groups fit this description.

Solomon, et al, focus on workplace learning. The description of hybrid spaces stems from a larger organisational study where it was observed people frequently referred to non-work spaces where dialogue and discourse happened. These included spaces in the workplace which were not designated as working spaces such as a coffee room, and spaces outside the workplace where colleagues regularly conversed such as in a car share arrangement for commuting. No doubt the space around a water cooler also fits. They found that although people were resistant to labelling their experience in these spaces as learning, it was often clear from the content of the descriptions or observations that these spaces were learning spaces.

The initial thought was whether the hybrid spaces could be used to enhance the workplace learning of the organisation, but this was resisted and they conclude by examining some of the pros and cons of formalising the informal and unintended. Reference is made to Colley, et al, (2002) and the impossibility of separating formal and informal learning in any satisfactory way. In the same way, other binaries such as work/non-work, on-the-job/off-the-job, worker/social being, worker/learner, working/playing may not be as clear cut as first appears. It is suggested that “It is in the in-between space that interesting things happen.”

Although not discussed in detail, another thread running through the article is identity in hybrid spaces. In a work context, hierarchies remain but it becomes possible to speak about things which it is not possible to in the the work place itself. To what extent do online forums also facilitate an opportunity to clear the air or let off steam by different participants involved in SEN - or any other domain?

Oldenburg, R., & Brissett, D. (1982). The Third Place. [Article]. Qualitative Sociology, 5(4), 265-284.

Peachey, A. (2008). First reflections, Second Life, third place: community building in virtual worlds. Paper presented at the ReLIVE08, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

Solomon, N., Boud, D., & Rooney, D. (2006). The in-between: exposing everyday learning at work. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(1), 3 - 13.

Steinkuehler, C. A., & Williams, D. (2006). Where everybody knows your (screen) name: online games as third places. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 885-909.

Posted in space/place, social learning, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

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?

Posted in ASD, empowerment, social learning, informal learning, community, education, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

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 »

19/11/2009 by lizit.

Since my blog a couple of days ago where I mentioned the way Jane Hart was looking for a different way of categorising learning which moved away from the informal/formal model, Steven Verjans has set up a Cloudworks site which is providing an opportunity to explore Jane’s model further and to consider Harold Jarche’s extension to it.

As a result of reading the comments on the Cloudworks page, reading quite a bit about self-directed learning and how understanding of what it is has developed over the past thirty years, and playing more with my own idea, I have come up with this diagram.

It is very much a first stab at trying to create a model which provides scope for acknowledging the co-existence of both formal and informal and planned and serendipitous within each and every learning experience. This follows the observations of Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm (2002, 2003) where they suggested there was little value in seeking to differentiate formal and informal learning as characteristics of each were found in both.

Obviously this is a work in progress, but it does begin to feel as though the time might be right to re-examine the informal/formal learning paradigm.

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16/11/2009 by lizit.

For several months now I have been trying to get my head around informal learning. My starting point was one of endorsing the importance of informal learning. This was based largely on my community development experience, seeing the learning engaged in by people who had been considered educational failures, and more recently on recognising the amount of independent learning engaged in by all manner of individuals through the use of web resources. My involvement in various OU networks and the Sussex Learning Network has made me aware of the importance of Web 2.0 and social learning. I took part in the Clusters project which explored the potential use of a number of Web 2.0 tools in supporting students.

In exploring the informal learning literature, I have found a complex mishmash of debate about categorisation and definitions. The term has gained different meanings in different contexts and there are those who suggest it is an unhelpful term which should be avoided. As long ago as 2003, it was suggested that there is no clear differentiation between formal and informal learning but that both include elements of the other to varying degrees.

At the end of last week, in a flash of inspiration or madness, I suggested to my DPhil supervisor that perhaps a different typology was needed and suggested as a starting point 5 categories: other directed, self directed, incidental, serendipitous, and social. Over the weekend, I spent time doing literature searches on self-directed learning and found this was an area which had attracted a lot of attention and debate in the 1980s and early 1990s but the more recent literature seemed to be focusing on the development of independent learning skills in formal contexts rather than the earlier focus on self-teaching. I was not happy with my initial 5 categories; I find it particularly unhelpful using a term which has a clearly understood meaning in a different context. This morning, I was beginning to think about just 2 categories - self and other initiated - with sub-categories of intentional, incidental and accidental. I then came across a fascinating blog post from Jane Hart, signposted by Jay Cross. Although the focus is on use of social media in organisational training contexts, the starting point is an attempt to find a more satisfactory classification tool than formal and informal learning.

Posted in social learning, informal learning, research ideas, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

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!

Posted in social learning, informal learning, education, motivation, blog | Print | 1 Comment »

16/09/2009 by lizit.

Just come across a wiki forming the basis of Karyn Romeis’s masters dissertation on the impact of the use of social media on her professional practice as a corporate learning professional. Interesting when only yesterday I was suggesting that hidden behind the work I am doing for my DPhil is a personal case study.

I haven’t read the dissertation in depth as yet - but can see that it is a document I will want to go back to as there are ideas there that I want to explore further.  One is the connectivism concept which I have encountered before, but do not really have a grasp of, but which may offer some way of linking ideas about informal learning. The other that has struck me at first reading, is the use of narrative and stories as a data source. In my description of what I want to do, I have found myself talking about stories, and it looks as though I need to find out more about narratives in thinking about my methodology.

Posted in methodology, narratives, connectivism, social learning | Print | 2 Comments »

17/07/2009 by lizit.

Came across an interesting article yesterday on social learning theory and Second Life (Smith, M., & Berge, Z. L. (2009). Social learning theory in Second Life. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 439-445).

Bandura had reached my peripheral vision a couple of times before, but I hadn’t followed up, but this article made interesting reading.  It takes what the authors see as the 3 key components of Bandura’s social learning theory - observational learning, imitation and behaviour modelling - and considers how these might apply in a virtual world context.

What struck me first about the article - though I haven’t yet looked at any of the originals - was that social learning theory appears to be based on the idea that we learn from others through our interactions in a social context. This clearly has relevance for a virtual social world - it is Boellstorff’s observation that most SL users are there for social reasons. Although Smith and Berge apply the model to formal learning situations within SL, it looks as though it is probably equally applicable in informal learning. Taking it together with SDT, suggests a way of looking both at how people learn and why people learn.

Yesterday, I registered a new avatar, principally because I wanted to check the current registration arrangements and in particular registering into a different orientation space. I was surprised just how many orientation experiences are now on offer - probably 40 plus - including several using languages other than English. Unlike the Linden Labs orientation, these are all based in PG areas which are accessible to existing SL residents as well as new.  It might be possible to either do observational stuff in one of these spaces with appropriate permissions or to become a mentor.  I’m beginning to see some possibilities…

Posted in social learning, informal learning, motivation | Print | No Comments »

28/06/2009 by lizit.

I’ve been watching an interesting recording from ASTD 2009 - a conference aimed at Learning and Development people in large corporates. The subject matter was informal learning, but the focus of the address was social learning (meaning use of Web 2.0 technologies) and the NetGens (otherwise known as digital natives or Generation Y and in this case referring to those born between 1977 and 1997).

As with most stuff on digital natives, there was a tendency to assume all of that ‘group’ are tech savvy, use Web 2.0, etc.  They were described as looking for freedom, fun and collaboration and having no clear differential between work and personal life. Some of this may be true - and some applies to those born pre 1977 too, especially with changing work patterns and demands of workplace leading to more use of home offices etc.

What interested me most was how informal learning was being equated to social learning, with a momentary allusion to other forms of informal learning like information gathering through internet searches. The focus seemed to be very much on how to manage social learning within companies by the creation of social networking possibilities, both physical and virtual. Delegates were being encouraged to divert formal learning budgets into the creation of social learning environments and were being given advice on how to use them.  For example, the appointment of wiki gardeners to read the blogs and wikis and find the tacit knowledge elements contained within them for incorporation in easily accessible databases.

I wasn’t at all sure whether the proposal had much to do with learning, except perhaps for the employing organisations.  It seemed to have more to do with knowledge management and formalisation of informal processes. The commercial aspects of social leaning were heavily endorsed in terms of serving the customer better, which actually means selling additional products.

The tie up between informal (serendipitous) learning and social learning is an interesting one, but the incorporation of this in knowledge management appears to me to be another attempt to formalise those interactions.

Posted in social learning, informal learning | Print | 1 Comment »