Rethinking Learning

At the end of chapter one it was argued that the vital relationship between informal and lifelong learning needed to be looked at afresh. It was suggested that this should serve as a stimulus to reconceptualising learning itself. Subsequent chapters have outlined and critiqued the various ways that lifelong learning, formal education provision and economic wellbeing have become entwined in recent educational policy and practice. We argue that this has resulted in an undesirable imbalance between formal and informal learning, one in which there is too much focus on the former and unwarranted neglect of the latter. To correct this, it is clear that we need to think of learning as something much wider than schooling and formal education. We need to rethink learning itself. That is the task of this chapter.

We begin by considering why a single account of learning is unlikely to be feasible. The main reason is twofold. Firstly, that we seem to be unable to think about learning without resorting to the use of metaphor, and various rival metaphors are available for this purpose. Secondly, all learning is contextualised and different contexts favour different metaphors. Hence, all attempts to provide an overarching account of learning are inevitably contested. Quite simply, for any proposed general account of learning there will be learning contexts where the theory and its accompanying metaphors are not particularly applicable. Thus, after considering why humans cannot think about learning in metaphor-free ways, this chapter outlines various metaphors and clusters of metaphors that are prominent in attempts to understand learning. There are several distinctive metaphors employed in relation to learning, each one involving its own epistemological and ontological assumptions, as well a series of subsidiary metaphors. Each of these distinctive metaphors and their attendant assumptions and subsidiary metaphors will be outlined in detail. (For the sake of brevity, the term ‘metaphor cluster’ will be employed hereafter to refer to a ‘learning metaphor, together with its attendant assumptions and subsidiary metaphors’). This chapter will then consider how one metaphor cluster, the propositional learning one, has been elevated to the position of ‘single, preferred account of learning’. Crucial problems for common understandings of learning, that have been created by this ascendency of a single, preferred account of learning, are identified and discussed. From this critique, a different, more inclusive and pluralistic, account of learning emerges. Our account of key instances of informal learning, as a developing capacity to make context-sensitive judgements, provides but one kind of learning that fits under the broader account of learning that is proposed here. Finally, in this chapter, a number of exemplars will be outlined and discussed so as to give flesh to some of the key ideas discussed up till then, as well as in subsequent chapters.