Here are some notes from our discussion at the Leeds University Theory Group meeting today:
Paper discussed
Edwards R (2009) Introduction: Life as a Learning Context? In: Edwards Richard, Biesta Gert, Thorpe Mary (ed.). Rethinking Contexts for Learning and Teaching: Communities, Activites and Networks, Abingdon, Oxon, U.K.: Routledge (of Taylor & Francis), pp. 1-13.
Discussion notes
In this chapter Edwards addresses “the problem of context” (Lave, 1996: p.5), and poses the question that “[i]f learning is lifelong and lifewide, what specifically then is a learning context?” (Edwards, 2009: p.2). He brings in the geological metaphor of “strata” to serve as a basis for arguing that learning can occur in a range of distributed ‘contexts’ and associational orders.
All contexts, therefore, are potentially learning contexts, and if we attune our attention to the social and material relations, or arrangements, which give rise to learning across different strata of people’s lives then we can begin to “lose the conceptual basis for talking specifically of a learning context” (p.2).
I was interested in asking: what really is an ‘off task’ activity in education, once we move beyond the dramaturgy of formal learning? As even sleeping is a part of the training regimen for many athletes, so what of learning?
The theoretical framing of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is one way of escaping the confines of a ‘context-as-container’ approach to learning, as are the frameworks of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991), and complexity (Haggis, 2007). But to change the very notion of context is a wholly different matter. And it is here where Edwards draws from a material-semiotic approach to do this (Latour, 1993), as well as other influences.
In the meeting we talked about the reframing of the notion of ‘context’ in relation to learning, and how we make the best of pedagogic interventions with this framing; is it simply to allow learners opportunities to ‘(re)contextualise’ pedagogic content?
In my own research on digital literacy events, I’m exploring how learners mobilise the literacy practices of their personal and social lives into a classroom situation, and write assignments for their course using the connectivity of cyberspace. ‘Context’ is important to me as I don’t think it’s enough to say that learners ‘migrate’ or ‘transfer’ some of their vernacular literacy practices from one context to another. Edwards’ metaphors of ‘folding’ and ‘scrumpled geography’ certainly shed some light on how a context emerges through a socio-material arrangement. Where does learning fit in to this? And how do we maximise opportunities for it?
References
Edwards R (2009) ‘Introduction: Life as a Learning Context?’ In: Edwards Richard, Biesta Gert, Thorpe Mary (ed.). Rethinking Contexts for Learning and Teaching: Communities, Activites and Networks, Abingdon, Oxon, U.K.: Routledge (of Taylor & Francis), pp. 1-13.
Haggis, T. (2007) ‘Conceptualizing the case in adult and higher education research: a dynamic systems view’, in J. Bogg and R. Geyer (Eds) Complexity, Science and Society, Oxford: Radcliff.
Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern, Harlow: Harvester Wheatcheaf.
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lave, J. (1996) ‘The practice of learning’, in S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (Eds) (1996) Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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