Read the Chapter #5 and answer the following Questions in a paragraph style…

1. Describe John Dewey’s version of Pragmatism (one paragraph)

2. How relevant is John Dewey’s Pragmatism in the field of education? (one paragraph)

3. Explain the three (3) different theories of Adult Learning (one paragraph for each theory)

book is attatched

200172c8coverv05b

Contemporary Theories of Learning
In this defi nitive collection of today’s most infl uential learning theorists, sixteen world-
renowned experts present their understanding of what learning is and how human
learning takes place.
Professor Knud Illeris has collected chapters that explain both the complex
frameworks in which learning takes place and the specifi c facets of learning, such as
the acquisition of learning content, personal development, and the cultural and social
nature of learning processes. Each international expert provides either a seminal text
or an entirely new précis of the conceptual framework they have developed over a
lifetime of study.
Elucidating the key concepts of learning, Contemporary Theories of Learning provides
both the perfect desk reference and an ideal introduction for students. It will prove
an authoritative guide for researchers and academics involved in the study of learning
and an invaluable resource for all those dealing with learning in daily life and work.
It provides a detailed synthesis of current learning theories … all in the words of the
theorists themselves.
The theories of
KNUD ILLERIS • PETER JARVIS • ROBERT KEGAN • YRJÖ ENGESTRÖM •
BENTE ELKJAER • JACK MEZIROW • HOWARD GARDNER • PETER ALHEIT
• JOHN HERON • MARK TENNANT • JEROME BRUNER • ROBIN USHER •
THOMAS ZIEHE • JEAN LAVE • ETIENNE WENGER • DANNY WILDEMEERSCH
& VEERLE STROOBANTS
in their own words
Knud Illeris is Professor of Lifelong Learning at the Danish University of Education.
He is internationally acknowledged as an innovative contributor to learning theory and
adult education. In 2005 he became an Honorary Adjunct Professor of Teachers College,
Columbia University, New York, and in 2006 he was inducted to The International
Hall of Fame of Adult and Continuing Education. He is the author of numerous books,
including How We Learn, which provides a comprehensive understanding of human
learning and non-learning.

Contemporary Theories of
Learning
Learning theorists … in their own words
Edited by Knud Illeris

First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2009 Knud Illeris
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Contemporary theories of learning: learning theorists—in their own
words / edited by Knud Illeris.—1st.
p. cm.
1. Learning—Philosophy. 2. Adult learning. I. Illeris, Knud.
LB1060.C6558 2009
370.15’23—dc22
2008027878
ISBN10: 0-415-47343-8 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-47344-6 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-47343-9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-47344-6 (pbk)
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
ISBN 0-203-87042-5 Master e-book ISBN

Contents
List of fi gures vii
Introduction 1
1 A comprehensive understanding of human learning 7
KNUD ILLERIS
2 Learning to be a person in society: learning to be me 21
PETER JARVIS
3 What “form” transforms? A constructive-developmental
approach to transformative learning 35
ROBERT KEGAN
4 Expansive learning: toward an activity-theoretical
reconceptualization 53
YRJÖ ENGESTRÖM
5 Pragmatism: a learning theory for the future 74
BENTE ELKJAER
6 An overview on transformative learning 90
JACK MEZIROW
7 Multiple approaches to understanding 106
HOWARD GARDNER
8 Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning
discourse 116
PETER ALHEIT

vi Contents
9 Life cycles and learning cycles 129
JOHN HERON
10 Lifelong learning as a technology of the self 147
MARK TENNANT
11 Culture, mind, and education 159
JEROME BRUNER
12 Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 169
ROBIN USHER
13 ‘Normal learning problems’ in youth: in the context of
underlying cultural convictions 184
THOMAS ZIEHE
14 The practice of learning 200
JEAN LAVE
15 A social theory of learning 209
ETIENNE WENGER
16 Transitional learning and refl exive facilitation: the case of
learning for work 219
DANNY WILDEMEERSCH AND VEERLE STROOBANTS
Index 233

Figures
1.1 The main areas of the understanding of learning 8
1.2 The fundamental processes of learning 9
1.3 The three dimensions of learning and competence development 10
2.1 Kolb’s learning cycle 23
2.2 Jarvis’ 1987 model of learning 24
2.3 The transformation of sensations: learning from primary
experience 26
2.4 The transformation of the person through learning 29
2.5 The internalisation and externalisation of culture 33
3.1 Two kinds of learning: informative and transformative 43
3.2 Five increasingly complex epistemologies 47
4.1 Vygotsky’s model of mediated act and its common
reformulation 54
4.2 The structure of a human activity system 55
4.3 Two interacting activity systems as minimal model for the
third generation of activity theory 56
4.4 Contradictions in children’s health care in the Helsinki area 64
4.5 Conceptual model of the care agreement practice 68
4.6 Strategic learning actions and corresponding contradictions in
the cycle of expansive learning 70
4.7 Expanded view of directionalities in concept formation 71
5.1 Comparison between a traditional concept of experience and
Dewey’s concept of experience 81
5.2 After Dewey’s process of inquiry 83
5.3 After Kolb’s learning cycle 85
9.1 The basic life cycle of the ego 132
9.2 The basic learning cycle of the ego 133
9.3 The distressed ego life cycle 134
9.4 Compulsive roles of the distressed ego 135
9.5 Guilt and blame of the distressed ego 136
9.6 The reversal learning cycle of the ego 137

viii Figures
9.7 Reversal learning cycle of the ego applied to restimulated
distress 139
9.8 The three stages of change using the reversal learning cycle 140
9.9 The basic life cycle of the person 141
9.10 The basic learning cycle of the person 142
9.11 The co-operative reversal learning cycle of the person 143
12.1 A ‘map’ of experiential learning in the social practices
of postmodernity 170
15.1 Components of a social theory of learning: an initial inventory 211
16.1 Transitional learning 223

Introduction
The idea of this book is to present an international selection of the most
important contemporary learning theorists in one volume and in their own
words in order to give an impression of the ongoing development and debate
in this area.
During the last 10–15 years, learning has become a key topic, not only for
professionals and students in the areas of psychology, pedagogy and education,
but also in political and economic contexts. One reason for this is that the level
of education and skills of nations, companies and individuals is considered
a crucial parameter of competition in the present globalised market and
knowledge society. It is, however, important to emphasise that the competitive
functions of learning are merely a secondary, late-modern addition to the
much more fundamental primary function of learning as one of the most basic
abilities and manifestations of human life.
Learning is also a very complex matter, and there is no generally accepted
defi nition of the concept. On the contrary, a great number of more-or-less
special or overlapping theories of learning are constantly being developed,
some of them referring back to more traditional understandings, others trying
to explore new possibilities and ways of thinking. It is also worth noting that
whereas learning traditionally has been understood mainly as the acquisition of
knowledge and skills, today the concept covers a much larger fi eld that includes
emotional, social and societal dimensions. For example, learning sometimes
takes on the nature of competence development, which has to do with the
ability to manage different existing and future challenges in working life and
many other fi elds of practice.
It is thus quite diffi cult to obtain an overview of the present situation of
the understanding of the topic of learning. It is, fi rst of all, characterised by
complexity, which is also mirrored in the long story that lies behind the genesis
of this book.
This story begins right back in 1998 when I was writing a book that
was published in Danish in 1999 and in English in 2002 entitled The Three
Dimensions of Learning. As I later stated, a little sentimentally perhaps, I
experienced this work as ‘a kind of voyage of discovery’, and when I started on

2 Introduction
my journey, I had no idea of what I would fi nd (Illeris 2007, p. xi).
A part of this journey led through the reading of a lot of writings by earlier
and contemporary learning theorists as I tried to develop a framework that
could cover the whole fi eld of learning in a structured way. Later, when the
book had been published, I came to think that it might be a good idea to pick
out what I now could see were key articles or chapters by the various theorists
and present them in a way that could form an overview for interested students
and others. This was a much bigger task than I had expected. However, a year
later the book called Texts on Learning appeared in Danish, with 31 chapters by
old and new authors from 11 countries. This book has never been published in
English; on the contrary, most of the chapters were translated into Danish from
English and other languages. However, up to now almost 10,000 copies of it
have been sold, which is quite a lot in a small country like Denmark.
Some years later I wrote another book called Adult Education and Adult
Learning, which appeared in Danish in 2003 and in English in 2004, and the
story was repeated. So in 2005, an edited book appeared in Danish called Texts
on Adult Learning and containing 27 chapters by authors from 11 countries and
three international bodies (UNESCO, OECD and the EU).
Finally, in 2006, I published a book in Danish that came out in English in
2007 with the title How We Learn. When this book was launched in Denmark,
the Danish University of Education arranged a one-day conference with Peter
Jarvis, Etienne Wenger and myself as keynote speakers. The conference was a
great success. The assembly hall was packed with 420 participants, and during
the closing discussion we were urged to make a publication out of the three
keynotes. However, three chapters are not enough for a book, so I included
another three relevant chapters (by Jack Mezirow, Yrjö Engeström and Thomas
Ziehe), and this book was published in Danish in 2007 under the title Learning
Theories: Six Contemporary Approaches. This volume also quickly became very
popular in Denmark, selling more than 2,000 copies during its fi rst year.
Thus, altogether in the three books, I had an international collection of 64
selected chapters presenting different understandings of learning by authors
ranging from Grundtvig in 1838 to brand-new contributors in 2007. On this
basis I proposed to Routledge that I should pick out some 14 to 16 of the
most remarkable chapters of current interest and add a few new ones. This
proposal was reviewed and accepted, and the editing process and enquiries
about obtaining the necessary permissions commenced early in 2008.
The most fundamental question, of course, has been which authors and texts
to select. In this context, fi rst of all a practical interpretation of what is meant
by ‘contemporary’ was needed. An examination of the material led me to choose
to make 1990 the start date – i.e. that only contributions which appeared for
the fi rst time after 1990 could be accepted. Of course, a boundary of this kind is
arbitrary and will always exclude some contributions that could be considered
both ‘contemporary’ and important.
For example, in 1984, David Kolb published his book Experiential Learning

Introduction 3
(following a preliminary publication by Kolb and Fry in 1975), which has
certainly made an important contribution to the understanding of learning
but which, in my opinion, can hardly be regarded as contemporary and up
to date. The concept of ‘experiential learning’ has been elaborated further by
many other authors (cf. e.g. Weil and McGill 1989), and Peter Jarvis, in this
book and many other writings, actually starts his deliberations by stating that
he fi nds Kolb’s theory much too simple to capture the complexity of learning.
Other authors who made important contributions in the 1970s and 80s were
Chris Argyris and Donald Schön with their concepts of ‘single loop’ and ‘double
loop’ learning (Argyris and Schön 1978) and ‘the refl ective practitioner’ (Schön
1983), and Hans Furth in his book Knowledge As Desire (1987).
On the other hand, some of the selected authors made their fi rst contributions
long before 1990. Thus, Jerome Bruner’s fi rst well-known publication in this
connection dates right back to 1956 (Bruner et al. 1956), Thomas Ziehe’s
fi rst work on learning in youth stems from 1975, Jack Mezirow launched his
theory of ‘transformative learning’ for the fi rst time in 1978, Robert Kegan’s
The Evolving Self appeared in 1982, Howard Gardner advanced his idea of
‘multiple intelligences’ in 1983, Peter Jarvis started publishing on learning
in 1987 and Yrjö Engeström’s dissertation Learning by Expanding is also from
1987. In general, most of the authors in this book published before 1990.
However, the crucial point is that either their main theoretical contributions
have been made, or they have renewed or expanded their understandings in
decisive ways, after this date.
The other basic criterion of selection concerns what can be regarded as
‘learning’ and ‘learning theory’. My decisions in this fi eld are based on the
defi nition of the concept of learning as ‘any process that in living organisms
leads to permanent capacity change and which is not solely due to biological
maturation or ageing’ (Illeris 2007, p. 3, repeated in my chapter later in this
book). This very open defi nition is, as I see it, in line with important modern
understandings of learning as something much broader and more complicated
than the traditional conception of learning as ‘the acquisition of knowledge and
skills’, and it has allowed me to select contributions ranging as widely as from
Howard Gardner’s ‘Multiple Approaches to Understanding’ to Thomas Ziehe’s
ideas of ‘normal learning problems’ and ‘underlying cultural convictions’.
However, there are some types of possible contributions that have been
avoided. First, readers will look in vain for chapters referring mainly to the
classic behaviourist conception of learning – partly because not many new
contributions by this school appear, and partly because, in my understanding,
this school deals with such a small corner of the vast fi eld of learning that,
in relation to human learning, it is only of interest concerning some very
special fi elds of early learning, re-training and certain groups of mentally
handicapped learners. Similarly, there are also other areas of learning that once
were important conquests but now have been overtaken by more inclusive and
complicated approaches as, for example, the gestalt psychological interest in

4 Introduction
learning by problem solving, which today is integrated in such approaches as
experiential learning and practice learning.
Second, I have avoided approaches in which the interest in learning is limited
to some special sectors of life or society, such as school learning and especially
organisational learning (not to speak of ‘the learning organisation’). However,
this does not mean that approaches taking their point of departure in, for
example, adult education or workplace learning have been excluded if their
understanding of learning is of general interest.
Third, I have not taken in contributions of a specifi c system theoretical
approach such as the works of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (e.g.
Luhmann 1995) and his many followers in particular, because I fi nd this type
of approach too dissociated and distant from the concrete learning of everyday
life in modern society. There is in this case, as I see it, a tendency for the
systematic features to become more important than the human learners and
their complex life situations.
Fourth, I have not included any contributions from modern brain research.
This is not because I do not fi nd such contributions interesting or important
– I actually use them quite a lot in my own work – but because I think that
they are still too specialised to have the status of general understandings of
learning.
All this has left me with the 16 chapters that make up the rest of this book.
There are, of course, many others that I have had to omit in order not to make
the volume too extensive or with too many overlaps and repetitions.
The next problem I have had to face in the editing process is how to
arrange these 16 chapters. In this respect I have taken my point of departure
in the learning dimensions that I have presented and explained in my own
contribution. I have therefore placed this chapter fi rst so that the reader can
start by getting acquainted with the line of thinking lying behind the structure
of the book.
Next, I have placed four other chapters that in very different ways also try
to deal with and explain learning as a whole. These are fi rst the chapters by
Peter Jarvis and Robert Kegan, who from an existential and a psychological
perspective, respectively, outline a general understanding of what learning is
and involves. These are followed by the chapters by Yrjö Engeström and Bente
Elkjaer, who are a bit more specifi c in their approaches as they represent the
‘schools’ of activity theory and pragmatism, respectively.
Then come two contributions which, while they certainly also are of a
holistic nature, are to some extent more oriented towards the classic topic of
the learning content, i.e. what is actually learned. These are the chapters by
two of the most infl uential fi gures in the contemporary fi eld of learning in
America: Jack Mezirow, as the creator of the theory of transformative learning,
and Howard Gardner, as the creator of the theory of multiple intelligences.
From there I turn to the incentive dimension of learning, i.e. theoretical
approaches which have special focus on the interests, motivations and emotions

Introduction 5
that drive learning and the personal development that learning creates. I see
the chapter by Peter Alheit, which describes the biographical approach to
learning, as the most general contribution in this area. This is followed by
the chapter by John Heron, who uses the example of learning to illustrate his
general theory of ‘feeling and personhood’. And, fi nally, there is the chapter
by Mark Tennant, who discusses the development of the self in relation to the
mainly French understandings of postmodernity.
The last six chapters all focus on the interaction dimension of learning.
Three of them do this in a mainly cultural context. These are, fi rst, the chapter
by Jerome Bruner, who for more than 50 years has played a key role in the
American learning landscape and gradually has moved from a behaviourist
via a so-called ‘science-centred’ to a cultural psychological position. Second
comes the chapter by Robin Usher, who describes four postmodern positions
in relation to learning. And third follows the chapter by Thomas Ziehe, who
digs deeply into the cultural conditions that set the scene for young people’s
learning today.
Finally, the last three chapters of the book deal with learning in a social
context. Jean Lave takes up the approach of practice learning; Etienne Wenger,
who has worked closely together with Lave, presents ‘a social theory of
learning’; and in the last chapter of the book, Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle
Stroobants develop a model that illustrates how many different social infl uences
are involved in modern learning processes.
In this way the book will take the reader through a broad variety of
perspectives on learning. I have chosen not to divide the book into sections as
each of the 16 contributions in a way forms its own section.
Some readers may disagree with the selections and dispositions I have
made, and some may be disappointed, but all I can say is that in my editing I
have tried to be stringent and to achieve a broad and adequate representation
of contemporary approaches to the topic of learning. It is my hope that
in this way I have succeeded in producing a volume that can provide an
overview of the current situation and the multitude of learning theoretical
understandings, thereby inspiring the readers to deal with this topic in
qualifi ed and differentiated ways.
Knud Illeris
References
Argyris, Chris and Schön, Donald A. (1978): Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action and
Perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Bruner, Jerome S., Goodnow, Jacqueline J., and Austin, George A. (1956): A Study of Thinking.
New York: Wiley.
Engeström, Yrjö (1987): Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental
Research. Helsinki: Orienta-Kunsultit.

6 Introduction
Furth, Hans G. (1987): Knowledge As Desire: An Essay on Freud and Piaget. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Gardner, Howard (1983): Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic
Books.
Illeris, Knud (2002): The Three Dimensions of Learning: Contemporary Learning Theory in the Tension
Field between the Cognitive, the Emotional and the Social. Copenhagen: Roskilde University Press,
and Leicester: NIACE (American edition: Krieger Publishing, Malabar, FL, 2004).
Illeris, Knud (2004): Adult Education and Adult Learning. Copenhagen: Roskilde University
Press, and Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing.
Illeris, Knud (2007): How We Learn: Learning and Non-learning in Schools and Beyond. London/
New York: Routledge.
Jarvis, Peter (1987): Adult Learning in the Social Context. New York: Croom Helm.
Kegan, Robert (1982): The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Kolb, David A. (1984): Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kolb, David and Fry, Roger (1975): Toward an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning.
In Cary L. Cooper (ed.): Theories of Group Processes. London: Wiley.
Luhmann, Niklas (1995 [1984]): Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Mezirow, Jack (1978): Education for Perspective Transformation: Women’s Re-entry Programs
in Community Colleges. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Schön, Donald A. (1983): The Refl ective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Weil, Susan Warner and McGill, Ian (eds.) (1989): Making Sense of Experiential Learning: Diversity
in Theory and Practice. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Ziehe, Thomas (1975): Pubertät und Narzissmus [Puberty and Narcissism]. Frankfurt a.M.:
Europäische Verlagsanstalt.

Chapter 1
A comprehensive understanding
of human learning
Knud Illeris
Already in the 1970s Knud Illeris was well known in Scandinavia for his developing
work on project studies in theory and practice. In this work, learning theory was applied,
mainly by a combination of Jean Piaget’s approach to learning and the so-called
‘critical theory’ of the German–American Frankfurt School that basically connected
Freudian psychology with Marxist sociology. In the 1990s, Illeris returned to his
learning theoretical roots, now involving many other theoretical approaches in the general
understanding of learning, which was fi rst presented in The Three Dimensions
of Learning and later fully worked out in How We Learn: Learning and Non-
learning in School and Beyond. The following chapter presents the main ideas of
this understanding and is an elaborated version of the presentation Illeris made at a
conference in Copenhagen in 2006 when the Danish version of How We Learn was
launched. The article has never before been published in English.
Background and basic assumptions
Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, many theories and under-
standings of learning have been launched. They have had different angles,
different epistemological platforms and a very different content. Some of them
have been overtaken by new knowledge and new standards, but in general we
have today a picture of a great variety of learning theoretical approaches and
constructions, which are more-or-less compatible and more-or-less competitive
on the global academic market. The basic idea of the approach to learning
presented in this chapter is to build on a wide selection of the best of these
constructions, add new insights and perspectives and in this way develop an
overall understanding or framework, which can offer a general and up-to-date
overview of the fi eld.
Learning can broadly be defi ned as any process that in living organisms leads
to permanent capacity change and which is not solely due to biological maturation or
ageing (Illeris 2007, p. 3). I have deliberately chosen this very open formulation
because the concept of learning includes a very extensive and complicated set
of processes, and a comprehensive understanding is not only a matter of the
nature of the learning process itself. It must also include all the conditions that

8 Knud Illeris
infl uence and are infl uenced by this process. Figure 1.1 shows the main areas
which are involved and the structure of their mutual connections.
On the top I have placed the basis of the learning theory, i.e. the areas of
knowledge and understanding which, in my opinion, must underlie the devel-
opment of a comprehensive and coherent theory construction. These include all
the psychological, biological and social conditions which are involved in any
learning. Under this is the central box depicting learning itself, including its
processes and dimensions, different learning types and learning barriers, which
to me are the central elements of the understanding of learning. Further there
are the specifi c internal and external conditions which are not only infl uencing
but also directly involved in learning. And fi nally, the possible applications of
learning are also involved. I shall now go through these fi ve areas and emphasise
some of the most important features of each of them.
The two basic processes and the three dimensions of
learning
The fi rst important condition to realise is that all learning implies the integration
of two very different processes, namely an external interaction process between
the learner and his or her social, cultural or material environment, and an
internal psychological process of elaboration and acquisition.
Many learning theories deal only with one of these processes, which of
EXTERNAL
CONDITIONS
APPLICATION
LEARNING
BASIS
STRUCTURE OF THE THEORY
INTERNAL
CONDITIONS
DISPOSITIONS
LIFE AGE
SUBJ. SITUATION
BIOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
SOCIAL SCIENCE
LEARNING SPACE
SOCIETY
OBJ. SITUATION
STRUCTURES
LEARNING TYPES
BARRIERS
PEDAGOGY
LEARNING POLICY
Figure 1.1 The main areas of the understanding of learning.

A comprehensive understanding of human learning 9
course does not mean that they are wrong or worthless, as both processes can
be studied separately. However, it does mean that they do not cover the whole
fi eld of learning. This may, for instance, be said of traditional behaviourist
and cognitive learning theories focusing only on the internal psychological
process. It can equally be said of certain modern social learning theories which
– sometimes in explicit opposition to this – draw attention to the external
interaction process alone. However, it seems evident that both processes must
be actively involved if any learning is to take place.
When constructing my model of the fi eld of learning (Figure 1.2), I started
by depicting the external interaction process as a vertical double arrow between
the environment, which is the general basis and therefore placed at the bottom,
and the individual, who is the specifi c learner and therefore placed at the top.
Next I added the psychological acquisition process as another double arrow.
It is an internal process of the learner and must therefore be placed at the top
pole of the interaction process. Further, it is a process of integrated interplay
between two equal psychological functions involved in any learning, namely
the function of managing the learning content and the incentive function of
providing and directing the necessary mental energy that runs the process.
Thus the double arrow of the acquisition process is placed horizontally at the
top of the interaction process and between the poles of content and incentive
– and it should be emphasised that the double arrow means that these two
functions are always involved and usually in an integrated way.
As can be seen, the two double arrows can now span out a triangular fi eld
between three angles. These three angles depict three spheres or dimensions
of learning, and it is the core claim of the understanding that all learning will
always involve these three dimensions.
CONTENT
acquisition
INCENTIVE
INDIVIDUAL
ENVIRONMENT
in
te
ra
ct
io
n
Figure 1.2 The fundamental processes of learning.

Loris Romero

Loris Romero

10 Knud Illeris
The content dimension concerns what is learned. This is usually described
as knowledge and skills, but also many other things such as opinions, insight,
meaning, attitudes, values, ways of behaviour, methods, strategies, etc. may be
involved as learning content and contribute to building up the understanding
and the capacity of the learner. The endeavour of the learner is to construct
meaning and ability to deal with the challenges of practical life and thereby an
overall personal functionality is developed.
The incentive dimension provides and directs the mental energy that is
necessary for the learning process to take place. It comprises such elements as
feelings, emotions, motivation and volition. Its ultimate function is to secure
the continuous mental balance of the learner and thereby it simultaneously
develops a personal sensitivity.
These two dimensions are always initiated by impulses from the interaction
processes and integrated in the internal process of elaboration and acquisition.
Therefore, the learning content is, so to speak, always ‘obsessed’ with the
incentives at stake – e.g. whether the learning is driven by desire, interest,
necessity or compulsion. Correspondingly, the incentives are always infl uenced
by the content, e.g. new information can change the incentive condition.
Many psychologists have been aware of this close connection between what
MEANING
ABILITIES
CONTENT INCENTIVE
knowledge
understanding
skills
motivation
emotion
volition
action
communication
cooperation
INTER-
ACTION
INTEGRATION
FUNCTIONALITY SENSITIVITY
MENTAL AND BODILY
BALANCE
Figure 1.3 The three dimensions of learning and competence development.

Loris Romero

A comprehensive understanding of human learning 11
has usually been termed the cognitive and the emotional (e.g. Vygotsky 1978;
Furth 1987), and recently advanced neurology has proven that both areas are
always involved in the learning process, unless in cases of very severe brain
damage (Damasio 1994).
The interaction dimension provides the impulses that initiate the learning
process. This may take place as perception, transmission, experience, imitation,
activity, participation, etc. (Illeris 2007, pp. 100ff.). It serves the personal
integration in communities and society and thereby also builds up the sociality
of the learner. However, this building up necessarily takes place through the
two other dimensions.
Thus the triangle depicts what may be described as the tension fi eld of
learning in general and of any specifi c learning event or learning process as
stretched out between the development of functionality, sensibility and sociality
– which are also the general components of what we term as competencies.
It is also important to mention that each dimension includes a mental as
well as a bodily side. Actually, learning begins with the body and takes place
through the brain, which is also part of the body, and only gradually is the
mental side separated out as a specifi c but never independent area or function
(Piaget 1952).
An example from everyday school life
In order to illustrate how the model may be understood and used, I shall take
an everyday example from ordinary school life (which does not mean that the
model only deals with school learning).
During a chemistry lesson in the classroom, a teacher is explaining a
chemical process. The students are supposed to be listening and perhaps
asking questions to be sure that they have understood the explanation
correctly. The students are thus involved in an interaction process. But at
the same time, they are supposed to take in or to learn what the teacher is
teaching, i.e. psychologically to relate what is taught to what they should
already have learned. The result should be that they are able to remember
what they have been taught and, under certain conditions, to reproduce it,
apply it and involve it in further learning.
But sometimes, or for some students, the learning process does not take
place as intended, and mistakes or derailing may occur in many different ways.
Perhaps the interaction does not function because the teacher’s explanation is
not good enough or is even incoherent, or there may be disturbances in the
situation. If so, the explanation will only be picked up partially or incorrectly,
and the learning result will be insuffi cient. But the students’ acquisition
process may also be inadequate, for instance because of a lack of concentration,
and this will also lead to deterioration in the learning result. Or there may be
errors or insuffi ciencies in the prior learning of some students, making them
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12 Knud Illeris
is being taught. Much of this indicates that acquisition is not only a cognitive
matter. There is also another area or function involved concerning the students’
attitudes to the intended learning: their interests and mobilisation of mental
energy, i.e. the incentive dimension.
In a school situation, focus is usually on the learning content; in the case
described it is on the students’ understanding of the nature of the chemical
process concerned. However, the incentive function is also still crucial, i.e. how
the situation is experienced, what sort of feelings and motivations are involved,
and thus the nature and the strength of the mental energy that is mobilised.
The value and durability of the learning result is closely related to the incentive
dimension of the learning process.
Further, both the content and the incentive are crucially dependent on the
interaction process between the learner and the social, societal, cultural and
material environment. If the interaction in the chemistry lesson is not adequate
and acceptable to the students, the learning will suffer, or something quite
different may be learned, for instance a negative impression of the teacher, of
some other students, of the subject or of the school situation in general.
The four types of learning
What has been outlined in the triangle model and the example above is a
concept of learning which is basically constructivist in nature, i.e. it is assumed
that the learner him- or herself actively builds up or construes his/her learning
as mental structures. These structures exist in the brain as dispositions that are
usually described by a psychological metaphor as mental schemes. This means
that there must in the brain be some organisation of the learning outcomes
since we, when becoming aware of something – a person, a problem, a topic,
etc. – in fractions of a second are able to recall what we subjectively and usually
unconsciously defi ne as relevant knowledge, understanding, attitudes, reactions
and the like. But this organisation is in no way a kind of archive, and it is
not possible to fi nd the different elements at specifi c positions in the brain.
It has the nature of what brain researchers call ‘engrams’, which are traces of
circuits between some of the billions of neurons that have been active at earlier
occasions and therefore are likely to be revived, perhaps with slightly different
courses because of the impact of new experiences or understandings.
However, in order to deal systematically with this, the concept of schemes is
used for what we subjectively tend to classify as belonging to a specifi c topic
or theme and therefore mentally connect and are inclined to recall in relation
to situations that we relate to that topic or theme. This especially applies to
the content dimension, whereas in the incentive and interaction dimensions
we would rather speak of mental patterns. But the background is similar in that
motivations, emotions or ways of communication tend to be organised so that
they can be revived when we are oriented towards situations that ‘remind’ us
of earlier situations when they have been active.

A comprehensive understanding of human learning 13
In relation to learning, the crucial thing is that new impulses can be included
in the mental organisation in various ways, and on this basis it is possible to
distinguish between four different types of learning which are activated in
different contexts, imply different kinds of learning results and require more
or less energy. (This is an elaboration of the concept of learning originally
developed by Jean Piaget (e.g. Piaget 1952; Flavell 1963).)
When a scheme or pattern is established, it is a case of cumulative or me chanical
learning. This type of learning is characterised by being an isolated formation,
something new that is not a part of anything else. Therefore, cumulative
learning is most frequent during the fi rst years of life, but later occurs only
in special situations where one must learn something with no context of
meaning or personal signifi cance, for example a PIN code. The learning
result is characterised by a type of automation that means that it can only be
recalled and applied in situations mentally similar to the learning context. It
is mainly this type of learning which is involved in the training of animals and
which is therefore also referred to as conditioning in behaviourist psychology.
By far the most common type of learning is termed assimilative or learning
by addition, meaning that the new element is linked as an addition to a scheme
or pattern that is already established. One typical example could be learning
in school subjects that are usually built up by means of constant additions to
what has already been learned, but assimilative learning also takes place in all
contexts where one gradually develops one’s capacities. The results of learning
are characterised by being linked to the scheme or pattern in question in such a
manner that it is relatively easy to recall and apply them when one is mentally
oriented towards the fi eld in question, for example a school subject, while they
may be hard to access in other contexts. This is why problems are frequently
experienced in applying knowledge from a school subject to other subjects or
in contexts outside of school (Illeris 2008).
However, in some cases, situations occur where something takes place that
is diffi cult to immediately relate to any existing scheme or pattern. This is
experienced as something one cannot really understand or relate to. But if it
seems important or interesting, if it is something one is determined to acquire,
this can take place by means of accommodative or transcendent learning. This
type of learning implies that one breaks down (parts of ) an existing scheme
and transforms it so that the new situation can be linked in. Thus one both
relinquishes and reconstructs something, and this can be experienced as
demanding or even painful, because it is something that requires a strong
supply of mental energy. One must cross existing limitations and understand
or accept something that is signifi cantly new or different, and this is much
more demanding than just adding a new element to an already existing scheme
or pattern. In return, the results of such learning are characterised by the fact
that they can be recalled and applied in many different, relevant contexts. It
is typically experienced as having understood or got hold of something which
one really has internalised.

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14 Knud Illeris
Finally, over the last few decades it has been pointed out that in special
situations there is also a far-reaching type of learning that has been variously
described as signifi cant (Rogers 1951, 1969), expansive (Engeström 1987),
transitional (Alheit 1994) or transformative learning (Mezirow 1991). This
learning implies what could be termed personality changes, or changes in the
organisation of the self, and is characterised by simultaneous restructuring of a
whole cluster of schemes and patterns in all of the three learning dimensions – a
break of orientation that typically occurs as the result of a crisis-like situation
caused by challenges experienced as urgent and unavoidable, making it
necessary to change oneself in order to get any further. Transformative learning
is thus both profound and extensive, it demands a lot of mental energy and
when accomplished it can often be experienced physically, typically as a feeling
of relief or relaxation.
As has been demonstrated, the four types of learning are widely different in
scope and nature, and they also occur – or are activated by learners – in very
different situations and connections. Whereas cumulative learning is most
important in early childhood, and transformative learning is a very demanding
process that changes the very personality or identity and occurs only in very
special situations of profound signifi cance for the learner, assimilation and
accommodation are, as described by Piaget, the two types of learning that
characterise general, sound and normal everyday learning. Many other learning
theorists also point to two such types of learning; for example, Chris Argyris
and Donald Schön have coined the well-known concepts of single and double
loop learning (Argyris 1992; Argyris and Schön 1996), Per-Erik Ellström
(2001) speaks about adaptation-oriented and development-oriented learning,
and also Lev Vygotsky’s idea (1978) of transition into the ‘zone of proximal
development’ may be seen as a parallel to accommodative learning.
However, ordinary discussions of learning and the design of many educational
and school activities are concentrated on and often only aimed at assimilative
learning, as this is the sort of learning that the usual understanding of the
concept of learning is about. But today this understanding is obviously
insufficient, and the much-demanded generic competencies can only be
built up by a combination of assimilative, accommodative and, eventually,
transformative learning processes.
Barriers to learning
Another problem is that much intended learning does not take place or is
incomplete or distorted. In schools, in education, at workplaces and in many
other situations, very often people do not learn what they could learn or what
they are supposed to learn. Therefore I fi nd it important also to discuss briefl y
what happens in such cases.
Of course, it cannot be avoided that we all sometimes learn something that
is wrong (cf. Mager 1961) or something that is inadequate for us in some way

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A comprehensive understanding of human learning 15
or another. In the fi rst instance, this concerns matters such as mislearning,
which can be due to misunderstandings, lack of concentration, insuffi cient
prior learning and the like. This may be annoying and in some cases unlucky,
but simple mislearning due to ‘practical’ reasons is not a matter of great interest
to learning theory as such mislearning can usually be corrected rather easily,
if necessary.
However, today much non-learning and mislearning are not so simple, but
have a background in some general conditions that modern society creates,
and in some respects the investigation and understanding of such processes
are defi nitely as important as more traditional learning theory to understand
what is happening and to cope with it in practice.
The central point is that in our complex late-modern society, what Freud
called defence mechanisms – which are active in specifi c personal connections
(cf. Anna Freud 1942) – must necessarily be generalised and take more
systematised forms because nobody can manage to remain open to the gigantic
volumes and impact of infl uences we are all constantly faced with.
This is why today people develop a kind of semi-automatic sorting
mechanism vis-à-vis the many infl uences, or what the German social psy-
chologist Thomas Leithäuser (1976) has analysed and described as an everyday
consciousness. This functions in the way that one develops some general pre-
understandings within certain thematic areas, and when one meets with
infl uences within such an area, these pre-understandings are activated so that
if elements in the infl uences do not correspond to the pre-understandings,
they are either rejected or distorted to make them agree. In both cases, this
results in no new learning but, on the contrary, often the cementing of the
already-existing understanding.
Thus, through everyday consciousness we control our own learning and
non-learning in a manner that seldom involves any direct positioning
while simultaneously involving a massive defence of the already-acquired
understandings and, in the fi nal analysis, our very identity. (There are, of
course, also areas and situations where our positioning takes place in a more
target-oriented manner, consciously and fl exibly.)
However, not only the volume but also the kind of influence can be
overwhelming. Not least, on television we are faced every day with so much
cruelty, wickedness and similar negative impact that it is absolutely impossible
to really take it in – and people who cannot protect themselves from this are
doomed to end up in some kind of psychological breakdown. Other new forms
of similar overloading are caused by the endless changes and reorganisations
many people experience at their workplaces, social institutions, etc. or by the
helplessness that can be felt when consequences of the decisions of those in
power encroach on one’s life situation and possibilities.
In the most important cases, for instance when a change to a basically
new situation in a certain life area must be overcome, most people react
by mobilising a genuine identity defence which demands very hard work of a

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16 Knud Illeris
more-or-less therapeutic character to break through, usually by a transformative
learning process. This happens typically in relation to a sudden situation of
unemployment or other fundamental changes in the work situation, divorce,
death of closely related persons or the like, and it is worth realising that such
situations happen much more frequently in the modern globalised market
society of today than just a generation ago.
Another very common form of defence is ambivalence, meaning that in a
certain situation or connection one is both wanting and not wanting to learn or
do something. A typical example is that people who unwillingly and without
any personal fault have become unemployed on the one hand know very well
that they must engage themselves in some retraining or re-education, and on
the other hand strongly wish that this was not the case. So they go or are sent
to some courses but it is diffi cult for them to concentrate on the learning and
they use any possible excuse to escape, mentally or physically.
In all such defence situations, learning is obstructed, hindered, derailed
or distorted if it is not possible for the learner to break through the defence,
and the task of a teacher or instructor will often be to support and encourage
such a breakthrough before more goal-directed and constructive training
or education can take place. But teachers are usually not trained for such
functions, although they quite frequently are necessary if the intended learning
shall be promoted.
Another psychological mechanism which may block or distort relevant
learning is mental resistance. This is not, in itself, so very time-specifi c, as all
human beings in any society will experience situations where what they try to
accomplish cannot be carried through, and if they cannot understand or accept
the barriers they will naturally react with some sort of resistance.
In practice it is sometimes quite diffi cult to distinguish between non-
learning caused by defence and non-learning caused by resistance. However,
psychologically there is a great and important difference. Whereas the defence
mechanisms exist prior to the learning situation and function reactively,
resistance is caused by the learning situation itself as an active response. Thus
resistance contains a strong mental mobilisation and therefore also a strong
learning potential, especially for accommodative and even transformative
learning. Often when one does not just accept something, the possibility of
learning something signifi cantly new emerges. And most great steps forward
in the development of mankind and society have taken place when someone
did not accept a given truth or way of doing or understanding things.
In everyday life, resistance is also a most important source of transcendent
learning, although it may be both inconvenient and annoying, not least for
teachers. In any event, today it should be a central qualifi cation of teachers to be
able to cope with and even inspire mental resistance, as precisely such personal
competencies which are so much in demand – for example, independence,
responsibility, fl exibility and creativity – are likely to be developed in this
way. This is why confl ict or dilemma raising may be taken in as effective

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A comprehensive understanding of human learning 17
but demanding techniques in some particularly challenging educational
situations.
Internal and external learning conditions
What has been discussed in the above – the processes, dimensions, types and
barriers of learning – I regard as features which should be included in any
learning theory that aims at covering the whole fi eld of the concept. However,
there are also other issues that infl uence learning without being directly
involved in learning as such and thus can be termed the conditions of learning.
These issues are also taken up in my book How We Learn (Illeris 2007), but in
this article I shall only shortly indicate what they are about.
The internal conditions of learning are features of or in the learner that
infl uence learning possibilities and are involved in the learning processes.
Intelligence is supposed to be a measure of the general ability to learn, but it has
always been disputed whether or not a general and measurable instance of this
kind exists, and there is certainly not a general agreement about its defi nition.
Since 1983, American psychologist Howard Gardner (1983, 1993, 1999) has
claimed that there are several independent intelligences – a view which to some
extent corresponds to the understanding of learning presented here because it
includes not only cognitive but also emotional and social abilities. A somewhat
similar concept is about individual learning styles, but the nature and existence
of these still seem to be more an open question. In contrast to these general
measures, it is obvious that the more specifi c individual features of gender and
life age to some degree infl uence the learning possibilities.
The external conditions of learning are features outside the learner that
infl uence learning possibilities and are involved in the learning processes. These
can roughly be divided into features of the immediate learning situation and
learning space and more general cultural and societal conditions. The kind
of learning space makes up for differences between everyday learning, school
learning, workplace learning, net-based learning, interest-based learning, etc.
and for diffi culties in applying learning outcomes across the borders of these
spaces – the so-called ‘transfer problem’ of learning (Eraut 1994; Illeris et al.
2004; Illeris 2008). General societal conditions are dependent on time and place:
obviously the learning possibilities are much more wide-ranging today than a
century ago and they also differ between the countries and cultures of today.
Finally, some important questions about the use and applicability of learning
theory, especially in the areas of educational practice and policy, are also
briefl y discussed in the book. Some very common misunderstandings in these
areas are pointed out, as well as some typical connections between different
understandings of learning, different schools of pedagogy and different
fundamental assumptions of learning policy. In the last chapter, the book
concludes by mapping the most important understandings and theorists of
learning in relation to the learning triangle shown in Figure 1.3.

18 Knud Illeris
Conclusion
The general conclusion is that learning is a very complicated matter, and
analyses, programmes and discussions of learning must consider the whole
fi eld if they are to be adequate and reliable. This implies, for instance, that all
three learning dimensions must be taken into account, that the question of
relevant learning types must be included, that possible defence or resistance
must be considered and that internal as well as external learning conditions
must also be dealt with. This is, of course, a very wide-ranging demand. To
word it differently, it could be said that if for some reason it is not possible
or appropriate to include all these areas, it must be clear that the situation or
process has not been fully covered, and an open question will remain as to what
happens in the areas that are not discussed.
I shall round off by illustrating this more concretely through two examples
from my own research and practice.
The fi rst example has to do with youth education. Many Western countries
have a high ambition to the effect that all or the great majority of young people
should complete some academically or practically qualifying post-16 education
programme. The goal of the Danish government is for 95 per cent to receive
such qualifi cations, but although 95 per cent commence a programme, less
than 80 per cent complete it.
This, of course, has been the subject of a great deal of research, debate,
reforms, etc. but with almost no or even negative effect. From a learning point
of view, it would seem not to have been fully realised that today young people
of this age are highly engaged in a process of personal identity development,
which is an absolute necessity to be able to navigate in the late-modern,
globalised market society. Therefore, young people fundamentally meet all
learning initiatives – consciously or unconsciously – with such questions
as: What does this mean to me? or What can I use this for? – implying
that it is only worth paying attention to if it is subjectively accepted as a
usable contribution to the present demands of the identity process. And the
premises of this judgement lie equally in all three learning dimensions, i.e.
the programme offered must not only have an acceptable, interesting and
challenging content, it must also contribute to an acceptable positioning in
relation to contemporary trends on the youth lifestyle market, and it must be
organised in ways and by teachers or other persons who are in harmony with
the personal needs of the young learners. One may think that such demands
are not relevant or acceptable, and many people in the educational fi eld are
of this opinion, but the inevitable consequence will then be a continued high
drop-out rate (see e.g. Illeris 2003, 2007).
The second example is about retraining of low-skilled workers who against
their will have become unemployed – which is a very frequent state of affairs in
today’s society. These adults are very often referred to various practical courses
to acquire a basis for employment in a new trade where it is possible to get a

A comprehensive understanding of human learning 19
job. But the process leading to this has been experienced not as guidance (as
it is offi cially called) but as placement. Furthermore, even when the person in
question realises that the training may lead to a return to the labour market,
which is usually a very strong wish, their identity is tied to their former trade
and a strong defence blocks the engagement in new learning. If the guidance
received had made time for personal refl ection and participation in the decision,
this defence could have been overcome. When asked, the great majority of
people in this situation answer that they would probably have chosen the same
course, but they had not been given the opportunity to make the mental switch
before the course. Now they are forced to undergo a demanding transformative
learning process at the same time as they are expected to acquire a great many
new practical qualifi cations (see e.g. Illeris 2006).
In learning terms, in both of these examples a lot of resources are invested in
endeavours that have little or no chance of success because the considerations
of the ‘system’ or the authorities have not included an adequate and realistic
analysis of the learning situation.
References
Alheit, Peter (1994): The ‘Biographical Question’ as a Challenge to Adult Education. International
Review of Education, 40(3/5), pp. 283–98.
Argyris, Chris (1992): On Organizational Learning. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Argyris, Chris and Schön, Donald A. (1996): Organizational Learning II – Theory, Method, and
Practice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Damasio, Antonio R. (1994): Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York:
Grosset/Putnam.
Ellström, Per-Erik (2001): Integrating Learning and Work: Conceptual Issues and Critical
Conditions. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 12(4), pp. 421–35.
Engeström, Yrjö (1987): Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental
Research. Helsinki: Orienta-Kunsultit.
Eraut, Michael (1994): Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence. London: Falmer.
Flavell, John H. (1963): The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget. New York: Van Nostrand.
Freud, Anna (1942): The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press.
Furth, Hans G. (1987): Knowledge As Desire: An Essay on Freud and Piaget. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Gardner, Howard (1983): Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic
Books.
Gardner, Howard (1993): Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, Howard (1999): Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century.
New York: Basic Books.
Illeris, Knud (2003): Learning, Identity and Self-Orientation in Youth. Young – Nordic Journal
of Youth Research, 11(4), pp. 357–76.
Illeris, Knud (2006): Lifelong Learning and the Low-Skilled. International Journal of Lifelong
Education, 25(1), pp. 15–28.
Illeris, Knud (2007): How We Learn: Learning and Non-learning in School and Beyond. London/
New York: Routledge.

20 Knud Illeris
Illeris, Knud (2008): Transfer of Learning in the Learning Society. International Journal of Lifelong
Education (in press).
Illeris, Knud et al. (2004): Learning in Working Life. Copenhagen: Roskilde University Press.
Leithäuser, Thomas (1976): Formen des Alltagsbewusstseins [The Forms of Everyday Consciousness].
Frankfurt a.M.: Campus.
Mager, Robert F. (1961): On the Sequencing of Instructional Content. Psychological Reports,
9, pp. 405–13.
Mezirow, Jack (1991): Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Piaget, Jean (1952 [1936]): The Origins of Intelligence in Children. New York: International
Universities Press.
Rogers, Carl R. (1951): Client-Centered Therapy. Boston: Houghton Miffl in.
Rogers, Carl R. (1969): Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become. Columbus,
OH: Charles E. Merrill.
Vygotsky, Lev S. (1978): Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 2
Learning to be a person in society
Learning to be me
Peter Jarvis
Briton Peter Jarvis is today one of the best-known fi gures of international learning
research. He was trained as both a theologian and a sociologist, but only later did he take
up the topic of learning theory, primarily in relation to adult education. However, since
the late 1980s Jarvis has been extremely productive in these areas, and since 2006 he
has worked out a trilogy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society, summing up
his extensive understandings of learning. He has also for many years been the chief editor
of the well-reputed International Journal of Lifelong Education. The following
chapter stems, like the previous one, from the one-day conference on learning theory in
Copenhagen in 2006. At the same time it presents the main ideas of the fi rst volume of
the mentioned trilogy: Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Human Learning. His
presentation is here published internationally for the fi rst time.
Introduction
Many years ago I used to be invited to speak at pre-retirement courses, and one
of the exercises that I asked the participants to undertake was that well-known
psychological one on identity. I would put on the fl ip chart the question, ‘Who
am I?’ and the response which began ‘I am (a) …’. Then I asked the participants
to complete the answer ten times. We took feedback, and on many occasions
the respondents placed their occupation high on the list – usually in the top
three. I would then ask them a simple question: ‘Who will you be when you
retire?’
If I were now to be asked to answer that question, I would respond that ‘I
am learning to be me’. But, as we all know, ‘me’ exists in society and so I am
forced to ask four further questions:
What or who is me? •
What is society? •
How does the one interact with the other? •
What do I mean by ‘learning’? •
This apparently simple answer to the question actually raises more profound

22 Peter Jarvis
questions than it answers, but these are four of the questions that, if we could
answer them, would help us to understand the person. I want to focus on the
‘learning’ for the major part of this chapter, but in the fi nal analysis it is the
‘me’ that becomes just as important. This is also a chapter that raises questions
about both ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ and this takes us beyond psychology,
sociology and social psychology to philosophy and philosophical anthropology
and even to metaphysics.
My interest in learning began in the early 1980s, but my concern with the
idea of disjuncture between me and my world goes back a further decade to the
time when I began to focus upon those unanswerable questions about human
existence that underlie all religions and theologies of the world. It is, therefore,
the process of me interacting with my life-world that forms the basis of my
current thinking about human learning, but the quest that I began then is one
that remains incomplete and will always be so. I do not want to pursue the
religious/theological response to disjuncture (the gap between biography and
my current experience) here but I do want to claim that all human learning
begins with disjuncture – with either an overt question or with a sense of un-
knowing. I hope that you will forgive me for making this presentation a little
personal – but it will also demonstrate how my work began and where I think
it is going, and in this way it refl ects the opening chapter of my recent book
on learning ( Jarvis, 2006). In the process of the chapter, I will outline my
developing theory and relate it to other theories of learning. The chapter falls
into three parts: developing the theory, my present understanding of learning
and learning throughout the lifetime.
Developing my understanding of human learning
As an adult educator I had a number of experiences in the early 1980s that
sparked off my interest in learning, but the one which actually began my
research was unintentional. I was invited to speak at an adult education
workshop about the relationship between teaching and learning. In those
days, that was a most insightful topic to choose since most of the books about
teaching rarely mentioned learning and most of the texts about learning rarely
mentioned teaching. I decided that the best way for me to tackle the topic was
to get the participants to generate their own data, and so at the start of the
workshop each participant was asked to write down a learning experience. It
was a diffi cult thing to do – but after 20 or 30 minutes, everybody had a story,
and I then asked them to pair up and discuss their learning experiences. We
took some feedback at this stage, and I then put the pairs into fours and they
continued to discuss, but by this time some of their discussion was not so much
about their stories as about learning in general. At this point I introduced them
to Kolb’s learning cycle (1984).
I told the groups that the cycle was not necessarily correct – indeed, I have
always maintained that it is too simple to refl ect the reality of the complex

Learning to be a person in society 23
social process of human learning – and so I asked them to re-draw it to fi t
their four experiences. We took feedback and produced four totally different
diagrams. By good fortune, I had the opportunity over the next year to
conduct this workshop in the UK and USA on eight more occasions and, by
the third, I realised that I had a research project on adult learning. During all
the workshops, I collected all the feedback and, after the second one, I told the
participants that I was also using the outcome of their discussions for research.
Nobody objected, but rather they started making even more suggestions
about my work. By 1986, I had completed the research and wrote it up, and it
contained my own model of learning based upon over 200 participants in nine
workshops all undertaking this exercise. In 1987, the book Adult Learning in the
Social Context ( Jarvis, 1987) appeared, in which I offered my own learning cycle.
As a sociologist, I recognised that all the psychological models of learning
were fl awed, including Kolb’s well-known learning cycle, in as much as they
omitted the social and the interaction. Hence my model included these, and the
book discussed the social functions of learning itself, as well as many different
types of learning. However, it is possible to see the many routes that we can
take through the learning process if we look at the following diagram – I
actually mentioned 12 in the book. I tried this model out in many different
workshops, including two very early on in Denmark, and over the following 15
years I conducted the workshop many times, and in different books variations
on this theme occurred.
However, I was always a little concerned about this model, which I regarded
as a little over-simple, but far more sophisticated than anything that had
Figure 2.1 Kolb’s learning cycle.

24 Peter Jarvis
gone before. While I was clear in my own mind that learning always started
with experience and that experience is always social, I was moving towards a
philosophical perspective on human learning, and so an existentialist study was
then undertaken – Paradoxes of Learning ( Jarvis, 1992). In this, I recognised
that, although I had recognised it in the 1987 model, the crucial philosophical
issue about learning is that it is the person who learns, although it took me a
long time to develop this. What I also recognised was that such concepts as
truth and meaning also needed more discussion within learning theory since
they are ambiguous and problematic.
To my mind, the move from experientialism to existentialism has been
the most significant in my own thinking about human learning and it
occupies a central theme of my current understanding ( Jarvis, 2006). It was
this recognition that led to another recent book in which Stella Parker and
I ( Jarvis and Parker, 2005) argued that since learning is human, then every
academic discipline that focuses upon the human being has an implicit
theory of learning, or at least a contribution to make to our understanding
of learning. Fundamentally, it is the person who learns and it is the changed
person who is the outcome of the learning, although that changed person
may cause several different social outcomes. Consequently, we had chapters
from the pure sciences, such as biology and neuroscience, and from the social
sciences and from metaphysics and ethics. At the same time, I was involved in
writing another book on learning with two other colleagues ( Jarvis, Holford
and Griffi n, 2003) in which we wrote chapters about all the different theories
of learning, most of which are still psychological or experiential. What was
becoming apparent to me was that we needed a single theory that embraced
all the other theories, one that was multi-disciplinary.
Figure 2.2 Jarvis’ 1987 model of learning.

Learning to be a person in society 25
Over the years my understanding of learning developed and was changed,
but in order to produce such a theory it was necessary to have an operational
defi nition of human learning that refl ected that complexity – a point also made
by Illeris (2002). Initially, I had defi ned learning as ‘the transformation of
experience into knowledge, skills and attitudes’ ( Jarvis, 1987, p. 32) but after
a number of metamorphoses I now defi ne it in the following manner:
Human learning is the combination of processes throughout a lifetime
whereby the whole person – body (genetic, physical and biological)
and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs and
senses) – experiences social situations, the perceived content of which
is then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through
any combination) and integrated into the individual person’s biography
resulting in a continually changing (or more experienced) person.
What I have recounted here has been a gradual development of my under-
standing of learning as a result of a number of years of research and the
realisation that it is the whole person who learns and that the person learns in
a social situation. It must, therefore, involve a number of academic disciplines
including sociology, psychology and philosophy. These have all come together
recently in my current study of learning ( Jarvis, 2006, 2007).
Towards a comprehensive theory of human learning
As I have thus far argued, learning is both existential and experiential. In a
sense, I would want to argue that learning occurs from before birth – for we
do learn pre-consciously from experiences that we have in the womb, as a
number of different disciplines indicate – and continues to the point when we
lose consciousness before death. However, the fact that the individual is social
is crucial to our understanding of learning, but so is the fact that the person is
both mind and body. All of our experiences of our life-world begin with bodily
sensations which occur at the intersection of the person and the life-world.
These sensations initially have no meaning for us as this is the beginning of
the learning process. Experience begins with disjuncture (the gap between our
biography and our perception of our experience) or a sense of not-knowing, but
in the fi rst instance experience is a matter of the body receiving sensations, e.g.
sound, sight, smell and so on, which appear to have no meaning. Thereafter,
we transform these sensations into the language of our brains and minds and
learn to make them meaningful to ourselves – this is the fi rst stage in human
learning. However, we cannot make this meaning alone; we are social human
beings, always in relationship with us, and as we grow, we acquire a social
language, so that nearly all the meanings will refl ect the society into which
we are born. I depict this fi rst process in Figure 2.3.
Signifi cantly, as adults we live a great deal of our lives in situations which we

26 Peter Jarvis
have learned to take for granted (Box 1), that is, we assume that the world as
we know it does not change a great deal from one experience to another similar
one (Schutz and Luckmann, 1974), although as Bauman (2000) reminds us, our
world is changing so rapidly that he can refer to it as ‘liquid’. Over a period of
time, however, we actually develop categories and classifi cations that allow this
taken-for-grantedness to occur. Falzon (1998, p. 38) puts this neatly:
Encountering the world … necessarily involves a process of ordering the
world in terms of our categories, organising it and classifying it, actively
bringing it under control in some way. We always bring some framework
to bear on the world in our dealings with it. Without this organisational
activity, we would be unable to make any sense of the world at all.
However, the same claim cannot be made for young children – they frequently
experience sensations about which they have no meaning or explanation and
they have to seek meanings and ask the question that every parent is fearful
of: Why? They are in constant disjuncture or, in other words, they start much
of their living refl ecting Box 2, but as they develop, they gain a perception of
the life-world and of the meanings that society gives to their experiences, and
so Box 1 becomes more of an everyday occurrence. However, throughout our
lives, however old and experienced we are, we still enter novel situations and
have sensations that we do not recognise – what is that sound, smell, taste and
so on? Both adult and child have to transform the sensation to brain language
and eventually to give it meaning. It is in learning the meaning, etc. of the
Figure 2.3 The transformation of sensations: learning from primary experience.

Learning to be a person in society 27
sensation that we incorporate the culture of our life-world into ourselves; this
we do in most, if not all, of our learning experiences.
Traditionally, however, adult educators have claimed that children learn
differently from adults, but the processes of learning from novel situations
is the same throughout the whole of life, although children have more new
experiences than adults do and this is why there appears to be some difference
in the learning processes of children and adults. These are primary experiences
and we all have them throughout our lives; we all have new sensations in which
we cannot take the world for granted – when we enter a state of disjuncture
and immediately we raise questions: What do I do now? What does that
mean? What is that smell? What is that sound? and so on. Many of these
queries may not be articulated in the form of a question, but there is a sense
of unknowing (Box 2). It is this disjuncture that is at the heart of conscious
experience – because conscious experience arises when we do not know and
when we cannot take our world for granted. Through a variety of ways we
give meaning to the sensation and our disjuncture is resolved. An answer (not
necessarily a correct one, even if there is one that is correct) to our questions
may be given by a signifi cant other in childhood, by a teacher, incidentally
in the course of everyday living, through discovery learning or through self-
directed learning and so on (Box 3). However, there are times when we just
cannot give meaning to primary experiences like this – when we experience
beauty, wonder and so on – and it is here that we may begin to locate religious
experiences – but time and space forbid us to continue this exploration today
(see Jarvis and Hirji, 2006).
When we do get our disjunctures resolved, the answers are social constructs,
and so immediately our learning is infl uenced by the social context within
which it occurs. We are encapsulated by our culture. Once we have acquired
an answer to our implied question, however, we have to practise or repeat it
in order to commit it to memory (Box 4). The more opportunities we have
to practise the answer to our initial question, the better we will commit it to
memory. Since we do this in our social world, we get feedback, which confi rms
that we have gotten a socially acceptable resolution or else we have to start the
process again, or be different from those people around us. A socially acceptable
answer may be called correct, but here we have to be aware of the problem of
language – conformity is not always ‘correctness’. This process of learning to
conform is ‘trial and error’ learning – but we can also learn to disagree, and it is
in agreeing and disagreeing that aspects of our individuality emerge. However,
once we have a socially acceptable resolution and have memorised it, we are
also in a position to take our world for granted again (Box 5), provided that the
social world has not changed in some other way. Most importantly, however, as
we change and others change as they learn, the social world is always changing
and so our taken-for-grantedness becomes more suspect (Box 5) since we always
experience slightly different situations. The same water does not fl ow under the
same bridge twice and so even our taken-for-grantedness is relative.

28 Peter Jarvis
The signifi cance of this process in contemporary society, however, is that
once we have given meaning to the sensation and committed a meaning
to our memories then the significance of the sensation itself recedes in
future experiences as the socially acceptable answer (meaning) dominates the
process, and when disjuncture then occurs it is more likely because we cannot
understand the meaning, we do not know the meaning of the word and so on,
than it is about the sensation itself. Naturally the sensation still occurs but we
are less conscious of it. In this sense, we carry social meaning within ourselves –
whatever social reality is, it is incorporated in us through our learning from the
time of our birth onwards. Indeed, this also refl ects the thinking of Bourdieu
(1992, p. 127) when he describes habitus as a ‘social made body’ and he goes
on in the same page to suggest that ‘[s]ocial reality exists, so to speak, twice,
in things and in minds, in fi elds and in habitus, outside and inside of agents’.
There is a sense then in which we might, unknowingly, be imprisoned behind
the bars of our own minds – a phrase which I think was originally termed by
Peter Berger. Signifi cantly, this is the type of learning that adult educators have
assumed that adults but not children have: these experiences are secondary ones
which occur as a result of language or other forms of mediation – secondary
experiences are mediated experiences of the world. These always occur in
conjunction with primary ones, although we are not always conscious of the
primary ones; for instance, when we are listening to someone speak we are not
always conscious of how comfortable the chair is, and so on.
We have a continuing ambivalent relationship with our life-world – both
in experiencing sensations and in experiencing meaning, both in knowing
and not knowing. We have already described the primary experience since it
is about experiencing with the senses, and we can continue to have primary
experiences throughout our lives so that Figure 2.3 is as relevant for adults as
it is for children when the senses are at the heart of the learning. But when the
senses are relegated and we are more concerned with the cultural meanings,
when we do not know the meanings or words rather than the sounds etc., then
we have secondary experiences – these are mediated experiences which are often
through speech and the written word, although we are becoming increasingly
aware of visual mediation through television and the Web. These are becoming
an everyday feature for many of us. Nevertheless, cognition becomes central
to learning and while we still have the primary experience, it is relegated to a
subsidiary position in the hierarchy of human learning, and in the following
diagram I have depicted this secondary process in which we have certain forms
of cognitive disjuncture. In Box 1, the whole person is in the life-world and at
the point of disjuncture has an experience (Box 2).
Having had an experience (Box 2), which might occur as a result of dis-
juncture, we can reject it, think about it, respond to it emotionally or do
something about it – or any combination of these (Boxes 3–5). But there is a
double arrow here since there is always feedback at every point in learning as
well as a progressive act. What is important about this observation is that we

Learning to be a person in society 29
actually learn from the experience and not from the social situation in which
the experience occurs, nor from the sensation once meaning has been attributed
to it. As a result of the learning we become changed persons (Box 6) but, as
we see, learning is itself a complex process. Once the person is changed, it is
self-evident that the next social situation into which the individual enters is
changed. And so, we can return to my experiences – I do not need to have a
meaning to learn from the experience, although I might want to give meaning
to my experiences as I refl ect upon them (Box 3). However, my emotions are
transformed (Box 4), my beliefs are affected and so are many attitudes and
values (Box 3) and so on. I might even want to do something about them (Box
5). Finally, we see that as a result of learning (Box 6), we become changed
persons and so only in being can we become and in learning we experience the
process of becoming. Indeed, I am changed and so, therefore, is the situation
in which I interact. Consequently, we can conclude that learning involves three
transformations: the sensation, the person and then the social situation.
In Figure 2.4, I have tried to capture the continuous nature of learning by
Figure 2.4 The transformation of the person through learning.

30 Peter Jarvis
pointing to the second cycle (Box 12). However, this diagram must always
be understood in relation to Figure 2.3, since it is only by combining them
that we can begin to understand the process of human learning. These two
diagrams together depict the complex process of experiencing both sensations
and meanings simultaneously; it is also a recognition that both primary
and secondary experiences occur simultaneously. However, there is a funda-
mental issue here about the person becoming more experienced which tells us
something more about the nature of the person. For as long as I can continue
to learn, I remain an unfi nished person – the possibility of more growth, more
experience and so on remains – or I am still learning to be me! Philosophi-
cally speaking, I only am at the moment ‘now’ and since I cannot stop time
I am always becoming; paradoxically, however, through all that becoming
I always feel that I am the same self. Being and becoming are inextricably
intertwined, and human learning is one of the phenomena that unite them,
for it is fundamental to life itself.
I am now, therefore, confronted with another issue in learning to be me and
that is to be found in the nature of the person who learns: I have suggested
that the person is about knowledge, skills, attitudes, emotions, beliefs, values,
senses and even identity and that through learning each of these can be changed
and develop further. But if we look carefully at the literature on learning we
fi nd that there is work on personal and cognitive development (Erikson, 1963;
Piaget, 1929), work on religious faith development (Fowler, 1981), on moral
development (Kohlberg, 1981) and so on. In precisely the same way, there is
research in the way that we develop both our personal and social identities,
including Mead (Strauss, 1964) and Wenger (1998) in their different ways. If
we are to understand how the person learns to become a whole person, then
we need to combine all of these theories, and that is where the book that I am
just beginning will take us.
A person’s lifetime learning
Since learning is an existential phenomenon, my starting point is the whole
person – that is, body and mind. We can describe this process as that of the
human essence emerging from the human existent, a process that continues
throughout the whole of life, and that essence is moulded through interaction
with the world. But that essence does not just emerge unaided, as it were –
like the physical body needs food in order to mature, so that human existent
needs to have experiences and learn if the human essence is to emerge and
develop. The stimulus for this learning is our experience of the world – the
point at which we intersect with the world (both physical and social). The
only way that we can experience these moments of intersection is through our
senses – we see, hear, feel, smell and taste. These then are the beginning of
every learning experience, so that the bodily sensations are fundamental to the
whole of the learning process. Fundamental to our understanding of learning,

Learning to be a person in society 31
therefore, is our understanding of the whole person in the social situation – it
is a philosophical anthropology but also a sociology and psychology. Once we
recognise that learning is not just psychological and that the exclusive claims
of psychology detract from the fullness of our understanding of learning, we
can look afresh at human learning.
But before we do, we need to note that the person is both body and mind and
that these are not separate entities – they are interrelated. Therefore, once we
have recognised the signifi cance of the senses in our learning theory, we need
to examine the relationship between body and mind. There have been many
volumes written on this topic and so there is no place to review the relation-
ship in depth here. Suffi ce to note that there are fi ve major sets of theory about
the body–mind relationship. Maslin (2001), for instance, suggests fi ve main
theories:
Dualism: the human person is a composite of two completely separate •
entities: body and mind. However, contemporary brain scanning techniques
have demonstrated that brain activity can be seen as a result of the body
receiving sensations, which suggests that there is a close interconnection
between them;
Mind/brain identity: a monist theory that claims that only physical •
substances exist and that human beings are just part of the material world;
therefore, mental states are identical with physical ones, which raises
fundamental problems about the nature of culture and meaning;
Logical or analytical behaviourism: ‘statements about the mind and •
mental states turn out, after analysis, to be statements that describe a
person’s actual and potential public behaviour’ (Maslin 2001, p. 106).
The objections include rejecting the idea that behaviour is the driving
force of human being, and other forces, such as meaning or even thought
itself, are signifi cant;
Functionalism: the mind is a function of the brain. Such a theory rules out •
meaning, intentionality, irrationality and emotion;
Non-reductive monism: Maslin (2001, p. 163) describes it thus: •
It is non-reductive because it does not insist that mental properties are
nothing over and above physical properties. On the contrary, it is willing to
allow that mental properties are different in kind from physical properties,
and not ontologically reducible to them. It is clusters and series of these
mental properties which constitute our psychological lives … property
dualism dispenses with the dualism of substances and physical events,
hence it is a form of monism. But these physical substances and events
possess two very different kinds of property, namely physical properties
and, in addition, non-physical, mental properties.
Having examined fi ve different ways of looking at the body–mind relationship

32 Peter Jarvis
we can fi nd no simple theory that allows us to explain it. Exclusive claims
should not logically be made for any single theory, although they are made
quite widely in contemporary society. Some of the theories, however, appear
to be much weaker than others, such as mind/brain identity, behaviourism
and functionalism. This is unfortunate since these are the ones most widely
cited and used in contemporary society. We have accepted a form of dualism
that may best be explained as a form of non-reductive monism, although we
are less happy with dualism per se. Yet we have to acknowledge that none of
the theories can claim universal allegiance and in each there are problems that
appear insurmountable.
From the above brief philosophical discussion we can see immediately that
profound doubt is cast on many contemporary theories of learning as providing
logical understanding of human learning, including behaviourism, information
processing and all forms of cognitive theory. This is not to say that they are
not valid in as far as they go, simply that they do not go far enough: they
all have an incomplete theory of the person. Clearly experientialism comes
much closer because it situates the learning in the social context, but even
experiential learning theories do not go suffi ciently far since they also build
on an incomplete theory of the person and few of them actually examine the
social context within which the experience occurs. Two theories which offer
a great deal of insight into human learning – in fact to my mind the most
comprehensive – are those of Illeris (2002) and Wenger (1998).
Conclusion
As with many other learning theories, the two last mentioned start from the
psychological and the sociological angle, respectively. Each of them provides
tremendous insights into human learning and points us beyond its own
boundaries. Both raise profound questions and both include the idea of the
human being in relation to the social world which I try to depict in Figure 2.5.
The psychologist traces the arrows out from the person to the external,
objectifi ed culture, while the sociologist starts with the objectifi ed culture
and points inwards to the individual person. A person’s learning must be seen
from both perspectives! This leaves us with major problems about how we
study learning. I would argue that we need to start with an understanding of
the person – the learner – which is a philosophical perspective that has been
sadly lacking from studies of learning, and, thereafter, begin to explore the
psychological and the sociological aspects of the leaning process in tandem.
But standing in the middle is the person – and analysis of the person calls
for a philosophical anthropology. This also leads us to recognising the inter-
subjectivity of social living and human learning – well captured by Buber’s
(1994) I and Thou – and I believe that this broader perspective will help us
understand learning better, although it is impossible to have a theory that
explains the learning process in every detail. Paradoxically, despite all that we

Learning to be a person in society 33
know and all that we have learned, we will spend the reminder of our lives
learning to be ourselves – people in society.
References
Arendt, H. (1978) The Life of the Mind. San Diego: Harvest Book, Harcourt.
Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Bourdieu, P. (1992) The Purpose of Refl exive Sociology. In Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L (eds).
An Invitation to Refl exive Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Buber, M. (1994 [1923]) I and Thou. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Erikson, E. (1963) Childhood and Society. New York: Norton.
Falzon, C. (1998) Foucault and Social Dialogue: Beyond Fragmentation. London: Routledge.
Fowler, J. (1981) Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.
New York: Harper and Row.
Illeris. K (2002) The Three Dimensions of Learning: Contemporary Learning Theory in the Tension Field
Between the Cognitive, the Emotional and the Social. Leicester: NIACE.
Jarvis, P. (1987) Adult Learning in the Social Context. London: Croom Helm.
Jarvis, P. (1992) Paradoxes of Learning: On Becoming an Individual in Society. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass.
Jarvis, P. (2001) Learning in Later Life: An Introduction for Educators & Carers. London: Kogan Page.
Jarvis, P. (2006) Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Human Learning. London: Routledge.
(Vol 1 of Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society).
Jarvis, P. (2007) Globalisation, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society: Sociological Perspectives.
London: Routledge. (Vol 2 of Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society).
Jarvis, P., Holford, J. and Griffi n, C. (2003) Theory and Practice of Learning (2nd edition). London:
Routledge.
Jarvis, P. and Hirji, N. (2006) Learning the Unlearnable – Experiencing the Unknowable. Journal
for Adult Theological Education, 1, pp. 88–94.
Jarvis, P. and Parker, S. (eds) (2005) Human Learning: An Holistic Approach. London:
Routledge.
Kohlberg, L. (1981) The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice.
San Francisco: Harper & Row.
X The person
Objectified
culture
(multi-cultural)
Figure 2.5 The internalisation and externalisation of culture.

34 Peter Jarvis
Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Loder, J. (1998) The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Maslin, K. T. (2001) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Piaget, J. (1929) The Child’s Conception of the World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Schutz, A. and Luckmann, T. (1974) The Structures of the Life-world. London: Heinemann.
Strauss, A. (ed) (1964) George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Wenger, E (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 3
What “form” transforms?
A constructive-developmental approach to
transformative learning
Robert Kegan
Robert Kegan is a trained psychologist and Professor of Adult Learning and Professional
Development at Harvard University. In 1982 he presented his advanced stage model
of human development in his book The Evolving Self, and in 1994 he elaborated the
model further in another important book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands
of Modern Life. Later, leadership, change, and professional learning and training
have become the focus of his work. His interest in the transformations that lead from
one developmental stage to the next has led him to take up Jack Mezirow’s concept of
“transformative learning” (see Mezirow’s chapter later in this book), as can be seen in
the following chapter, which is a slightly abridged version of Kegan’s chapter in Jack
Mezirow et al. (2000), Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a
Theory in Progress.
Introduction
Consider the case of Peter and Lynn as they tumble out of bed. “These days,”
each could say, “my work is too much with me.” Different as their work is,
they have noticed that in each of their jobs a similar circumstance has stirred
them up.
Lynn has been at Highland Junior High School for twelve years, originally
as an English teacher. Three years ago she became chair of the English depart-
ment, and last year it was decided that chairpersons would become part of
the principal’s newly formed Leadership Council. The school had decided to
adopt a site-based management (SBM) philosophy in which the responsibility
and authority for running the school would no longer be vested only in the
principal, Carolyn Evans, but shared mainly among the principal and the
faculty or its representatives.
Peter has worked at BestRest Incorporated for nineteen years. A bedding
manufacturer with twelve regional factories, BestRest hired Peter during the
summers while he was still in college. He caught the eye of Anderson Wright,
then a plant manager, who became his mentor. As Anderson rose through
the ranks he brought Peter along. Eventually, when he became a corporate
vice president, he put Peter in charge of an independent product line. Peter

36 Robert Kegan
enjoyed the continuing close association with Anderson, whom he consulted
frequently and easily.
But life became more complicated for Peter when Anderson decided to make
the independent product line a separate company division and Peter its new
head. “If you’re game, Peter,” said Anderson, “and I think you’re ready, I want
you to think of the new line as a company on its own – SafeSleep Products –
and I want you to run it.” Peter could hear the excitement in Anderson’s voice,
his pleasure in offering Peter what Anderson clearly regarded as a wonderful
present. So Peter, without hesitation or conscious deliberation, moved himself
to rejoin Anderson in this new place.
Thus Lynn and Peter, the teacher and the business executive who seldom
feel their work has anything in common, fi nd themselves contending with a
similar circumstance: worker-participation initiatives have recast the issues of
responsibility, ownership, and authority at work. Both are miserable and de-
moralized about the changes at work. Let’s take a closer look to fi nd out why.
“I can give you an example of why this thing is not working at Highland,”
Lynn says. “Probably every department chair and most of the faculty would
agree that there are big fl aws in the way we do faculty evaluations. First of
all, faculty evaluations are based on two class visits by the principal. They are
announced visits, so teachers end up preparing for a performance and they don’t
feel that the principal gets a fair sample of their work. The kids know what’s
going on and act weird – they’re on ‘good behavior’ too, and completely un-
spontaneous. The principal writes up a generally innocuous report. Nobody
is learning a thing, but at least the principal can tell the central offi ce that
‘everyone’s been evaluated’ and she has the paperwork to prove it.
“I went along with this, but by the time I’d become the English department
chair I got the idea that the school should be a learning place for everyone. I
decided that if we want kids to be learning in school it would help them if we
modeled learning ourselves. It was actually some version of this that got me
excited about being on the Leadership Council in the fi rst place. I had some
different ideas about faculty evaluation. I wanted to return the emphasis to
learning, not fi le-fi lling.
“So when Carolyn proposed site-based management to our faculty, I admired
her for being willing to let some other voices come into the leadership of the
school, but I wasn’t thinking, ‘Good, now we’re going to take over.’ I don’t
want to take over. I don’t want to be the principal. But I don’t want Carolyn
being the department chair either, and I felt that we had a better chance of
clearing these things up in group discussions, like we’d have on the council,
than in one-on-one meetings in Carolyn’s offi ce.
“The whole thing started to fall apart for me this semester around just this
issue of faculty evaluation, and it wasn’t even my initiative. When Alan –
he’s the history chair – brought in his proposal, it was a complete surprise
to me. Basically, his proposal was that the history department be allowed to
run a one-year experiment on evaluation. He wanted to get the performance-

What “form” transforms? 37
anxiety, test-taking dimension out of it. He wanted people to have the option
of entering supervisory relationships with him or a few other senior members
of the department that would really be more consultative than supervisory.
The supervisor/consultant would, in effect, be ‘hired’ by the faculty member
to advance the faculty member’s learning goals. The teacher could ‘fi re’ the
consultant without consequences. No fi le entries for one year. Try to get a sense
of how the faculty used it and how much and what kind of learning was going
on, but all anonymously, evaluating the experiment, not the teachers.
“I loved the idea, of course. I was envious that I hadn’t thought of it myself.
It seemed like a good way of putting into operation my idea that the faculty
member should run his evaluation, that the evaluation should be aimed at
learning, not putting on a show, that the chair could serve as a consultant and
a resource to self-directed learning.
“We’ve now had three long discussions about this on the council, and we
still haven’t had the fi rst word about the real merits of Alan’s proposal. As
I now realize, the issue for Carolyn had less to do with promoting faculty
learning than with the precedent it sets about accountability in general and
accountability to her specifi cally. Stop visits by the principal? Let the faculty
decide what they need to learn? No evaluations for the fi les by anybody!
These didn’t go down easily with Carolyn. Rather than take her usual stance
of speaking last in a conversation, she was the fi rst to speak after Alan made
his proposal, and what she had to say pretty much silenced the rest of us. She
didn’t identify any merits in the proposal. She didn’t even acknowledge the
implicit problems the proposal was at least trying to address. She just said
basically, ‘This is something we can’t do.’
“I’m not proud of the way I responded, but it was just such a unilateral and
imperial stance for her to take, and I guess I got mad. What I said was, ‘Why,
Carolyn? Is it illegal what Alan is proposing?’ and everyone else laughed and
I could see that Carolyn was very angry. I hadn’t meant it exactly the way it
came out. I didn’t mean she was out of line to object to the proposal. I was
reacting to the way she framed it. I didn’t feel she had the right to just shut
down the conversation. At the time I attributed my overreaction and sarcasm to
the fact this was an especially important issue to me personally, and I resented
how it was being dismissed. That didn’t justify my sarcasm, but it did dignify
it somehow.
“Anyhow, after that council session Carolyn asked to meet with me in her
offi ce, and she read me the riot act: How could I do that to her? Didn’t I know
how much she counted on my loyalty? Didn’t I realize how powerful I was
as a department chair, and that to take such a doubting view when she had
clearly committed herself was terribly undermining? That she thought of us
as partners, that we had worked so well together all these years, and how it
was even more important with SBM that we read each other’s signals well and
be a good team. I had to say, ‘Whoa, Carolyn, time out, I’m having too many
reactions to all this.’

38 Robert Kegan
“We ended up having a good conversation, actually, one of our best in years,
but it was really diffi cult. I had to tell her I thought it was unfair of her to
trade on my loyalty to her, that I did respect her and I was grateful to her for
her support to me professionally over the years, but that I was sure she was
not interested in a friend who was a clone. This got us into the whole SBM,
Leadership Council thing, and whether that was itself a team, and what were
the expectations about how we functioned as members of that council. Carolyn
broke down and cried and said she was fi nding SBM terribly hard, that she had
had no idea what she was getting into, that half the time she had nightmares
that the school was going to fall apart because there was more chaos than
leadership, and the other half of the time she had nightmares that the school
was getting along too well without her running things, that SBM was about
gradually making the principal irrelevant.”
Were Peter to tell us what his new role as head of a division really felt like, he
might say something like this: “Honestly? It’s defi nitely a different ball game!
What game is it? Well, let’s see. I guess you could say before I was president, I
was playing a game of catch. Anderson would throw things at me and I’d catch
them, I’d throw things back at him and he’d catch them. And now? Now I’d
say I’m a juggler. There’s not one ball, there are fi ve, and then there are ten,
and then there are fi fteen! People keep tossing more in to me to add to those
I’m juggling. But I’m not throwing to anyone. I’m just throwing them into
the air. And my job as the juggler is to keep them all going up there, to not
let any of them drop to the ground.
“You couldn’t believe the number of things that come across my desk.
‘Anderson says to take this to you now.’ ‘Anderson says he’s not the guy on this
anymore; you are.’ If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. You have to deal with a lot
of people’s feelings about this change. Everybody thought the company concept
for SafeSleep was a hot idea when Anderson proposed it, but now that we’re
actually doing it, a lot of people aren’t so sure. I’m not even sure Anderson’s
so sure at this point. People keep asking me how I feel about the change, but
I don’t have time to think about how I feel about it because I spend half my
day dealing with how everybody else feels about it.
“Take Ted, for example. He’s one of our salespeople. I’ve known Ted ten
years in this business. Ted’s putting a lot of pressure on me not to separate him
from the SafeSleep line. Ted’s a mattress salesman and a damn good one. He
does excellent work for his customers. They love him and he loves them. The
SafeSleep line got its start by accident, or what Anderson called ‘entrepreneurial
jujitsu,’ turning a weakness into a strength. New government codes mandated
that we manufacture fl ame-retardant mattresses, and it cost millions of dollars
to set up the capacity. Since we had the capacity, Anderson reasoned, why not
use it for other things, too? Presto! The SafeSleep line. But originally these
products were just an extra that the mattress salespeople offered their furniture
stores. The store used them as ‘sweeteners’ to sell their customers our top-
of-the-line mattresses. Everybody was happy. The furniture store’s customer

What “form” transforms? 39
liked the freebie; the store liked the mattress sale; our salespeople liked the
increased mattress orders they got from the stores. ‘So why are you ruining a
nice thing?’ Ted wants to know. ‘Peter, I’m family,’ he says to me. ‘And Harold
is not,’ which is true. ‘So why are you letting this guy take the bread off my
table?’ he says.
“I hired Harold soon after I became president of SafeSleep because Harold
had sales experience in bedclothes. He was the fi rst nonmattress salesperson in
the place, and I thought we needed that for the new company. He’s turned out
to be a dynamo. The guy’s got more ideas per square inch than I’ve ever seen,
and most of them make sense. But they’re also making some people, like Ted,
mad. And I’m not so sure Anderson’s very keen about him either.
“Harold’s take was that BestRest was choking SafeSleep, that the best reason
for setting up SafeSleep as a separate company was that its growth was stunted
in the shadow of the mattress company. Furniture stores, he said, were not the
place to be selling pajamas and not even the best place to sell quilts. And on
and on. It all made sense to me, but whenever you start talking about doing
things differently people get worried about what it means for them. His view is
that if SafeSleep is really going to be its own company, it needs its own identity,
its own purpose. It has to get out of the hip pocket of BestRest.
“The problem with this is that as soon as you pull the SafeSleep line away
from the mattress sales force, a guy like Ted, who has gotten a lot of mileage
out of it, yells ‘Ouch.’ I think Harold’s basically right, but Ted’s probably right,
too, that his mattress orders will go down, at least for a while, if we pull the
SafeSleep line from him. Ted’s not just worried about his volume, he’s worried
about his bonus benefi ts. Why doesn’t he go make his stores feel guilty? It’s
their fault if they short-order him, not mine. Give me a break!
“I consider Ted and Anderson two of my best friends, and if this new job
ruins both of these friendships I won’t be surprised. When Anderson offered
me the presidency he said it was a way to move our relationship to a whole
new level, that we were becoming true colleagues. It’s a whole new level all
right! I guess if you never want to see a guy again you should become true
colleagues with him! But I know if you ask Anderson he’ll say he’s just as
available, that it’s me, that I don’t call. And that’s true. I just stay away from
him these days and fi gure that when he needs to tell me something he will.
I’d leave our meetings feeling as if we’d talked a lot but I had no clearer idea
where I was when I left.
“It was very clear that he didn’t want to be asked straight out what he
thought we should do. It was very clear that he wanted me to have a plan. But
it was also clear that he liked some plans better than others. He’d dump all over
a lot of Harold’s ideas. I’d leave his offi ce and fi nd myself down on Harold for
the next three days. I’d feel that he was trying to warn me away from Harold
but wouldn’t come right out and say so. What I’d always liked about Anderson
was that he was a straight shooter. He’d always tell you exactly what he wanted.
I want Anderson to sign on to my plans, and he keeps saying, ‘If this is where

40 Robert Kegan
you want to put your chips.’ A fat lot of help that is! When I tell him it must
be nice for him to be out of it, he gets annoyed and says, ‘Don’t think for a
minute I’m out of it! You’re turning SafeSleep from a cute afterthought into
a corporate factor, and if it goes down the tubes they’ll be asking me what
happened.’ And then I feel even less reassured because now I’m responsible for
Anderson’s not getting hurt. That’s a lot of what’s different about being the
president. I’ve got to worry about Ted. I’ve got to worry about Anderson. And
I’m not exactly sure what I did to deserve this wonderful job.”
Peter and Lynn are dealing with what we might call the hidden curriculum
of adult life as it expresses itself here in the world of work. If we were to look at
the whole of contemporary culture in the West as a kind of school, and consider
adult roles as the courses in which we are enrolled, most adults have a full and
demanding schedule. The “courses” of parenting, partnering, working, and
living in an increasingly diverse society are demanding ones, yet most adults
are enrolled in all of them. What does it take to succeed in these courses?
What is the nature of the change struggling students would have to undergo
to become successful students?
These are the kinds of questions I posed in my book In Over Our Heads
(1994), of which Peter and Lynn are the heroes. In the last several years since
the book has been published, I have heard the thinking of a few thousand adult
educators about Peter and Lynn in various workshops, institutes, and summer
conferences. Most people see Lynn as more capable and handling better the
new demands at work. Although people often want to claim that Peter has a
number of external problems that Lynn does not – he has more at stake, they
say; his organizational culture is less supportive, they say; he has a male boss,
they say, who isn’t as open to conversation as Lynn’s boss – most people do not
attribute Lynn’s greater success to these external advantages alone.
Without using the terms, people fi nd Lynn more capable in each of four
familiar quadrants of the psychological self: cognitive (“Lynn seems to have more
of a mind of her own”; “She has a Big Picture and an overall ‘take’ on things,
but Peter seems lost and overwhelmed”), affective (“Lynn takes responsibility
for how she feels, understands why she feels that way, and can even step out of
being controlled by her feelings”; “Peter seems swamped and overrun by his
feelings”; “He blames other people for how he feels”), interpersonal (“Peter is
like a victim”; “He’s too dependent”; “Lynn is able to set clear boundaries in
a complicated multidimensional relationship, but Peter is not, and seems run
by his relationships to people at work who are his friends”), and intrapersonal
(“Peter doesn’t seem very self-refl ective”; “He’s thinking about what other
people are thinking, and she’s thinking about her own thinking”).
What sort of transformation would it take for Peter to exercise the capabilities
people see in Lynn? What capabilities does Peter already possess and what prior
transformations in his learning might their presence imply? Why don’t his
present capabilities serve him in his new circumstances?

What “form” transforms? 41
Transformational learning and the problem of its success
Some academic writing – that which is most frequently parodied and ridiculed
– uses obscure language to hide the fact that nothing terribly original is being
expressed. Some unappealingly obscure academic language is in the service
of genuinely new ideas; the thinkers are just better at creating new thinking
than at devising the language required to express it. And on occasion a richly
heuristic set of novel ideas fi nds an appealing language for its expression and
the fi eld takes off. In psychology, Erikson’s concepts of identity and identity
crisis are examples. Gardner’s multiple intelligences is a more recent one. And
surely transformational learning is another. Jack Mezirow’s genius and our
good fortune derive from this double-header ability to provide accessible new
language in service of valuable new ideas. But as Mezirow well knows, this kind
of success spawns its own problems. The language can become so appealing
it begins to be used for myriad purposes; its meaning can be distorted, its
distinct ideas lost. It can take on quasi-religious qualities, in this case of
dramatic “conversion.” Transformation begins to refer to any kind of change
or process at all. Piaget (1954) distinguished between assimilative processes, in
which new experience is shaped to conform to existing knowledge structures,
and accommodative processes, in which the structures themselves change in
response to new experience. Ironically, as the language of transformation is more
widely assimilated, it risks losing its genuinely transformative potential!
In this chapter I try to protect the genuinely landscape-altering potential in
the concept of transformational learning by suggesting several of its distinct
features that I believe need to be more explicit:
Transformational kinds of learning need to be more clearly distinguished •
from informational kinds of learning, and each needs to be recognized as
valuable in any learning activity, discipline, or fi eld.
The • form that is undergoing transformation needs to be better understood;
if there is no form, there is no transformation.
At the heart of a form is a way of knowing (what Mezirow calls a “frame •
of reference”); thus genuinely transformational learning is always to some
extent an epistemological change rather than merely a change in behavioral
repertoire or an increase in the quantity or fund of knowledge.
Even as the concept of transformational learning needs to be • narrowed by
focusing more explicitly on the epistemological, it needs to be broadened to
include the whole lifespan; transformational learning is not the province
of adulthood or adult education alone.
Adult educators with an interest in transformational learning may need •
a better understanding of their students’ current epistemologies so as not
to create learning designs that unwittingly presuppose the very capacities
in the students their designs might seek to promote.

42 Robert Kegan
Adult educators may better discern the nature of learners’ particular needs •
for transformational learning by better understanding not only their
students’ present epistemologies but also the epistemological complexity
of the present learning challenges they face in their lives.
The remainder of this chapter addresses each of these points in the context of
the predicaments of Peter and Lynn.
Informational learning and transformational learning
Learning aimed at increasing our fund of knowledge, at increasing our
repertoire of skills, at extending already established cognitive structures all
deepen the resources available to an existing frame of reference. Such learning
is literally in-form-ative because it seeks to bring valuable new contents into
the existing form of our way of knowing.
No learning activity, discipline, or fi eld is well nourished without continuous
opportunities to engage in this kind of learning. Certainly no passenger wants
an airline pilot whose professional training was long on collaborative refl ective
dialogue leading to ever more complex apprehensions of the phenomena of
fl ight but short on the technique of landing a plane in a crosswind; no patient
wants a doctor well trained in such dialogue but unable to tell a benign lump
from a cancerous tumor.
However, learning aimed at changes not only in what we know but changes
in how we know has an almost opposite rhythm about it and comes closer to
the etymological meaning of education (“leading out”). “Informative” learning
involves a kind of leading in, or fi lling of the form (see Figure 3.1). Trans-
form-ative learning puts the form itself at risk of change (and not just change
but increased capacity). If one is bound by concrete thinking in the study of,
say, history, then yes, further learning of the informative sort might involve
the mastery of more historical facts, events, characters, and outcomes. But
further learning of a transformative sort might also involve the development
of a capacity for abstract thinking so that one can ask more general, thematic
questions about the facts, or consider the perspectives and biases of those who
wrote the historical account creating the facts. Both kinds of learning are
expansive and valuable, one within a preexisting frame of mind and the other
reconstructing the very frame.
But only the latter would I call transformative or transformational. Trans-
formation should not refer to just any kind of change, even to any kind of
dramatic, consequential change. I know a 10-year-old who decided to read
the entire encyclopedia, A through Z, for a summer project. His appetite and
his recall were certainly impressive. His ability even to sustain his interest
in a series of very short-term exposures was commendable. But I see nothing
transformational about his learning.
Changes in one’s fund of knowledge, one’s confi dence as a learner, one’s self-

What “form” transforms? 43
perception as a learner, one’s motives in learning, one’s self-esteem – these are
all potentially important kinds of changes, all desirable, all worthy of teachers
thinking about how to facilitate them. But it is possible for any or all of these
changes to take place without any transformation because they could all occur
within the existing form or frame of reference.
And much of the time there would be no problem whatever in this being
exactly what occurs. Lynn, for example, already demonstrates the complex
capacity to set boundaries, to keep separate her simultaneous relationship to
Carolyn as friend and as colleague so that the claims from one sphere are not
inappropriately honored in another. She demonstrates the capacity to generate
an internal vision that guides her purposes and allows her to sort through
and make judgments about the choices, expectations, and proposals of others.
Although it would certainly be possible for the underlying form of her way
of knowing to undergo further transformation, it may not be necessary at the
moment. She may be in greater need of learning additional skills at detecting
more readily circumstances that are likely to risk such boundary violations,
or how one more effectively gathers a consensus to bring to life the vision she
is able intellectually to create. Such learnings could be extremely valuable,
make her even more effective, and increase her enjoyment of work and her
circumstances – and none of that learning need be transformational.
Informative: Changes in what we know
Transformative: Changes in how we know
Figure 3.1 Two kinds of learning: informative and transformative.

44 Robert Kegan
Peter, on the other hand, would be ill-served by a kind of learning that was
only informative. He is overreliant on the opinion of others, too dependent
on signals from others to direct his own choices and behaviors. He could
experience a kind of learning that might dramatically enhance his signal-
detecting capabilities in twelve different ways. But dramatic as such changes
might be, I would not call them transformational because they do not give
Peter the opportunity to reconstruct the very role of such signals in his life.
Given his current work circumstances, if he cannot effect this change he is
going to continue to have a diffi cult time.
Informational and transformational kinds of learning are each honorable,
valuable, meritable, dignifi able activities. Each can be enhancing, necessary,
and challenging for the teacher to facilitate. In given moments or contexts, a
heavier weighting of one or the other may be called for.
What form transforms? The centrality of epistemology
As the foregoing suggests, the saving specifi city of a concept like transformational
learning may lie in a more explicit understanding of the form we believe is
undergoing some change. If there is no form, there is no transformation. But
what really constitutes a form?
Mezirow’s term frame of reference is a useful way to engage this question.
Its province is necessarily epistemological. Our frame of reference may be
passionately clung to or casually held, so it clearly has an emotional or affective
coloring. Our frame of reference may be an expression of our familial loyalties
or tribal identifi cations, so it clearly has a social or interpersonal coloring.
Our frame of reference may have an implicit or explicit ethical dimension, so
it clearly has a moral coloring. But what is the phenomenon itself that takes
on all these colorings? Mezirow says a frame of reference involves both a habit
of mind and a point of view. Both of these suggest that, at its root, a frame of
reference is a way of knowing.
“Epistemology” refers to precisely this: not what we know but our way of
knowing. Attending to the epistemological inevitably involves attending to
two kinds of processes, both at the heart of a concept like transformational
learning. The fi rst is what we might call meaning-forming, the activity by
which we shape a coherent meaning out of the raw material of our outer and
inner experiencing. Constructivism recognizes that reality does not happen
preformed and waiting for us merely to copy a picture of it. Our perceiving is
simultaneously an act of conceiving, of interpreting. “Percept without concept
is blind,” Kant said. “Our experience,” Huxley said, “is less what happens to
us, and more what we make of what happens to us.”
The second process inherent in the epistemological is what we might call
reforming our meaning-forming. This is a metaprocess that affects the very terms
of our meaning-constructing. We do not only form meaning, and we do not
only change our meanings; we change the very form by which we are making

What “form” transforms? 45
our meanings. We change our epistemologies.
These two processes inherent in epistemology are actually at the heart of two
lines of social-scientifi c thought that should be in much closer conversations
with each other: the educational line of thought is transformational learning,
and the psychological line of thought is constructive developmentalism.
Constructive developmental psychology (Kegan, 1982, 1994; Piaget, 1954;
Kohlberg, 1984; Belenky et al., 1986) attends to the natural evolution of the
forms of our meaning-constructing (hence “constructive-developmental”). A
more explicit rendering of transformational learning, I suggest, attends to
the deliberate efforts and designs that support changes in the learner’s form
of knowing. Adult educators with an interest in supporting transformational
learning can look to constructive-developmental theory as a source of ideas
about (1) the dynamic architecture of “that form which transforms,” that is, a
form of knowing; and (2) the dynamic architecture of “reforming our forms of
knowing,” that is, the psychological process of transformations in our knowing.
Constructive-developmental theory invites those with an interest in
transformational learning to consider that a form of knowing always consists of
a relationship or temporary equilibrium between the subject and the object in
one’s knowing. The subject–object relationship forms the cognate or core of an
epistemology. That which is “object” we can look at, take responsibility for, refl ect
upon, exercise control over, integrate with some other way of knowing. That
which is “subject” we are run by, identifi ed with, fused with, at the effect of. We
cannot be responsible for that to which we are subject. What is “object” in our
knowing describes the thoughts and feelings we say we have; what is “subject”
describes the thinking and feeling that has us. We “have” object; we “are” subject.
Constructive-developmental theory looks at the process it calls development
as the gradual process by which what was “subject” in our knowing becomes
“object.” When a way of knowing moves from a place where we are “had by
it” (captive of it) to a place where we “have it,” and can be in relationship to
it, the form of our knowing has become more complex, more expansive. This
somewhat formal, explicitly epistemological rendering of development comes
closest, in my view, to the real meaning of transformation in transformational
learning theory.
Transformational learning as a lifelong phenomenon
As all good teachers know, every student comes with a “learning past” that is
an important part of his or her present and future learning. Important features
of this past – for adult learners especially, and their teachers – include the
history of their relationship to the subject at hand and the history of their
personal disposition toward the enterprise of learning itself. But for the adult
educator with an interest in supporting transformative learning, an important
and often overlooked feature of their students’ learning pasts is their history
of prior transformations.

46 Robert Kegan
Although the more explicitly epistemological defi nition of transformative
learning this chapter advances is intended to limit our defi nition of trans-
formation (so that not every kind of change, even important change, constitutes
transformation), it also expands our exploration of the phenomenon to the
entire lifespan. Much of the literature on transformational learning really
constitutes an exploration of what constructive-developmental theory and
research identifi es as but one of several gradual, epochal transformations in
knowing of which persons are shown to be capable throughout life. This par-
ticular transformation, refl ected in the contrast between Peter’s and Lynn’s
constructions of their similar predicaments at work, is empirically the most
widespread gradual transformation we fi nd in adulthood, so it is not surprising
that adult educators have come to focus on it. But constructive-developmental
theory suggests that (a) it is not the only transformation in the form of our
knowing possible in adulthood; (b) even this transformation will be better
understood and facilitated if its history is better honored and its future better
appreciated; and (c) we will better discern the nature of learners’ particular
needs for transformational learning by better understanding not only their
present epistemologies but the epistemological complexity of the present
learning challenges they face in their lives.
The transformation that Peter would undergo were he to construct exper-
ience more like Lynn is a shift away from being “made up by” the values and
expec tations of one’s “surround” (family, friends, community, culture) that
get uncritically internalized and with which one becomes identifi ed, toward
developing an internal authority that makes choices about these external values
and expectations according to one’s own self-authored belief system. One goes
from being psychologically “written by” the socializing press to “writing upon”
it, a shift from a socialized to a self-authoring epistemology, in the lingo of
constructive-developmental theory.
As pervasive and powerful as this gradual transformation may be, it is
only one of several shifts in the deep underlying epistemology (the form that
transforms) we use to organize meaning. Longitudinal and cross-sectorial
research, using a reliable interview instrument to discern what epistemologies
an individual has access to (Lahey and others, 1988), identifi es fi ve distinctly
different epistemologies (Kegan, 1994). As Figure 3.2 suggests, each of these
can be described with respect to what is subject and what is object, and each
shift entails the movement of what had been subject in the old epistemology
to what is object in the new epistemology. Thus the basic principle of
complexifi cation of mind here is not the mere addition of new capacities (an
aggregation model), nor the substitution of a new capacity for an old one
(a replacement model), but the subordination of once-ruling capacities to
the dominion of more complex capacities, an evolutionary model that again
distinguishes transformation from other kinds of change.
An array of increasingly complex epistemologies, such as those described in
Figure 3.2, works against the unhelpful tendency to see a person like Peter, who

PERCEPTIONS
Fantasy
SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS/
IMPULSES
SUBJECT OBJECT UNDERLYING STRUCTURE
CONCRETE
Actuality
Data, cause-and-effect
Movement
Sensation
Perceptions
Single point/immediate/atomistic
Durable category
Cross-categorical
Trans-categorical
System/complex
Trans-system
Trans-complex
POINT OF VIEW
Role-concept
Simple reciprocity (tit-for-tat)
ENDURING DISPOSITIONS
Needs, preferences
Self-concept
ABSTRACTIONS
Ideality
Inference, generalization
Hypothesis, proposition
Ideals, values
ABSTRACT SYSTEMS
Ideology
Formulation, authorization
Relations between abstractions
INSTITUTION
Relationship-regulating forms
Multiple-role consciousness
DIALECTICAL
Trans-ideological/post-ideological
Testing formulation, paradox
Contradiction, oppositeness
PO
ST
-M
O
D
ER
N
IS
M
Th
e
se
lf-
tr
an
sf
or
m
in
g
m
in
d
Th
e
se
lf-
au
th
or
in
g
m
in
d
Th
e
so
ci
al
iz
ed
m
in
d
M
O
D
ER
N
IS
M
T
R
A
D
IT
IO
N
A
LI
SM
INTER-INSTITUTIONAL
Relationship between forms
Interpenetration of self and other
MUTUALITY/INTERPERSONALISM
Role consciousness
Mutual reciprocity
INNER STATES
Subjectivity, self-consciousness
SELF-AUTHORSHIP
Self-regulation, self-formation
Identity, autonomy, individuation
SELF-TRANSFORMATION
Interpenetration of selves
Inter-individuation
Impulses
Concrete
Abstractions
Mutuality
Interpersonalism
Inner states
Subjectivity
Self-consciousness
Abstract system
ideology
LINES OF DEVELOPMENT
COGNITIVE
INTERPERSONAL
INTRAPERSONAL
Institution
relationship-
regulating forms
Self-authorship
Self-regulation
Self formation
Point of view
Enduring dispositions
Needs, preferences
Social perception
K
E
Y
Figure 3.2 Five increasingly complex epistemologies.

48 Robert Kegan
orders experience predominantly from the socialized epistemology, only in terms
of what he cannot do, and to see a person like Lynn, who predominantly orders
experience from the self-authoring epistemology, only in terms of what she can.
Surely any educator who wished to be helpful to Peter, especially one wishing
to facilitate transformational learning, would do well to know and respect
where Peter is coming from, not just where it may be valuable for him to go.
A constructive-developmental perspective on transformational learning creates
an image of this kind of learning over a lifetime as the gradual traversing of
a succession of increasingly elaborate bridges. Three injunctions follow from
this image. First, we need to know which bridge we are on. Second, we need
to know how far along the learner is in traversing that particular bridge.
Third, we need to know that, if it is to be a bridge that is safe to walk across,
it must be well anchored on both sides, not just the culminating side. We
cannot overattend to where we want the student to be – the far side of the
bridge – and ignore where the student is. If Peter is at the very beginning – the
near side – of the bridge that traverses the socialized and the self-authoring
epistemologies, it may be important to consider that this also means he is at
the far side of a prior bridge. Only by respecting what he has already gained
and what he would have to lose were he to venture forth is it likely we could
help him continue his journey.
Although it is easy and tempting to defi ne Peter by what he does not or
cannot do (especially in comparison to Lynn), it is also true that his socialized
epistemology permits him all the following capacities: he can think abstractly,
construct values and ideals, introspect, subordinate his short-term interests to
the welfare of a relationship, and orient to and identify with the expectations
of those social groups and interpersonal relationships of which he wishes to
feel himself a part.
From the vantage point of empirical research we know that it ordinarily
takes the fi rst two decades of living to develop these complex capacities, and
some people have not developed them even by then (Kegan, 1982, 1994).
Many parents, for example, would be overjoyed were their teenagers to have
these capacities. Consider as an example parents’ wish that their children be
trustworthy and hold up their end of family agreements, such as abiding by
a curfew on Saturday night. What appears to be a call for a specifi c behavior
(“Be home by midnight or phone us”) or the acquisition of a specifi c knowledge
(“Know that it is important to us that you do what you say you will”) actually
turns out to be something more epistemological. Parents do not simply want
their kids to get themselves home by midnight on Saturday night; they want
them to do it for a specifi c reason. If their kids abide by a curfew only because
the parents have an effective enough monitoring system to detect if they do not
and a suffi ciently noxious set of consequences to impose when they do not, the
parents would ultimately be disappointed even though the kids are behaving
correctly. Parents of teens want to resign from the role of “parent police.” They
want their kids to hold up their end of the agreement, not simply because

What “form” transforms? 49
they can frighten them into doing so but because the kids have begun to
intrinsically prioritize the importance of being trustworthy. This is not fi rst
of all a claim on their kids’ behavior; it is a claim on their minds. Nor will the
mere acquisition of the knowledge content (“It is important to my parents that
I do what I say I will”) be suffi cient to bring the child home by midnight. Many
non-behaving teens know precisely what their parents value. They just do not
themselves hold these values! They hold them extrinsically, as landmines they
need to take account of, to maneuver around so they do not explode.
What the parents are really hoping for from their teens is a transformation,
a shift away from an epistemology oriented to self-interest, the short term, and
others-as-supplies-to-the-self. This epistemology they ordinarily develop
in late childhood. Rather they need to relativize or subordinate their
own immediate interests on behalf of the interests of a social relationship,
the continued participation in which they value more highly than the
gratifi cation of an immediate need. When they make this epistemological
shift, sustaining a mutual bond of trust with their parents becomes more
important than partying till dawn.
And when adolescents do make this shift (to the socialized mind in Figure 3.2),
interestingly, we consider them to be responsible. For a teen, the very ca pacity
to be “written upon,” to be “made up by,” constitutes responsibility. It is
Peter’s misfortune that this perfectly dignifi able and complicated epistemology
is a better match with the hidden curriculum of adolescence than that of
modern adulthood, which makes demands on us to win some distance from
the socializing press and actually regards people who uncritically internalize
and identify with the values and expectations of others as insuffi ciently
responsible! Parents who, for example, cannot set limits on their children,
who cannot defy them, or who are susceptible to being “made up” by their
wishes we regard as irresponsible. To master this new curriculum, Peter needs
a new epistemology. But this does not mean that he did not earlier undergo
an important transformation (to the socialized epistemology), and it does
not mean he did not learn well or did not learn enough. In fact, by all accounts
he was a very successful learner. His present difficulties arise because the
complexity of the “life curriculum” he faces has gotten qualitatively more
challenging. In the words of Ronald Heifetz (1995), what he faces are not
technical challenges (the sort that can be addressed by what I call “informational
learning”), but adaptive challenges, the kind that require not merely knowing
more but knowing differently. For this reason he is in need of supports to
transformational learning.
The particular epistemological transformation Peter needs help to begin
– the transformation to a self-authoring frame of reference – is the particular
transformation we often fi nd unwittingly privileged in writings on adult
learning. Mezirow (2000) talks about our need to pierce a taken-for-granted
relationship to the assumptions that surround us. “We must become critically
refl ective of the assumptions of the person communicating” with us, he says.

50 Robert Kegan
“We need to know whether the person who gives us a diagnosis about our
health is a trained medical worker, or that one who gives us direction at work
is authorized to do so.” In essence, Mezirow says, we need to “take as object
… what is taken for granted, like conventional wisdom; [or] a particular
religious worldview,” rather than being subject to it. This is not only a call for an
epistemological shift; it is a call for a particular epistemological shift, the move
from the socialized to the self-authoring mind. This is a call that makes nothing
but good sense provided the adult learner is not too far from the entrance to
this particular epistemological bridge (nor has already traversed it).
And even when it does make good curricular sense, we must be careful not
to create learning designs that get out too far ahead of the learner. For example,
when Mezirow says transformational educators want to support the learner’s
ability “to negotiate his or her own purposes, values, feelings, and meanings
rather than simply to act on those of others,” he again sounds the call for the
move toward self-authoring, and he quite understandably invokes a model of
education that will support this shift: “The generally accepted model of adult
education involves a transfer of authority from the educator to the learners.”
But even when this particular shift is the appropriate transformational bridge
for our student, all of us, as adult educators, need help in discerning how
rapidly or gradually this shift in authority will optimally take place for that
student, which is a function of how far he or she is along this particular bridge.
The shift in authority to which Mezirow refers refl ects the familiar call in the
adult education literature for us to regard and respect all our adult students as
self-directed learners, almost by virtue of their adult status alone. Gerald Grow
(1991) defi nes self-directed learners as those who are able to:
examine themselves, their culture and their milieu in order to understand
how to separate what they feel from what they should feel, what they value
from what they should value, and what they want from what they should
want. They develop critical thinking, individual initiative, and a sense of
themselves as co-creators of the culture that shapes them.
But when the adult education experts tell us they want students to “understand
how to separate what they feel from what they should feel, what they value from
what they should value, and what they want from what they should want,”
do they take seriously enough the possibility that when the socialized mind
dominates our meaning-making, what we should feel is what we do feel, what
we should value is what we do value, and what we should want is what we do
want? Their goal therefore may not be a matter of getting students merely to
identify and value a distinction between two parts that already exist, but of
fostering a qualitative evolution of mind that actually creates the distinction.
Their goal may involve something more than the cognitive act of “distinction,”
a bloodless word that fails to capture the human wrenching of the self from its
cultural surround. Although this goal is perfectly suited to assisting adults in

What “form” transforms? 51
meeting the bigger culture-wide “curriculum” of the modern world, educators
may need a better understanding of how ambitious their aspiration is and how
costly the project may seem to their students.
Adult students are not all automatically self-directing merely by virtue
of being adults, or even easily trained to become so. Educators seeking self-
direction from their adult students are not merely asking them to take on new
skills, modify their learning style, or increase their self-confi dence. They are
asking many of them to change the whole way they understand themselves,
their world, and the relationship between the two. They are asking many of
them to put at risk the loyalties and devotions that have made up the very
foundation of their lives. We acquire personal authority, after all, only by
relativizing – that is, only by fundamentally altering – our relationship to
public authority. This is a long, often painful voyage, and one that, much of
the time, may feel more like mutiny than a merely exhilarating (and less self-
confl icted) expedition to discover new lands.
Note how lost at sea Peter becomes when his long-time mentor unwittingly
assumes his capacity for self-directed learning. Anderson no doubt sees
himself as an emancipatory, empowering employer-as-adult-educator who
scrupulously and consistently stands by his transfer of authority, taking care not
to undermine Peter by taking on business that should properly be referred to
him and refusing even Peter’s veiled requests to step in and once again provide
a map and a destination. What Anderson sees as his testimony to Peter’s
capacity for self-direction, Peter sees as a bewildering vacuum of externally
supplied expectation and an indirect message from his boss that he no longer
cares that much what happens to Peter. I have heard countless complaints
about Anderson’s ineffectiveness as a good leader, that he has asked too much
of Peter all at once; and yet when we have the opportunity to examine our own
leadership as adult educators, few of us can escape the conclusion that we have
ourselves – on many occasions with the most emancipatory of intentions – been
Andersons in our own classrooms.
Finally, an array of epistemologies such as that depicted in Figure 3.2
reminds us that even as our designs can get too far ahead of where some of our
students are, so they can also fall too far behind; even as we can fail to do Peter
justice by seeing him only in terms of what he cannot do, we can fail to do
justice to Lynn’s learning opportunities by seeing her only in terms of those
capacities she has already developed. The move toward the self-authoring mind
– valorized though it may unwittingly be in the subtexts of our aspirations for
transformational learning – is not the only fundamental epistemological shift
in adulthood. Nor are the learning challenges that call for the self-authoring
mind the only challenges adults of this new century will face.
The self-authoring mind is equipped, essentially, to meet the challenges
of modernism. Unlike traditionalism, in which a fairly homogeneous set of
defi nitions of how one should live is consistently promulgated by the cohesive
arrangements, models, and codes of the community or tribe, modernism is

52 Robert Kegan
characterized by ever-proliferating pluralism, multiplicity, and competition
for our loyalty to a given way of living. Modernism requires that we be more
than well socialized; we must also develop the internal authority to look at
and make judgments about the expectations and claims that bombard us from
all directions. Yet adult learners today and tomorrow encounter not only the
challenges of modernism but of postmodernism as well. Postmodernism calls
on us to win some distance even from our own internal authorities so that
we are not completely captive of our own theories, so that we can recognize
their incompleteness, so that we can even embrace contradictory systems
simultaneously. These challenges – a whole different “curriculum” – show up in
as private a context as our confl icted relationships, where we may or may not be
able to hold the embattled sides internally rather than projecting one side onto
our adversary, and in as public a context as higher education itself, where we
may or may not be able to see that our intellectual disciplines are inevitably, to
some extent, ideological procedures for creating and validating what counts as
real knowledge. Lynn too, it seems, has further bridges to cross. She has her own
particular needs for transformational learning, however different from Peter’s
these may be. She challenges educators to create yet another set of learning
designs should they seek to support her own bigger becoming.
“The spirit,” Hegel wrote in The Phenomenology of Mind, “is never at rest
but always engaged in ever progressive motion, in giving itself a new form.”
How might we understand transformational learning differently – and our
opportunities as educators – were we better to understand the restless, creative
processes of development itself, in which all our students partake before,
during, and after their participation in our classrooms?
References
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. McV., Goldberger, N. R., and Tarule, J. M. Women’s Ways of Knowing:
The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
Grow, G. “Teaching Learners to Be Self-Directed.” Adult Education Quarterly, 1991, 41(3), 125–49.
Heifetz, R. A. Leadership Without Easy Answers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Kegan, R. The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982.
Kegan, R. In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Ordinary Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1994.
Kohlberg, L. The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages. New
York: HarperCollins, 1984.
Lahey, L., and others. A Guide to the Subject-Object Interview: Its Administration and Interpretation.
Cambridge, MA: Subject-Object Workshop, 1988.
Mezirow, J. “Learning to Think Like an Adult – Core Concepts of Transformation Theory.” In
J. Mezirow and Associates: Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in
Progress. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.
Piaget, J. The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books, 1954.

Chapter 4
Expansive learning
Toward an activity-theoretical
reconceptualization
Yrjö Engeström
Yrjö Engeström is the founder and leader of the Center for Activity Theory and
Developmental Work Research at the University of Helsinki in Finland and is at the
same time Professor at the University of California, San Diego. He fundamentally
builds his theoretical work on the so-called cultural-historical or activity-theoretical
approach to learning and mental development, which was fi rst launched in the Soviet
Union in the 1920s and 30s by Lev Vygotsky. However, in his dissertation on
“expansive learning” in 1987, he combined this approach with the system theoretical
work of Briton Gregory Bateson on double-bind situations and learning levels and
thereby introduced the notion of confl icts which were absent in Vygotsky’s framework. In
the following slightly abridged version of an article, Engeström sums up the historical
development and current status of activity theory and illustrates its potential with a case
story from the work at his Boundary Crossing Laboratory in Helsinki.
Introduction
Any theory of learning must answer at least four central questions: (1) Who
are the subjects of learning – how are they defi ned and located? (2) Why do
they learn – what makes them make the effort? (3) What do they learn – what
are the contents and outcomes of learning? (4) How do they learn – what are
the key actions of processes of learning? In this chapter, I will use these four
questions to examine the theory of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987)
developed within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory.
Before going into expansive learning, I will briefl y introduce the evolution
and five central ideas of activity theory. The four questions and the five
principles form a matrix which I will use to systematize my discussion of
expansive learning.
I will concretize the theoretical ideas of this chapter with the help of examples
and fi ndings from an ongoing intervention study we are conducting in the
multi-organizational fi eld of medical care for children in the Helsinki area in
Finland. After presenting the setting and the learning challenge it was facing,
I will discuss each of the four questions in turn, using selected materials from
the project to highlight the answers offered by the theory of expansive learning.

54 Yrjö Engeström
I will conclude by discussing the implications of the theory of expan-
sive learning for our understanding of directionality in learning and
development.
Generations and principles of activity theory
Cultural-historical activity theory was initiated by Lev Vygotsky (1978) in
the 1920s and early 1930s. It was further developed by Vygotsky’s colleague
and disciple Alexei Leont’ev (1978, 1981). In my reading, activity theory has
evolved through three generations of research (Engeström, 1996). The fi rst
generation, centered around Vygotsky, created the idea of mediation. This idea
was crystallized in Vygotsky’s (1978, p. 40) famous triangular model in which
the conditioned direct connection between stimulus (S) and response (R) was
transcended by “a complex, mediated act” (Figure 4.1A). Vygotsky’s idea of
cultural mediation of actions is commonly expressed as the triad of subject,
object, and mediating artifact (Figure 4.1B).
The insertion of cultural artifacts into human actions was revolutionary in
that the basic unit of analysis now overcame the split between the Cartesian
individual and the untouchable societal structure. The individual could no
longer be understood without his or her cultural means; and the society
could no longer be understood without the agency of individuals who use and
produce artifacts. This meant that objects ceased to be just raw material for the
formation of logical operations in the subject as they were for Piaget. Objects
became cultural entities and the object-orientedness of action became the key
to understanding human psyche.
The limitation of the fi rst generation was that the unit of analysis remained
individually focused. This was overcome by the second generation, centered
around Leont’ev. In his famous example of “primeval collective hunt” (Leont’ev,
1981, pp. 210–213), Leont’ev explicated the crucial difference between an
individual action and a collective activity. However, Leont’ev never graphically
expanded Vygotsky’s original model into a model of a collective activity
system. Such a modeling is depicted in Figure 4.2.
The uppermost sub-triangle of Figure 4.2 may be seen as the “tip of the
iceberg” representing individual and group actions embedded in a collective
MEDIATING ARTIFACT
Subject Object
RS
X
Figure 4.1 (A) Vygotsky’s model of mediated act and (B) its common reformulation.

Expansive learning 55
activity system. The object is depicted with the help of an oval indicating that
object-oriented actions are always, explicitly or implicitly, characterized by
ambiguity, surprise, interpretation, sense-making, and potential for change.
The concept of activity took the paradigm a huge step forward in that it
turned the focus on complex interrelations between the individual subject
and his or her community. In the Soviet Union, the societal activity systems
studied concretely by activity theorists were largely limited to play and
learning among children, and contradictions of activity remained an extremely
touchy issue. Since the 1970s, the tradition was taken up and recontextualized
by radical researchers in the West. New domains of activity, including work,
were opened up for concrete research. A tremendous diversity of applications
of activity theory began to emerge, as manifested in recent collections (e.g.
Chaiklin et al., 1999; Engelsted et al., 1993; Engeström et al., 1999). The idea
of internal contradictions as the driving force of change and development in
activity systems, so powerfully conceptualized by Il’enkov (1977), began to
gain its due status as a guiding principle of empirical research.
Ever since Vygotsky’s foundational work, the cultural-historical approach was
very much a discourse of vertical development toward “higher psychological
functions.” Luria’s (1976) cross-cultural research remained an isolated attempt.
Michael Cole (1988) was one of the fi rst to clearly point out the deep-seated
insensitivity of the second-generation activity theory toward cultural diversity.
When activity theory went international, questions of diversity and dialogue
between different traditions or perspectives became increasingly serious
challenges. It is these challenges that the third generation of activity theory
must deal with.
The third generation of activity theory needs to develop conceptual tools to
understand dialogue, multiple perspectives, and networks of interacting activity
systems. Wertsch (1991) introduced Bakhtin’s (1981) ideas on dialogicality
as a way to expand the Vygotskian framework. Ritva Engeström (1995) went
a step further by pulling together Bakhtin’s ideas and Leont’ev’s concept of
MEDIATING ARTIFACTS:
TOOLS AND SIGNS
SUBJECT
RULES COMMUNITY DIVISION OF LABOUR
OBJECT
SENSE,
MEANING
OUTCOME
Figure 4.2 The structure of a human activity system (Engeström, 1987, p. 78).

56 Yrjö Engeström
activity, and others have developed notions of activity networks, discussed
Latour’s actor-network theory, and elaborated the concept of boundary crossing
within activity theory.
These developments indicate that the door is open for the formation of the
third generation of activity theory. In this mode of research, the basic model is
expanded to include minimally two interacting activity systems (Figure 4.3).
In Figure 4.3, the object moves from an initial state of unrefl ected, situa-
tionally given “raw material” (object 1; e.g. a specifi c patient entering a
physician’s offi ce) to a collectively meaningful object constructed by the
activity system (object 2; e.g. the patient constructed as a specimen of a bio-
medical disease category and thus as an instantiation of the general object of
illness/health), and to a potentially shared or jointly constructed object (object
3; e.g. a collaboratively constructed understanding of the patient’s life situation
and care plan). The object of activity is a moving target, not reducible to
conscious short-term goals.
In its current shape, activity theory may be summarized with the help of fi ve
principles (for earlier summaries, see Engeström, 1993, 1995, 1999a).
The fi rst principle is that a collective, artifact-mediated and object-oriented
activity system, seen in its network relations to other activity systems, is taken
as the prime unit of analysis. Goal-directed individual and group actions,
as well as automatic operations, are relatively independent but subordinate
units of analysis, eventually understandable only when interpreted against the
background of entire activity systems. Activity systems realize and reproduce
themselves by generating actions and operations.
The second principle is the multi-voicedness of activity systems. An activity
system is always a community of multiple points of view, traditions, and
interests. The division of labor in an activity creates different positions for
MEDIATING
ARTIFACTS OBJECT
2
OBJECT
1
OBJECT
3
OBJECT
1
SUBJECT SUBJECT
RULES RULESCOMMUNITY COMMUNITYDIVISION
OF LABOUR
DIVISION
OF LABOUR
OBJECT
2
MEDIATING
ARTIFACTS
Figure 4.3 Two interacting activity systems as minimal model for the third
generation of activity theory.

Expansive learning 57
the participants, the participants carry their own diverse histories, and the
activity system itself carries multiple layers and strands of history engraved
in its artifacts, rules, and conventions. The multi-voicedness is multiplied in
networks of interacting activity systems. It is a source of trouble and a source
of innovation, demanding actions of translation and negotiation.
The third principle is historicity. Activity systems take shape and get trans-
formed over lengthy periods of time. Their problems and potentials can only
be understood against their own history. History itself needs to be studied as
local history of the activity and its objects, and as history of the theoretical
ideas and tools that have shaped the activity. Thus, medical work needs to
be analyzed against the history of its local organization and against the more
global history of the medical concepts, procedures, and tools employed and
accumulated in the local activity.
The fourth principle is the central role of contradictions as sources of change
and development. Contradictions are not the same as problems or confl icts.
Contradictions are historically accumulating structural tensions within
and between activity systems. The primary contradiction of activities in
capitalism is between the use value and exchange value of commodities. This
primary contradiction pervades all elements of our activity systems. Activities
are open systems. When an activity system adopts a new element from the
outside (for example, a new technology or a new object), it often leads to an
aggravated secondary contradiction where some old element (for example, the
rules or the division of labor) collides with the new one. Such contradictions
generate disturbances and confl icts, but also innovative attempts to change
the activity.
The fi fth principle proclaims the possibility of expansive transformations
in activity systems. Activity systems move through relatively long cycles
of qualitative transformations. As the contradictions of an activity system
are aggravated, some individual participants begin to question and deviate
from its established norms. In some cases, this escalates into collaborative
envisioning and a deliberate collective change effort. An expansive
transformation is accomplished when the object and motive of the activity are
reconceptualized to embrace a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in
the previous mode of the activity. A full cycle of expansive transformation may
be understood as a collective journey through the zone of proximal development
of the activity:
It is the distance between the present everyday actions of the individuals
and the historically new form of the societal activity that can be collectively
generated as a solution to the double bind potentially embedded in the
everyday actions.
(Engeström, 1987, p. 174)

58 Yrjö Engeström
Expansive learning – a new approach
Standard theories of learning are focused on processes where a subject
(traditionally an individual, more recently possibly also an organization) acquires
some identifi able knowledge or skills in such a way that a corresponding,
relatively lasting change in the behavior of the subject may be observed. It is a
self-evident presupposition that the knowledge or skill to be acquired is itself
stable and reasonably well defi ned. There is a competent “teacher” who knows
what is to be learned.
The problem is that much of the most intriguing kinds of learning in
work organizations violates this presupposition. People and organizations
are all the time learning something that is not stable, not even defi ned or
understood ahead of time. In important transformations of our personal lives
and organizational practices, we must learn new forms of activity which are
not yet there. They are literally learned as they are being created. There is no
competent teacher. Standard learning theories have little to offer if one wants
to understand these processes.
Gregory Bateson’s (1972) theory of learning is one of the few approaches
helpful for tackling this challenge. Bateson distinguished between three levels
of learning. Learning I refers to conditioning, acquisition of the responses
deemed correct in the given context – for instance, the learning of correct
answers in a classroom. Bateson points out that wherever we observe Learning
I, Learning II is also going on: people acquire the deep-seated rules and patterns
of behavior characteristic to the context itself. Thus, in classrooms, students
learn the “hidden curriculum” of what it means to be a student: how to please
the teachers, how to pass exams, how to belong to groups, etc. Sometimes the
context bombards participants with contradictory demands: Learning II cre-
ates a double bind. Such pressures can lead to Learning III, where a person or
a group begins to radically question the sense and meaning of the context and
to construct a wider alternative context. Learning III is essentially a collective
endeavor. As Bateson points out, processes of Learning III are rare and dangerous:
Even the attempt at Level III can be dangerous, and some fall by the
wayside. These are often labeled by psychiatry as psychotic, and many of
them fi nd themselves inhibited from using the fi rst person pronoun.
(Bateson, 1972, pp. 305–306)
Bateson’s conceptualization of Learning III was a provocative proposal, not an
elaborated theory. The theory of expansive learning develops Bateson’s idea into
a systematic framework. Learning III is seen as learning activity which has its
own typical actions and tools (these will be discussed later in this chapter).
The object of expansive learning activity is the entire activity system in which
the learners are engaged. Expansive learning activity produces culturally new
patterns of activity.

Expansive learning 59
The learning challenge in children’s health care in Helsinki
In Finland, public health care services are principally funded by taxation, and
the patient typically pays a nominal fee for a visit. A critical structural issue in
the Helsinki area is the excessive use of high-end hospital services, historically
caused by a concentration of hospitals in this area. In children’s medical care,
the high-end of medicine is represented by the Children’s Hospital, which has
a reputation of monopolizing its patients and not actively encouraging them
to use primary care health center services. Due to rising costs, there is now
much political pressure to change this division of labor in favor of increased
use of primary care services.
The problem is most acute among children with long-term illnesses,
especially those with multiple or unclear diagnoses. Children with asthma and
severe allergies are a typical and rapidly growing group. Such children often
drift between caregiver organizations without anyone having overview and
overall responsibility of the child’s care trajectory. This puts a heavy burden
on the families and on the society.
The Children’s Hospital decided to respond to the pressures by initiating
and hosting a collaborative redesign effort, facilitated by our research group
using a method called Boundary Crossing Laboratory. Approximately 60 invited
representatives of physicians, nurses, other staff, and management from
primary care health centers and hospitals responsible for children’s health care
in the Helsinki area met in ten three-hour sessions, the last one of which was
held in mid-February 1998. The participants viewed and discussed a series of
patient cases videotaped by the researchers. The cases demonstrated in various
ways troubles caused by lack of coordination and communication between the
different care providers in the area. The troubles took the form of excessive
numbers of visits, unclear loci of responsibility, and failure to inform other
involved care providers (including the patient’s family) of the practitioner’s
diagnoses, actions, and plans.
The learning challenge in this setting was to acquire a new way of working
in which parents and practitioners from different caregiver organizations will
collaboratively plan and monitor the child’s trajectory of care, taking joint
responsibility for its overall progress. There was no readily available model that
would fi x the problems; no wise teacher had the correct answer.
Who and where are the subjects of learning?
This learning challenge could not be met by training individual practitioners
and parents to adopt some new skills and knowledge. The issue at stake was
organizational, not resolvable by a sum total of separate individuals.
On the other hand, there was no mythical collective subject that we could
approach and push to take charge of the transformation. Top-down commands
and guidelines are of little value when the management does not know what

60 Yrjö Engeström
the content of such directives should be. The management of the Children’s
Hospital – as competent and experienced as it was – was conscious of its own
limitations in the situation and asked us to help.
Recent theories of situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger,
1998) and distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995) tell us to look for well-
bounded communities of practice or functional systems, such as task-oriented
teams or work units, to become collaborative subjects of learning. But in the
multi-organizational fi eld of children’s medical care in Helsinki, there is no
well-bounded work unit that could conceivably be the center of coordination.
In each individual patient case, the combination of institutions, specialties,
and practitioners involved in the delivery of care is different, and it is seldom
possible to name a stable locus of control.
Latour’s (1987) actor-network theory recommends that we locate learning in
a heterogeneous network of human and non-human actors. This is fi ne, but
Latour’s principle of generalized symmetry turns all the actors (or actants, as
he prefers to call them) into black boxes without identifi able internal systemic
properties and contradictions. If we want to successfully confront the various
actors involved in the care, we must be able to touch and trigger some internal
tensions and dynamics in their respective institutional contexts, dynamics that
can energize a serious learning effort on their part.
In our case, learning needs to occur in a changing mosaic of interconnected
activity systems which are energized by their own inner contradictions. A
minimal constellation of activity systems includes the activity system of the
Children’s Hospital, the activity system of the primary care health center, and
the activity system of the child’s family. In each particular patient case, the
specifi c instantiation of the three activity systems is different. Yet, the general
structural characteristics and network positions of each one of them remain
suffi ciently stable to allow analysis and redesign.
In the Boundary Crossing Laboratory, the basic constellation of the three
activity systems was implemented so that hospital practitioners sat on one side
of the room and primary care health center practitioners sat on another side
of the room. The voices of patients’ families came from the front of the room,
from videotapes made by following patients through their hospital and health
center visits and also from actual parents we invited to join in the sessions.
In the fi rst session of the Boundary Crossing Laboratory, we presented the case
of a prematurely born boy who was suffering from asthma symptoms and repeated
respiratory infections. His care had been initiated at the Children’s Hospital
in August. By mid-November, his personal physician at the health center had
not received any information on the initiation of hospital care or on plans for
continued care. As the health center personal physician was unable to attend
the Laboratory session in person, we showed her videotaped interview to the
participants. The personal physician’s use of reported speech – borrowing the voice
of an imagined hospital physician – made her statement particularly poignant:

Expansive learning 61
Excerpt 1 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 1)
INTERVIEWER I’m thinking to myself, would there be any room for negotiation,
I mean, is it always so that one-sidedly one party, the hospital, decides that
OK, now this is at such a stage that we can send him to primary care …
Is there any discussion on this?
PERSONAL PHYSICIAN Nobody has ever asked me, “Would you take this patient
for follow-up?” But then again, I am not specialized in pediatrics.
In the Laboratory session, practitioners from the Children’s Hospital by and
large denied that patient information is not sent to the health centers and
maintained that the papers must have gotten lost at the health center. Health
center practitioners on the other hand claimed that it was in fact common
that the Children’s Hospital would not send patient papers to the health
center. In other words, at this point the multi-voicedness of the interaction
took the shape of interlocking defensive positions. Toward the end of the fi rst
session, the head physician of the Children’s Hospital opened a fi rst crack in
the defensive deadlock:
Excerpt 2 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 1)
HEAD PHYSICIAN OF THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL And here I think we now have a
pretty obvious issue, we just have to ask whether the patient record is
actually sent to the primary care.
While expansive learning was fi rmly distributed within and between the
three key activity systems, actions like the one taken by the head physician
demonstrate that individual agency is also involved. However, different
individuals speaking in different voices take the leading subject position in
the activity at different moments. The leading subject role and agency is not
fi xed, it keeps shifting.
Why do they learn – what makes them make the effort?
For situated learning theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991), motivation to learn
stems from participation in culturally valued collaborative practices in which
something useful is produced. This seems a satisfactory starting point when
we look at novices gradually gaining competence in relatively stable practices.
However, motivation for risky expansive learning processes associated with
major transformations in activity systems are not well explained by mere
participation and gradual acquisition of mastery.
As I pointed out earlier, Bateson (1972) suggested that expansive Learning
III is triggered by double binds generated by contradictory demands imposed
on the participants by the context. In the Boundary Crossing Laboratory, we

62 Yrjö Engeström
made the participants face and articulate the contradictory demands inherent in
their work activity by presenting a series of troublesome patient cases captured
on videotape. In several of these cases, the patient’s mother was also present.
This made it virtually impossible for the participants to blame the clients for
the problems and added greatly to the urgency of the double bind.
Despite overwhelming evidence, the acknowledgment and articulation of the
contradictions was very diffi cult for the practitioners. The fi rst statements to that
effect began to emerge in the third session of the Boundary Crossing Laboratory:
Excerpt 3 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 3)
HOSPITAL NURSE A chronically ill child who has several illnesses does not
necessarily have a clearly defi ned physician in charge. The care is fragmented.
The information is terribly fragmented in the patient’s medical record. It
is not necessarily easy to draw conclusions as to what has happened to this
child in the previous visit, not to speak of fi nding information about visits
to another hospital, for example what shared guidance and counseling
practices the family would need. And one doesn’t necessarily even fi nd
information on the current medications. They are merely in the parents’
memory or written on some piece of paper. So the information on the care
of the illness compared to the clinical situation and urgent care situation
can be detective work …
To make analytical sense of the situation, we need to look at the recent history
of the activity systems involved. Since the late 1980s, in municipal primary
care health centers, the personal doctor principle and multi-professional teams
have effectively increased the continuity of care, replacing the isolated visit with
the long-term care relationship as the object of the practitioners’ work activity.
The notion of care relationship has gradually become the key conceptual tool
for planning and recording work in health centers.
A parallel development has taken place in Finnish hospitals. Hospitals
grew bigger and more complicated in the postwar decades. Fragmentation by
specialties led to complaints and was seen to be partially responsible for the
rapidly rising costs of hospital care. In the late 1980s, hospitals began to design
and implement critical paths or pathways for designated diseases or diagnostic
groups. At the beginning of the Boundary Crossing Laboratory work, the head
physician of the Children’s Hospital made it clear to the participants that he
saw critical pathways as the solution to the problems:
Excerpt 4 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 1)
HEAD PHYSICIAN OF THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL Why critical pathways, that has
surely been explained suffi ciently, and now I’ll only tell you that in the
spring we started this activity. That is, the planning of critical pathways

Expansive learning 63
for children and adolescents in Uusimaa county. And we have a basic
working group which has representatives from both the health center level
and the central hospital level and from here and from all parties, that is,
representatives of both nursing and physicians.
With these reforms spreading and taking root, shouldn’t the problems with coor-
dination and collaboration be under control? Evidence presented and discussed
in Boundary Crossing Laboratory sessions led to the conclusion that this is not
the case. Care relationships and critical paths were solutions created in response
to particular historical sets of contradictions. These contradictions are rapidly
being superseded by a new, more encompassing confi guration of contradictions.
Care relationships and critical paths respond to contradictions internal to the
respective institutions. Care relationships are seen as a way to conceptualize,
document, and plan long-term interactions with a patient inside primary
health care. Their virtue is that the patient can be seen as having multiple
interacting problems and diagnoses that evolve over time; their limitation is
that responsibility for the patient is practically suspended when the patient
enters a hospital. Correspondingly, critical paths are constructed to give a
normative sequence of procedures for dealing with a given disease or diagnosis.
They do not help in dealing with patients with unclear and multiple diagnoses,
and they tend to impose their disease-centered worldview even on primary care
practitioners. Fundamentally, both care relationships and critical paths are
linear and temporal constructions of the object. They have great diffi culties in
representing and guiding horizontal and socio-spatial relations and interactions
between care providers located in different institutions, including the patient
and his/her family as the most important actors in care.
Asthmatic and allergic children with repeated respiratory problems are a
clear case in point. Such a child may have more than a dozen hospital visits,
including some stays of a few days in a ward, and even more numerous visits
to a primary care health center in one year. Some of these visits are serious
emergencies, some of them are milder but urgent infections, some are for tests,
control and follow-ups.
One of the cases we presented in the Boundary Crossing Laboratory was
Simon, age 3. In 1997, he had three visits to the district hospital of his mu-
nicipality, 11 visits to the Helsinki University Central Hospital (HUCH) ear
clinic, 14 visits to his personal physician at the local health center, and one
visit to the outpatient clinic of the HUCH Children’s Hospital. Another case
we presented, Andrew, age 4, had in 1997 four visits to the HUCH hospital
for skin and allergic diseases, nine visits to his local district hospital, and
14 visits to his primary care health center.
After we presented yet another such case in the Boundary Crossing Laboratory,
the head physician of the Children’s Hospital turned to the hospital physician
who was in charge of designing the critical pathway for allergic children and
asked her to explain how the implementation of the critical pathway will solve

64 Yrjö Engeström
this child’s problem. The response was something of a turning point for the
head physician:
Excerpt 5 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 7)
HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN 1 Here is fi rst of all … the care for asthma and then there is
the care for food allergy. So in the case of one child, this cannot really be
presented on one overhead, how this goes …
HEAD PHYSICIAN (IN AGGRAVATED TONE) But isn’t it quite common that children
with allergies have these other problems? So surely they, surely you will
plan some sort of a process which guarantees that these children do not
belong to many critical pathways but …?
HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN 2 Well, unfortunately these children will indeed belong to
multiple critical pathways …
The constellation of contradictions in this field of activity systems is
schematically depicted in Figure 4.4. In both the hospital and the health center,
a contradiction emerges between the increasingly important object of patients
moving between primary care and hospital care and the rule of cost-effi ciency
implemented in both activity systems. In Helsinki, the per capita expenditure
on health care is clearly above national averages, largely due to the excessive use
TOOLS:
CARE RELATIONSHIPS
TOOLS:
?
TOOLS:
CRITICAL PATHWAYS
SUBJECT:
GENERAL
PRACTITIONER
OBJECT: CHILDREN
MOVING BETWEEN
PRIMARY CARE
AND HOSPITAL
OBJECT:
CHRONICALLY ILL CHILD WITH
MULTIPLE PROBLEMS
RULES:
COST-EFFECTIVE
CARE
RULES:
COST-EFFECTIVE
CARE
COMMUNITY:
NURSE, HEALTH
CENTER STAFF
DIVISION OF LABOUR
BETWEEN
PROFESSIONS
DIVISION OF LABOUR
BETWEEN
PROFESSIONS AND
SPECIALISTS
OUTCOME:
GAPS, OVERLAPS AND
DISCOORDINATION
COMMUNITY:
FAMILY MEMBERS,
FRIENDS
COMMUNITY:
NURSE, HOSPITAL
STAFF
OBJECT: CHILDREN
MOVING BETWEEN
PRIMARY CARE
AND HOSPITAL
SUBJECT:
HOSPITAL
PHYSICIAN
SUBJECT:
PARENTS
HEATH CENTER CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
PATIENT’S FAMILY
Figure 4.4 Contradictions in children’s health care in the Helsinki area.

Expansive learning 65
and high cost of services provided by the central university hospital of which
the Children’s Hospital is a part. Thus, there is an aggravated tension between
the primary care health center and the university hospital. Health centers in
the Helsinki area are blaming the university hospital for high costs, while the
university hospital criticizes health centers for excessive referrals and for not
being able to take care of patients who do not necessarily need hospital care.
A contradiction also emerges between the new object (patients moving
between primary care and hospital care) and the recently established tools,
namely care relationships in primary care and critical paths in hospital work.
Being linear–temporal and mainly focused on care inside the institution, these
tools are inadequate for dealing with patients who have multiple simultaneous
problems and parallel contacts to different institutions of care. In the activity
system of the patient’s family, the contradiction is also between the complex
object of multiple illnesses and the largely unavailable or unknown tools for
mastering the object.
As different aspects of these contradictions were articulated in the Boundary
Crossing Laboratory, we observed a shift among the participants from initial
defensive postures toward a growing determination to do something about the
situation. The determination was initially fuzzy, as if a need state looking for
an identifi able object and corresponding concept at which the energy could
be directed:
Excerpt 6 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 5)
HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN I kind of woke up when I was writing the minutes [of the
preceding session]. … What dawned on me concerning B [name of the
patient in the case discussed] is, I mean, a central thing … for the mastery
of the entire care. How will it be realized and what systems does it require?
I think it was pretty good, when I went back through our discussion, I
think one fi nds clear attempts at solving this. It is sort of a foundation,
which we must erect for every patient.
RESEARCHER That seems to be a proposal for formulating the problem. What is
… or how do we want to solve it in B’s case? I mean, is it your idea that
what we want to solve is the mastery of the entire care?
HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN I think it’s just that. I mean that we should have … or
specifi cally concerning these responsibilities and sharing of responsibility
and of practical plans, and tying knots, well, we should have some kind of
arrangement in place. Something that makes everyone aware of his or her
place around this sick child and the family.
What are they learning?
Above in excerpt 6, a physician from the Children’s Hospital used the ex-
pression “tying of knots.” He referred to a preceding discussion in the same

66 Yrjö Engeström
Boundary Crossing Laboratory session in which the researcher suggested the
term “knotworking” to capture the idea of the new pattern of activity needed to
achieve collaborative care of children with multiple illnesses across institutional
boundaries. The practitioners should be able to connect and coordinate with
one another and with the parents quickly “on the spot” when needed, but also
on the basis of a shared and mutually monitored long-term plan. The notion
of knotworking served as one link in an emerging confi guration of concepts
that was to defi ne the expanded pattern of activity.
Later in session 4, a task force of four practitioners, led by a hospital head
nurse, presented their proposal for the improvement of feedback between the
Children’s Hospital and the health centers:
Excerpt 7 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 4)
HOSPITAL HEAD NURSE Well, this is the title— Proposal for a trial period for the
month of January, and a trial must always be evaluated, whether it succeeds
or not, and what needs to be improved. And I say already at this point that
this trial requires additional work, it brings more work. For the outpatient
clinic, we propose a procedure in which the outpatient clinic during the
entire month sends written feedback on every patient visit regardless of
the continuation. To whom, to the home, to the personal primary care
physician, to the physician who wrote the referral …
The proposal met with a range of objections, largely centering on the excessive
amount of work the feedback system was expected to cause. The head physician
of the Children’s Hospital joined in the chorus of objections, employing the
available concept of critical pathways as a warrant in his argument:
Excerpt 8 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 4)
HOSPITAL HEAD PHYSICIAN We have these task force groups for the critical
pathways in place, and they have also discussed this matter, and without
exception they have the opinion that defi nitely not for every visit – I, too,
would be afraid that if there is feedback for every visit, there will be so
many pieces of paper that the essential information gets easily lost, so surely
it would be better that the sender, that is those who are in charge of the care
of the patient, should themselves assess when feedback needs to be sent.
The proposal was rejected. In the fi fth session of the Boundary Crossing
Laboratory, the task force came back with a new proposal. In the discussion,
the new proposal was mainly referred to as “care responsibility negotiation.”
The term “care agreement” was also mentioned. The proposal emphasized
communication and negotiation between the parents and the different practi-
tioners involved in a child’s care.

Expansive learning 67
This proposal had a favorable response. It was elaborated further in the
sixth session. In this session, the “care agreement” emerged as the central new
concept. The older concept of critical pathways was still used side by side with
the new idea of the care agreement:
Excerpt 9 (Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 6)
HOSPITAL HEAD NURSE Then an important thing in this is the division of care
responsibility which we have discussed, which is diffi cult to chew on. Now
this also takes a stand with regard to the division of care responsibility, and
at the end there is the important point that parents have accepted the plan,
and the concept of feedback refers simply to a copy of the medical record
text which contains necessary contact information. And in our opinion this
would mean additional work but this would be simple enough, fl exible
and possible to realize if we embark on this, and the goal is to develop
dialogue …
DATA SECURITY SPECIALIST Well, if I may comment on this. This would in my
opinion be exactly building the critical pathway model, fi nding ways to
improve the critical pathway and the work within it.
HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN 1 An agreement is made only if the hospital care exceeds
two visits or goes beyond a standard protocol, so in fact we imagine that
the majority of visits will fall into those not exceeding two visits or the
protocol.
HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN 2 What may be new in this is that in the second visit, or
the visit when the outpatient clinic physician makes the care agreement
proposal, which is a kind of a vision for continuation of care, so he or she
kind of presents this vision also to the parents sitting there, who become
committed this way to this continuation of care and to the distribution
of care responsibility, however the distribution is defi ned, something that
probably has not been talked about so clearly to the parents. That’s what
makes this excellent.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS SPECIALIST In my opinion, this is a great system, and
as an outsider, I say, implement this as soon as possible so that after a
suffi cient trial period we can duplicate this system elsewhere. This is a
great system.
Under the umbrella of care agreement, four interconnected solutions were
created. First, the patient’s personal physician – a general practitioner in the
local health center – is designated as the coordinator in charge of the patient’s
network and trajectory of care across institutional boundaries. Secondly,
whenever a child becomes a patient of the Children’s Hospital for more than a
single visit, the hospital physician and nurse in charge of the child draft a care
agreement which includes a plan for the patient’s care and the division of labor
between the different care providers contributing to the care of the child. The

68 Yrjö Engeström
draft agreement is given to the child’s family and sent to the child’s personal
health center physician (and when appropriate, to the physicians in charge
of the child in other hospitals) for their scrutiny. Thirdly, if one or more of
the parties fi nd it necessary, they will have a care negotiation (by e-mail, by
telephone, or face to face) to formulate a mutually acceptable care agreement.
Fourthly, care feedback, in the form of a copy of the patient’s medical record, is
automatically and without delay given or sent to the other parties of the care
agreement after the patient’s unplanned visit or changes in diagnoses or care
plans. Figure 4.5 depicts a simplifi ed model of the care agreement, produced
and used by the practitioners in the Boundary Crossing Laboratory.
The care agreement practice aims at resolving the contradictions depicted
in Figure 4.4 by creating a new instrumentality. This instrumentality, when
shared by parents and practitioners across institutional boundaries, is supposed
to expand the object of their work by opening up the dimension of horizontal,
socio-spatial interactions in the patient’s evolving network of care, making the
parties conceptually aware of and practically responsible for the coordination
of multiple parallel medical needs and services in the patient’s life. This does
not replace but complements and extends the linear and temporal dimension
of care. The solution also aims at relieving the pressure coming from the rule
of cost-effi ciency and the tension between the Children’s Hospital and health
centers by eliminating uncoordinated excessive visits and tests and by getting
the health center general practitioners involved in making joint care decisions
that are acceptable to all parties.
The new instrumentality is supposed to become a germ cell for a new kind
of collaborative care, “knotworking,” in which no single party has a permanent
dominating position and in which no party can evade taking responsibility
over the entire care trajectory. The model implies a radical expansion of the
object of activity for all parties: from singular illness episodes or care visits to
a long-term trajectory (temporal expansion), and from relationships between
the patient and a singular practitioner to the joint monitoring of the entire
network of care involved with the patient (socio-spatial expansion).
PRIMARY
CARE
HEALTH
CENTER
CHILDREN’S
HOSPITAL
PATIENT;
PARENTS
REFERRAL
CARE FEEDBACK
CARE AGREEMENT
Figure 4.5 Conceptual model of the care agreement practice.

Expansive learning 69
How do they learn – what are the key actions?
Theories of organizational learning are typically weak in spelling out the
specifi c processes or actions that make the learning process. One of the more
interesting attempts to open up this issue is Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995)
framework of cyclic knowledge creation, based on conversions between tacit
and explicit knowledge. Their model posits four basic moves in knowledge
creation: socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization.
A central problem with Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model, and with many other
models of organizational learning, is the assumption that the assignment for
knowledge creation is unproblematically given from above. In other words,
what is to be created and learned is depicted as a management decision that
is outside the bounds of the local process (see Engeström, 1999b). This
assumption leads to a model in which the fi rst step consists of smooth, confl ict-
free socializing, the creation of “sympathized knowledge” as Nonaka and
Takeuchi call it.
In contrast, a crucial triggering action in the expansive learning process
discussed in this chapter, as in other analogous processes we have analyzed, is
the confl ictual questioning of the existing standard practice. In the Boundary
Crossing Laboratory, this questioning was invoked by the troublesome patient
cases, to be defensively rejected time and again. The practitioners did also
begin to produce questioning actions in their own voices; a small example of
this was shown in excerpt 2. The analysis of contradictions culminated much
later as the confl ict between critical pathways (available tool) and patients
with multiple illnesses (new object) was articulated in excerpt 5. Actions
of questioning and analysis are aimed at finding and defining problems
and contradictions behind them. If the management tries to give a fi xed
learning assignment from above in this type of process, it is typically rejected
(Engeström, 1999b). Out of these debates, a new direction begins to emerge,
as seen in excerpt 6.
The third strategic action in expansive learning is modeling. Modeling is
already involved in the formulation of the framework and the results of the
analysis of contradictions, and it reaches its fruition in the modeling of the new
solution, the new instrumentality, the new pattern of activity. In the Boundary
Crossing Laboratory, the fi rst proposal of the project group in session 4 was
the fi rst attempt at such modeling (see excerpt 7). The critical discussion and
rejection of this proposal (excerpt 8) is an example of the action of examining
the new model. The second, successful proposal, presented in session 5, is again
an example of modeling, and the ensuing elaboration in session 6 (excerpt 9)
again represents examining the new model.
The care agreement model has been implemented in practice since May
1998. The manifold implementation opens up a whole different story of tensions
and disturbances between the old and the new practice, a story too large and
complex to be entered in this paper. The cycle of expansion (Figure 4.6) is

70 Yrjö Engeström
not completed yet. Our research group continues to follow and document the
implementation and to feed back intermediate fi ndings to the practitioners.
Conclusion: directionality in learning development
We habitually tend to depict learning and development as vertical processes,
aimed at elevating humans upward, to higher levels of competence. Rather than
simply denounce this view as an outdated relic of enlightenment, I suggest
that we construct a complementary perspective, namely that of horizontal or
sideways learning and development. The case discussed in this paper provides
rich indications of such a complementary dimension.
In particular, the construction of the concept of care agreement (with the
related concepts of care responsibility negotiation and knotworking) by
the participants of the Boundary Crossing Laboratory is a useful example
of developmentally significant sideways learning. In his classic work on
concept formation, Vygotsky (1987) basically presented the process as a
creative meeting between everyday concepts growing upward and scientifi c
concepts growing downward. While this view opened up a tremendously
fertile fi eld of inquiry into the interplay between different types of concepts
in learning, it did retain and reproduce the basic singular directionality of
vertical movement. Later works by such Western scholars as Nelson (1985,
QUATERNARY
CONTRADICTIONS
REALIGNMENT
WITH NEIGHBORS PRIMARY CONTRADICTION
NEED STATE
1. QUESTIONING
2A. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
2B. ACTUAL-EMPIRICAL
ANALYSIS
3. MODELING THE NEW
SOLUTION
4. EXAMINING THE
NEW MODEL
5. IMPLEMENTING THE
NEW MODEL
6. REFLECTING ON
THE PROCESS
7. CONSOLIDATING
THE NEW
PRACTICE
SECONDARY CONTRADICTIONS
DOUBLE BIND
TERTIARY CONTRADICTION
RESISTANCE
Figure 4.6 Strategic learning actions and corresponding contradictions in the cycle
of expansive learning.

Expansive learning 71
1995) and also by the greatest Russian analyst of learning, V. V. Davydov
(1990), enriched and expanded Vygotsky’s ideas, but the issue of directionality
remained intact.
How does this image correspond to the data on expansive learning in the
Boundary Crossing Laboratory? Concept formation in the laboratory sessions
started out with the “scientific concept” proposed by the management:
critical pathways. Instead of identifi able everyday concepts, it was met and
confronted by our videotaped cases and live parents, telling about children with
multiple illnesses and fragmented care. The meeting was uneasy, if not outright
confl ictual.
What followed was a sideways move. Instead of trying to merge the possibly
incompatible worlds of the “scientifi c concept” of critical pathways and the
everyday experience of the patients, a group of practitioners presented a series
of alternative conceptualizations. This sideways move started with the poorly
articulated idea of automatic feedback on every patient visit from the hospital to
the primary care health center. This attempt at formulating a new deliberate
concept was rejected “from below,” using the experiential threat of excessive
paperwork as the main conceptual argument.
The proponents of the new idea did not give up. They initiated another
sideways move and proposed a new concept: care responsibility negotiation. This
was met more favorably. The practitioners used their experiences of the need for
parent involvement (see excerpt 9) to elaborate, refi ne, and concretize the concept.
This led to yet another sideways move: the formulation of the concept of care
agreement. Since the spring of 1998, through their actions of implementing
this concept in practice, practitioners and parents have accumulated experiences
to challenge and transform this concept again in new sideways moves.
This account leads us to a new, two-dimensional view of concept formation
(Figure 4.7).
CRITICAL
PATHWAYS
MULTIPLE ILLNESSES,
FRAGMENTED CARE
EXCESSIVE
PAPERWORK
NEED FOR PARENT
INVOLVEMENT
DECLARED
CONCEPT
1
EXPERIENCED
CONCEPT
1
DECLARED
CONCEPT
2
EXPERIENCED
CONCEPT
2
DECLARED
CONCEPT
3
EXPERIENCED
CONCEPT
3
DECLARED
CONCEPT
4
AUTOMATIC
FEEDBACK
CARE RESPONSIBILITY
NEGOTIATION
CARE
AGREEMENT
Figure 4.7 Expanded view of directionalities in concept formation.

72 Yrjö Engeström
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MA: Harvard University Press.
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall.
Leont’ev, A. N. (1981). Problems of the development of the mind. Moscow: Progress.
Luria, A. R. (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Nelson, K. (1985). Making sense: The acquisition of shared meanings. New York: Academic Press.
Nelson, K. (1995). From spontaneous to scientifi c concepts: continuities and discontinuities
from childhood to adulthood. In L. M. W. Martin, K. Nealson and E. Tobach (Eds.),
Sociocultural psychology: Theory and practice of knowing and doing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.

Expansive learning 73
Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create
the dynamics of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. New York: Plenum.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 5
Pragmatism
A learning theory for the future
Bente Elkjaer
Dane Bente Elkjaer holds a chair in learning theory at the University of Aarhus. She is
also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Management Learning. Her main focus is working
life learning, and her theoretical approach is inspired by the works of the American
pragmatist philosopher and educator John Dewey. In 2005 she published a book, When
Learning Goes to Work: A Pragmatist Gaze at Working Life Learning (in
Danish). In the following chapter, which is published for the fi rst time here, Elkjaer
gives an interpretation of Dewey’s understanding of learning grounded in his particular
notion of the concept of experience. She discusses how a pragmatist perspective on learning
can elaborate contemporary learning theory by being linked to the notion of practice-based
learning as introduced by the works of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger.
Introduction
A theory of learning for the future advocates the teaching of a preparedness to
respond in a creative way to difference and otherness. This includes an ability
to act imaginatively in situations of uncertainties. John Dewey’s pragmatism
holds the key to such a learning theory and refl ects his view of the continuous
meetings of individuals and environments as experimental and playful.
That pragmatism has not yet been acknowledged as a relevant learning
theory for the future may be due to the immediate connotation and the
many interpretations associated with the term ‘experience’, which is at the
heart of Dewey’s educational thinking. Dewey defi ned experience in a way
that is not well understood within educational research, and in a way that is
easily confused with the term ‘experiential learning’. The latter refers to the
importance of participants’ ‘experiences’ derived from bodily actions and stored
in memory as more or less tacit knowledge.
Experience is, according to Dewey, not primarily associated with knowledge
but with human beings’ lives and living. In Dewey’s terms, living is the
continuous interaction (later: ‘transaction’) between individuals and their
environments. Transaction holds the same meaning as experience, but also
includes emotion, aesthetics and ethics as well as knowledge. To become
knowledgeable is only a part of experience. Cognition and communication are

Pragmatism 75
still important parts of transaction, and as such are part of experiencing and
not merely an outcome of experience.
Experience is the relation between individual and environments, ‘subject’
and ‘worlds’, which are the terms I use to connote the socialised individual and
the interpreted world. The subject-worlds relation makes experience possible.
Experience is both the process of experiencing and the result of the process. It
is in experience, in transaction, that diffi culties arise, and it is with experience
that problems are resolved by inquiry. Inquiry (or critical and reflective
thinking) is an experimental method by which new experience may be had
not only through action but also by using ideas and concepts, hypotheses
and theories as ‘tools to think with’ in an instrumental way. Inquiry concerns
consequences, and pragmatism views subjects as future-oriented rather than
oriented towards the past. This is evident from subjects exercising playful
anticipatory imagination (‘what-if’) rather than causal thinking based upon
a priori propositions (‘if-then’). The consequence of the orientation towards
the future is that knowledge (in Dewey’s terms: ‘warranted assertibilities’) is
provisional, transient and subject to change (‘fallible’) because future experience
may act as a corrective to existing knowledge.
The view of experience as encompassing the relation between subject
and worlds, inquiry as experimental and instrumental and knowledge as
fallible means that pragmatism can be called a learning theory for the future.
This means a learning theory that helps educators and learners develop a
responsiveness towards challenges through the method of inquiry and an open-
ended understanding of knowledge. I believe, in other words, that taking a
closer look at the Deweyan notion of experience may be helpful for the creation
of a learning theory that answers the cry for creativity and innovation that, at
least rhetorically, is in demand in contemporary knowledge societies.
This chapter contains a brief background on how pragmatism should be
understood in its everyday and philosophical meaning. Then I introduce
Dewey’s notion of experience as based on transaction between subject and
worlds as well as in the relation between action and thinking. Third is a section
on the differences between a Deweyan and a traditional understanding of
experience. This is to create some background for understanding what happens
when a non-Deweyan defi nition of ‘experience’ is used. Dewey was (late in
life) well aware that the use of experience as a theoretical term created a lot of
confusion and he would have used the term ‘culture’ had he known. This would
not have been of any help today, as culture is also a term with many defi nitions.
The term ‘practice’ may be a candidate for a contemporary theoretical term for
what Dewey wanted to say with his ‘experience’. I return to this issue in my
conclusion and discussion.
In a fourth section, I return to the relation between action and thinking, but
as the relation between transaction (i.e. experience) and thinking. I show that
inquiry into a diffi cult situation in experience can result both in resolution of
the situation and in new possible avenues for solving future problems by way

76 Bente Elkjaer
of conceptual development. Fifth, I include a brief section on David Kolb’s
notion of experiential learning, because his use of experience is very different
from Dewey’s, although he is inspired by Dewey and often read like that.
In the fi nal section, I discuss whether Dewey missed something when he
talked about experience, inquiry, learning and becoming knowledgeable. I
think that Deweyan philosophy is insuffi cient to describe how power is a
key to understanding how learning is also a matter of access to participation
in educational activities and to being able to respond to challenges (Biesta,
2006). I claim that a practice-based view of learning may help to incorporate
the importance of power in theories of learning. Thus, a practice-based view of
learning includes awareness of the need to include a conceptual understanding
of the institutional order as transcending subjects’ power to think and to act.
A pragmatist and pragmatism
In everyday language, a ‘pragmatist’ is a person who is focused on results,
someone who gets things done and finds solutions to problems despite
ideological and political differences. The pragmatist is often criticised for her or
his apparent willingness to abandon ideals and moral standards in exchange for
results. This commonly accepted meaning of the pragmatism of a pragmatist
is, of course, not completely wrong, but it is not entirely in accordance with
the philosophical interpretation of pragmatism. In this latter domain, and
despite inevitable debates, there is widespread agreement that pragmatism
concerns the understanding of the meanings of phenomena in terms of their
consequences. That is, meaning is not ascribed in a priori terms (‘if-then’);
rather, it is identifi ed by anticipating ‘what-if’ consequences to potential
actions and conduct. Thus, the everyday results-oriented pragmatist echoes
scholarly defi nitions of pragmatism to the extent that both are concerned with
the consequences of actions and the attributions of meanings to phenomena.
American pragmatism emerged as a philosophical trend near the end of the
nineteenth century, at a time when the US was still a ‘new world’ fi lled with
adventure and the promise of new ways of life. The immigrants were looking to
the future and its possibilities, and not towards the past they had left behind.
The class-divided society of Europe was based upon traditions and family
relations, but in the New World, at least in a rhetorical sense, one had to prove
one’s worth through values and actions rather than any privileges bestowed by
birth. The US was a country in which the boundaries towards the West were
still open and fascinating, but also a country in which industrialisation and mass
production were rapidly infl uencing the development of society. Philosophically,
this period was characterised by a range of contradictions that set science versus
religion, positivism versus romanticism, intuition versus empiricism and
the democratic ideals of the Age of Enlightenment versus aristocracy. In this
context, pragmatism served as a mediating or consensual method of philosophy
that sought to unite these various contradictions (Scheffl er, 1974 [1986]).

Pragmatism 77
One important contributor to the development of pragmatism was John
Dewey (1859–1952), whose philosophical interests spanned many areas,
including psychology, education, ethics, logic and politics. He insisted that
philosophy must be practically useful in people’s lives rather than a purely
intellectual endeavour. In his view, the promise of a better world rests upon
people’s ability to respond ‘in an intelligent way’ to diffi cult situations that
need to be resolved. Dewey argued that inquiry is a method in which working
hypotheses are generated through anticipatory imagination of consequences,
which may be tested in action. This experimental way of dealing with
change does not merely happen through trial and error, because anticipatory
imagination guides the process (Dewey, 1933 [1986], 1938 [1986]). In Dewey’s
version, pragmatism is a method to think and act in a creative (imaginative)
and future-oriented (i.e. consequential) manner.
Where as the pragmatist in the everyday meaning of the term cares little
for the ideological foundations of the results, Dewey’s pragmatism examines
how the use of different ideas and hypotheses, concepts and theories affects the
result of inquiry. Thinking is to use concepts and theories to defi ne a problem
and, as such, is part of the result of inquiry. Thinking, i.e. critical anticipation
of and refl ection on the relation between defi ning and solving a problem, is
part of pragmatism in the philosophical defi nition of the term. The pragmatist
philosophical view of thinking is to help defi ne the uncertainties that occur
in experience. A pragmatist researcher cannot resort to general theoretical
rules and maxims from the Grand Theories (Marxism, psychoanalysis, etc.)
when s/he wants to understand a phenomenon. The situation determines
which concepts and theories are useful for an analysis of a given problem.
One can often use various theories and concepts as tools (‘instruments’) in an
experimental process, the aim of which is to transform a diffi cult situation to
one that is manageable and comfortable for the subject.
I have stressed the differences between an everyday understanding of a
pragmatist and philosophical pragmatism because, in educational thinking,
the latter is often associated with insuffi cient (theoretical) background. One
example of this is when educationalists associate pragmatism with ‘learning by
doing’ or as mere ‘trial and error’. This view separates action from thinking,
which for Dewey prevents learning in an informed (or ‘intelligent’) way. In
order for learning to be still more informed, the use of concepts and theories
are needed because they allow us to think about, anticipate and refl ect on
action and upon ourselves as acting. In the philosophical interpretation of
pragmatism, cognition is closely related to action and is not to be understood
by means of abstract and general theories. The understanding of learning
as innovative is grounded in this open-ended and creative relation between
thinking and action as both anticipatory and refl ective. This does not mean that
learning cannot be habitual (or ‘reproductive’). This will indeed often be the
case as most actions are habitual and only involve incremental adjustments. The
philosophical pragmatism, however, provides a way to understand learning as an

78 Bente Elkjaer
experimental responsiveness to change and as such it facilitates creative action
and thinking. The key to this understanding of learning is Dewey’s notion of
experience, which is closely connected to his notion of inquiry and knowledge.
Experience as transactions between subject and worlds
Dewey worked all his life on refi ning his notion of experience and defi ned
it fi rst as interactional (resting on a principle of causal relations between
subject and worlds) and later as a transactional concept (resting on a principle
of mutual relations between subject and worlds) (Dewey and Bentley, 1949
[1991]). Experience concerns living, the continuous response to and feedback
between subject and worlds, as well as the result of this process. It is within
experience that diffi culties arise and are resolved by way of inquiry. Experience
is the concept Dewey used to denote the relation between subject and worlds as
well as between action and thinking, between human existence and becoming
knowledgeable about selves and the worlds of which they are a part.
Dewey laid the foundation for his concept of experience in 1896 with a
groundbreaking article, in which he criticised how the concept of the ‘refl ex arc’
was used to interpret the relation between action and thinking, between being
and knowing (Dewey, 1896 [1972]). In this article, Dewey argued against the
notion that it is possible to analyse human action as a mechanical sequence, a
‘refl ex arc’, consisting of three separate events in the following order: sensory
stimulus, idea and action. Dewey called the refl ex arc a patchwork of separate
parts, a mechanical juxtaposition without connection, instead of seeing action
and thinking as parts of an integrated organic whole (see also Elkjaer, 2000).
The ‘organic’ refers to the fact that subjects are always part of social and natural
worlds, and it is as participants of these worlds that acting and knowing takes
place. Action and thinking are not separate and clearly defi ned processes,
but are integrated and connected. This integration of knowing and acting is
mirrored in concrete action, both bodily and verbal.
Dewey argues that stimulus, idea and action are functional elements in a
division of labour, which together makes up a whole, a situation or an event.
Action and thinking are, in other words, elements of an organic coordination
rather than a refl ex arc. One example of the situatedness of stimulus is hearing
a sound:
If one is reading a book, if one is hunting, if one is watching in a dark place
on a lonely night, if one is performing a chemical experiment, in each case,
the noise has a very different psychical value; it is a different experience.
In any case, what precedes the ‘stimulus’ is a whole act, a sensori-motor
co-ordination. What is more to the point, the ‘stimulus’ emerges out of
this co-ordination; it is born from it as its matrix; it represents as it were
an escape from it.
(Dewey, 1896 [1972]: 100)

Pragmatism 79
A sound is not an independent stimulus, because the meaning of it depends
upon the situation in which it is heard. Nor is the response an independent
event that merely follows from a stimulus. The response is part of defi ning
the stimulus, and a sound has to be classifi ed as a specifi c kind of sound (from
an animal or a violent assault) in order to be followed by a relevant response.
This classifi cation has to be suffi ciently exact to hold throughout the response
in order to maintain it. It is not possible to aim a shot, shoot and run away at
the same time. The response is therefore a reaction within the sound and not
to the sound. The solution is, in other words, embedded in the defi nition of
the problem. This is why Dewey prefers the term ‘organic circle’ rather than
‘refl ex arc’ as a metaphor for the relation between being and knowing.
Dewey’s notion of the organic circle contains the outline of his work with
defi ning his notion of experience. Thus, experience is a series of connected
organic circles, it is transaction, and it is the continuous relation between
subject and worlds. Experience is an understanding of the subject as being
in the world, not outside and looking into the world, as a spectator theory of
knowledge would imply. The subject-in-world is the foundation for becoming
knowledgeable of the world and of selves, because is rests upon a bond between
action and thinking, being and knowing.
The equivocality of experience
About 20 years after Dewey wrote his article on the refl ex arc, he made a
comparison between his conception of experience and the commonplace
meaning of experience. This led him to the following fi ve differences between
a commonplace interpretation of experience and his concept of experience
(Dewey, 1917 [1980]). First, experience is traditionally understood as an epis-
temological concept in which the purpose is production and acquisitions of
knowledge for example, through refl ection on action (cf. Kolb). In contrast
to this, Dewey’s concept of experience is ontological and based upon the
transactional relation between subject and worlds. The epistemological
orientation of experience means that it is possible to overlook situations in
which knowledge is not the primary content or purpose, and not be able to see
that experience is also emotional and aesthetic. There is a difference between
enjoying a painting because of its aesthetic value and studying the painting
as an art reviewer (see also Bernstein, 1966 [1967]). There are no experiences
without some form of knowing, but the meaning of the concept of experience
is distorted if the paradigm for all experience becomes an issue of conscious
thinking. Most of human lives consist of non-cognitive experiences as subjects
continuously act, enjoy and suffer, and this is experience.
It is not possible to understand the meaning of Dewey’s concept of inquiry
if the value of the aesthetic and emotional experiences in Dewey’s concept of
experience is not recognised, because inquiry is an answer to a felt (‘emotional’)
encounter with a confl ict. Inquiry begins with an emotionally felt diffi culty,

80 Bente Elkjaer
an uncertain situation, and inquiry is a method to resolve this confl ict. When
something is experienced with the ‘stomach’ or an emotional response is
exhibited in a situation, then inquiry is a way to help defi ne experience in a
cognitive sense and create meaning. To do so, it may be necessary to activate
former similar experiences by experimenting with different possible ways of
attributing meaning to the situation at hand and, through that, transform the
emotional experience into something that can be comprehended as a cognitive
and communicative experience. This is how an emotional experience becomes
a refl ective one; it becomes a learning experience, and may become knowledge,
which in turn can be part of informing experience in the next similar experience
of an emotionally diffi cult situation.
Secondly, experience is traditionally understood as an inner mental and
subjective relation rather than a part of the objective conditions for human
action that undergoes changes through human response. When experience is
interpreted as subjective, then experience is trapped in the privacy of subjects’
action and thinking. There is no experience without a subject experiencing it
but it does not mean that experiencing is solely subjective and private. Sharing
experience is more than a metaphor, because the objective world is always
woven into the subjective experience.
Third, experience is traditionally viewed in the past tense, the given rather
than the experimental and future oriented. Dewey’s concept of experience,
on the contrary, is characterised by reaching forward towards the unknown.
In Dewey’s defi nition, experience is connected to the future because ‘we live
forward’. Anticipatory and forward thinking is more important for action and
cognition than recollection. Subjects are not passive spectators who look into
the world from the outside, but powerful and future-oriented participants in
natural and social worlds.
Fourth, experience is traditionally viewed as isolated and specifi c rather
than as continuous and connected. For Dewey, however, experience is a series
of connected situations (organic circles) and even if all situations are connected
to other situations, every situation has its own unique character. Experience,
nevertheless, is so connected that it is possible to use experience as a foundation
for knowledge and to guide future actions.
Finally, experience has traditionally been viewed as beyond logical reasoning.
Dewey argued, however, that there is no conscious experience without this
kind of reasoning. Anticipatory thinking and refl ection is always present in
conscious experience by way of theories and concepts, ideas and hypotheses.
This latter is the most important contrast to the traditional interpretation of
experience. By on the one hand stressing that experience is not primarily an
epistemological matter, and on the other hand claiming that the systematic
process of knowledge is one form of experience, Dewey wanted to show how
inquiry is the only method for having an experience. Inquiry is triggered by
diffi cult situations, and inquiry is the means through which it is possible to
transform these situations through the mediation of thinking and action.

Pragmatism 81
Further, experience and inquiry are not limited to what is mental and private.
Situations always have both subjective and objective elements, and through
inquiry it is possible to change the direction of experience. Subjects are living,
acting and reacting in objective worlds, but these transactions are not automatic
or blind. Experience is experimental and oriented towards the future, and
subjects use concepts and theories as instruments to guide the process. Dewey
viewed education and teaching as a means to support, through inquiry, the
direction of experience. Figure 5.1 shows the two defi nitions of experience.
Transaction and thinking
The notion of interaction, and (later) the notion of transaction, refers to the
mutual creation and formation of subjects at work with their worlds. The
worlds, however, live their own lives and are subject to their own relations,
which are what subjects experience. The mutual formation of subjects and
worlds reaches beyond the given worlds, because subjects are capable of
inquiring and looking at themselves as well as the situation and changing both
what is experienced and how it is experienced through reinterpretations and
reactions. To live is to be engaged in the transactions that comprise experience,
and experience is a process of life that changes continuously and in which new
uncertain situations are an invitation to respond, an incentive to inquire and
an opportunity to critically and refl ectively think and have new experiences.
Education, in the scholastic definition of the term, is a specific form of
experience. In education, the purpose is to guide the process of experience and
to make it more rewarding than if the subject was left to him- or herself.
Development of experience happens when habitual actions and values are
disrupted by encounters with diffi cult situations. This disruption can be a
Traditional concept of experience Dewey’s concept of experience
Experience as knowledge Knowledge as a subset of experience
Experience as subjective Experience as both subjective and
objective
Experience as oriented to the past Experience as future oriented
(consequence)
Experience as isolated experiences Experience as united experiences
Experience as action Experience as encompassing theories and
concepts and as such a foundation for
knowledge
Figure 5.1 Comparison between a traditional concept of experience and Dewey’s
concept of experience.

82 Bente Elkjaer
trigger to a closer examination of the situation, to inquiry, and thus new
experience can be had and new knowledge may be created. Not all experience,
however, leads to knowledge. Some experiences never enter consciousness and
communication, but remain emotional and subconscious. Dewey talks about
the aesthetic and emotional experience, and about happiness and sorrow as
also being experience. To become knowledgeable is just one way of having
experience; there are many other kinds of experience.
It is possible to learn from experience, because experience can be used to
create connections to the past and to the future. Dewey writes the following
about experience that points to the past and the future:
To ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection
between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things
in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an
experiment with the world to fi nd out what it is like; the undergoing
becomes instruction – discovery of the connection of things. Two con-
clusions important for education follow. (1) Experience is primarily an
active–passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. But (2) the measure of the
value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities
to which it leads up. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is
cumulative or amounts to something, or has meaning.
(Dewey, 1916 [1980]: 147)
The quote illustrates that Dewey’s experience is a transaction (‘an active–passive
affair’) between subject and worlds, and that ‘we’ as human beings anticipate
the consequences of our actions. The quote, however, also shows that if learning
is to be the outcome of experience, cognition is needed to create continuity
in experience. Experience is had through experimenting with the world in
which cognition is needed to create continuity in the experimental thinking
and action. The dividing line between non-cognitive and cognitive experience
fl uctuates, but if experience is to become a learning experience in the sense
that experience can inform future experience, experience has to get out of the
bodily and non-discursive fi eld and into the cognitive and conscious fi eld of
experience. In short, experience has to become refl ective and communicated
(with self and other) in order to later be used in an anticipatory way.
Subjects have experience because of how they live their lives and because
of how they create relations to other subjects and worlds. It is impossible to
avoid experience. Only through cognition and communication, however, can
experience become learning experience. It is in this endeavour that education
in its widest possible sense may be helpful, because a teacher or a more
experienced person can open up avenues for hitherto unknown understandings
and actions by introducing concepts and theories that were not otherwise
accessible to the learner.
Inquiry is the process through which subjects become knowledgeable. It

Pragmatism 83
is through inquiry that experience is had and knowledge may be created. In
this process, ideas and hypotheses, concepts and theories are a part. Different
hypotheses can be formulated and a mixture of ideas and thoughts from former
experiences activated. Concepts and theories are used instrumentally and
experimentally both in thought actions (‘imagination’) and in bodily actions
in which they can be tested. When a problem is resolved, a feeling of control
may replace uncertainty for a period. Figure 5.2 is a graphical representation
of Dewey’s process of inquiry.
Dewey’s concept of experience is, as mentioned, different from a traditional
understanding of experience in that it is an ontological construct. Dewey’s
concept of experience is anchored in the natural and social worlds, because
experience is had in the subject-world transaction. Dewey’s concept of experience
is directed towards the future; experience is had in the active process of living
and life is lived with an eye to tomorrow. Experience is, according to Dewey,
Idea, concept
Solution to problem and
control with the action
1. Disruption and
uncertainty, habitual
actions are no
longer working
2. Intellectualisation and
definition of the problem
3. Inquiry into the
condition of the situation
and formulation of a
working hypothesis
4. Reasoning
5. Testing the
hypothesis in action
Figure 5.2 After Dewey’s process of inquiry (Miettinen, 2000: 65).

84 Bente Elkjaer
a middle road between the total divide and constitutes a connection to the
whole. It is out of experience (empirical data) that knowledge can be created,
and it is through the subconscious experiences that thinking can be used to
create connection to past and future and between action and consequence.
Dewey’s optimism lies in his belief in the value of developing individual and
collective experience so that subjects can act increasingly ‘intelligent’ based
on an increasingly informed empirical knowledge.
To use experience as defi ned above may cause some problems in educational
research, because ‘experience’ is primarily used in the traditional sense, i.e. as an
epistemological concept anchored in individuals’ past and derived from bodily
actions. David Kolb’s defi nition of experience will be introduced to illustrate
this alternate defi nition of experience (Kolb, 1984).
David Kolb’s definition of experience
Kolb’s learning cycle based on the notion of ‘experience’ is one of the most
cited in educational research and deserves mention. Kolb’s ‘working defi nition’
of learning is: ‘Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through
the transformation of experience’ (Kolb, 1984: 38). For Kolb, experience is not
knowledge, but only a foundation for the creation of knowledge. Kolb says that
he does not want to develop a third alternative to behaviourist and cognitive
theories of learning, but ‘rather to suggest through experiential learning
theory a holistic integrative perspective on learning that combines experience,
perception, cognition, and behavior’ (Kolb, 1984: 20–21).
Kolb’s theory is best known for its model of experiential learning, which
he calls the ‘Lewinian Experiential Learning Model’. Kolb constructs his own
theory from this model. See Figure 5.3.
Kolb stressed two aspects in his learning cycle. First, concrete and immediate
experiences are valuable for creating meaning in learning and for validating
the learning process:
Immediate personal experience is the focal point for learning, giving life,
texture, and subjective personal meaning to abstract concepts and at the
same time providing a concrete, publicly shared reference point for testing
the implications and validity of ideas created during the learning process.
(Kolb, 1984: 21)
Second, the model is based upon action research and laboratory teaching,
which are both characterised by feedback processes. The information provided
by feedback is the starting point of a continuous process consisting of goal-
directed action and evaluation of the consequences of this action. Kolb writes
that each stage in the model fi ts into different forms of adaptation to reality
or different ‘learning styles’. A particular individual ability or learning style
corresponds with each individual stage in the model:

Pragmatism 85
Learners, if they are to be effective, need four different kinds of abilities
– concrete experience abilities, refl ective observation abilities, abstract
conceptualization abilities, and active experimentation abilities. That is,
they must be able to involve themselves fully, openly, and without bias
in new experiences. They must be able to refl ect on and observe their
experiences from many perspectives. They must be able to create concepts
that integrate their observations into logically sound theories, and they
must be able to use their theories to make decisions and solve problems.
(Kolb, 1984: 30)
Thus, in spite of Kolb’s use of a circle, it is possible to regard each element in
the circle with reference to a different individual ability. While Dewey talks
about integration of action and thinking, Kolb makes a distinction in his
learning cycle with reference to different abilities refl ecting different learning
styles needed for effective action and thinking. The focus on experiences as
subjective and reaching backwards is, in Kolb’s learning cycle, emphasised by
the correlation of the stages in the model with different individual learning
styles. This means that the stages in Kolb’s learning cycle are not connected
Concrete
experience
Observations
and reflections
Testing
implications of
concepts in new
situations
Formation of
abstract
concepts and
generalisations
Figure 5.3 After Kolb’s learning cycle (Kolb, 1984: 21).

86 Bente Elkjaer
with each other in an organic way. Kolb does not introduce a defi nition of
experience that connects the stages, but he combines historical and theoretical
elements in his model. He talks about a ‘dialectic tension’ between the
experiential and the conceptual, but he resolves the tension by including both
as separate stages in his model. The result being no dialectics, since dialectic
logic would show how experience and conceptualisation are necessary for and
condition each other (Miettinen, 2000).
When Kolb has won such a prominent position in many educational
researchers’ practice and research, I think it is because he says something
that feels intuitively correct, namely that it is important to base teaching on
participants’ own experiences. This means taking the tacit knowledge derived
from bodily actions into account. The idea being that it is by appealing to the
participants’ less articulated experiences that motivation for understanding
the more abstract and general theories can be found. The problem is, however,
that there are many different experiences in a classroom and that a teacher
rarely is able to capture the attention of all the students by referring to their
subjective experiences. From the vantage point of pragmatism and Dewey’s
defi nition of experience, Kolb distinguishes between action and thinking
rather than seeing them as united, in spite of his stated outset in Dewey’s
concept of experience.
Dewey would probably have criticised Kolb’s experiential defi nition of
learning for focusing solely on individuals and their minds, just like he
criticised Lewin for being ‘mentalistically fashioned’ (Dewey and Bentley,
1949 [1991]: 125, note 23). While Dewey’s ‘experience’ connects subject and
worlds, action and thinking, experiences for Kolb remain closed in a separation
of the actions and thinking of subjects. Kolb wants to show that different
learning styles are needed, and in order to do so he depicts learning as separate
sequences in a closed circle. This happens at the expense of the integration of
not only action and thinking, but also the mutual relation between subject and
worlds. To Kolb, experience is an epistemological issue and not one of ontology,
in spite of his view on learning styles. This also means that there is no room for
emotion and aesthetics in Kolb’s theory of learning (Vince, 1998).
Conclusion and discussion
I began this chapter by saying that contemporary societies need a learning
theory that can respond creatively to difference and otherness. I discussed
Dewey’s defi nition of experience, which is grounded in transaction between
subject and worlds as well as in the relation between thinking and action,
being and knowing. Experience occurs when habitual action and thinking are
disturbed and calls for inquiry. Inquiry begins in emotion, but may develop
into cognition if verbal language is used to defi ne and resolve the disruptive
situation. The process of inquiry concerns the consequences of different ways
of defi ning and resolving uncertainties. Inquiry is an experimental process in

Pragmatism 87
which ideas, hypotheses, concepts and theories are used instrumentally as ‘tools
to think with’, and as such is a playful, creative and potentially innovative
process. The result of inquiry, the new experience or ‘warranted assertibilities’
(knowledge), is therefore open-ended (fallible) and can be reinterpreted in light
of new experiences.
The problem with using the term ‘experience’ is that it has several different
connotations in educational research as illustrated by Kolb. Dewey knew that
and suggested the term ‘culture’ to connote his more comprehensive under-
standing and use of ‘experience’. Another problem with Dewey’s understanding
of experience is whether power and inequalities can be addressed. The term
‘practice’ may be a contemporary candidate to include power and at the same
time to connote the content of Dewey’s defi nition of experience.
One learning theory that has practice at its heart is described in the
works of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and their understanding of learning
as ‘legitimate, peripheral participation in communities of practice’ (Lave,
1993 [1996]; Lave and Wenger, 1991). The understanding of learning as
participation in communities of practice took learning out of the clutches
of individualism. Instead, Lave and Wenger’s notion of learning is anchored
in access to participation in communities of practice with the purpose of
becoming competent practitioners. To take learning away from inside minds
to social relations is also to move learning into an area of confl icts and power.
The social structure of a practice, its power relations and its conditions for
legitimacy, defi ne the possibilities for learning (Gherardi et al., 1998). The
key issue is the relation between the institutional order and the participants’
experience (Holland and Lave, 2001). This is another way to describe the
relation between subjects and the worlds of which they are a part.
I, however, have some issues with practice-based learning. It is diffi cult to
see learning as more than induction to a community, i.e. as adaptation and
socialisation. This means that it is diffi cult to understand renewal of practice,
i.e. to understand creativity and innovation. An understanding of learning
as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice tends, in
other words, to overlook conservatism, protectionism and the tendency to
recycle knowledge rather than critically challenge and extend it. Furthermore,
underlying contradictions and inequities that prevent growth may be hidden
(Fenwick, 2001). The potentially constructive ambivalences and resistances
in learning may not be captured when the concept of community is strongly
emphasised (Wenger, 1998).
It is also diffi cult to see how thinking, concepts and theories can be part of
learning in a practice-based understanding of learning. Action is central in
Dewey’s concept of learning – not just actions understood as bodily actions,
but ideas about action (imagination, thought experiments) and ‘speech acts’
(language and communication) are also important actions in Dewey’s defi nition
of learning. Concepts and theories have an important pedagogical function,
because they may guide the formation of new experience and new knowledge

88 Bente Elkjaer
through a rigorous exploration of the past. This experience, in turn, can be used
to inform the future. To paraphrase Dewey, a scientifi c mindset is, and should
be, part of peoples’ lives. This mindset is demonstrated by exerting still more
informed inquiry and critical and refl ective thinking. Learning is, however,
not the same as transformation and change of conduct, because learning may
result in a better understanding of a phenomenon, which cannot necessarily
be observed as changed conduct.
Dewey’s future-oriented and experimental concept of learning serves as a
comprehensive and contemporary theory of learning that emphasises creativity
and innovation. This leads to a greater need to educate for inquiry, for critical
and refl ective thinking into the uncertainties and the challenges of living in
a global society with its constant demand of responsiveness to change. This
means we must learn to live rather than to acquire a fi xed curriculum. History
is, obviously, not unimportant, but should not be transferred as a static ‘body
of knowledge’ but as part of inquiry into contemporary challenges. We may, as
educators, need to look for another term than ‘experience’ – a term that can be
used today, and that captures the range of meaning that Dewey wanted with
his ‘experience’ and later his interpretation of ‘culture’. This means a term
that captures the fact that learning is about living, and as such is ‘lifelong’.
The term ‘practice’ is a candidate, but it also comes with its own issues as
indicated above.
References
Bernstein, R. J. (1966 [1967]). John Dewey. New York: Washington Square Press, Inc.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers.
Dewey, J. (1896 [1972]). The refl ex arc concept in psychology. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), Early
Works 5 (pp. 96–109). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1916 [1980]). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy
of education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), Middle works 9. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Dewey, J. (1917 [1980]). The need for a recovery of philosophy. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), Middle
works 10 (pp. 3–48). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1933 [1986]). How we think: A restatement of the relation of refl ective thinking to
the educative process. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), Later works 8 (pp. 105–352). Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1938 [1986]). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), Later works 12.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J., and Bentley, A. F. (1949 [1991]). Knowing and the known. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.),
Later works 16 (pp. 1–294). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Elkjaer, B. (2000). The continuity of action and thinking in learning: Re-visiting John Dewey.
Outlines. Critical Social Studies, 2, 85–101.
Fenwick, T. (2001). Tides of change: New themes and questions in workplace learning. New
Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 92, 3–17.
Gherardi, S., Nicolini, D., and Odella, F. (1998). Toward a social understanding of how people

Pragmatism 89
learn in organizations: The notion of situated curriculum. Management Learning, 29(3),
273–297.
Holland, D., and Lave, J. (2001). History in person: An introduction. In D. Holland and J. Lave
(Eds.), History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities (pp. 3–33). Santa
Fe and Oxford: School of American Research Press and James Currey.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Lave, J. (1993 [1996]). The practice of learning. In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding
practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 3–32). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Miettinen, R. (2000). The concept of experiential learning and John Dewey’s theory of refl ective
thought and action. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 19(1), 54–72.
Scheffl er, I. (1974 [1986]). Four pragmatists: A critical introduction to Peirce, James, Mead, and Dewey.
London and New York: Routledge and Paul.
Vince, R. (1998). Behind and beyond Kolb’s learning cycle. Journal of Management Education,
22(3), 304–319.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6
An overview on
transformative learning
Jack Mezirow
The concept of ‘transformative learning’ was launched in 1978 by Jack Mezirow,
Professor of Adult Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. For
many years he had been an adult education consultant in various developing countries,
inspired by Brazilian Paulo Freire and German Jürgen Habermas, among others. But
it was in connection with women’s adult education in the US that he discovered a wide-
ranging kind of learning, reaching right into changes of the identity. Later, Mezirow
elaborated on the concept of transformative learning in several writings and worked
with it in practice, not least in the reputed Adult Education Guided Independent Study
(AEGIS) doctoral programme. In the following chapter, which was fi rst published in
2006 in Peter Sutherland and Jim Crowther (eds.) Lifelong Learning: Concepts
and Contexts, Mezirow recapitulates the history and main features of the concept of
transformative learning and discusses various points of critique and suggestions for
extension that have been put forward over the years. In this way, the chapter can be
regarded as a fi nal summing-up of his work.
Introduction
The concept of transformative learning was introduced in the fi eld of adult
education in 1978 in an article that I entitled ‘Perspective Transformation’,
published in the American journal Adult Education Quarterly. The article urged
the recognition of a critical dimension of learning in adulthood that enables us
to recognize and reassess the structure of assumptions and expectations which
frame our thinking, feeling and acting. These structures of meaning constitute
a ‘meaning perspective’ or frame of reference.
Infl uences in the development of this concept included Freire’s ‘consci-
entization’, Kuhn’s ‘paradigms’, the concept of ‘consciousness raising’ in the
women’s movement, the writings and practice of psychiatrist Roger Gould,
philosophers Jurgen Habermas, Harvey Siegal and Herbert Fingerette and my
observation of the transformative experience of my wife, Edee, as an adult returning
to complete her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
The research base for the concept evolved out of a comprehensive national
study of women returning to community colleges in the United States (Mezirow

An overview on transformative learning 91
1978). The study used grounded theory methodology to conduct intensive fi eld
study of students in 12 diverse college programmes, comprehensive analytical
descriptions of an additional 24 programmes and responses to a mail inquiry
by another 314.
A transformative learning movement subsequently developed in North
American adult education, involving fi ve international conferences, featuring
over 300 paper presentations, the publication of many journal articles, over
a dozen books and an estimated 150 doctoral dissertations on transformative
learning in the fi elds of adult education, health and social welfare.
Foundations
Habermas (1981) makes a critically important distinction between instrumental
and communicative learning. Instrumental learning pertains to learning
involved in controlling or manipulating the environment, in improving
performance or prediction. We validate by empirically testing contested beliefs
regarding the truth of an assertion – that something is as it is purported to
be. Instrumental learning is involved in learning to design automobiles, build
bridges, diagnose diseases, fi ll teeth, forecast the weather and do accounting,
and in scientific and mathematical inquiry. The developmental logic of
instrumental learning is hypothetical-deductive.
Communicative learning pertains to understanding what someone means
when they communicate with you – in conversation, or through a book, a
poem, an artwork or a dance performance. To validate an understanding in
com municative learning, one must assess not only the accuracy or truth of what
is being communicated, but also the intent, qualifi cations, truthfulness and
authenticity of the one communicating. Telling someone that you love them
can have many meanings. We feel safer when a person prescribing medicine
for us has training as a physician or pharmacist.
The purpose of communicative discourse is to arrive at the best judgement,
not to assess a truth claim, as in instrumental learning. To do so one must access
and understand, intellectually and empathetically, the frame of reference of the
other and seek common ground with the widest range of relevant experience
and points of view possible. Our effort must be directed at seeking a consensus
among informed adults communicating, when this is possible, but, at least,
to clearly understand the context of the assumptions of those disagreeing. The
developmental logic of communicative learning is analogical-abductive.
For Habermas, discourse leading to a consensus can establish the validity
of a belief. This is why our conclusions are always tentative: we may always
encounter others with new evidence, arguments or perspectives. Thus diversity
of experience and inclusion are essential to our understanding. It is important
to recognize that the only alternatives to this dialectical method of inquiry
for understanding the meaning of our experience is to rely on tradition, an
authority or force.

92 Jack Mezirow
In suggesting specifi c ideal conditions for human discourse, Habermas has
provided us with an epistemological foundation defi ning optimal conditions
for adult learning and education. The conditions also provide a foundation for
a social commitment by adult educators to work toward a society that fosters
these ideals. To freely and fully participate in discourse, learners must:
have accurate and complete information; •
be free from coercion, distorting self-deception or immobilizing anxiety; •
be open to alternative points of view – empathic, caring about how others •
think and feel, withholding judgement;
be able to understand, to weigh evidence and to assess arguments objec- •
tively;
be able to become aware of the context of ideas and critically refl ect on •
assumptions, including their own;
have equal opportunity to participate in the various roles of discourse; •
have a test of validity until new perspectives, evidence or arguments •
are encountered and validated through discourse as yielding a better
judgement.
Transformative learning theory
Transformative learning is defi ned as the process by which we transform prob-
lematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives)
– sets of assumption and expectation – to make them more inclusive, discrimi-
nating, open, refl ective and emotionally able to change. Such frames are better
because they are more likely to generate beliefs and opinions that will prove
more true or justifi ed to guide action.
Frames of reference are the structures of culture and language through
which we construe meaning by attributing coherence and signifi cance to our
experience. They selectively shape and delimit our perception, cognition and
feelings by predisposing our intentions, beliefs, expectations and purposes.
These preconceptions set our ‘line of action’. Once set or programmed, we
auto matically move from one specific mental or behavioural activity to
another, and we have a strong tendency to reject ideas that fail to fi t our pre-
conceptions.
A frame of reference encompasses cognitive, conative and affective components,
may operate within or outside awareness and is composed of two dimensions:
a habit of mind and resulting points of view. Habits of mind are broad,
abstract, orienting, habitual ways of thinking, feeling and acting, infl uenced
by assumptions that constitute a set of codes. These codes or canon may be
cultural, social, linguistic, educational, economic, political, psychological,
religious, aesthetic and others. Habits of mind become articulated in a specifi c
point of view – the constellation of belief, memory, value judgement, attitude
and feeling that shapes a particular interpretation. Points of view are more

An overview on transformative learning 93
accessible to awareness, to feedback from others. An example of a habit of mind
is ethnocentrism, the predisposition to regard others outside one’s own group as
inferior, untrustworthy or otherwise less acceptable. A resulting point of view
is the complex of negative feelings, beliefs, judgements and attitudes we may
have regarding specifi c individuals or groups with characteristics different than
our own. Having a positive experience with one of these groups may change
an ethnocentric point of view but not necessarily one’s ethnocentric habit of
mind regarding other groups.
Transformative learning may occur in instrumental learning. This usually
involves task-oriented learning. In communicative learning, as in the
ethnocentric example, transformative learning usually involves critical self-
refl ection. However, elements of both task-oriented learning and critical
self-refl ection may be found in either type of learning. Habits of mind involve
how one categorizes experience, beliefs, people, events and oneself. They
may involve the structures, rules, criteria, codes, schemata, standards, values,
personality traits and dispositions upon which our thoughts, feelings and
action are based.
Meaning perspectives or habits of mind include the:
sociolinguistic – • involving cultural canon, social norms, customs, ideologies,
paradigms, linguistic frames, language games, political orientations and
secondary socialization (thinking like a teacher, doctor, policeman or an
administrator), occupational or organizational cultures’ habits of mind;
moral-ethical – • involving conscience, moral norms and values;
learning styles – • sensory preferences, focus on wholes or parts or on the
concrete or abstract, working alone or together;
religious – • commitment to doctrine, spiritual or transcendental world
views;
psychological • – theories, schema, scripts, self-concept, personality traits
or types, repressed parental prohibitions, emotional response patterns,
dispositions;
health – • ways of interpreting health problems, rehabilitation, near-death
experience;
aesthetic – • values, taste, attitude, standards, judgements about beauty and
the insight and authenticity of aesthetic expressions, such as the sublime,
the ugly, the tragic, the humorous, the drab.
Transformative learning theory, as I have interpreted it, is a metacognitive
epistemology of evidential (instrumental) and dialogical (communicative)
reasoning. Reasoning is understood as the process of advancing and assessing
a belief. Transformative learning is an adult dimension of reason assessment
involving the validation and reformulation of meaning structures.
The process of transformative learning involves:

94 Jack Mezirow
refl ecting critically on the source, nature and consequences of relevant •
assumptions – our own and those of others;
in instrumental learning, determining that something is true (is as it is •
purported to be) by using empirical research methods;
in communicative learning, arriving at more justifi ed beliefs by partici- •
pating freely and fully in an informed continuing discourse;
taking action on our transformed perspective – we make a decision and •
live what we have come to believe until we encounter new evidence,
argument or a perspective that renders this orientation problematic and
requires reassessment;
acquiring a disposition – to become more critically refl ective of our own •
assumptions and those of others, to seek validation of our transformative
insights through more freely and fully participating in discourse and to
follow through on our decision to act upon a transformed insight.
Transformations may be epochal – sudden major reorientations in habit of
mind, often associated with signifi cant life crises – or cumulative, a progressive
sequence of insights resulting in changes in point of view and leading to a
transformation in habit of mind. Most transformative learning takes place
outside of awareness; intuition substitutes for critical refl ection of assumptions.
Educators assist learners to bring this process into awareness and to improve
the learner’s ability and inclination to engage in transformative learning.
In our study of women returning to college, transformations often follow
the following phases of meaning, becoming clarifi ed:
a disorienting dilemma; •
self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt or shame; •
a critical assessment of assumptions; •
recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared; •
exploration of options for new roles, relationships and action; •
planning a course of action; •
acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans; •
provisional trying of new roles; •
building competence and self-confi dence in new roles and relationships; •
a reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s new •
perspective.
The two major elements of transformative learning are fi rst, critical refl ection
or critical self-refl ection on assumptions – critical assessment of the sources,
nature and consequences of our habits of mind – and second, participating
fully and freely in dialectical discourse to validate a best refl ective judgement
– what King and Kitchener defi ne as that judgement involving ‘the process an
individual evokes to monitor the epistemic nature of problems and the truth
value of alternative solutions’ (1994: 12).

An overview on transformative learning 95
Issues
Emotion, intuition, imagination
Important questions have been raised by adult educators concerning trans-
formation theory. One has to do with the need for more clarifi cation and
emphasis on the role played by emotions, intuition and imagination in the
process of transformation. This criticism of the theory is justifi ed. The process
by which we tacitly construe our beliefs may involve taken-for-granted values,
stereotyping, highly selective attention, limited comprehension, projection,
rationalization, minimizing or denial. That is why we need to be able to
critically assess and validate assumptions supporting our own beliefs and
expectations and those of others.
Our experiences of persons, things and events become realities as we typify
them. This process has much to do with how we come to associate them
with our personal need for justifi cation, validity and a convincing, real sense
of self. Expectations may be of events or of beliefs pertaining to one’s own
involuntary reactions to events – how one subjectively expects to be able to
cope. Our expectations powerfully affect how we construe experience; they
tend to become self-fulfi lling prophecies. We have a proclivity for categorical
judgement.
Imagination of how things could be otherwise is central to the initiation of
the transformative process. As the process of transformation is often a diffi cult,
highly emotional passage, a great deal of additional insight into the role of
imagination is needed and overdue. As many transformative experiences occur
outside of awareness, I have suggested that, in these situations, intuition sub-
stitutes for critical self-refl ection. This is another judgement that needs further
conceptual development.
I have attempted to differentiate between the adult educator’s role in working
with learners who are attempting to cope with transformations and that of the
psychotherapist by suggesting that the difference in function pertains to the
degree of anxiety generated by the transformative experience. More insight into
the process of transformative learning that takes place outside of awareness is
also in need of development.
Decontextualized learning
Another major criticism cites my emphasis on a concept of rationality that is
considered an ahistorical and universal model leading to a ‘decontextualized’
view of learning – one that fails to deal directly with considerations and questions
of context – ideology, culture, power and race-class-gender differences.
An epistemology of evidential and discursive rationality involves reasoning –
advancing and assessing reasons for making a judgement. Central to this process
is critical self-refl ection on assumptions and critical–dialectical discourse. Of
course, infl uences like power, ideology, race, class and gender differences

96 Jack Mezirow
and other interests often pertain and are important factors. However, these
infl uences may be rationally assessed and social action taken appropriately
when warranted.
Siegal (1988) explains that rationality is embodied in evolving traditions.
As the tradition evolves, so do principles that define and assess reasons.
Principles that defi ne reasons and determine their force may change, but
rationality remains the same: judgement and action in accord with reason.
A critical thinker is one who is appropriately moved by reasons. Admittedly,
this is an unfamiliar orientation. There are those who have always argued with
great conviction that education – and indeed the very nature of learning and
rationality itself – is and must be the handmaiden of a particular ideology,
religion, psychological theory, system of power and infl uence, social action,
culture, a form of government or economic system.
This familiar habit of mind dictates that learning, adult education and
rationality must, by definition, be servants to these masters. A rational
epistemology of adult learning holds the promise of saving adult education
from becoming, like religion, prejudice and politics, the rationalization of
a vested interest to give it the appearance of cause. Transformative learning
is essentially a metacognitive process of reassessing reasons supporting our
problematic meaning perspectives.
Social action
A major emphasis of critics of transformation theory, as I have conceptualized
it, has been its de-emphasis of social action. Adult education holds that an
important goal is to effect social change. Transformation theory also contends
that adult education must be dedicated to effecting social change, to modifying
oppressive practices, norms, institutions and socio-economic structures to
allow everyone to participate more fully and freely in refl ective discourse and
to acquiring a critical disposition and refl ective judgement. Transformative
learning focuses on creating the foundation in insight and understanding
essential for learning how to take effective social action in a democracy.
As Dana Villa notes in Socratic Citizenship (2001), one of our habitual frames
of reference is to be disposed to view anything that is either cause-based, group-
related or service-oriented as the core of ‘good citizenship’ and anything which
simply dissents or says ‘no’ as of little value. Socrates’ original contribution
was the introduction of critical self-refl ection and individualism as essential
standards of justice and civic obligation in a democracy. Socrates undermined
fellow citizens’ taken-for-granted habits of mind pertaining to what justice and
virtue require. He sought to distance thinking and moral refl ection from the
restraints of arbitrary political judgement and action – to move to a disposition
of critical refl ection on assumptions and the citizen’s own moral self-formation
as a condition of public life.
Habermas (1981) suggests that critical refl ection on assumptions and critical

An overview on transformative learning 97
discourse based on refl ective judgement – the key dimensions of transformative
learning – are characteristics of the highest level of adult morality.
Ideology critique
Adult educator Stephen Brookfi eld (1991) has challenged the breadth of
transformative learning as I have conceptualized it. He writes:
For something to count as a example of critical learning, critical analysis
or critical refl ection, I believe that the persons concerned must engage
in some sort of power analysis of the situation or context in which the
learning is happening. They must also try to identify assumptions they
hold dear that are actually destroying their sense of well being and serving
the interests of others: that is, hegemonic assumptions.
(1991: 126)
For Brookfield, ideologies are pejorative ‘sets of values, beliefs, myths,
explanations and justifi cations that appear self-evidently true and are morally
desirable’ (1991: 129).
Brookfi eld is not suggesting a critique of all relevant ideologies, the point
of view of transformation theory in adult education. He is quite specifi c that
critical refl ection as ideology critique ‘focuses on helping people come to
an awareness of how capitalism shapes belief systems and assumptions (i.e.
ideologies) that justify and maintain economic and political inequity’ (1991:
341). Issues raised here are echoed in critical pedagogy.
Critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy, and its current form of popular education in Latin America,
is an adult education programme evolving from the village-based literacy work
of Paulo Freire that assigns priority to a guided analysis of how ideology, power
and infl uence specifi cally impact upon and disadvantage the immediate lives of
illiterate learners. The educator assists them to learn to read in the process of
planning and taking an active role in collective social action to effect change.
There is a praxis of transformative study and action.
For critical pedagogy, the critical learner, prototypically an illiterate rural
peasant, not only comes to recognize injustice but, upon this recognition,
is expected to actively participate in the specifi c political or social action
required to change it. The process and problems involved in taking informed,
collective, political action in a functioning democracy are seldom addressed in
the literature of critical pedagogy.
Burbules and Burk (1999) note that in critical pedagogy everything is open
to critical refl ection except the premises and categories of critical pedagogy
itself and comment that ‘there is a givenness of what a “critical” understanding

98 Jack Mezirow
should look like that threatens to become its own kind of constraint’ (1999: 54).
‘From the perspective of critical thinking, critical pedagogy crosses a threshold
between teaching critically and indoctrinating’ (1999: 55). Transformation
theory in adult education, on the other hand, involves how to think critically
about one’s assumptions supporting perspectives and to develop refl ective
judgement in discourse regarding beliefs, values, feelings and self-concept. It
is not primarily to think politically; for ideology critique and critical pedagogy,
this is a false assumption.
Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the universe as a rational and orderly system. In
the book Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning (2002), Edmund
O’Sullivan and his colleagues at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
at the University of Toronto move far beyond critical pedagogy’s sole concern
with the political and social dimensions of capitalism to include environmental,
spiritual and self-concept issues in what they call ‘integral transformative
learning’:
Transformative learning involves experiencing a deep structural shift in the
basic premises of thought, feeling and action. It is a shift of consciousness
that dramatically and permanently alters our being in the world. Such a
shift involves our understanding of ourselves and our self-locations; our
relationships with other humans and the natural world; our understanding
of the relations of power in interlocking structures of class, race and gender;
our body awareness; our visions of alternative approaches to living; and our
sense of the possibilities for social justice and peace and personal joy.
(2002: 11)
‘Transformative criticism’, as conceptualized from this perspective, posits a
critique of the dominant culture’s ‘formative appropriateness’ and provides
a vision of an alternative form of culture and concrete indications of how to
abandon inappropriate elements and to create more appropriate new cultural
forms. They suggest that these elements should form a new type of integral
education.
O’Sullivan et al.’s identifi cation of transformative learning with movement
toward the realization of a bold conception of a new cosmology moves well
beyond the political focus of critical pedagogy. However, it shares the same
limitation of not presenting or inviting a critical assessment of its core
assumptions and categories. Such an assessment should consider the defi nition
and validity of each of the fi ve components designated in their defi nition of
transformation, the assumptions regarding the role of education and adult
education as the principal vehicle for effecting the broad multidimensional
transformation they envision and how we are to understand the epistemology

An overview on transformative learning 99
of transformative learning in adulthood, particularly the role of rationality,
critical refl ection on epistemic assumptions, and of discourse in the context
of this theory.
Perspectives on transformative learning
Constructivist development
Constructivist developmental psychologists believe that development involves
movement through a predictable sequence of ‘forms’ (frames of reference or
meaning systems) culminating in the development of the adult capacity, and in
some adult learners, the ability and disposition to engage in the transformative
processes of critical self-refl ection and refl ective judgement through discourse.
Robert Kegan (2000) identifi es fi ve forms of meaning-making through the
lifespan. These forms of mind include the perceptual/impulsive, the concrete/
opinionated, the socialized, the self-authoring and the self-transforming mind
that includes the capacity for self-refl ection. He delineates the capabilities of
adulthood: able to think abstractly, construct values and ideals, introspect,
subordinate short-term interests to the welfare of a relationship and orient
to and identify with expectations of groups and individual relationships of
which one wishes to feel a part. It ordinarily takes two decades to develop these
capacities and longer for some.
Mary Belenky and her associates (1986) identifi ed six forms of knowing:
silenced, received, subjective, separate, connected and constructed. The
connected knower enters into the perspective of another and tries to see the world
through his/her eyes. This is an essential dimension of transformative learning.
King and Kitchener (1994) have considerable evidence to support the
assertion that it is only in adulthood that epistemic assumptions allow for
true refl ective thinking in a seven-stage movement. Stage seven involves
understanding abstract concepts of knowledge as a system; knowledge is the
outcome of the process of reasonable inquiry for constructing an informed
understanding. This stage is comparable to the adult capacity to effectively
participate in discourse in transformation theory.
Psychic distortion
Psychiatrist Roger Gould’s ‘epigenetic’ theory of adult development (1978)
holds that traumatic events in childhood may produce prohibitions that,
though submerged from consciousness in adulthood, continue to generate
anxiety feelings that inhibit adult action when there is a risk of violating them.
This dynamic results in a lost function – the ability to take risks, feel sexual,
fi nish a job – that must be regained if one is to become a fully functioning
adult. The most signifi cant adult learning occurs in connection with life
transitions. As adulthood is a time for regaining lost functions, the learner

100 Jack Mezirow
should be assisted to identify the specifi c blocked action and the source and
nature of stress in deciding to take action. The learner is helped to differentiate
between the anxiety that is a function of the childhood trauma and the anxiety
warranted by his or her immediate adult life situation.
Gould feels that learning to cope with ordinary existential psychological
distortions can be facilitated by knowledgeable adult educators and adult
counsellors as well as by therapists. He has developed an interactive, comput-
erized programme of guided self-study for adult learners coping with life
transitions. Educators and counsellors provide emotional support and help the
learner think through the choices posed by the programme.
Schema therapy
As described by Bennett-Goleman (2001), schema therapy is an adaptation
of cognitive psychotherapy that focuses on repairing emotional frames of
reference, like maladaptive emotional habits, relentless perfectionism or the
sense of emotional deprivation. Mindfulness, a Buddhist concept, defi ned
here as a refi ned, meditative awareness, is combined by Bennett-Goleman
with insights from cognitive neuroscience. Mindfulness may be applied by
individuals to understand their patterns of emotional reactivity in workshops.
Major schemas include:
… unloveability, the fear that people would reject us if they truly knew us;
mistrust, the constant suspicion that those close to us will betray us; social
exclusion, the feeling we don’t belong; failure, the sense that we cannot
succeed at what we do; subjugation, always giving in to other people’s
wants and demands; and entitlement, the sense that one is somehow special
and so beyond ordinary rules and limits.
(2001: 11)
Mindfulness allows one to separate specifi c experience from the overlay of
mental and emotional reaction to it. In that space there is room to examine
whether we harbour distorted assumptions, ungrounded beliefs, or warped
perceptions. We can see the ways our thoughts and feelings defi ne us as
they come and go – we can see our habitual lenses themselves
(2001: 53)
As frames of reference, schemas are the way the mind organizes, retains and
acts on a particular task, but they also selectively determine to what we will
attend and what they deem irrelevant. When emotions intervene, schemas can
determine what is admitted to awareness and can provide a plan of action in
response. Schemas are mental models of experience.
Bennett-Goleman (2001) describes the process involved in challenging and
changing schema thoughts:

An overview on transformative learning 101
Become mindful of the feeling or typical thoughts associated with the •
schema. Focus on your thoughts, emotions and body sensations all – all
due to which the schema has become activated. Test whether you are
overreacting.
Become aware of your schema thoughts as such and recognize they may •
be distortions.
Challenge those thoughts. Recognize how you have learned through •
critical self-refl ection that they embody false assumptions. Validate your
transformative insights by getting involved in a discourse with another
who has a more realistic understanding of the subject.
Use empathic reframing to acknowledge the schema reality while you put •
into words a more accurate picture of things.
Individuation – Jungian psychology
Patricia Cranton (1994) interprets Jung’s theory of psychological type to
integrate his concepts with those of transformative learning theory in adult
education. Learners’ psychological predispositions form one kind of habit of
mind. This involves two interrelated processes: to become more aware and to
understand our own nature while, at the same time, individuating ourselves
from the rest of humanity as we learn who we are.
Jung describes a continuum on which one may differentiate two ways of
relating to the world and of making judgements: introverted and extraverted.
We make judgements either logically or analytically – to assess a problem,
weigh alternatives and make a decision – or rely upon deep-seated reactions of
acceptance or rejection in which logic plays no part. This differentiation between
perception and judgement is close to transformation theory’s differentiation
between learning outside awareness through intuition and learning within
awareness through critical refl ection on assumptions. Psychological preferences
(thinking and feeling or sensing and intuition) are habits of mind.
John Dirkx (1997) also identifi es the goal of Jung’s concept of individuation
as the development of an individual’s personality. This development involves
a dialogue between ego consciousness and the content of the unconscious.
Transformation involves participating in dialogue with the unconscious aspects
of the psyche. This frees one from obsessions, compulsions and complexes
that can shape and distort our frame of reference. The symbolic process of
individuation is expressed in the form of images. Through a dialogue between
the conscious and unconscious, mediated through symbols and images, learners
gain insight into aspects of themselves that are outside conscious awareness but
infl uence their sense of self as well as their interpretations and actions. These
symbols and images express emotions and feelings that arise in the learning
process. ‘Behind every emotion there is an image’ (Dirkx 1997: 249).
The content or process of formal learning evokes images realized through
dialogue. In the course of this interaction, ‘both content and ourselves are

102 Jack Mezirow
potentially transformed. Individuation is an ongoing psychic process. When
entered into consciously and imaginatively, it provides for a deepening of
awareness of the self, an expansion of one’s consciousness, and engendering of
soul. We become more fully who we are and we are more fully able to enter into
a community of humans. In Jungian terms, this is transformation – emergence
of the self’ (Dirkx 1997: 251).
Dean Elias (1997) has expanded the defi nition of transformative learning to
explicitly include the unconscious: transformative learning is the expansion
of consciousness through the transformation of basic world views and specifi c
capacities of the self; transformative learning is facilitated through consciously
directed processes such as appreciatively accessing and receiving the symbolic
contents of the unconscious and critically analyzing underlying premises.
For additional insight into Jungian interpretations of transformative learning
in the context of adult learning, see Robert Boyd (1991).
Facilitating transformation learning in graduate adult
education
The fi rst graduate programme in adult education designed to foster and
facilitate the concept of transformative learning was established two decades
ago at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York. A highly selective
doctoral programme, Adult Education Guided Independent Study, was
designed for professionals with at least fi ve years of experience in this fi eld
of practice. Students came on campus one weekend a month and attended
intensive three-week summer sessions to satisfy course requirements in two
years. Dialogue continued through the Internet. To practice and analyze the
process of discourse, students collaborated on most problems with colleagues
around tables of six. A major emphasis was placed on the creation of effective
learning communities for collaborative inquiry.
Applicants were required to write a paper that described an issue in the fi eld,
present arguments on both sides, describe the point of view each represented
and describe their own point of view and analyze their own assumptions. Faculty
members, who placed emphasis on identifying additional missing assumptions,
carefully reviewed the papers. Extensive revisions were requested. Revisions
were often returned to the applicant with a faculty analysis of additional missed
assumptions, and second and often third revisions were required. These exchanges
were designed to force the applicants to critically examine their own habits of
taken-for-granted ways of thinking and introduce the students to assumption
analysis. Grading was limited to pass or incomplete. Academic standards
were high. Three incompletes required that a student leave the programme.
Courses included assumption analysis, involving articles authored by
adult educators, and life histories, involving comparative assessment of key
turning points in the lives of students meeting in groups of three, designed
to encourage them to recognize that there are alternative ways of interpreting

An overview on transformative learning 103
common experience, as well as courses in ideologies, media analysis, the work
of Paulo Freire and transformations through art and literature. Other courses,
added over the years, focused on adult learning, research methods, adult
literacy, community development and organizational development.
Methods found useful in fostering critical self-refl ection of assumptions
and discourse include using critical incidents, life histories, journal writing,
media analysis, repertory grids, metaphor analysis, conceptual mapping, action
learning, collaborative learning and John Peters’ ‘Action-Reason-Thematic
Technique’ – all described in Mezirow and Associates (1990).
Universal dimensions of adult knowing
There is a current debate over whether a learning theory must be dictated
exclusively by contextual interests, as suggested by Brookfi eld, followers of
critical pedagogy, other post-Marxist theorists and many postmodern critics.
Transformative learning theory, as I have conceptualized it, holds that
cultures enable or inhibit the realization of common human interests – the
ways adults realize common learning capabilities. Who learns what and
the when, where and how of education are clearly functions of the culture.
Transformative learning is a rational, metacognitive process of reassessing
reasons that support problematic meaning perspectives or frames of reference,
including those representing such contextual cultural factors as ideology,
religion, politics, class, race, gender and others. It is the process by which
adults learn how to think critically for themselves rather than take assumptions
supporting a point of view for granted.
Universal dimensions of rationality and adult understanding upon which
cultural or contextual infl uences impact – and may distort – include the following:
Adults
seek the meaning of their experience – both mundane and transcendent; •
have a sense of self and others as agents capable of thoughtful and respon- •
sible action;
engage in mindful efforts to learn; •
learn to become rational by advancing and assessing reasons; •
make meaning of their experience – both within and outside awareness – •
through acquired frames of reference – sets of orienting assumptions and
expectations with cognitive, affective and conative dimensions that shape,
delimit and sometimes distort their understanding;
accept some others as agents with interpretations of their experience that •
may prove true or justifi ed;
rely upon beliefs and understandings that produce interpretations and •
opinions that will prove more true or justifi ed than those based upon other
beliefs and understandings;

104 Jack Mezirow
engage in reflective discourse to assess the reasons and assumptions •
supporting a belief to be able to arrive at a tentative best judgement – as
a sometime alternative or supplement to resorting to traditional authority
or force to validate a judgement;
understand the meaning of what is communicated to them by taking •
into account the assumptions (intent, truthfulness, qualifi cations) of the
person communicating as well as the truth, justifi cation, appropriateness
and authenticity of what is being communicated;
imagine how things could be different; •
learn to transform their frames of reference through critical refl ection on •
assumptions, self-refl ection on assumptions and dialogic reasoning when
the beliefs and understandings they generate become problematic.
These are generic dimensions of adult understanding that may be deliberately
or unconsciously enhanced or discouraged through the process of adult
education. Limiting the development of these qualitative dimensions of adult
learning by exclusively focusing adult education on immediate contextual
issues is self-defeating. It brings to mind the old Chinese saying, ‘Give a man a
fi sh and he can eat for a day; teach him to fi sh and he can eat for his lifetime’.
References
Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R. and Tarule, J.M. (1986) Women’s Ways of
Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind, New York: Basic Books.
Bennett-Goleman, T. (2001) Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart, New York:
Three Rivers Press.
Boyd, R. (1991) Personal Transformations in Small Groups: A Jungian Perspective, London: Routledge.
Brookfield, S. (1991) ‘Transformative learning as ideology critique’, in J. Mezirow (ed.)
Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Burbules, N. and Burk R. (1999) ‘Critical thinking and critical pedagogy: relations, differences,
and limits’, in T. Popkewitz and L. Fendler (eds) Critical Theories in Education: Changing
Terrains of Knowledge and Politics, New York: Routledge.
Cranton, P. (1994) Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning: A Guide for Educators of
Adults, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Dirkx, J. (1997) ‘Nurturing soul in adult learning’, in P. Cranton (ed.) Transformative Learning
in Action: Insight from Practice, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Elias, D. (1997) ‘It’s time to change our minds’, ReVision, 20(1), 1: 3–5.
Gould, R. (1978) Transformations: Growth and Change in Adult Life, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Habermas, J. (1981) The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Thomas McCarthy (trans.),
Boston: Beacon Press.
Kegan, R. (2000) ‘What “form” transforms?’ in J. Mezirow and Associates Learning as
Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
King, P. and Kitchener, K. (1994) Developing Refl ective Judgment, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mezirow, J. (1978) Education for Perspective Transformation: Women’s Re-entry Programs in
Community Colleges, New York: Teachers College, Columbia University (available through
ERIC system).

An overview on transformative learning 105
Mezirow, J. and Associates (1990) Fostering Critical Refl ection in Adulthood: A Guide to Transformative
and Emancipatory Learning, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
O’Sullivan, E., Morrell, A. and O’Connor, M. (2002) Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative
Learning: Essays on Theory and Praxis, New York: Palgrave.
Siegal, H. (1988) Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education, New York:
Routledge.
Villa, D. (2001) Socratic Citizenship, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 7
Multiple approaches
to understanding
Howard Gardner
Harvard professor Howard Gardner is known worldwide for his infl uential theory
of “multiple intelligences,” which was fi rst put forward in 1983 and was later
elaborated and expanded in several writings. As intelligence may be understood as the
capacity or potential to learn in various connections, Gardner’s work has also been an
important contribution to learning theory and is therefore taken up in this volume –
though Gardner is not primarily regarded as a learning theorist. The following text is
the second half of a chapter which was originally published in C.M. Reigeluth (ed.)
Instructional-Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional
Theory, Volume 2 (pp. 69–89) and is here reprinted with permission from Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates. Gardner has himself chosen this text for the present book because it
deals with his view and understanding on learning and education in extension of his
work on multiple intelligences.
Introduction
Let me introduce the core ideas of the educational approach that I embrace. I
believe that every person ought to master a central body of curricular materials
and approaches, though I am not thereby wedded to a specifi c canon. For this
essay I have selected the examples of evolution and the Holocaust – though they
are not without controversy – because I think that they lie comfortably within
the ensemble of ideas that every educated person should have encountered,
grappled with, and mastered. (In my book, The Disciplined Mind (1999), I have
added to the true [evolution] and the evil [the Holocaust] an example of the
beautiful [the music of Mozart].) I depart from traditional educators – and
from their allies in psychology – in the assumption that such topics need to
be taught or assessed in a single way.
Because of their biological and cultural backgrounds, personal histories,
and idiosyncratic experiences, students do not arrive in school as blank slates,
nor as individuals who can be aligned unidimensionally along a single axis
of intellectual accomplishment. They possess different kinds of minds, with
different strengths, interests, and modes of processing information. While this
variation (a product of evolution!) initially complicates the job of the teacher,

Multiple approaches to understanding 107
it can actually become an ally in effective teaching. For if the teacher is able to
use different pedagogical approaches, there exists the possibility of reaching
more students in more effective ways.
Differences among students can be described in innumerable ways and it
is a simplifi cation to prioritize any. For my purposes, I will speak of students
as highlighting different intelligences. However, to follow this argument,
one need not endorse my particular theory of intelligences. Any approach
that recognizes and can somehow label or identify differences in intellectual
proclivity or potential will suffi ce.
Assume that our educational goals include an enhanced understanding of
the theory of evolution and the events called the Holocaust – topics drawn
respectively from biology and from history. Specifi cally, we want students to
appreciate that evolution, a process of random mutation in the genotype, is
the driving force behind the variety of species that have existed historically
and contemporaneously. The diverse phenotypes yielded by genetic variation
result in organisms that are differentially able to survive in specifi c ecological
contexts. Those that survive to reproduce in abundance have a competitive
advantage over those that, for whatever reason, are less prone to adjust
adequately to a given ecological niche. If these trends continue over the long
run, the survivors prevail, while those that cannot compete successfully are
doomed to extinction. The fossil record documents the course and fate of
different species historically; one sees the gradual increase in variety of species,
as well as the increasing complexity of certain lines of descent. It is possible to
study the same processes contemporaneously, with relevant research ranging
from the breeding of Drosophila of various strains to experimental investigations
of the origin of genes.
Turning to the Holocaust, we want students to appreciate what happened
to the Jewish people, and to certain other condemned minorities and political
dissidents, during the Nazi Third Reich, from 1933 to 1945. Efforts to
castigate and isolate the Jewish people began with simple verbal attacks
and laws of exclusion, gradually evolved to more violent forms of abuse,
and ultimately culminated in the devising of camps whose explicit goal was
the extinction of European Jewry. The contours of anti-Semitism were laid
out in Hitler’s early speeches and writings; but the historical course from
plans to actualities took several years and involved hundreds of thousands of
individuals in various capacities. Genocide – the effort to eliminate a people in
its entirety – is hardly a new phenomenon; it dates back to biblical times. Yet,
the systematic way in which an allegedly civilized, modern nation proceeded
to eradicate six million Jews is without precedent.
In brief form, these understandings would constitute a reasonable goal for a
course or unit. Sheer memorization or faithful paraphrase of these paragraphs,
of course, does not count for understanding. Rather, as noted above, students
exhibit understanding to the extent that they can invoke these sets of ideas
flexibly and appropriately to carry out specific analyses, interpretations,

108 Howard Gardner
comparisons, and critiques. An “acid test” of such understanding is the
student’s ability to perform his understandings with respect to material that
is new – perhaps as new as today’s newspaper.
How to approach these formidable topics? From the vantage point of
multiple intelligences, I propose three increasingly focused lines of attack.
A. Entry points One begins by fi nding a way to engage the student and to place
her centrally within the topic. I have identifi ed at least six discrete entry points
that can be roughly aligned with specifi c intelligences. In each case, I defi ne
the entry point and illustrate it with respect to our two topics:
1 Narrative The narrative entry point addresses students who enjoy learning
about topics through stories. Such vehicles – linguistic or fi lmic – feature
protagonists, confl ict, problems to be solved, goals to be achieved, tensions
aroused and, often, allayed. Evolution invites treatment in terms of the
story of Darwin’s voyages (as it contrasts with the story of origins told in
the Bible) or of the “course” of a particular species. The Holocaust can be
introduced through a narrative account of a particular person or through
a year-by-year chronicle of events in the Third Reich.
2 Quantitative/numerical The quantitative entry point speaks to students
who are intrigued by numbers, the patterns that they make, the various
operations that can be performed, the insights into size, ratio, and
change. From an evolutionary perspective, one can look at the incidence
of different individuals or species in different ecological niches and how
those aggregates change over time. With respect to the Holocaust, one
can look at the movement of individuals to various camps, the survival
rates at each, the comparisons of the fates of Jews and other victim groups
in different cities and nations.
3 Foundational/existential This entry point appeals to students who are
attracted to fundamental “bottom line” kinds of questions. Nearly all
youngsters raise such questions, usually through myths or art: the more
philosophically oriented come to pose and argue about issues verbally.
Evolution addresses the question of who we are and where we come from
– and whence all living matter emanates. The Holocaust addresses the
questions of what kinds of beings humans are, and what are the virtues
and vices of which they/we are capable.
4 Aesthetic Some individuals are inspired by works of art or by materials
arranged in ways that feature balance, harmony, a carefully designed
composition. The tree of evolution, with its many branches and
interstices, may attract such individuals; Darwin himself was intrigued
by the metaphor of the “tangled bank” of nature. Many efforts have been
undertaken to portray the Holocaust in works of art, literature, fi lm, and
music, both by those who were killed and by those survivors and observers
who have tried to capture its horror.

Multiple approaches to understanding 109
5 Hands-on Many individuals, particularly young persons, fi nd it easiest
to approach a topic through an activity in which they become actively
engaged – one where they can build something, manipulate materials, carry
out experiments. The chance to breed generations of fruit fl ies (Drosophila)
gives one the opportunity to observe the incidence and fate of genetic
mutations. Holocaust displays can provide a harrowing introduction to
this event. When students receive an alternative “identity” upon their
entrance to a Holocaust exhibit and later ascertain what happened to
this person in the course of the Holocaust, the personal identifi cation
can be very powerful. Being a subject in a psychological experiment
that documents the human proclivity to follow orders can be a jarring
experience as well.
6 Social The entry points described thus far address the individual as a
single person. Many individuals learn more effectively, however, in a
group setting, where they have the opportunity to assume different roles,
to observe others’ perspectives, to interact regularly, to complement one
another. A group of students can be given a problem to solve – for example,
what happens to various species in a given environment following a
dramatic change in climate; or how would the Germans have reacted had
the Allies blown up the train tracks that led to a concentration camp. Or
they can be asked to role-play different species in a shifting ecology, or
different participants in a rebellion in a ghetto that is under siege.
B. Telling analogies An “entry point” perspective places students directly in the
center of a disciplinary topic, arousing their interests and securing cognitive
commitment for further exploration. The entry point, however, does not
necessarily inculcate specifi c forms or modes of understanding.
Here the teacher (or the student) is challenged to come up with instructive
analogies, drawn from material that is already understood, that can convey
important aspects of the less familiar topic. In the case of evolution, for
example, analogies can be drawn from history or from the arts. Societies change
over time, sometimes gradually, sometimes apocalyptically. The processes of
human social change can be compared with those of biological change within
and between species. Evolution can also be observed in works of art. Characters
change within the course of a book, and sometimes over a series of books. Themes
in a fugue evolve and develop in certain ways, and not (ordinarily) in others.
One may search for analogies to the Holocaust. The effort to annihilate a
people can be analogized to the eradication of traces of an event or even of an
entire civilization. Sometimes these efforts at eradication are deliberate, as
when the criminal seeks to hide all evidence of a crime. Sometimes these efforts
occur as a result of the passage of time, as happens when the traces of an ancient
city are virtually destroyed (absent relevant historical records, we do not know,
of course, about those cities whose vestiges have altogether disappeared as the
result of natural disaster or a vengeful enemy).

110 Howard Gardner
Analogies can be powerful, but they can also mislead. Analogies are an
excellent way to convey important facets of a topic to individuals who have
little familiarity with it. However, each analogy can also suggest parallels that
do not hold – for example, the informing intelligence that constructs the theme
of a fugue differs from the random nature of biological evolution; a murderer
working in isolation differs from a large sector of society working secretly but
in concert. The teacher is obligated to qualify each analogy as appropriate and
to make sure that the misleading parts of the analogy are not allowed to distort
or cripple the students’ ultimate understanding.
C. Approaching the core Entry points open up the conversation; telling analogies
convey revealing parts of the concept-in-question. Yet, the challenge to convey
the central understandings still remains.
We come to the most vexing part of our analysis. Traditionally, educators
have relied on two seemingly opposite approaches. Either they have provided
quite explicit instructions – usually didactic – and assessed understanding
in terms of linguistic mastery of materials (“Evolution is …” or “The fi ve
central points about the Holocaust are …”). Or they have supplied copious
information to the student and hoped that, somehow, the student would forge
his own synthesis (“On the basis of your reading, our trip to the museum, and
various classroom exercises, what would you do if …”). Some teachers have
pursued both approaches, either simultaneously or successively.
Here we encounter the crucial educational question: Can one use knowledge
about individual differences in strengths and modes of representations to create
educational approaches that can convey the most important, the “core notions”
of a topic in a reliable and thorough manner?
First off, one must acknowledge that there cannot be a formulaic approach.
Every topic is different – just as every classroom context is different – and so
each topic must be considered in terms of its own specifi c concepts, network
of concepts, issues, problems, and susceptibilities to misconception.
A second step recognizes that topics do not exist in isolation – they come
from and are, to some extent, defi ned by the ensemble of existing and emerging
disciplines. Thus, a study of evolution occurs within the domain of biology
and, more generally, within the realm of scientifi c explanation. As such, it
involves the search for general principles and for models that will apply to
all organisms under all kinds of circumstances (though some idiographically
oriented scientists seek to explicate specifi c events like the disappearance of
dinosaurs). In contrast, a study of the Holocaust occurs within history – and,
sometimes, within literary or artistic efforts to render this historical event.
Parts of the Holocaust may resemble other historical events, but a foundational
notion about history is that it offers an account of specifi c events occurring in
specifi c contexts. One can neither expect general principles to emerge nor build
models that can be tested (though some scientifi cally oriented historians have
attempted to construct and test such models).

Multiple approaches to understanding 111
The third step acknowledges commonly used ways of describing and
explaining a concept. Thus evolution is typically described using certain
examples (e.g. the disappearance of Neanderthal man, the branching tree
of evolution), while the Holocaust is typically presented in terms of certain
key events and documents (e.g. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the formulation of the
Final Solution at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, the records kept
at Auschwitz, the reports by the fi rst Allied soldiers to liberate the camps,
the chilling photographs of the survivors). These familiar examples are not
randomly chosen; rather, they have helped scholars to defi ne these topics in the
past, and they have proved effective pedagogically with at least a reasonable
percentage of students.
But while these examples have their reasons, one must not infer that such
examples are uniquely or permanently privileged. One can certainly feature
these examples without ensuring understanding; and, by the same token, it is
surely possible to enhance understanding of evolution or the Holocaust by using
other examples, other materials, or differently formulated causal accounts. We
know that this ensemble changes because there are new historical or scientifi c
discoveries, as well as novel pedagogical approaches that proved effective. (Thus,
for example, the opportunity to simulate evolutionary processes in a computer
program, or to create virtual realities, spawns educational opportunities that
could not have been anticipated a generation or two ago.)
The key step to approaching the core is the recognition that a concept can
only be well understood – and can only give rise to convincing performances
of understanding – if an individual is capable of representing that core in more
than one way, indeed, in several ways. Moreover, it is desirable if the multiple
modes of representing draw on a number of symbol systems, intelligences,
schemas, and frames. Going beyond analogies – indeed proceeding in the
opposite direction – representations seek to be as accurate and comprehensive
as possible.
Several implications follow from this assertion. First of all, it is necessary to
spend signifi cant time on a topic. Second, it is necessary to portray the topic in
a number of ways – both to illustrate its intricacies and to reach an ensemble
of necessarily diverse students. Third, it is highly desirable if the multiple
approaches explicitly call upon a range of intelligences, skills, and interests.
It may seem that I am simply calling for the “smorgasbord” approach to
education – throw enough of the proverbial matter at students and some of
it will hit the mind/brain and stick. Nor do I think that such an approach
is without merit. However, the theory of multiple intelligences provides
an opportunity, so to speak, to transcend mere variation and selection. It is
possible to examine a topic in detail to determine which intelligences, which
analogies, which examples are most likely both to capture important aspects of
the topic and to reach a signifi cant number of students. We must acknowledge
here the cottage industry aspect of pedagogy – a craft that cannot now and
may never be susceptible to an algorithmic approach. It may also constitute the

112 Howard Gardner
enjoyable part of teaching – the opportunity continually to revisit one’s topic
and to consider fresh ways in which to convey its crucial components.
Educators and scholars may continue to believe that there is still an optimal
mode for representing the core of a topic. I respond as follows. The history of
disciplinary progress makes it inevitable that experts will think about a topic in
terms of privileged considerations – perhaps genetic mutations and ecological
niches in biology, perhaps human intentions and worldwide demographic and
ecological forces in the case of history. Such consensual portrayal is reasonable.
However, one should never lose sight of the fact that evolution did not occur
in biology, and the Holocaust did not occur in history: they are processes
and events that happened and became available for observers and scholars to
describe, interpret, and explicate as best they could. New discoveries, as well
as new disciplinary trends, gradually undermine today’s orthodoxy; tomorrow’s
scholar might remake our understandings. Just as Darwin rewrote Lamarck’s
view of evolution, the believers in punctuated equilibrium aim to overthrow
Darwinian gradualism (Gould, 1993). By the same token, Daniel Goldhagen’s
Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996) gives a far more “ordinary Germanic” cast
to the Holocaust than had historians of earlier decades.
Generalizing the approach
Even if I have achieved some success in suggesting how best to approach two
gritty topics of education, I evidently have left untouched the vast majority of
the curriculum. My focus has been on a high school – perhaps a college – pair
of topics; I have drawn from biology and European history, rather than from
mathematics, music, or meteorology; and I have focused on topics or issues,
rather than, say, specifi c chemical reactions, or metrical analyses, or geometric
proofs.
I would be remiss were I to imply that the approach sketched here could
be applied equivalently to every topic of the syllabus. Indeed, I deliberately
selected two topics that are relatively rich and multifaceted, and that readily
allow consideration from several perspectives. I suspect that no pedagogical
approach is going to prove equally effective for the full range of topics and
skills that need to be conveyed; teaching French verbs or the techniques
of Impressionism is simply not commensurate with covering the Russian
Revolution or explicating Newton’s laws of mechanics.
Still, the approach sketched here can have wide utility. First of all, it raises
the question of why one is teaching certain topics and what one hopes that
students will retain at some time in the future. Much of what we teach recurs
through habit; it makes sense to teach fewer topics and to treat them in
greater depth. Such an approach allows one to relate materials to a few central
themes – like evolution in biology, or the Holocaust in history (or energy in
physics, or character in literature) – and to eliminate topics if they cannot be
reasonably connected to some powerful themes or throughlines. After all, we

Multiple approaches to understanding 113
cannot conceivably cover everything; we may as well strive to be coherent and
comprehensive in what we do cover.
Having determined which topics require sustained attention, one can then
exploit an ensemble of pedagogical approaches. To recapitulate: one begins by
considering which entry points might succeed in attracting the interest and
attention of diverse students. One then considers which kinds of examples,
analogies, and metaphors might convey important parts of the topic in ways
that are powerful and not misleading. Finally, one seeks to fi nd a small family
of literally appropriate representations that, taken together, provide a rich and
differentiated set of representations of the topic under consideration. Such an
ensemble conveys to students what it is like to be an expert. And to the extent
that the family of representations involves a range of symbols and an array of
schemes, it will prove far more robust and useful to students.
Presenting materials and fostering multiple representations is one component
of effective teaching; the complementary component entails the provision of
many opportunities for performance, which can reveal to the student and to
interested observers the extent to which the material has been mastered. In
stimulating revealing performances of understanding, teachers need to be
imaginative and pluralistic. While it is easy to fall back on the tried-and-true
– the short-answer test, the essay question – there is no imperative to do so.
Performances can be as varied as the different facets of the topic and the diverse
sets of skills of students. A variety of sanctioned performances not only provides
more students with an opportunity to show what they have understood, but it
also ensures that no single “take” on a topic exerts an inappropriate hegemony
on students’ (or test-makers’!) understandings of that topic.
With respect to our present examples, then, I encourage teachers to have
students engage with one another in debates on the causes of the Holocaust
or on the merits of Lamarckianism; carry out experiments that probe different
aspects of the evolutionary process; interview individuals who have survived the
Holocaust or various other global confl icts of our time; create works of art that
commemorate heroes of the Resistance; or design a creature that can survive in
an environment that has become highly toxic. Perhaps most challengingly, they
might need to be asked to discuss the factors that permitted the Holocaust in
terms of what we know about the evolution of behavior in that line called Homo
sapiens. Hence, at last our two topics would be joined. Consultation of curricular
guides and conversations with other teachers should stimulate the imagination
with respect to other kinds of performances for other specimen curricula.
Just another call for projects, the sins of the Progressive Movement, as
castigated by E. D. Hirsch (1996)? Quite the contrary. Student projects need
to be considered critically in two respects: (1) adequacy as an example of a
genre (Is it a coherent essay? Is it an effective monument? Does it qualify as
a causal explanation?); and (2) adequacy as an occasion for performing one’s
understandings (Does the debater stick to the consensual facts or does she
distort what is known? Does the newly designed species have a lifespan that

114 Howard Gardner
allows reproduction and rearing of offspring?). Far from being a superfi cial
measure of understanding, such projects and performances hold the students
to high standards – the key features of the concept should be performed in
vehicles that meet the test of cultural viability.
I have restricted myself until now almost entirely to the simplest forms
of technology – books, pencils, and papers, perhaps a few art supplies, or a
simple biochemical laboratory. This is appropriate – fundamental discussions
of educational goals and means should not be dependent upon the latest
technological advances. Yet, the approach outlined here promises to be
enhanced signifi cantly by current and future technologies. It is no easy matter
for teachers to provide individualized curricula and pedagogy for a class of
thirty elementary school students, let alone several high school classes totaling
more than one hundred students. Similarly, it is challenging to have students
provide a variety of performances and then provide meaningful feedback on
this potpourri.
Happily, we have in our grasp today technology that will allow a quantum
leap in the delivery of individualized services for both students and teachers. It
is already possible to create software that addresses the different intelligences;
that provides a range of entry points; that allows students to exhibit their
own understandings in symbol systems (linguistic, numerical, musical, and
graphic, just for starters); and that begins to allow teachers to examine student
work fl exibly and rapidly. Student work can even be examined from a distance,
thanks to e-mail, video conferencing, and the like. The development of
“intelligent computer systems” that will be able to evaluate student work and
provide relevant feedback is no longer simply a chapter from science fi ction.
In the past, it might have been possible to argue that individualized
instruction – while desirable – was simply not possible. That argument is no
longer tenable. Future reluctance will have to be justifi ed on other grounds.
My strong hunch is that such resistance is not likely to persuade students and
parents who are not experiencing success “in the usual way” and who might
benefi t from alternative forms of delivery; neither will such resistance satisfy
scholars who have arrived at new ways of conceptualizing materials, nor teachers
who are themselves dedicated to a variety of pedagogies and assessments.
Educators have always tinkered with promising technologies, and much of
the history of education chronicles the varying fates of paper, books, lecture
halls, fi lmstrips, television, computers, and other human artifacts. Current
technologies seem tailor-made to help bring into reality the kind of “MI
approach” that I have endorsed here. Still, there are no guarantees. Many
technologies have faded, and many others have been used superfi cially and
unproductively. And we cannot forget that some of the horrible events of
human history – such as the Holocaust – featured a perversion of existing
technology.
That is why any consideration of education cannot remain merely instrumental.
Not merely computers, we must ask – but computers for what? More broadly,

Multiple approaches to understanding 115
education for what? I have taken here a strong position – that education must
ultimately justify itself in terms of enhancing human understanding. But that
understanding itself is up for grabs. After all, one can use knowledge of physics
to build bridges or bombs; one can use knowledge of human beings to help
or to enslave them.
I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world
is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so
that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the
same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes
and move in productive directions.
An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what
we can do. Part of that answer lies in biology – the roots and constraints of our
species – and part of it lies in our history – what people have done in the past
and what they are capable of doing. Many topics are important but I would
argue that evolution and the Holocaust are especially important. They bear on
the possibilities of our species – for good and for evil. A student needs to know
about these topics not primarily because they may appear on an examination
but rather because they help us to chart human possibilities. Ultimately, we
must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performances of under-
standing that truly matter are the ones that we carry out as human beings in a
world that is imperfect but one that we can affect – for good or for ill.
References
Gardner, Howard (1999): The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1996): Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gould, Stephen Jay (1993): Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History.
New York: Norton.
Hirsch, E.D. (1996): The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them. New York: Doubleday.
Reigeluth, Charles M. (ed.) (1999): Instructional-Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of
Instructional Theory, Vol. 2. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Chapter 8
Biographical learning – within the
new lifelong learning discourse
Peter Alheit
Biographical research is about how people’s life courses develop through interaction between
the individual subjectivity and the societal conditions. Learning is an important part of
this interaction, and therefore biographical research of necessity includes a conception of
learning. Conversely, important learning can only be understood concretely in relation
to the biography of the learner. The German sociologist Peter Alheit, Professor at the
University of Göttingen, is a core person in the development of European biographical
research and theory, and in the following chapter, which is a further elaboration of
earlier articles, he provides an overview of the theoretical understanding of learning in
a biographical perspective.
Introduction
In the educational debate of the past 30 years – and especially during the most
recent decade – the concept of lifelong learning has been sharpened strategically
and functionally. In a certain sense, it stands for a new way of specifying the
educational tasks in the societies of late modernity. In its programmatic and
highly infl uential document on educational policy, the Memorandum on Lifelong
Learning, the European Commission stated that ‘[l]ifelong learning is no longer
just one aspect of education and training; it must become the guiding principle
for provision and participation across the full continuum of learning contexts’
(Commission of the European Communities, 2000, p. 3). Two decisive reasons
are given for this assessment:
1 Europe has moved towards a knowledge-based society and economy. More
than ever before, access to up-to-date information and knowledge, together
with the motivation and skills to use these resources intelligently on
behalf of oneself and the community as a whole, are becoming the key to
strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and improving the employability
and adaptability of the workforce;
2 Today’s Europeans live in a complex social and political world. More
than ever before, individuals want to plan their own lives, are expected
to contribute actively to society, and must learn to live positively with

Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning discourse 117
cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity. Education, in its broadest sense,
is the key to learning and understanding how to meet these challenges.
(Commission, 2000, p. 5)
This double rationale has narrowed the scope of the concept in a functionalistic
manner, on the one hand, but on the other hand it also adds precision to its
defi nition. The Memorandum explicitly states that lifelong learning relates to
all meaningful learning activities:
to the • formal learning processes that take place in the classical education
and training institutions and which usually lead to recognised diplomas
and qualifi cations,
to the • non-formal learning processes that usually take place alongside the
mainstream systems of education and training – at the workplace, in clubs
and associations, in civil society initiatives and activities, in the pursuit of
sports or musical interests – and
to • informal learning processes that are not necessarily intentional and which
are a natural accompaniment to everyday life (Commission, 2000, p. 8).
The purpose behind this new understanding of the term ‘learning’ is the
option of networking these different forms of learning in a synergistic way –
learning should not only be systematically extended to cover the entire lifespan,
but should also take place ‘lifewide’, i.e. learning environments should be
engendered in which the various types of learning can complement each other
organically. ‘The “lifewide” dimension brings the complementarity of formal,
non-formal and informal learning into sharper focus’ (Commission, 2000, p. 9).
Lifelong, ‘networked’ learning thus seems to become an economic and social
imperative of the fi rst degree. The ‘new’ concept of lifelong learning betrays
an ambition that John Field has termed ‘the new educational order’ (Field, 2000,
pp. 133ff.). Learning acquires a new meaning – for society as a whole, for
education and training institutions and for individuals. The shift in connotation
exposes an inner contradiction, however, in that this new learning is initially
‘framed’ by political and economic precepts. The goals are competitiveness,
employment and adaptive competence on the part of the workforce. The
intention is also, however, to strengthen freedom of biographical planning and
the social involvement of individuals. Lifelong learning ‘instrumentalises’ and
‘emancipates’ at one and the same time.
The following analysis will focus on the curious tensions between these two
perspectives. The fi rst part looks at the social framework for lifelong learning
– the macro-perspective, so to speak. In the second part, a particular theoretical
view on ‘education in the lifespan’ will be put forward, namely the concept of
biographical learning – the micro-perspective, if one wishes. A brief fi nal section
concentrates the fi ndings in terms of relevant research questions, which will
strengthen a development of the humanities in relation to these issues.

118 Peter Alheit
The macro-perspective: lifelong learning as reorganisation
of the education system
To begin with, however, we must explain the astonishing fact that, at the
end of the twentieth century, a global political consensus was generated on
the concept of lifelong learning (Field, 2000, pp. 3ff.). The factors triggering
this paradigm shift on an international scale in programmes for education
and training are four trends in the post-industrial societies of the Western
hemisphere, trends that mutually overlap and which led – in the words of John
Field (2000, pp. 35ff.) – to a ‘silent explosion’ at the close of the twentieth
century: the changing meaning of ‘work’, the new and totally transformed
function of knowledge, the experience of increasing dysfunctionality on the
part of mainstream education and training institutions and, in particular,
challenges facing the social actors themselves that are characterised only
roughly with labels such as ‘individualisation’ and ‘refl exive modernisation’
(Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991).
The changing nature of ‘work’ in the societies of late modernity
The twentieth century has drastically modifi ed the meaning and signifi cance of
employment. Most people spend much less of their lifetime in work than their
great-grandparents ever did. As recently as 1906, an average working year in
the UK comprised approximately 2,900 hours; in 1946, the fi gure had fallen
to 2,440; and in 1988, to a mere 1,800 hours (see Hall, 1999, p. 427). Changes
have also occurred to the ‘inner structure’ of work. The large-scale shift of jobs
from the industrial sector to the services sector is merely a superfi cial symptom
of the changes taking place. The more crucial aspect is that the notion of a
consistent ‘working life’ is fi nally a thing of the past, even granting that women
were traditionally excluded anyway. Average employment no longer means
practising one and the same occupation over a substantial span of one’s life,
but now involves alternating phases of work and further training, voluntary
and involuntary discontinuities of occupation, innovative career switching
strategies and even self-chosen alternation between employment and family-
centred phases (see Alheit, 1992).
This trend has not only challenged people’s expectations regarding the
classical life-course regime (Kohli, 1985) and made individual life planning
a much riskier enterprise, but it also poses new problems for the institutions
involved, in their capacity as ‘structuring agents of the life course’ – namely
the agencies of the employment system and the labour market, the social and
pension insurance institutions, but above all, the institutions of the education
system. It is they who must compensate for the consequences of deregulation
and fl exibility in the labour market, provide support for unanticipated and
risk-laden status passages and transitions to ‘modernised’ life courses and strike
a new balance between the options held by individual actors, on the one hand,

Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning discourse 119
and the functional imperatives of the institutional ‘meso-level’, on the other.
As an innovative instrument for managing essential ‘life politics’, lifelong
learning is the obvious answer.
The new function of knowledge
This idea of managing life politics seems all the more necessary the more
diffuse its subject matter starts to become. The trivial, overriding consensus
that, in the wake of the technological innovations engendered by the post-
industrial information society, knowledge has become the key resource of the
future conceals the perplexity over the actual function and character of this
knowledge. The core issue, quite obviously, is not simply to disseminate and
distribute a defi nable stock of knowledge as effi ciently as possible, nor is it the
fact that all areas of life are subjected to increasing scientifi cation (Stehr, 2002),
but rather it is a phenomenon that expands successively by virtue of the specifi c
uses to which it is put, and which devalues itself again to a certain degree.
Knowledge is no longer that ‘cultural capital’ that, according to Bourdieu,
determines social structures and guarantees its astonishing persistence through
ever-recurring reproduction (Bourdieu, 1984). Knowledge is a kind of ‘grey
capital’ (Field, 2000, p. 1) that generates new, virtual economies. The stock
market crash of the New Economy in 2000 is merely one dark side of the almost
intangible quality of ‘new knowledge’.
The communication and interaction networks of the IT age, which have long
since permeated, extended and modifi ed the realms of conventional industrial
production and the character of classical services and administrations, remain
dependent – more so than traditional forms of knowledge in the past – on
the individual user. The latter’s personal options in respect to the new, virtual
markets – his/her contacts, productive inputs and consumer habits in the
Internet – are what create the future forms of knowledge. The knowledge of
the information society is doing knowledge, a kind of lifestyle that determines
the structures of society far beyond the purely occupational domain and lends
them a dynamic of ever-shorter cycles.
This very quality of ‘new knowledge’ now necessitates fl exible feedback
procedures, complex self-management checks and permanent quality man-
agement. In the process, the nature of education and learning is dramatically
changed (Stehr, 2002). They no longer entail the communication and
dissemination of fi xed bodies of knowledge, values or skills, but rather a
kind of ‘knowledge osmosis’ for ensuring what must now be a permanent and
continuous exchange between individual knowledge production and organised
knowledge management. The idea of lifelong learning, and especially self-
managed learning, seems highly predestined for this process – as a framework
concept at least.

120 Peter Alheit
The dysfunctionality of the established educational institutions
The conditions thus generated by a knowledge society in the making render
classical teaching–learning settings problematic – above all, the idea that
accompanied the ‘fi rst career’ of the lifelong learning label in the early 1970s
– the human capital theory. The latter concept measures, as it were, the capital
invested in education and training according to the length of full-time
schooling and assumes that extending its duration will have positive impacts
on willingness to engage in lifelong learning (for a critique, see Schuller,
1998; Field, 2000, p. 135). A number of recent empirical studies, particularly
in Great Britain (e.g. Tavistock Institute, 1999; Schuller and Field, 1999),
provide evidence that the very opposite is the case – simply extending primary
schooling, without drastic changes to the conditional framework and the
quality of the learning process, led in the majority of those affected to a loss
of motivation and to an instrumental attitude to learning that is in no way
conducive to continued, self-managed learning in later phases of life, but which
tends rather to suppress such learning (Schuller and Field, 1999).
Lifelong learning as it is now conceived requires a kind of paradigm shift in
the organisation of learning – not in adulthood, but in the very fi rst forms of
schooling. The goals for orientation are no longer effi cient learning, effective
didactic strategies and consistent formal curricula, but rather the emphasis
on the situation and the prerequisites on the part of learners (Bentley, 1998).
This also means addressing non-formal and informal options for learning. The
key educational question is no longer how certain material can be taught as
successfully as possible, but which learning environments can best stimulate
self-determined learning – in other words, how learning itself can be learned
(Simons, 1992; Smith, 1992).
Of course, this perspective must also include the conveying of basic
qualifi cations such as reading, writing, arithmetic or computer literacy, but
even these basic skills must be linked to practical experience; the owners of
cognitively acquired skills must be able to combine these with social and
emotional competencies. Enabling such options demands a high degree of
institutional ‘self-refl exivity’ on the part of education and training institutions
in their classical form. They must accept that they, too, must become ‘learning
organisations’. The necessity of preparing their clientele for lifelong, self-
determined learning implies a concept of lifewide learning, or ‘holistic learning’.
Schools must network with the community to which they relate, with
companies, associations, churches and organisations that are active in that
district, and with the families of the schoolchildren in their care. They have to
discover new locations for learning and invent other learning environments.
Recent school development concepts, particularly those in which the separate
institutions are granted substantial autonomy, are certainly providing for greater
scope. What is valid for schools is equally valid, of course, for universities,
adult education facilities and public administration academies. As John Field

Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning discourse 121
correctly points out, lifelong learning necessitates a ‘new educational order’ (Field,
2000, pp. 133ff.) – a ‘silent revolution’ in education.
Individualisation and reflexive modernisation
This demand is neither absurd nor utopian when one looks at the situation faced
by a growing group of society’s members. The demands levelled at individuals
in the second half of the twentieth century changed considerably. Economic
factors are by no means the only ones responsible – social and cultural changes
also play a critical role. Despite the continuation of social inequalities, the
bonds to social milieus and classical mentalities have become looser (Beck,
1992). Patterns of orientation have become more localised and tend to relate
more now to generational or gender-based experience, to the perception of
one’s own ethnicity or even to preferences for certain lifestyles (Alheit, 1999).
Infl ationary changes in the range of information and consumer products on
offer have dramatically increased the number of options open to the members
of society (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991). Life courses are therefore much less
predictable than in the past. What is more, the compulsion to make decisions
on a continual basis and to perform incessant changes of orientation is being
devolved to the individuals themselves to an increasingly clear extent.
This visible trend towards individualisation of the life-course regime and
the concomitant pressure to engage in continuous ‘refl exivity’ on one’s own
actions has led – as expressed in the prominent theses of Ulrich Beck or
Anthony Giddens – to a different, refl exive modernity. Yet to be able to handle
this different modernity (Beck, 1992), individuals need completely new and
fl exible structures of competence that can only be established and developed
within lifelong learning processes (see Field, 2000, pp. 58ff.). And it demands
fundamental changes in the entire educational system.
Contours of a new educational economy?
The astonishing consensus that appears to reign on these doubtlessly plausible
and complementary analyses of the age we live in extends from representatives
of the traditional business community, to protagonists of the New Economy,
to education experts in the modernised left-wing parties. What makes that
consensus problematic is its indifference to the social consequences that would
be unleashed if such educational policies were implemented without a measure
of distance. The delusion of a lifelong learning society does nothing whatsoever
to eradicate the selection and exclusion mechanisms of the ‘old’ educational
system. Indeed, it may conceal and exacerbate those mechanisms instead (see
Field, 2000, pp. 103ff.).
It can already be shown with present empirical evidence that labour market
segments requiring low skill levels are in chronic decline (OECD, 1997a).
In other words, the expectations of the ‘knowledge society’ are raising the

122 Peter Alheit
pressure on individuals to meet certain standards of skills and knowledge
before they can be employed. The risks of exclusion for those who fail to meet
those standards are more draconian than was ever the case in bygone industrial
societies. Of course, the logic of exclusion is by no means new – class and gender
remain the decisive indicators (Field, 2000, pp. 115ff.). As would be expected,
age plays an increasingly signifi cant role (Tuckett and Sargant, 1999). Anyone
who never had the chance to learn how to learn will not make any effort to
acquire new skills late in the life course.
The crude mechanisms of economic valuation prompt a sceptical view of any
future scenario for the learning society – a small majority of ‘winners’, but with
a ‘life sentence’ to learn, may close its borders to a growing minority of ‘losers’
who never had a chance, or who voluntarily liberated themselves from the
straitjacket of having to perpetually acquire and market new knowledge. The
OECD forecast, in any case, comes close enough to the scenario just painted:
For those who have successful experience of education, and who see
themselves as capable learners, continuing learning is an enriching
experience, which increases their sense of control over their own lives
and their society. For those who are excluded from this process, however,
or who choose not to participate, the generalisation of lifelong learning
may only have the effect of increasing their isolation from the world of
the ‘knowledge-rich’. The consequences are economic, in under-used
human capacity and increased welfare expenditure, and social, in terms of
alienation and decaying social infrastructure.
(OECD, 1997b, p. 1)
Alternatives are therefore needed.
A reasonable consequence would be to realise that lifelong learning cannot
be reduced to investment in short-lived, exploitable economic capital, but that
it must also be an investment – of equal value – in social capital, in the way we
treat those next to us: the family, the neighbour, the co-worker, the other club
members, the people we meet in citizen’s action groups or at the bar counter
(see Field, 2000, pp. 145ff.). In this fi eld of life, we are all lifelong learners.
Nobody is excluded from the outset. Everyone is an expert. Shrinkage of this
type of capital – declining trust, the moratorium on solidarity that Robert D.
Putnam identifi ed years ago not just in US society (Putnam, 1995) – is also
economically counterproductive in the medium term. A balance between these
two intractable types of capital, on the other hand, could lead to a new kind of
‘educational economy’ or, more correctly perhaps, to a social ecology of learning
in modern, modernised societies. However, the precondition for such balance
is that learning individuals be taken more seriously – which would also involve
a shift in analytic perspective.

Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning discourse 123
The micro-perspective: aspects of a phenomenology of
biographical learning
So far we have talked about societal changes affecting the modern biography
from a specifi c perspective, namely the structural perspective. And for good
reason, since our lives are embedded in structures and cannot be extracted
arbitrarily. Nevertheless, it would be theoretical foolishness to describe life
and learning from this one perspective alone. If we view the problems that we
typically encounter from the perspective of the subject, then ‘structure’ obtains
an extraordinarily plastic character.
The ‘hidden capacity’ to lead our own lives
As biographical subjects we do indeed have the feeling of being the ‘organisers’
of our life course. Even when things do not run the way we hoped or expected
they would, we perform corrections to our life plans under the impression that
we do so with personal autonomy. In other words, the conscious disposition
towards our biography can be understood as an intentional action scheme. The
dominant attitude that we have to our own biography is one of planning.
We are referring here to more than the ‘big plans’ that we cultivate for our
lives – the dream job, the political career, house-building, fi nding a ‘good
match’ – but also our plans for the weekend or the following afternoon, or
what programmes we want to watch on TV. We decide, for example, to lose
10 pounds in weight or to give up smoking, and even succeed in doing so.
All of this conveys to us the impression that we hold our own lives in our own
hands and that we are the subjects of our biography. But this impression could
be exceptionally problematic, and not only because fate could deal us a blow
at any time, making us irrecoverably ill or unemployed, or making us lose a
loved one or all that we possess. The point is rather that our supposed autonomy
of action and autonomous planning is subordinated to ‘processual structures’
in our biography that we can influence to only a very marginal extent:
institutional procedures like schooling or vocational training, trajectories like
unemployment or a drug career, unconscious needs like a late coming-out as
homosexual.
What is important is the fi nding that our basic feeling – that we can act
relatively independently over our own biographies – does not necessarily
confl ict with the fact that the greater part of our biographical activities are
either fi xed to a large degree or require various ‘supporters’ to initiate them.
It therefore appears plausible that the feeling is not actually an intentional
action scheme at all, or a consciously desired biographical plan, but is instead
a kind of hidden ‘meaning’ behind the alternating processual structures of our
life course: the no-doubt ubiquitous, but strategically not always available
intuition that for all the contradiction, we are still dealing with our lives.
We entertain this unique ‘background idea’ of ourselves not in spite of, but

124 Peter Alheit
precisely because of the structural limitations imposed by our social and
ethnic origins, our gender and the era in which we are living. Structure and
subjectivity form an important combination here, the dissolution of which
can lead to crisis. Such crises obviously affect more than ourselves and our
capacities. They also depend on structures. ‘Life constructions’ are generated
between the twin poles of structure and subjectivity, and constructions only
contain elements of reality if they also have a retroactive effect on underlying
structures. This leads us to the fi nal and most important idea relating to the
consequences that the idea of biographical learning has for educational theory
in the wider sense.
Learning processes within transition
Life constructions extend beyond what we narrate about our lives. They are
hidden references to the structural conditions that are imposed on us. Bourdieu
(1984) has provided convincing evidence of this fact, using his concept of
habitus: the hidden way we express ourselves, the way we talk, think and eat,
walk and dress. Our habitus shows us the limits of our social origins. But there
is another side to life constructions: in the course of our lives we produce more
meaning relating to ourselves and our social framework that we can actually
have from the perspective of our refl exive biographical concern with self. We
dispose of a biographical background knowledge with which we are able to
fi ll out and utilise to the full the social space in which we move. None of us
have all conceivable possibilities open to us. But within the framework of a
restricted modifi cation potential, we have more opportunities than we will
ever put into practice. Our biography therefore contains a sizeable potential
of ‘unlived life’ (Weizsäcker, 1956). Intuitive knowledge about it is part of
our ‘practical consciousness’ (Giddens, 1984). It is not accessible on a simple
refl exive basis, but in a double sense it represents a very unusual resource for
educational processes:
Our prescriptive knowledge about life constructions which accompany •
us but which we have not implemented, or at least not yet, keeps the
refl exively available reference to self fundamentally open and creates the
preconditions for us to take a different attitude towards ourselves without
having to revise this ‘hidden’ meaning. The processual structures of our
life course, the dynamics of their emergence at the surface, suggest an
extension or a restriction of autonomous biographical action. Conscious
‘ratifi cation’ of them is our own responsibility as the subject of our own
biography. We are, in a certain sense, ‘autopoietic systems’, to use an
irritating and yet stimulating concept from Luhmann’s systems theory.
We possess the chance to identify the surplus meanings in our experience
of life and to appropriate them for a conscious change in our self- and
world-referentiality.

Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning discourse 125
Biographical background knowledge is at the same time, however, •
an emergent potential for changing structures. The modification of
individual self- and world-referents – even in the limited context of
specifi c life constructions – contains opportunities for the transformation
of the institutional framework conditions of social existence. Substantial
elements of these ‘structures’ are the unquestioned certainties functioning
in the background to which social individuals relate intuitively when they
act on the everyday plane, but also when they act biographically. As soon as
such prescripts – or only parts of them – enter our awareness and become
available, then structures begin to change. Unlived life does indeed possess
socially explosive force.
The dynamics of this ‘double educational resource’ awaken associations with
the enlightening option in classical psychoanalysis: ‘Where Id was, Ego shall
be’. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the important issue
is not only the self-assured, strong ego dealing with a basic dynamic that is
otherwise unchangeable, but is also the transition to a new quality of self- and
world-referentiality – a process that leaves neither the learning subject nor the
surrounding structural context unchanged. In other words, we are dealing here
with learning processes within transitions (Alheit, 1993). Transitional learning
processes are in a certain sense ‘abductive’. They implement what is described
in early American pragmatism, particularly by Charles Sanders Peirce, as the
ability to network something that ‘we would never previously have dreamed
could be combined’ (Peirce, 1991 [1903], p. 181).
This ability requires, of course, a social actor. Knowledge can only be
genuinely transitional if it is biographical knowledge. Solely when specifi c
individuals relate to their lifeworld in such a way that their self-refl exive
activities begin to shape social contexts is contact established with that key
qualifi cation of modernity, what I have termed elsewhere ‘biographicity’ (Alheit,
1992). Biographicity means that we can redesign again and again, from scratch,
the contours of our life within the specifi c contexts in which we (have to) spend
it, and that we experience these contexts as shapeable and designable. In our
biographies, we do not possess all conceivable opportunities, but within the
framework of the limits we are structurally set, we still have considerable
scope open to us. The main issue is to decipher the ‘surplus meanings’ of our
biographical knowledge, and that in turns means perceiving the potentiality
of our unlived lives.
However, refl exive learning processes do not take place exclusively inside
the individual, but depend on communication and interaction with others and
relations to a social context. Biographical learning is embedded in lifeworlds
that can be analysed under certain conditions as ‘learning environments’ or
‘learning milieus’ (see Lave and Wenger, 1991). Learning within and through
one’s life history is therefore interactive and socially structured, on the one
hand, but it also follows its own individual logic that is generated by the

126 Peter Alheit
specifi c, biographically layered structure of experience. The biographical
structure does not determine the learning process, because it is an open
structure that has to integrate the new experience it gains through interacting
with the world, with others and with itself. On the other hand, it signifi cantly
affects the way in which new experience is formed and built into a biographical
learning process. Biographical learning is both a constructionist achievement of the
individual integrating new experiences into the self-referential ‘architectonic’
of particular personal past experiences and a social process which makes subjects
competent and able to actively shape and change their social world (Alheit
and Dausien, 2000).
New research questions on an international lifelong
learning agenda
It seems, indeed, that any serious, analytical involvement with the complex
phenomenon of lifelong learning will be contingent on a paradigm shift among
educationalists:
at the social • macro-level, in respect of a new policy for education and
training that aims at striking a different balance between economic,
cultural and social capital;
at the institutional • meso-level, also in respect of a new self-refl exivity of
organisations that should conceive of themselves as ‘environments’ and
‘agencies’ of complex learning and knowledge resources, and no longer as
the administrators and conveyors of codifi ed, dominant knowledge (Field,
2000);
at the individual • micro-level, with regard to the increasingly complicated
linkages and processing accomplished by the specifi c actors in the face of
the social and media-related challenges of late modernity, which call for
a new quality in the individual and collective construction of meanings
(Alheit, 1999).
We still know too little, in fact, about the systemic balances between economic
and social capital. We hardly know anything yet about that ‘grey capital’ of
new knowledge (Field, 2000, p. 1) and its impacts on long-term learning
processes. Of course, the comparison of different types of post-industrial society
– e.g. the distinct differences between Danish or British or German strategies
for arriving at a learning society – makes it worthwhile to carry out systematic
international comparisons of educational economics.
Yet we have only scraps of information about the institutional prerequisites
for the paradigm shift required:
What pressures to change are operating on education and training
institutions? […] What concepts and measures are applied and accepted

Biographical learning – within the new lifelong learning discourse 127
as best practice in the fields of quality management, organisational
development and personnel development? What theoretical and empirical
conditions justify speaking of educational establishments as ‘learning
organisations’?
(Forschungsmemorandum, 2000, p. 13)
We are discovering more and more new, more complex and riskier status
passages and transitions in modern life courses. We observe astonishing and
creative (re-)constructions in individual biographies (Alheit, 1993; Dausien,
1996). However, we are still missing a systematically elaborated theory of
biographical and situated learning: ‘In which learning cultures and dependencies
of supra-individual patterns, mentalities and milieus does individual learning
develop? What implicit learning potentials and learning processes are shown
in social milieus and groups (e.g. within families and between generations)?’
(Forschungsmemorandum, 2000, p. 5)
These open research questions are raised by the ‘new concept’ of lifelong
learning. They include the idea that social learning is obviously – more
than ever before in history – an achievement of the subjects concerned. The
biographicity of learning affects institutional and even societal macro-structures.
Jacque Delors, in his famous UNESCO report (1996), called it ‘The treasure
within’. We may add: it should be understood as an important social and
cultural capital for the future development of civil societies.
References
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Education in the Federal Republic of Germany: Scholarly Approaches and Professional Practice.
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Alheit, P. (1993) ‘Transitorische Bildungsprozesse: Das “biographische Paradigma” in der
Weiterbildung’ [Transformative learning processes: The ‘biographical paradigm’ in adult
education] in: Mader, W. (Ed.) Weiterbildung und Gesellschaft. Grundlagen wissenschaftlicher
und berufl icher Praxis in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2nd edition. Bremen: University of
Bremen Press, pp. 343–418.
Alheit, P. (1999) ‘On a contradictory way to the ‘Learning Society’: A critical approach,’ Studies
in the Education of Adults 31 (1), pp. 66–82.
Alheit, P. and Dausien, B. (2000) ‘“Biographicity” as a basic resource of lifelong learning’ in:
Alheit, P., Beck, J., Kammler, E., Salling Olesen, H. and Taylor, R. (Eds.) Lifelong Learning
Inside and Outside Schools, Vol. 2. Roskilde: RUC, pp. 400–422.
Beck, U. (1992 [1986]) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Bentley, T. (1998) Learning Beyond the Classroom: Education for a Changing World. London:
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Commission of the European Communities (2000) A Memorandum on Lifelong Learning. Brussels:
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128 Peter Alheit
Dausien, B. (1996) Biographie und Geschlecht. Zur biographischen Konstruktion sozialer Wirklichkeit
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Field, J. (2000) Lifelong Learning and the New Educational Order. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham
Books.
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Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
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P. and Kammler, E. (Eds.) Lifelong Learning and Its Impact on Social and Regional Development.
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der Kamp, M. (Eds.) Learning Across the Lifespan: Theories, Research, Policies. Oxford: Pergamon
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Learning 1999. Leicester: NIACE.
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Ruprecht.

Chapter 9
Life cycles and learning cycles
John Heron
Briton John Heron is primarily known as the developer of the participatory research
method in the social sciences called “co-operative inquiry”. In the 1970s, Heron was
the founder and director of the Human Potential Research Project at the University of
Surrey. Later he worked with whole-person medicine in the British Postgraduate Medical
Foundation at the University of London and was the director of the International Centre
for Co-operative Inquiry in Volterra in Italy. Since 2000, he has been the director of
the South Pacifi c Centre for Human Inquiry in Auckland, New Zealand. In 1992, he
described the theoretical basis of his understanding in the book Feeling and Person-
hood: Psychology in Another Key. In this book he used the area of learning as a case
to illustrate his approach. The following chapter is made up of Chapter 11 and part of
Chapter 12 of this book (in chapter 13 he goes on to formal learning, and in general
a full understanding of his learning model implies a study of the preceding chapters).
An overview
In this chapter, I present my understanding of the processes of living and
learning as they can be derived from my theory of the person (Heron, 1992).
This leads to a series of models and maps – structural conjectures – which the
reader is invited to entertain as a set of lenses through which to view different
aspects of living and learning. Because these lenses give a selective view,
however much they may illuminate, they also constrain. They do not depict
reality; they offer no more than possible ways of construing our experience.
They focus on just one kind of story, among many other conceivable ones, about
how we live and learn. But I believe the story is a useful one.
Many of the models are not only depictions of a process but also practical
prescriptions about a possible way of managing some way of living and learning.
Again, any such prescription is a tentative proposal, a working hypothesis,
something it might be worth trying out in an experimental and critical way. It
is a recommendation, not a solution; an invitation to inquiry, not a dogma; an
exploratory project, not a panacea.
This chapter refl ects the dynamic interplay of life and mind, which is the
basic polarity of my theory of the person. It is about everyday living and

130 John Heron
everyday learning. The fi rst of these is daily experience without any thought
of learning from it; the second means the conscious intent to learn through
such experience. I look at both these in terms of the four psychological modes
– affective, imaginal, conceptual, practical – each including a basic polarity
between an individuating function and a participatory one. They are conceived
as a cycle, but with the up-hierarchy metaphor as the underlying rationale, i.e.
that the later-mentioned mode is not controlled and ruled but branching and
fl owering out of the earlier-mentioned mode(s).
Everyday living cycles are called life cycles, and everyday learning cycles are
called learning cycles. They may involve only the individuating modes, and then
I call them cycles of the ego, since the ego is only busy with the individuating
modes. Or they may engage the participatory modes as well, in which case I call
them cycles of the person. Again, cycles of the ego or the person may be basic
cycles or reversal cycles, in which the conceptual comes before the imaginal.
After discussing the life cycle and learning cycle of the ego, I explore some of
the distressed states into which the ego can become locked. Then I move on to
the life cycle and learning cycle of the person.
The cyclic process
The metaphor of a basic cycle portrays the ground process of the psyche, its
fl ow of life through the four modes in a continuous rhythmic pulse. Derived
from the up-hierarchy and its ground in affect, this cycle starts from the
affective mode and proceeds through the imaginal, the conceptual and the
practical to return to the affective, and so on. The individuating version of
this basic cycle is depicted in Figure 9.1. It is the cycle of the ego, busy with
the individuating modes – emotion, imagery, discrimination, action – that
cluster round the claims of daily subsistence; the participatory functions are
minimally or tacitly involved.
In this cycle the individuating modes exclude any conscious use of the
participatory modes. In the basic cycle of the person, by contrast, conscious
use of the participatory modes of feeling, intuition, refl ection and intention
includes the individuating modes, which are thus set within an extended
awareness. Life is more considered: daily subsistence is realigned within an
attunement to the wider scheme of things.
When I refer to a ‘life cycle’ I do not, of course, mean the course of a person’s
entire life, but simply the continuous cyclic succession of modes going on minute
by minute and hour by hour in everyday living. The frequency of the rhythm will
change a lot over any given day, with long and short cycles and overlapping cycles.
As well as the basic cycle, to do with the psyche’s ground process, there is
the reversal cycle when the psyche is reorganizing its ground process so that it
functions with new content. I stress that the reversal cycle is only one form of
reorganization: it just happens to be the one I choose to focus on in this chapter.
By using the model of the cycle, I can show the psychological modes involved

Life cycles and learning cycles 131
with all three basic polarities: in the ego and person cycles the polarity between
individuation and participation, in the basic and reversal cycles the polarity
between ground process and reorganization, and in life cycles and learning
cycles the polarity between life and mind. I don’t cover all possible combinations
of these, just some of the ones I am more familiar with.
The basic life cycle of the ego
This basic cycle involves the individuating modes of emotion, imagery, dis-
crimination and action (with the participatory only subliminally involved).
They are grounded in the overall emotional pattern which the person has
acquired in the development of the ego and start from some immediate, active
component of it. This egoic pattern is a systematic way of being fulfi lled or
frustrated in life. The emotional need felt now is an index of how the pattern
seeks to infl uence behaviour in order to maintain itself. And the infl uence is
fi rst exerted through an image or selected percept. Once this image is launched
the cycle is well under way: discrimination and action are simply means to the
envisaged goal.
The ego is defined as a case of mistaken identity: the person unawarely
identifi es – at the expense of the whole person – with a compulsive pursuit
of individuation so that it becomes distorted in the direction of separateness,
alienation and rigidity of self. The life cycle here is not only conservative, it is
defensively so: it is keeping the participatory modes at bay through the subject-
object split; and it is also warding off the pain of primal wounding and the
deep tensions of the human condition.
Figure 9.1 portrays the life cycle of the ego in the world of existence.
‘Imagery’ in this context basically means perception and memory. This is the
cycle the ego continuously moves round in its everyday experience from hour
to hour. The baseline of the cycle, and its starting point, is the individual’s
current emotional state, which is the felt fulfi lment or frustration of its needs
in the immediate world of existence. This infl uences perception of the present
situation, within which the ego discriminates and makes relevant distinctions
to service the actions that will satisfy its needs. Such actions will modify its
emotional state, leading to the generation of a new cycle.
The four stages of the cycle can be very simply illustrated. Thus an indi vidual
(1) feels hungry; (2) looks around the kitchen to see what there is to eat; (3)
selectively discriminates among the items to formulate a menu; and (4) cooks
a meal and eats it. Next, the same person (1) feels the need to relax; (2) looks
through the television programmes in the paper; (3) selectively discriminates
among the programmes to make a viewing schedule; and (4) turns on the TV
set and watches. And so on.
In terms of basic polarities, someone in this cycle is individuating only, is
identifi ed with a restricted ground process, and is living only – with learning
reduced virtually to nil.

132 John Heron
The basic learning cycle of the ego
When its changing emotional state is relatively free from past affl ictions,
then the ego can choose to learn, by trial and error, and by social infl uence,
what perceptions, discriminations and actions lead to felt fulfilment or
frustration of its concerns. The life cycle then becomes a simple learning cycle
utilizing feedback: the negative emotional outcomes of one cycle will be used
to modify or change perception, discrimination or action in the next; and
positive outcomes will reinforce those parts of the cycle that lead to them.
Comments from others may aid this process. The individual learns through
daily experience to get what he or she wants out of life.
In such ego learning, shown in Figure 9.2, the world is defi ned by deeds
that satisfy one’s needs and wants: it is the realm of everyday existence, its
individual and socialized desires. The learning is mainly practical, that is,
learning how to act in order to achieve these satisfactions. There is not much
learning about the world as such going on, since the world is reduced by
activism to those parameters that satisfy one’s wants.
For the basic life cycle to become this simple everyday learning cycle, two
qualities are needed as well as relative freedom from past affl iction. First, a
measure of mindfulness throughout the cycle, being aware of what is going on
at each stage, and of how each stage infl uences the next. And second, a suffi cient
concentration of attention next time around the cycle to try out alternative
ways of managing each of the stages. These are the twin signs that the mind is
at work: some inclusive awareness and some focused awareness, both informed
by the intention to grasp what is going on.
In Figure 9.2, mindfulness, the extra margin of awareness, is shown as an
outer circle around the modes; and concentration is shown as a cross in the
1
2 3
4
imagery
imaginal
mode
THE WORLD
OF EXISTENCE
discrimination
conceptual
mode
action
practical
mode
emotion
affective
mode
Figure 9.1 The basic life cycle of the ego.

Life cycles and learning cycles 133
middle of the world of existence. In terms of basic polarities, someone involved
with this cycle is individuating only, but with both intuition and refl ection a
little less tacitly involved; is identifi ed with a restricted ground process; and is
learning as well as living, although the learning is subordinate to a restricted
kind of living.
Distressed egos
The ego’s changing state is from time to time affl icted by repressed distress
from the individual’s past. This happens when the current situation echoes
traumatic early life events which fi xated the psyche on unmet needs and
consequent pain. The ego then unawarely sees the situation in terms of these
events: it reproduces in its present life a symbolic equivalent of the traumatic
past, and its behaviour is compulsively distorted by the old buried longings
and hurts. It is as if it is trying to create a current justifi cation for feeling
haunted by buried affl iction and for being stuck with a strategy of surviving by
identifying with frustration and hurt. It is also as if it is seeking to reproduce
the problem until at last it can attract the attention of someone who can come
forward, interrupt the whole production and break the old spell.
In this case the basic cycle will be a treadmill, with felt need, perception,
discrimination and action being unawarely caught in reproducing the closed
distorted loop of the past. Figure 9.3 portrays the predicament. So, for
example, a person has a repressed frozen need for the love they never got as
a child; they unconsciously project this longing on to someone who cannot
assuage it; they rationalize all this as meeting their adult needs; and this
launches them into compulsive symbolic re-enactment of their frustrating past.
Figure 9.2 The basic learning cycle of the ego.
1
2 3
4
imagery
imaginal
mode
THE WORLD
OF EXISTENCE
discrimination
conceptual
mode
action
practical
mode
emotion
affective
mode

134 John Heron
Doing so displaces the frozen need and repressed pain while reinforcing them
and keeping them in place. There is no possibility of learning from experience.
This pathological loop may overlap many cycles that characterize behaviour
in more obvious and external terms. So however you fill out Figure 9.1
showing the basic life cycle of the ego, this distressed ego life cycle may be
simultaneously involved.
Compulsive roles of the distressed ego
The classic roles of the affl icted ego, both in relation to itself and in relation
with others, are those of the compulsive victim, the compulsive rescuer,
the compulsive rebel and the compulsive oppressor. They correspond to the
four stages of the distressed ego cycle, as if each stage can also turn into a
subpersonality in its own disturbed right. The victim role represents the
repressed distress and frozen needs. The rescuer role personifi es the projection
of frozen needs onto the current situation in the hope that they can be met. The
rebel characterizes the defensive rationalization that refuses to acknowledge the
truth of what is really going on. The oppressor portrays the compulsion to act
in maladaptive and distorted ways.
Figure 9.4 shows the treadmill of compulsive ego roles. Applied within one
ego on its own and not in interaction with anyone else, an individual (1) feels
lowly, crushed and bad about him- or herself in some respect; (2) tries to do
something about it in some inappropriate way; (3) gives this effort up with a
rationalized refusal to acknowledge there is a problem; and then (4) punishes
him- or herself with accusations of impotence and incompetence. He or she
then (1) feels crushed and lowly and begins the cycle again. The point of the
four-wheel treadmill is that each role propels the next. The victim runs the
Figure 9.3 The distressed ego life cycle.
1
2 3
4
projected archaic
traumatic scenario
imaginal conceptual
affective practical
defensive
rationalization
compulsive
distorted behaviour
repressed pain
and frozen need

Life cycles and learning cycles 135
rescuer, who drives the rebel, who alerts the oppressor, who controls the victim.
If two interacting people are involved, then they share a two-person treadmill:
when one is victim, the other is rescuer; when one is rescuer, the other is rebel;
when one is rebel, the other is oppressor; and when one is oppressor the other
is victim. So if you are compulsively down, and a partner inappropriately tries
to help you, you rebel, the partner then accuses you, you irrationally sink again
and so on.
There are many variations of this. You may be down, then ask for inappro-
priate help; when it is given, you reject it; your partner attacks you for this and
you go down again and so on. Or you are driven to help your partner in some
ill-conceived way; the partner rebels; you accuse him or her of ingratitude; he or
she sinks in compulsive guilt and so on. So one person oscillates between victim
and rebel, while the other is in a complementary swing between oppressor and
rescuer, and at any point they may switch their allegiances, the one who was
victim and rebel becoming oppressor and rescuer, and vice versa.
Whatever the variation, basically the two people are trading guilt and blame,
passing it to and fro, because guilt and blame were imposed on them in early
years, wounding their capacity for loving and congealing it in emotional
pain. Thereafter the repressed pain of the wound is displaced into adult guilt
and blame behaviours. The psychological colleagues of guilt and blame are
collusion and denial. Two people locked into trading guilt and blame are
colluding in acting out archaic scenarios, while at the same time denying to
themselves and each other that it is going on.
Deeply irrational guilt makes a person identify and collude with a pathological
relationship. The more collusion, the more the person has defensively to deny
the pathology, leading to a build-up of repressed material which overfl ows into
blaming behaviour, which fl ips the partner into their own rapid circuit of
Figure 9.4 Compulsive roles of the distressed ego.
1
2 3
4
projected archaic
traumatic scenario
Rescuer Rebel
Victim Oppressor
defensive
rationalization
compulsive
distorted behaviour
repressed pain
and frozen need

136 John Heron
guilt, collusion, denial and counter-blame. Figure 9.5 shows this version of
the cycle.
The reversal learning cycle of the ego
Here a person is interrupting the basic life cycle of the ego using the reversal cycle.
So the ego’s ground process is being reorganized for the purposes of learning how
to live more effectively. Now I don’t believe that all reversal cycles are necessarily
learning cycles. For example, I think you can analyse the process of repression in
terms of a subliminal reversal cycle, and that is to do with psychological survival:
it is about negative living, not about learning. But here I am choosing a reversal
cycle which does involve learning, not just living.
So this reversal learning cycle interrupts the first leg of the basic cycle
(which moves promptly from emotion to imagery) and goes instead from
emotion to discrimination. So as soon as the current, active component of the
egoic emotional pattern arises, the individual discriminates its nature and
its propensity to generate a certain kind of image and replaces this with a
different kind of image, which leads directly to a different kind of action and
outcome. The reversal cycle goes from emotion to discrimination to imagery
to action, instead of the basic route from emotion to imagery to discrimination
to action.
This goes against the grain of the basic life cycle. It is ‘unnatural’, revisionary,
a reversal of the established, conservative scheme of things. It interrupts
the normal order and coherence of the psyche, so it requires alert inward
discrimination and motivation to get it going.
The cycle will be used until there is a shift in the underlying emotional
pattern and its associated imagery, so that the basic cycle is re-established at a
Figure 9.5 Guilt and blame of the distressed ego.
1
2 3
4
projected archaic
traumatic scenario
Collusion Denial
Guilt Blame
defensive
rationalization
compulsive
distorted behaviour
repressed pain
and frozen need

Life cycles and learning cycles 137
different level and in different terms. The individual is learning how to live in
a way that frees behaviour from unwanted habits or the distorting effects of an
affl icted past. This is a more sophisticated kind of everyday learning compared
to the basic learning cycle of the ego, which simply involves learning how to act
in order to achieve ego satisfactions. But note that both of them are concerned
mainly with practical learning.
Figure 9.6 illustrates the reversal cycle in arrows and the old, interrupted
basic cycle as a circle. To give an example: anxiety (1) about an impending
appoint ment is about to launch the image of an oppressive encounter. But
this image propensity doesn’t get off the ground, because the aware individual
spots it (2), substitutes the image (3) of a challenging meeting, follows this
through into action (4) and reaps its emotional rewards (1). This way there
is the possibility of establishing a new kind of basic cycle with a different
underlying pattern, in which the emotion of excitement generates an image
of a challenging encounter.
What this sort of reversal learning cycle proposes is that innovation in
individuated behaviour involves a discriminating substitution of imagery.
‘Substitution’ is perhaps hardly the word: what is involved is the insertion of
an image to banish an image propensity. And while these are not symbolized
in the fi gure, the use of the cycle presupposes mindfulness and concentration
informed by the learning intention. In terms of basic polarities, someone using
this cycle is individuating primarily, but with both intuition and refl ection more
noticeably involved; is reorganizing a restricted ground process; and is learning
through living, with the learning here widening out the living. So this is work
on opening up the ego.
A classic use of this reversal cycle in everyday life is to interrupt restimulated
old hurt so that it does not drive the distressed cycle of the ego and is not acted
out in compulsive behaviour. For repressed pain can be activated by those features
Figure 9.6 The reversal learning cycle of the ego.
1
23
4
imagery
imaginal
mode
discrimination
conceptual
mode
action
practical
mode
emotion
affective
mode

138 John Heron
of the current situation that are unconsciously seen as symbolic equivalents of
troubled events of the past. Once aroused, it strains at the repressive barrier,
generating images of driven displacement.
So the reversal cycle starts with this restimulated distress. Stage 2 is the
discrimination of it, and this can have various features. It can be a sim ple
noticing and identifying. It can develop into cognitive restructuring, con-
struing the situation in a positive light that replaces the old negative projected
template.
The third stage is image insertion, a picture of alternative behaviour to the
trigger-happy acting-out tendency. Attention is now switched off the agitated
emotion and on to a vision of a different kind of immediate future. This is
taken into action in stage 4. The revised action may entirely deactivate the
restimulated distress, replacing it, at stage 1 of the next cycle, with a different
emotional state, in which case a new, wholesome kind of basic cycle has been
launched, instead of the old distressed one. If the distress charge is reduced
but still twitching, then the reversal cycle is continued until a reshaped basic
cycle takes over in full swing.
Figure 9.7 shows the reversal cycle at work, interrupting a distress-driven
basic cycle, which is indicated by the faint circle. Of course, it can be used to
interrupt and change any kind of basic cycle, not just a distress-driven one:
any life-cycle habit that is due for a shift. But remember, the use of the reversal
cycle is ‘unnatural’, revisionary, a reversal of the established order in the psyche,
so it requires inner alertness to launch it.
Given this alertness, the revisionary cycle is for use in the thick of daily
egoic life. To give an example: George has an irrational impulse (1) to blame
his partner. He immediately notices this (2), and instead of seeing the other as
the bad parent of the past, sees (3) his partner as the one loved now, and then
acts accordingly (4).
How effective this cycle is in relation to restimulated distress depends on
several factors: the intensity of the restimulation; how much practice a person
has had in using the cycle like this; and whether the person also has access to
co-counselling or other therapy outlets for healing old traumatic memories
by releasing their distress charge. I don’t think it can be reliably effective
without some back-up of this last kind. Given this back-up, it can be applied
to dismantle many of the more gross confusions of egoic behaviour.
Everything depends on inner alertness at the point of discrimination. This is
a combination of mindfulness and concentration: one needs to be aware of one’s
process and ready to focus thought. The person has to be immediately ready
to conceptualize the irrational storm gathering on the emotional threshold
as restimulated distress. The more it can be construed in terms of historical
psychodynamics, the less its tendency to affl ict the present.
A co-counselling co-operative inquiry in which I was engaged looked at
a wide range of different methods for dealing with restimulated distress in
everyday life. It did not explicitly identify this reversal cycle; nevertheless

Life cycles and learning cycles 139
the inquiry fi ndings can be seen as full of practical psychological devices for
making it effective (Reason and Heron, 1982).
They made an important distinction between tactics and strategies: the
former are practical methods for use in the particular situation; the latter are
policies to adopt some preferred tactic or set of tactics. So strategies mean a greater
readiness at stage 1 of the reversal cycle:
They present a higher order approach to life management, rising above
the purely tactical, ad hoc response to particular situations. The tactical
approach is simply crisis-management: the restimulation is already upon
you and you choose whatever tactic will best enable you to handle it. The
strategic approach is more comprehensive: it anticipates and educates
before the event.
(Reason and Heron, 1982: 17)
Figure 9.8 shows the three stages of change when using the reversal cycle. The
inner circle is the old basic cycle, changed into the new basic cycle of the outer
circle by the fi gure-of-eight arrows of the reversal cycle.
The basic life cycle of the person
The more limited, preoccupied life cycle of the ego, shown in Figure 9.1, takes
it around the individuating modes of emotion, imagery, discrimination and ac-
tion. It is preoccupied with its needs and interests in the world of existence. The
participatory modes remain latent, working in a tacit way, the ego feeding off
their subliminal presence for its own ends, and ignoring some of their impulses.
Figure 9.7 Reversal learning cycle of the ego applied to restimulated distress.
1
23
4
envisioning
alternative
behaviours
imaginal
mode
noticing
recontruing
switching
conceptual
mode
alternative
behaviour
practical
mode
reduced
restimulation
restimulated
distress
affective
mode

140 John Heron
The person, by contrast, is functioning awarely in these wider modes,
including the individuating modes within them. The basic life cycle of the
person, the ground process, takes into account the participatory modes of
feeling, intuition, reflection and intention, as well as emotion, imagery,
discrimination and action.
It is shown in Figure 9.9 as four rotating larger wheels – the participatory
modes – which touch and turn each other; and within each of these is a smaller
wheel – the corresponding individuating mode – infl uenced by the movement
of the larger wheel that contains it. Each mode is shown as generating the
relevant worldview of which it is the primary parent.
The cycle starts with a person feeling in empathic resonance with their
total situation. Out of this felt participation, the person exercises an intuitive
awareness of the entire pattern of what is appearing, seeing this perhaps in
terms of some metaphor, story or myth that opens up life with expansive
possibilities. This in turn gives rise to refl ection, taking hold of the practical
issues involved in relating to the situation. And this leads to some intention to
act in a way that takes account of both the possibilities and the practicalities.
With such action, the situation changes and a new cycle commences.
At each stage, the individuating modes are subsumed and modifi ed. Felt
participation at stage 1 will infl uence and may alter the person’s primary
need and its degree of satisfaction and hence their current emotional state.
At stage 2, intuitive grasp of the total pattern of the situation will affect
the imagery of what is perceived, remembered and anticipated. At stage 3,
discrimination will be in the service of a refl ective grasp of relevant practical
issues. And at stage 4, action is the expression of wider purposes and intentions.
What might otherwise be the more limited address of the ego at all four stages
becomes transformed within a wider ambience.
Figure 9.8 The three stages of change using the reversal learning cycle.
11
23 3
4 4
imagery
imaginal
mode
discrimination
conceptual
mode
action
practical
mode
emotion
affective
mode
2

Life cycles and learning cycles 141
As an illustration of this cycle, let us take a holistic medical practitioner
relating to a client. (1) The practitioner attunes empathically to the total being
of the client, realigning her own emotional needs and interests accordingly. (2)
Then, as she questions, talks with and examines the client, she grasps intuitively
the total imagery of spoken and bodily cues and the story revealed by the client
and explores these imaginatively in terms of analogy and metaphor. (3) At the
back of her mind, she refl ects on all this imaginal data, while discriminating
among them, and formulates a range of possible diagnoses. (4) Finally, she
selects one of these as primary, makes a diagnosis and puts forward a plan of
practical therapy.
Since she is a holistic practitioner, working with the participatory cycle of the
person, she will want to include the client – wherever appropriate and possible
– in mutuality of attunement in stage 1, in shared discussion in stages 2 and 3
and in co-operative problem solving and planning in stage 4 (Heron, 1978).
In terms of the three basic polarities of the psyche, the person here is being
participative, including the individuating modes; is involved with an expanded
ground process; and is primarily living, the learning being minimal. So here is a
person being consciously participative through feeling, intuition and refl ection,
who has an open ego and is living through the apertures but is not learning to
any signifi cant degree.
The basic learning cycle of the person
As with the ego, the life cycle of the person can become a learning cycle if, once
again, the person is mindful throughout it and concentrates with the intention
of grasping what is going on. Mindfulness and concentration are symbolized
by the outermost circle and the central cross in Figure 9.10. In this fi gure,
Figure 9.9 The basic life cycle of the person.
1
2
4
imaginal
mode
conceptual
mode
practical
mode
The world
of appearance
The world
of essence
The world
of existence
The world
of presenceaffective
mode
Perception Discrimination
Emotion Action
Feeling Intention
Intuition Reflection
3

142 John Heron
I use the stages followed by the holistic medical practitioner, as outlined in
the previous section. So the practitioner in this fi gure may be learning about
empathizing more fully, or intuiting a wider pattern of cues, or refl ecting
rapidly on alternative hypotheses, or administering therapy. The learning takes
place by a simple feedback loop: what is noticed in one cycle is used to confi rm
or alter what is done in the next cycle. And what is noticed may be what goes
on within a stage or the effect of one stage on another.
Whereas the ego is learning through everyday experience how to become
more effective in satisfying its individual needs, the person is learning how to
become more effective in participating actively in wider and more inclusive
fi elds of endeavour. In terms of the three basic polarities, the person here is
being participative, including the individuating modes; is involved with an
expanded ground process; and is learning through living, with the learning
deepening the living. The person has an open ego and is living and learning
through the apertures.
The co-operative reversal learning cycle of the person
The basic learning cycle of the person, just considered, can benefi t from being
included within a wider circle of co-operative learning, in which people meet
to share their experience and refl ect together on its meaning and practical
implications. This is a higher-order cycle, which includes at one of its stages
the whole of a lower-order cycle. Again, its effective use presupposes both
mindfulness and concentration.
Figure 9.10 The basic learning cycle of the person.
1
2
4
imaginal
mode
conceptual
mode
practical
mode
affective
mode
Intuitive grasp
of the pattern
of all physical
and verbal signs
Reflective
formulation of
a diagnostic
hypothesis
Giving a diagnosis
and administering
practical therapy
Emphatic
resonance with
the presence of
the client
3

Life cycles and learning cycles 143
The model I propose for this is a co-operative reversal learning cycle. It is
a reversal cycle to interrupt the social ground process that gets established
when people meet together informally. Let us suppose it involves a peer
professional development group of holistic medical practitioners. It is shown in
Figure 9.11.
Stage 1 is the opening, affective stage. In the emotional mode, it is a time
for celebration and positive encounter, and for dealing with any unresolved
tensions between members of the group and with any anxiety that any aspect
of the impending process provokes. In the feeling mode, it is a time of group
communion, a meditation in which members ground themselves in their
mutual compresence. This nourishes the whole enterprise.
At stage 2, they share data from case histories and reflect on this to-
gether, discriminating the main issues, to get a deeper understanding of
the therapeutic process, with implications for revised practice. At stage 3,
practitioners re formulate their image of their therapeutic practice in the light
of their prior de liberations. This is a conscious exercise of active imagination, in
which practitioners see themselves – each one on their own terms and in their
own way – going about their business in the future in ways which take account
of whatever it is they wish to incorporate into their practice from the sharing of
stage 2.
This active imagination can be verbalized, working in pairs or small groups.
It can be elaborated through graphics, allegory or story, or demonstrated in
projected rehearsal through role-play. The group then disbands, and each
person takes their image into action at stage 4, which is daily professional
Figure 9.11 The co-operative reversal learning cycle of the person.
1
2
4
4
Imaginal
mode
Conceptual
mode
Practical
mode
Affective
mode
3
1
2
Reformulate
image of practice
Share data and
reflect together
Daily practice
Emotional
work and
mutual attunement
3

144 John Heron
practice and consists of the basic learning cycle of the person, as described
in the previous section, undertaken with many clients. After an appropriate
period of daily practice, they meet again to start a second co-operative cycle.
So this is a co-operative reversal learning cycle, a higher-order cycle, which
includes within it an individual basic learning cycle at stage 4. The co-operative
cycle can be used by any group of people, from two to two dozen, who wish to
enhance, and support each other in, their learning through living. In terms of
the three basic polarities, the persons involved being participative in their way
of relating, including the individuating modes, are reorganizing social ground
process; and are learning co-operatively to deepen their individual living. They
have open egos and are living and learning through the apertures.
Autonomy and holism
In ordinary usage, ‘learning’ refers to the acquisition of knowledge or skills from
experience, study or teaching. It involves interest and commitment: we only
really learn what we are interested in and follow through with some degree of
earnestness. Then too it supposes understanding and retention: we have learnt
something if we understand it or understand how to do it (in the case of a skill)
and can retain that understanding for some signifi cant period of time.
Learning is necessarily self-directed: no one else can do it for you. Interest,
commitment, understanding and retention are all autonomous, self-generated
and self-sustaining. Learning also involves the whole person, either by inclusion
or by default. Either all of us is explicitly involved in the learning process or
only part of us is explicitly involved and what is excluded can be negatively
infl uential, undermining either the content or the process.
These are the two poles of the learning process, autonomy and holism. In
living-as-learning, they are necessarily interdependent, to the extent, at any
rate, that your living involves all four psychological modes. In educational
institutions and formal courses, they can be developed in relative isolation from
each other. A course can involve lots of autonomy, with student self-direction
in course design, project work and assessment, yet have a rather restricted,
unholistic intellectual focus.
Conversely, there can be a programme which involves all aspects of the
students’ psyches but which is entirely decided and managed by the staff,
the students only being self-directing within set exercises. There is thus an
interesting creative tension between autonomy in learning and holism in
learning which educationalists are only just beginning to address, and which
I believe is one of the major challenges for the next decades.
There are four levels of student autonomy. The fi rst and minimal level
is the student being self-directing only within teacher-prescribed learning
activities: the teacher alone makes all the decisions about the programme
of learning and its assessment. The second and more signifi cant level is the
student participating with the teacher in negotiated programme planning

Life cycles and learning cycles 145
and assessment. The third level involves a small or large amount of exclusive
student self-direction in programme planning and assessment. The fourth
level, the most sophisticated, refers to student involvement in decisions with
staff about whether students or staff or both shall be involved in decision-
making about this or that aspect of programme planning and assessment. I
have discussed all this in detail elsewhere (Heron, 1989).
Likewise there are four levels of student holism. The fi rst involves only the
four individuating modes of emotion, imagery, discrimination and action: this is
limited holism at the egoic level. The second level combines the individuating
and participatory modes in particular creative classroom activities where the
focus is on the content of some subject matter. The third level involves the
individuating and participatory modes in more person-centred concerns:
personal development, interpersonal skills, professional work, group and
team work, organizational structures and wider social, ecological and planetary
commitments. The fourth level includes the second and third levels, integrated
with development in psychic and spiritual dimensions.
Kinds of learning
In terms of the theory of this book (J. Heron: Feeling and Personhood) there
are four kinds of learning – experiential, presentational, propositional and
practical. Experiential learning is acquiring knowledge of being and beings
through empathic resonance, felt participation. Imaginal learning is acquiring
knowledge of the patterning of experience through the exercise of intuition,
imagination and perception. Propositional learning is acquiring knowledge
stated in propositions through the exercise of the intellect. And practical
learning is acquiring knowledge of how to do something through the practice
of the particular skill in question.
If Howard Gardner (1983) now believes in eight kinds of intelligence,
then some very rough and ready correspondences can be set up with them
as follows. Experiential learning: intrapersonal, interpersonal, intuitive/
spiritual intelligences. Presentational learning: visual/spatial, musical/
auditory intelligences. Propositional learning: linguistic, mathematical/logical
intelligences. Practical learning: kinaesthetic intelligence.
However, leaving aside Gardner’s scheme, I prefer to think that each of the
eight modes represents a basic kind of intelligence. Experiential learning:
empathic, emotional intelligences. Presentational learning: intuitive, imaging
intelligences. Propositional learning: refl ective, discriminatory intelligences.
Practical learning: intentional, action intelligences. Which is all just another
way of making the same basic point: intelligence, learning, knowing – each
of these are of several different kinds, are One-Many, and need to be exercised
as such.

146 John Heron
Learning, inquiry and living
If learning is acquiring knowledge that is already established in the culture,
it is simply learning. But if it is acquiring new knowledge that no one else
has, then it becomes inquiry or research. Learning as inquiry overlaps with
learning what is known, but extends beyond it with a more sophisticated
methodology.
Living-as-learning means that daily life, or some signifi cant aspect of it, is
consciously undertaken as a learning process, and I have already explored some
models for this. This involves all four kinds of learning brought to a focus in
practical learning, which in this case, and in very broad terms, means learning
how to live, whether from the perspective of the ego or the person. It is
ambiguous as to whether it is simple learning or learning as inquiry, since it is
diffi cult to know what other people have or have not established as knowledge
of how to live. Many people just live, as distinct from living-as-learning.
And living-as-learning may be too individualistic, episodic and unfocused to
count as establishing any kind of solid practical knowledge. However, if it is
undertaken co-operatively with other people in some systematic way, especially
from the perspective of the whole person, the enterprise is so original that it is
almost certain to lead to learning as inquiry (see Figure 9.11).
A special case of living-as-learning is working-as-learning. Here daily work
is the exclusive focus of conscious learning. At an earlier stage in working life,
working-as-learning can also mean learning the job on the job, through some
kind of apprenticeship or work placement or work under supervision system.
References
Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Heron, J. (1978) Humanistic Medicine. London: British Postgraduate Medical Federation.
Heron, J. (1989) The Facilitators’ Handbook. London: Kogan Page. Revised and enlarged (1999)
as The Complete Facilitators’ Handbook.
Heron, J. (1992) Feeling and Personhood: Psychology in Another Key. London: Sage.
Reason, P. and Heron, J. (1982) Co-counselling: An Experiential Inquiry (2). Guildford, UK:
University of Surrey.

Chapter 10
Lifelong learning as a
technology of the self
Mark Tennant
Mark Tennant is Professor of Adult Education at the University of Technology in
Sydney, which for many years has been a leading research centre in this area. Tennant
is internationally known for his book Psychology and Adult Learning, which was
published for the fi rst time in 1988 and later in new editions in 1997 and 2005. For
many years Tennant has had a special interest in the development of personal identity
and the self, especially in adult education and in relation to postmodern and social
constructivist approaches. The following chapter is a slightly abridged version of an
article fi rst published in 1998 in the International Journal of Lifelong Education,
which discusses the postmodern tendencies of instability and fragmentation of the self and
how this challenges traditional aims of adult education to develop the self-understanding,
self-esteem and self-confi dence of the students.
Introduction
Adult education has a long history of interest in the development and trans-
formation of the self. As such it is useful to consider a range of adult education
programmes as belonging to and extending the lineage of technologies of
the self identifi ed by Foucault (1988). In all such programmes, even the
most individualistic, there are implicit or explicit theorizations concerning
the nature of the self and the way the self relates to others or to society more
generally. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the postmodern critique of
the dominant theorizations of the self in adult education – the psychological/
humanistic and the sociological/critical – and to comment on the ‘solution’
proffered by a postmodern theorization. The postmodern critique is valuable in
drawing attention to the diffi culties of theorizing some kind of originary, core,
true, stable, or ahistorical self. Nevertheless it is important to acknowledge that
in many of the sites in which adult educators work, the pursuit of a coherent,
continuous self is indispensable to transformative (and thereby resistant) adult
education practice.
The title of this chapter is taken from Foucault’s essay ‘Technologies of the
Self’, which appears in an edited book of the same title (Martin et al., 1988).
In this essay Foucault traces the development of technologies of the self in

148 Mark Tennant
Greco-Roman philosophy and in early Christianity. Technologies of the self
(which stand alongside and interact with technologies of production, sign
systems, and power):
permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others
a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts,
conduct and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain
a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality.
(1988: 18)
I have commenced with this reference to Foucault because it is useful to
consider adult education as belonging to and extending this lineage of tech-
nologies of the self. Indeed, adult education has a long history of interest
in the development and transformation of the self. A range of programmes
exist: from those which aim to promote self-development as an end in itself
(e.g. programmes which improve self-esteem or self-concept or which help
people to be more in touch with their ‘authentic’ self ) to those programmes in
which changes to the self are seen as being a necessary component of broader
social change (e.g. programmes aimed at consciousness-raising for those who
have suffered from or perhaps even perpetrated discrimination, and public
education campaigns in areas such as health, the environment, civics, and
domestic violence). In between these extremes are a host of programmes where
self-change is important in its own right, but where the ‘other’ is implicated
in different degrees (e.g. programmes for AIDS patients, those addicted to
drugs, diabetes sufferers, recent migrants, soon-to-be parents, or domestic
violence and sexual assault offenders). All such programmes include implicit
or explicit theorizations about the self and how it relates to others. Such
theorizations are a necessary part of our conceptions of the possibility of self-
change and the associated technologies deployed for the purpose of change.
Different theoretical perspectives pose essentially different questions and
cast the problematic in different ways. However, a common problem across
all perspectives concerns the way in which we participate in our own self-
formation and the extent to which the social is constituted in or is constitutive
of the self. Foucault offers a theoretical perspective on the formation of the self,
and the relationship between self and society, which is quite different from the
theoretical perspectives which have hitherto informed adult education practice.
Because of this association (albeit by others) with postmodernism, it is worth
exploring the postmodern perspective more broadly, both for what it has to
say about existing adult education technologies and for its potential to create
alternative technologies.

Lifelong learning as a technology of the self 149
The postmodern critique
There are a number of reviews of the traditions of learning in adult education,
but Usher et al. (1997) provide perhaps the most useful postmodern account
of how these traditions conceive of the self. Usher and colleagues, following
Boud (1989), comment on four traditions: the training and effi ciency tradition
(with its classical scientifi c self, a kind of self-contained mechanistic learning
machine); the self-direction or andragogical tradition (where the self is
conceived as individualistic and unitary, capable of rational refl ection on
experience, and conferring meaning on experience); the learner-centred or
humanistic tradition (with the notion of an innate or authentic self which is in a
process of ‘becoming’ in a holistic integration of thinking, feeling, and acting);
and the critical pedagogy and social action tradition (with its exploited self of
‘false consciousness’, an inauthentic self which is socially formed and distorted
by ideology and oppressive social structures). The problem with the fi rst
three of the above is that they accept as given or neutral that which is highly
problematic: for example, knowledge and skills are assumed to be neutral
rather than socially and culturally constructed; or experience is seen as given,
the source of authentic knowledge, and not in any way problematic; or there is
assumed to be a true self which exists independently of the social realm. In the
andragogical and humanistic traditions in particular, the social is something
which is cast as oppressive and to be overcome or transcended through
technologies which promote self-control, self-direction, self-management,
self-knowledge, autonomy, or self-realization – technologies which are aimed
at empowering the individual learner. In this scenario social change is a matter
of individuals acting authentically and autonomously: being truly themselves.
Now this view of the self, which is largely informed by psychology, has been
criticized as being overly individualistic: of portraying social problems as largely
individual problems with individual solutions, of accepting as given the social
world in which the self resides. This version of self-empowerment through the
fostering of personal autonomy is seen by critics as illusory, largely because
social structures and forces remain unchallenged. Ultimately, and ironically,
the technologies which enhance autonomy are said to serve the interests of
existing social structures and forces. This view is well expressed by Usher et al.:
These traditions make much of empowering the individual learner, yet they
have shown themselves to be wide open to hijacking by an individual and
instrumental ethic. The psychologism and individualism of humanistic
discourse presented as a concern for the ‘person’ can lead ultimately and
paradoxically to a dehumanisation through the substitution of covert for
overt regulation under the guise of ‘being human’, enabling learners to
‘open up’, and provide access to their ‘inner world’. This is an infi ltration
of power by subjectivity and a complementary infi ltration of subjectivity
by power.
(1997: 98)

150 Mark Tennant
Such a position is not new in social theory. Indeed, critical pedagogy, and its
associated technologies, is based upon a view of the self as socially constituted.
Now there are very different versions of how the social becomes a constitutive
part of the self: how the ‘outside’ gets ‘inside’ so to speak, and how social
processes interpenetrate the psyche. Nevertheless they all have in common
the notion that the self participates in its own subjugation and domination,
whether it is through ‘false consciousness’ produced by membership of a
particular social group or the internalization of social ‘oppression’ through
individual ‘repression’ (in the psychoanalytic sense). But Usher et al., from
their postmodernist stance, regard critical pedagogy as reifying the social as a
monolithic ‘other’ which serves to oppress and crush, and they warn that it is
a mistake to adopt an oversocialized and overdetermined view of the person:
There is a tendency in the critical tradition to end up with a conception of
the self which is, on the one hand, oversocialised and overdetermined and
on the other, patronising in so far as selves have to be seen as normally in
a state of false consciousness. In stressing the negative and overwhelming
effects of social relations and social structures, persons are made into social
‘victims’, dupes and puppets, manipulated by ideology and deprived of
agency.
(1997: 99)
The technology of the self in critical pedagogy is one based on ideology critique,
whereby the aim is to analyze and uncover one’s ideological positioning, to
understand how this positioning operates in the interests of oppression, and
through dialogue and action, free oneself of ‘false consciousness’. From a
postmodern point of view the problem with this is that it theorizes a self which
is capable of moving from ‘false’ to ‘true’ consciousness: that is, a rational and
unifi ed self which is capable of freeing itself from its social situatedness. It
is this which links critical pedagogy with the andragogical and humanistic
traditions, traditions which it opposes for their individualistic approach.
Postmodern theory holds that in the social sciences, and the educational
technologies they foster, the problematic of the social within the self is
traditionally framed in terms of a binary opposition or dualism between the
‘individual’ and ‘society’. It is as if the two poles ‘individual’ and ‘society’ are
antithetical and separate, and pull in opposite directions. Moreover, theoretical
positions which pose an ongoing dialectical interaction between ‘individual’
and ‘society’ have hitherto been unable to escape the dualism and invariably
privilege one term over the other. For example, there have been a number
of attempts in psychology to theorize the social component of psychological
functioning, particularly in social and developmental psychology. Concepts
such as ‘internalization’, ‘interaction’, ‘intersubjectivity’, ‘accommodation’,
‘shaping’, ‘role’, and ‘modelling’ are recognizable as part of the vernacular
adopted by psychology to explain how the ‘outside’ gets ‘inside’, so to speak.

Lifelong learning as a technology of the self 151
From a postmodern point of view, they all fail because they are based on an
acceptance of the individual–society dualism. Theories which stress ‘shaping’
and ‘modelling’, for example, assume a totally passive individual who is
moulded by external forces. Theories which employ the concepts of ‘interaction’,
‘internalization’, ‘accommodation’, ‘role’, and ‘intersubjectivity’ ultimately
rely on the existence of a unitary, rational, pre-given individual subject.
A unique aspect of postmodernism has been its development of a way of
theorizing subjectivity which is not reliant on this individual–society dualism.
It does so by reconceptualizing and renaming the terms of the dualism, so
that ‘individual’ and ‘society’ are replaced by the concepts of ‘the subject’ and
‘the social’, which are understood as produced rather than as pre-given and then
interacting. Thus postmodernism problematizes at the outset the concepts of
individual and society as effects which are produced rather than accepted as
pre-given entities. For example, the idea of the unitary, coherent, and rational
subject as agent is ‘deconstructed’ by postmodern analysis as being a historical
product, best seen as a discourse embedded in everyday practices and as part
of the productive work of, say, psychology and its associated educational
technologies. Replacing this view of the individual is the idea of the subject
as a position within a discourse. Moreover, because there are a number of
discourses, a number of subject positions are produced, and because discourses
are not necessarily coherent or devoid of contradiction, subjectivity is regarded
as multiple, not purely rational, and potentially contradictory. Usher et al.
portray the postmodern ‘story’ of the self as:
that of a decentred self, subjectivity without a centre of origin, caught
in meanings, positioned in the language and narratives of culture. The
self cannot know itself independently of the signifi cations in which it
is enmeshed. There is no self-present subjectivity, hence no ultimate
transcendental meaning of the self. Meanings are always ‘in play’ and
the self, caught up in this play, is an ever changing self, caught up in the
narratives and meanings through which it leads its life.
(1997: 103)
This is the self of the postmodern condition, in which there is a decentring
of the self away from the notion of a coherent ‘authentic’ self and towards the
notion of ‘multiple subjectivities’, ‘multiple lifeworlds’, or ‘multiple layers’
to everyone’s identity.
To summarize the postmodern critique: traditional theorizations of adult
education practice invariably privilege one of the two poles of the individual–
society dualism: the psychological/humanistic pole which stresses the agency
of the subject and the sociological/critical theory pole which stresses how the
subject is wholly determined. The dilemma for the adult educator is that
neither pole offers a satisfactory perspective on practice: the former seems too
naive in failing to acknowledge the power of social forces, and the latter is too

152 Mark Tennant
pessimistic and leaves no scope for education to have a meaningful role, and
there is certainly no role for the autonomous learner. Postmodernism offers a
way out of this dilemma by collapsing the binary opposition on which it is
built and treating the ‘subject’ and the ‘social’ as jointly produced through
discursive practices. What is required, then, is a shift in the theories upon
which adult education draws: from theories of the knowing subject to theories
of discursive practices.
An alternative reading
The postmodernist view has been contested on a number of grounds:
that it leads to nihilism and a politics of despair, that it underestimates
the extent to which people’s lives are shaped by economic and political
forces, that it is a Eurocentric master narrative which delegitimizes black
expressive culture and undermines feminist discourse, that the claim about
social fragmentation is overstated, and that ultimately it is a view which is
politically disabling because it directs people’s attention away from collective
struggle (Foley 1993: 83; McLaren 1995: 206). I don’t wish to pursue these
broad criticisms here, but would like to take up some issues concerning the
postmodern view of the subject. The fi rst is that the various theorizations
about how such a subject comes into being do not convincingly escape the
notion of an untheorized originary subject. What is this ‘something’ which,
through a process of recognition, becomes a subject? As Hirst observes of
Althusser’s notion of ‘interpellation’ (which, as Hall (1997) points out,
continues to be used in a general way for describing the ‘summoning into
place’ of the subject):
Recognition, the crucial moment of the constitution (activation) of
the subject, presupposes a point of cognition prior to the recognition.
Something must recognise that which it is to be … The social function of
ideology is to constitute concrete individuals (not-yet-subjects) as subjects.
The concrete individual is ‘abstract’ – it is not yet the subject it will be.
It is, however, already a subject in the sense of the subject which supports
the process of recognition. Thus something which is not a subject must
have the faculties necessary to support the recognition which will constitute
it as a subject. It must have a cognitive capacity as a prior condition of its
place in the process of recognition. Hence the necessity of the distinction
of the concrete individual and the concrete subject.
(1979: 65)
Hall (1997) argues that Foucault comes up against the same diffi culty (es-
pecially in his ‘archaeological’ works Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the
Clinic, The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of Knowledge) where, he claims,
‘Discursive subject positions become a priori categories which individuals

Lifelong learning as a technology of the self 153
seem to occupy in an unproblematic fashion’ (10). That this continues to
be problematic is signifi cant because it subjects postmodernism to its own
forceful critique of the ‘originary’ self presupposed in the social sciences.
The second issue concerns the theorization of resistance within a postmodern
view. Once again, Hall, with reference to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and
The History of Sexuality, observes that:
the entirely self-policing conception of the subject which emerges from
the disciplinary, confessional and pastoral modalities of power discussed
there, and the absence of any attention to what may in any way interrupt,
prevent or disturb the smooth insertion of individuals into the subject
positions constructed by these discourses.
(1997: 11)
I will try to illustrate this second issue initially through examining Usher
and Edwards’s (1995) analysis of the guidance and counselling of adult
learners. They argue that in the contemporary period there has been a shift
from disciplinary power (the gaze from the tower) to pastoral power (the gaze
from within). This is particularly apparent in the emergence of technologies
of self-management in guidance and counselling (e.g. learning contracts,
self-evaluation, portfolio development) which encourage people to document
their lives in every detail, and to take responsibility for life planning, self-
development, and self-realization. Usher and Edwards argue that constituting
the self as an object of knowledge, in order to discover the ‘truth’ about oneself
with the aid of a guide or counsellor, is a form of confessional practice which
is ultimately disempowering:
[T]his process has spread and has now become central in the governance
of modern society, where externally imposed discipline has given way
to the self-discipline of an autonomous subjectivity. With the spread of
confession, its purpose shifts from one of salvation to self-regulation, self-
improvement and self-development. In other words, confession actively
constitutes a productive and autonomous subject already governed and
thereby not requiring externally imposed discipline and regulation …
[W]hile confession plays an important role in displacing canonical
knowledge by valorising individual experience, this simply extends the
range of pastoral power embedded in the confessional regime of truth.
(1995: 12–13)
I want to emphasize that, for Usher and Edwards, it is enough that coun-
selling is directed towards fi nding a stable, autonomous identity to declare it
disempowering: it is not a question of some counselling practices producing
identities which are empowering and others disempowering. This constitutes
quite a challenge to those adult education technologies which invite self-

154 Mark Tennant
examination and self-transformation, either collectively or individually, in
order to oppose and resist domination and domestication. Irrespective of
whether these technologies have an essentialist or constructivist view of the
self, most adhere to the modernist project of developing a self with a semblance
of stability, unity, coherence, and continuity – however multiple or subject to
change. Should this be abandoned in favour of celebrating the ever-changing,
multiple, fragmented, and unstable self of postmodernity? Or, on the contrary,
should the postmodern self be resisted as a potential form of domination?
As a way of addressing these questions I would like to explore further the
counselling as confessional practice theme.
Now it is clearly possible to have alternative readings of counselling and
confessional practices. One can think of contemporary forms of confession
where the link between disclosure and renunciation is broken, for example,
where the confessional disclosure is a move to obtain a reciprocal confession
from the ‘other’, in order to solicit mutual support. In this way the confession,
far from disciplining the subject, serves to maintain the transgression.
Contrary to the postmodern view, it is possible to argue that some level of
continuity and coherence to the self, however contingent, is a necessary con-
dition for resistance to domination and oppression. Indeed it is for good reason
that adult education has a tradition of empowerment based upon the modern
subject, especially when it is addressing the concerns of those whose sense of
self has been dislocated and fragmented through a history of domination and
oppression.
In many of the sites in which adult educators work, the pursuit of a coherent,
continuous self is indispensable to empowerment. Far from inducing an
incredulous attitude towards any newly ‘discovered’ self, adult educators
should properly work against incredulity and, where disbelief is the tendency,
encourage the suspension of disbelief.
While it is undoubtedly true that many of the technologies in counselling
and adult education serve to disempower in the name of individual liberation,
the source of disempowerment is to be found in the production of particular
types of coherent subjectivities and not in the pursuit of coherence itself. The
postmodern subject can be seen in one sense as untouchable, and in another,
as infi nitely malleable with respect to these technologies. While it is true that
it is diffi cult to recruit the postmodern subject into the process of self-govern-
ment because of a refusal to be self-disciplined, this refusal is accompanied
by an openness to externally imposed discipline. Notwithstanding the above,
the postmodern subject can be enticed into self-discipline with the clever
manipulation of taste and opinion. The modern self, with its sense of coherence
and continuity, potentially offers resistance to both self-discipline and
externally imposed discipline. In struggles which involve contestations of
identity, it is those who have a strong sense of their own identity who offer
the best potential for resistance.

Lifelong learning as a technology of the self 155
A postmodern technology of the self?
In the above I have distinguished between the ‘postmodern self’ and the
‘modern self’, as if they are entities, for heuristic purposes only. I have no
desire to argue for the existence of any kind of originary, core, true, stable, or
ahistorical self. Rather I am concerned with avoiding an ‘essential’ view of the
self, but at the same time developing a concept of the self which is compatible
with transformative (and thereby resistant) adult education practice. In
referring to the importance of ‘continuity’ and ‘coherence’ of the self, I am
referring to a constructed closure, not one which is natural or essential, but
one which nevertheless connects an individual’s subject positions.
Accepting the merits of persisting with this version of a coherent and
continuous ‘self’, how does the postmodern critique guide the reformation of
technologies of the self in adult education? Certainly postmodernism retains
the idea of the critical subject, and Foucault, for one, regarded a permanent
critique of ourselves, and the relation of self to self, as central to the practice
of liberty. Perhaps the most powerful notion here is the situated self: the self
as part of the text of the world, which opens up the possibility of refusing the
way one has been inscribed and exploring alternative discourses about oneself
as a means of resisting domination and oppression. To return to Usher:
We can only be the agents of our experience by engaging in a hermeneutic
dialogue with the confused and often contradictory text of our experience
of the world and of ourselves. The dialogue is one where formation in
intersubjectivity and language, location in discourses and practical
involvement in the world is a condition for the achievement of autonomy
rather than a barrier to its discovery. Language, for example, does not
merely constrain subjectivity but offers the possibility for constructing a
critical self and social awareness through which subjectivity can be changed.
(1992: 210)
Thus it is not the true or authentic self which is discovered through refl ection
on experience; instead, experience is viewed as a text which can be reinterpreted
and reassessed. In effect we learn to read the text into which our self has been
inscribed, and we discover that there are alternative readings and therefore
there is an alternative self to be constructed. This doesn’t mean we can ascribe
any meaning to our experiences or that we can create any self we choose. We
need to give a plausible reading to our experience, one which can legitimately
contest, say, dominant meanings. Also the self remains situated in history and
culture and continually open to reinscription and reformulation. Hall expresses
the project clearly:
[I]dentities are about questions of using the resources of history, language
and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not ‘who we

156 Mark Tennant
are’ or ‘where we came from’, so much as what we might become, how
we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent
ourselves.
(Hall 1997: 4)
This is the approach taken by Michael White, a key fi gure in the narrative
therapy movement. I will briefl y describe his therapeutic technique to give the
reader a sense of the kind of transformative educational intervention implied
by a situated perspective on the ‘self ’.
Michael White is a family therapist who consciously draws on Foucault (and
others) as a means of shaping his therapeutic technique. Remembering that
he is a therapist who directs his energies towards the problems of clients,
his basic technique is to externalize these problems. The problem is treated
as an external entity, separate from the person or relationship ascribed to the
problem. For example, if a person has a compulsion to wash their hands every
three minutes, it is usual for family members to defi ne this problem as internal
to the person, together with a ‘problem saturated’ description of the family’s
inability to solve it. One technique is to talk of the problem as though it were
a separate entity, for example, giving it a name such as ‘Squeaky Clean’. This is
followed by the plotting of experiences or events into stories or ‘self-narratives’
around the problem. Firstly, he invites persons, through careful questioning,
to review the effects of the problem in their lives and relationships – this leads
to a mapping of the infl uence of the problem. Once the problem’s sphere of
infl uence has been mapped, questions are introduced to map the persons’
infl uence in the life of the problem. This leads to the identifi cation of new
information which shows the agency of persons in resisting the problem, acts of
defi ance or refusal of the problem that have been written out of the dominant
story. New stories are then built around these experiences:
I introduced questions that encouraged them to perform meaning in
relation to these examples, so that they might ‘re-author’ their lives
and relationships. How had they managed to be effective against the
problem in this way? How did this refl ect on them as people and on
their relationships? What personal and relationship attributes were they
relying on in making these achievements ? Did success give them any
ideas about further steps that they might take to reclaim their lives from
the problem?
(White 1989: 11)
White regards the process of externalizing as a counter-practice to cultural
practices which objectify persons and their bodies. It enables people to
separate from the dominant stories that have been shaping their lives
and relationships, and it opens spaces for people to re-author themselves.
He avoids individualizing the problem, while retaining the notion of

Lifelong learning as a technology of the self 157
responsibility through improving the capacity for personal agency in the
pursuit of new possibilities.
A great deal of attention is paid to defi ning the problem to be externalized.
For example, it would be inappropriate to externalize problems like violence
and sexual abuse: in such cases the therapist:
would be more inclined to encourage the externalisation of the attitudes
and beliefs that appear to compel the violence, and those strategies that
maintain persons in their subjugation: for example, the enforcement of
secrecy and isolation.
(White 1989: 12)
In such cases the technique would still involve the twin steps of asking the
persons involved to tell their story, say, about men’s aggression in general
and the circumstances leading to particular instances of violence; and then to
introduce a new account or reading of the problem, say, patriarchal ideology
and how it is supported through various cultural ‘instructions’, with the
invitation to challenge such instructions. In other instances, the ‘problem’
is already external, such as when people who are trying to re-author their
lives fi nd it diffi cult to do so because of the circulation of dominant and
disqualifying stories that others have about them and their relationships. In
such instances White suggests exploring ways of ensuring that one’s preferred
stories are circulated.
The approach of narrative therapy has much in common with existing
practices in adult education, especially those associated with refl ection on
experience. Such technologies certainly offer scope for the opening up of alter-
native discourse about oneself, but they can be equally oppressive, depending
on how they are practised. A ‘test’ of whether such practices are liberatory
is the extent to which they expose the social and cultural embeddedness
and taken-for-granted assumptions in which the self is located; explore
the interests served by the continuation of the self thus positioned; incite a
refusal to be positioned in this way when the interests served are those of
domination and oppression; and encourage alternative readings of the
text of experience. Of course, as McLaren (1995) points out, the reinvention
of the self must be linked to the remaking of the social, which implies a
shared vision (however contingent or provisional) of democratic community
and an engagement with language of social change, emancipatory practice,
and transformative politics. In this way, learners:
are able to call into question the political assumptions and relations
of determination upon which social truths are founded in both the
communities in which they work and the larger society of which they are
a part.
(McLaren 1995: 227)

158 Mark Tennant
Taking into account the postmodern critique, Jarvis (1997), for one, goes
a long way towards identifying the ethical basis of such a shared vision (i.e.
concern for the Other as the only universal moral good). I don’t wish to pursue
this here, except to signal that any project aimed at reconstructing the self
needs to address the broader issue of the ‘just society’.
To conclude, the postmodern critique is valuable in drawing attention to
the way in which selves can participate in their own subjugation and how
existing adult education technologies, in the name of promoting autonomy
and freedom, can be accomplices in the process of subjugation. As such it is
important to ‘deconstruct’ such technologies and the selves produced by them.
But what of the reconstruction of selves? In this regard, the postmodern focus
on the self as text offers new possibilities for ‘self-work’, but these possibilities
can only be realized if this text has some degree of closure and continuity,
and if this (rather than fragmentation and discontinuity) is seen as a cause
for celebration.
References
Boud, D. (1989) Some competing traditions in experiential learning. In S. Weil and I. McGill
(eds) Making Sense of Experiential Learning: Diversity in Theory and Practice (Milton Keynes,
UK: Open University Press).
Foley, G. (1993) Postmodernism, adult education and the ‘emancipatory’ project. Convergence,
26 (4), 79–88.
Foucault, M. (1988) Technologies of the self. In L. Martin, H. Gutman and P. Hutton (eds),
Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press), 16–49.
Hall, S. (1997) Who needs identity? In S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity
(London: Sage), 1–17.
Hirst, P. (1979) On Law and Ideology (London: Macmillan).
Jarvis, P. (1997) Ethics and Education for Adults in a Late Modern Society (Leicester, UK: National
Institute for Adult and Continuing Education).
Martin, L., Gutman. H. and Hutton, P. (eds) (1988) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel
Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press).
McLaren, P. (1995) Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture: Oppositional Politics in a Postmodern
Era (London: Routledge).
Usher, R. (1992) Experience in adult education: A post-modern critique. Journal of Philosophy
of Education, 26, 201–214.
Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1995) Confessing all? A ‘postmodern guide’ to the guidance and
counselling of adult learners. Studies in the Education of Adults, 27 (1), 9–23.
Usher, R. Bryant, I. and Johnston, R. (1997) Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge
(London: Routledge).
White, M. (1989) Selected Papers (Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications).

Chapter 11
Culture, mind, and education
Jerome Bruner
Jerome Bruner rightly occupies a position as “the grand old man” of American learning
and cognitive research and theory. For more than half a century he has been active as a
researcher, developer, and debater of learning and education. In the late 1940s, he made
detailed studies on perception and thinking. During the 1950s, his studies of cognition
were an important basis for what was later termed “cognitive science.” After the so-called
“Sputnik-shock” in 1957, when Russia sent up the fi rst satellite, Bruner was appointed
chairman of the scientifi c commission which was set up to fundamentally reconstruct
the American school system, and his books The Process of Education, Toward a
Theory of Instruction and The Relevance of Education laid the groundwork for
the concept of science-centered curriculum. Later he scrutinized the concepts of “mind”
and “meaning,” and as late as 1996, at the age of 82, he published The Culture
of Education, which summarizes the broad understanding of learning and education
as cultural processes he gradually developed. This chapter is made up of the two fi rst
programmatic sections of that book, which probably will stand as the most durable work
of his vast production.
Computationalism and culturalism
The essays in [The Culture of Education] are all products of the 1990s, expressions
of the fundamental changes that have been altering conceptions about the
nature of the human mind in the decades since the cognitive revolution. These
changes, it now seems clear in retrospect, grew out of two strikingly divergent
conceptions about how mind works. The fi rst of these was the hypothesis that
mind could be conceived as a computational device. This was not a new idea,
but it had been powerfully reconceived in the newly advanced computational
sciences. The other was the proposal that mind is both constituted by and realized
in the use of human culture. The two views led to very different conceptions
of the nature of mind itself and of how mind should be cultivated. Each led
its adherents to follow distinctively different strategies of inquiry about how
mind functions and about how it might be improved through “education.”
The fi rst or computational view is concerned with information processing: how
fi nite, coded, unambiguous information about the world is inscribed, sorted,

160 Jerome Bruner
stored, collated, retrieved, and generally managed by a computational device. It
takes information as its given, as something already settled in relation to some
preexisting, rule-bound code that maps onto states of the world. This so-called
“well-formedness” is both its strength and its shortcoming, as we shall see.
For the process of knowing is often messier and more fraught with ambiguity
than such a view allows.
Computational science makes interesting general claims about the conduct
of education (Segal et al. 1985, Bruer 1993, Chi et al. 1988), though it is still
unclear what specifi c lessons it has to teach the educator. There is a widespread
and not unreasonable belief that we should be able to discover something about
how to teach human beings more effectively from knowing how to program
computers effectively. One can scarcely doubt, for example, that computers
provide a learner with powerful aids in mastering bodies of knowledge,
particularly if the knowledge in question is well defi ned. A well-programed
computer is especially useful for taking over tasks that, at last, can be declared
“unfi t for human production.” For computers are faster, more orderly, less fi tful
in remembering, and do not get bored. And of course, it is revealing of our
own minds and our human situation to ask what things we do better or worse
than our servant computer.
It is considerably more uncertain whether, in any deep sense, the tasks of
a teacher can be “handed over” to a computer, even the most “responsive”
one that can be theoretically envisioned. Which is not to say that a suitably
programmed computer cannot lighten a teacher’s load by taking over some of
the routines that clutter the process of instruction. But that is not the issue.
After all, books came to serve such a function after Gutenberg’s discovery made
them widely available (Ong 1991, Olson 1994).
The issue, rather, is whether the computational view of mind itself offers an
adequate enough view about how mind works to guide our efforts in trying
to “educate” it. It is a subtle question. For in certain respects, “how the mind
works” is itself dependent on the tools at its disposal. “How the hand works,” for
example, cannot be fully appreciated unless one also takes into account whether
it is equipped with a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, or a laser-beam gun. And
by the same token, the systematic historian’s “mind” works differently from
the mind of the classic “teller of tales” with his stock of combinable myth-like
modules. So, in a sense, the mere existence of computational devices (and a
theory of computation about their mode of operating) can (and doubtless will)
change our minds about how “mind” works, just as the book did (Olson 1994).
This brings us directly to the second approach to the nature of mind – call it
culturalism. It takes its inspiration from the evolutionary fact that mind could
not exist save for culture. For the evolution of the hominid mind is linked to
the development of a way of life where “reality” is represented by a symbolism
shared by members of a cultural community in which a technical-social way of
life is both organized and construed in terms of that symbolism. This symbolic
mode is not only shared by a community, but conserved, elaborated, and passed

Culture, mind, and education 161
on to succeeding generations who, by virtue of this transmission, continue to
maintain the culture’s identity and way of life.
Culture in this sense is superorganic (Kroeber 1917). But it shapes the minds of
individuals as well. Its individual expression inheres in meaning making, assign-
ing meanings to things in different settings on particular occasions. Meaning
making involves situating encounters with the world in their appropriate
cultural contexts in order to know “what they are about.” Although meanings
are “in the mind,” they have their origins and their signifi cance in the culture in
which they are created. It is this cultural situatedness of meanings that assures
their negotiability and, ultimately, their communicability. Whether “private
meanings” exist is not the point; what is important is that meanings provide
a basis for cultural exchange. On this view, knowing and communicating are
in their nature highly interdependent, indeed virtually inseparable: however
much the individual may seem to operate on his or her own in carrying out
the quest for meanings, nobody can do it unaided by the culture’s symbolic
systems. It is culture that provides the tools for organizing and understanding
our worlds in communicable ways. The distinctive feature of human evolution
is that mind evolved in a fashion that enables human beings to utilize the tools
of culture. Without those tools, whether symbolic or material, man is not a
“naked ape” but an empty abstraction.
Culture, then, though itself man-made, both forms and makes possible
the workings of a distinctively human mind. On this view, learning and
thinking are always situated in a cultural setting and always dependent upon
the utilization of cultural resources (see e.g. Bruner 1990). Even individual
variation in the nature and use of mind can be attributed to the varied
opportunities that different cultural settings provide, though these are not the
only source of variation in mental functioning.
Like its computational cousin, culturalism seeks to bring together insights
from psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and the human sciences generally,
in order to reformulate a model of mind. But the two do so for radically
different purposes. Computationalism, to its great credit, is interested in any
and all ways in which information is organized and used – information in
the well-formed and fi nite sense mentioned earlier, regardless of the guise in
which information processing is realized. In this broad sense, it recognizes no
disciplinary boundaries, not even the boundary between human and non-human
functioning. Culturalism, on the other hand, concentrates exclusively on how
human beings in cultural communities create and transform meanings.
I want to set forth in this chapter some principal motifs of the cultural
approach and explore how these relate to education. But before turning
to that formidable task, I need fi rst to dispel the shibboleth of a necessary
contradiction between culturalism and computationalism. For I think the
apparent contradiction is based on a misunderstanding, one that leads to gross
and needless overdramatization. Obviously the approaches are very different,
and their ideological overspill may indeed overwhelm us if we do not take care

162 Jerome Bruner
to distinguish them clearly. For it surely matters ideologically what kind of
“model” of the human mind one embraces (Brinton 1965). Indeed, the model
of mind to which one adheres even shapes the “folk pedagogy” of schoolroom
practice. Mind as equated to the power of association and habit formation
privileges “drill” as the true pedagogy, while mind taken as the capacity for
refl ection and discourse on the nature of necessary truths favors the Socratic
dialogue. And each of these is linked to our conception of the ideal society
and the ideal citizen.
Yet in fact, neither computationalism nor culturalism is so linked to par-
ticular models of mind as to be shackled in particular pedagogies. Their
difference is of quite a different kind. Let me try to sketch it.
The objective of computationalism is to devise a formal redescription of any
and all functioning systems that manage the fl ow of well-formed information.
It seeks to do so in a way that produces foreseeable, systematic outcomes.
One such system is the human mind. But thoughtful computationalism
does not propose that mind is like some particular “computer” that needs to
be “programmed” in a particular way in order to operate systematically or
“effi ciently.” What it argues, rather, is that any and all systems that process
information must be governed by specifi able “rules” or procedures that govern
what to do with inputs. It matters not whether it is a nervous system, or the
genetic apparatus that takes instruction from DNA and then reproduces later
generations, or whatever. This is the ideal of artifi cial intelligence (AI), so-called.
“Real minds” are describable in terms of the same AI generalization – systems
governed by specifi able rules for managing the fl ow of coded information.
But, as already noted, the rules common to all information systems do
not cover the messy, ambiguous, and context-sensitive processes of meaning
making, a form of activity in which the construction of highly “fuzzy”
and metaphoric category systems is just as notable as the use of specifi able
categories for sorting inputs in a way to yield comprehensible outputs. Some
computationalists, convinced a priori that even meaning making can be
reduced to AI specifi cations, are perpetually at work trying to prove that the
messiness of meaning making is not beyond their reach (McClelland 1990,
Schank 1990). The complex “universal models” they propose are sometimes
half-jokingly referred to by them as “TOEs,” an acronym for “theories of
everything” (Mitchell 1995). But though they have not even come near to
succeeding and, as many believe, will probably never in principle succeed,
their efforts nonetheless are interesting for the light they shed on the divide
between meaning making and information processing.
The diffi culty these computationalists encounter inheres in the kinds of
“rules” or operations that are possible in computation. All of them, as we know,
must be specifi able in advance, must be free of ambiguity, and so on. They must,
in their ensemble, also be computationally consistent, which means that while
operations may alter with feedback from prior results, the alterations must also
adhere to a consistent, prearranged systematicity. Computational rules may

Culture, mind, and education 163
be contingent, but they cannot encompass unforeseeable contingencies. Thus
Hamlet cannot (in AI) tease Polonius with ambiguous banter about “yonder
cloud shaped like a camel, nay ‘tis backed like a weasel,” in the hope that his
banter might evoke guilt and some telltale knowledge about the death of
Hamlet’s father.
It is precisely this clarity, this prefi xedness of categories, that imposes
the most severe limit on computationalism as a medium in which to frame
a model of mind. But once this limitation is recognized, the alleged death
struggle between culturalism and computationalism evaporates. For the
meaning making of the culturalist, unlike the information processing of the
computationalist, is in principle interpretive, fraught with ambiguity, sen-
sitive to the occasion, and often after the fact. Its “ill-formed procedures” are
like “maxims” rather than like fully specifi able rules (Sperber and Wilson
1986, Grice 1989). But they are hardly unprincipled. Rather, they are the
stuff of hermeneutics, an intellectual pursuit no less disciplined for its failure to
produce the click-clear outputs of a computational exercise. Its model case is
text interpretation. In interpreting a text, the meaning of a part depends upon
a hypothesis about the meanings of the whole, whose meaning in turn is based
upon one’s judgment of meanings of the parts that compose it. But a wide
swath of the human cultural enterprise depends upon it. Nor is it clear that the
infamous “hermeneutic circle” deserves the knocks it gets from those in search
of clarity and certainty. After all, it lies at the heart of meaning making.
Hermeneutic meaning making and well-formed information processing
are incommensurate. Their incommensurability can be made evident even
in a simple example. Any input to a computational system must, of course,
be encoded in a specifi able way that leaves no room for ambiguity. What
happens, then, if (as in human meaning making) an input needs to be encoded
according to the context in which it is encountered? Let me give a homely
example involving language, since so much of meaning making involves
language. Say the input into the system is the word cloud. Shall it be taken
in its “meteorological” sense, its “mental condition” sense, or in some other
way? Now, it is easy (indeed necessary) to provide a computational device with
a “look-up” lexicon that provides alternative senses of cloud. Any dictionary
can do it. But to determine which sense is appropriate for a particular context,
the computational device would also need a way of encoding and interpreting
all contexts in which the word cloud might appear. That would then require
the computer to have a look-up list for all possible contexts, a “contexticon.”
But while there are a fi nite number of words, there are an infi nite number of
contexts in which particular words might appear. Encoding the context of
Hamlet’s little riddle about “yonder cloud” would almost certainly escape the
powers of the best “contexticon” one could imagine!
There is no decision procedure known that could resolve the question
whether the incommensurability between culturalism’s meaning making and
computationalism’s information processing could ever be overcome. Yet, for all

164 Jerome Bruner
that, the two have a kinship that is diffi cult to ignore. For once meanings are
established, it is their formalization into a well-formed category system that
can be managed by computational rules. Obviously one loses the subtlety of
context dependency and metaphor in doing so: clouds would have to pass tests
of truth functionality to get into the play. But then again, “formalization” in
science consists of just such maneuvers: treating an array of formalized and
operationalized meanings as if they were fi t for computation. Eventually we
come to believe that scientifi c terms actually were born and grew that way:
decontextualized, disambiguated, totally “look-uppable.”
There is equally puzzling commerce in the other direction. For we are often
forced to interpret the output of a computation in order to “make some sense”
of it – that is, to fi gure out what it “means.” This “search for the meaning”
of fi nal outputs has always been customary in statistical procedures such as
factor analysis where the association between different “variables,” discovered
by statistical manipulation, needed to be interpreted hermeneutically in order
to “make sense.” The same problem is encountered when investigators use the
computational option of parallel processing to discover the association between
a set of coded inputs. The fi nal output of such parallel processing similarly
needs interpretation to be rendered meaningful. So there is plainly some
complementary relationship between what the computationalist is trying to
explain and what the culturalist is trying to interpret, a relationship that has
long puzzled students of epistemology (von Wright 1971, Bruner 1985).
In an undertaking as inherently refl exive and complicated as characterizing
“how our minds work” or how they might be made to work better, there is
surely room for two perspectives on the nature of knowing (von Wright 1971).
Nor is there any demonstrable reason to suppose that without a single and
legitimately “true” way of knowing the world, we could only slide helplessly
down the slippery slope that leads to relativism. It is surely as “true” to say that
Euclid’s theorems are computable as to say, with the poet, that “Euclid alone
has looked on beauty bare.”
A theory of mind
To begin with, if a theory of mind is to be interesting educationally, it should
contain some specifi cations for (or at least implications bearing on) how its
functioning can be improved or altered in some signifi cant way. All-or-none and
once-for-all theories of mind are not educationally interesting. More specifi cally,
educationally interesting theories of mind contain specifi cations of some kind
about the “resources” required for a mind to operate effectively. These include
not only instrumental resources (like mental “tools”), but also settings or
conditions required for effective operations – anything from feedback within
certain time limits to, say, freedom from stress or from excessive uniformity.
Without specifi cation of resources and settings required, a theory of mind is all
“inside-out” and of limited applicability to education. It becomes interesting

Culture, mind, and education 165
only when it becomes more “outside-in,” indicating the kind of world needed
to make it possible to use mind (or heart!) effectively – what kinds of symbol
systems, what kinds of accounts of the past, what arts and sciences, and so
on. The approach of computationalism to education tends to be inside-out
– though it smuggles the world into the mind by inscribing bits of it in
memory, as with our earlier dictionary example, and then relies on “look-
up” routines. Culturalism is much more outside-in, and although it may
contain specifi cations about mental operations eo ipso, as it were, they are not
as binding as, say, the formal requirement of computability. For the approach
of the computationalist to education is indeed bound by the constraint of
computability – that is, whatever aids are offered to mind must be operable
by a computational device.
When one actually examines how computationalism has approached
educational issues, there seem to be three different styles. The fi rst of these
consists in “restating” classical theories of teaching or learning in a computable
form. But while some clarity is gained in so doing (for example, in locating
ambiguities), not much is gained by way of power. Old wine does not improve
much for being poured into differently shaped bottles, even if the glass is
clearer. The classic reply, of course, is that a computable reformulation yields
“surplus insight.” Yet “association theory,” for example, has gone through
successive translations from Aristotle to Locke to Pavlov to Clark Hull without
much surplus yield. So one is justifi ably impatient with new claims for veiled
versions of the same as with many so-called parallel distributed processing (PDP)
“learning models” (Rumelhart and McClelland 1986).
But in fact, computationalism can and does do better than that. Its second
approach begins with a rich description or protocol of what actually transpires
when somebody sets out to solve a particular problem or master a particular
body of knowledge. It then seeks to redescribe what has been observed in
strict computational terms. In what order, for example, does a subject ask for
information, what confuses him, what kinds of hypotheses does he entertain?
This approach then asks what might be going on computationally in devices
that operate that way, for instance, like the subject’s “mind.” From this it seeks
to reformulate a plan about how a learner of this kind might be helped – again
within the limits of computability. John Bruer’s interesting book Schools for
Thought (1993) is a nice example of what can be gained from this fresh approach.
But there is an even more interesting third route that computationalists
sometimes follow. The work of Annette Karmiloff-Smith (1979, 1992) provides
an example if taken in conjunction with some abstract computational ideas. All
complex “adaptive” computational programs involve redescribing the output
of prior operations in order both to reduce their complexity and to improve
their “fi t” to an adaptation criterion. That is what “adaptive” means: reducing
prior complexities to achieve greater “fi tness” to a criterion (Mitchell 1995,
Crutchfi eld and Mitchell 1994). An example will help. Karmiloff-Smith notes
that when we go about solving particular problems, say language acquisition,

166 Jerome Bruner
we characteristically “turn around” on the results of a procedure that has
worked locally and try to redescribe it in more general, simplifi ed terms. We
say, for example, “I’ve put an s at the end of that noun to pluralize it; how about
doing the same for all nouns?” When the new rule fails to pluralize woman,
the learner may generate some additional ones. Eventually, he ends up with a
more or less adequate rule for pluralizing, with only a few odd “exceptions”
left over to be handled by rote. Note that in each step of this process that
Karmiloff-Smith calls “redescription,” the learner “goes meta,” considering
how he is thinking as well as what he is thinking about. This is the hallmark
of “metacognition,” a topic of passionate interest among psychologists – but
also among computational scientists.
That is to say, the rule of redescription is a feature of all complex “adaptive”
computation, but in the present instance, it is also a genuinely interesting
psychological phenomenon. This is the rare music of an overlap between different
fi elds of inquiry – if the overlap turns out to be fertile. So, REDESCRIBE, a
TOE-like rule for adaptive computational systems that also happens to be a
good rule in human problem solving, may turn out to be a “new frontier.” And
the new frontier may turn out to be next-door to educational practice.
So the computationalist’s approach to education seems to take three forms
as noted. The first reformulates old theories of learning (or teaching, or
whatever) in computable form in the hope that the reformulation will yield
surplus power. The second analyzes rich protocols and applies the apparatus
of computational theory to them to better discern what might be going on
computationally. Then it tries to fi gure out how the process can be helped.
This, in effect, is what Newell, Shaw, and Simon did in their work on the
General Problem Solver, and what is currently being done in studies of how
“novices” become “experts” (Chipman and Meyrowitz 1993). Finally there is the
happy fortuity where a central computational idea, like “redescription,” seems to
map directly onto a central idea in cognitive theory, like “metacognition.”
The culturalist approaches education in a very different way. Culturalism
takes as its fi rst premise that education is not an island, but part of the
continent of culture. It asks fi rst what function “education” serves in the
culture and what role it plays in the lives of those who operate within it.
Its next question might be why education is situated in the culture as it is
and how this placement refl ects the distribution of power, status, and other
benefi ts. Inevitably, and virtually from the start, culturalism also asks about the
enabling resources made available to people to cope and what portion of those
resources is made available through “education,” institutionally conceived.
And it will constantly be concerned with constraints imposed on the process
of education – external ones like the organization of schools and classrooms
or the recruitment of teachers and internal ones like the natural or imposed
distribution of native endowment, for native endowment may be as much
affected by the accessibility of symbolic systems as by the distribution of genes.
Culturalism’s task is a double one. On the “macro” side, it looks at the culture

Culture, mind, and education 167
as a system of values, rights, exchanges, obligations, opportunities, and power.
On the “micro” side, it examines how the demands of a cultural system affect
those who must operate within it. In that latter spirit, it concentrates on how
individual human beings construct “realities” and meanings that adapt them
to the system, at what personal cost, with what expected outcomes. While
culturalism implies no particular view concerning inherent psycho-biological
constraints that affect human functioning, particularly meaning making, it
usually takes such constraints for granted and considers how they are managed
by the culture and its instituted educational system.
Although culturalism is far from computationalism and its constraints, it
has no diffi culty incorporating its insights – with one exception. It obviously
cannot rule out processes relating to human meaning making, however much
they do not meet the test of computability. As a corollary, it cannot and does
not rule out subjectivity and its role in culture. Indeed, as we shall see, it is
much concerned with mtersubjectivity – how humans come to know “each
other’s minds.” In both these senses, culturalism is to be counted among the
“sciences of the subjective.” And, in consequence, I shall often refer to it as
the “cultural psychological” approach, or simply as “cultural psychology.”
For all that it embraces the subjective in its purview and refers often to the
“construction of reality,” cultural psychology surely does not rule out “reality”
in any ontological sense. It argues (on epistemological grounds) that “external”
or “objective” reality can only be known by the properties of mind and the
symbol systems on which mind relies (Goodman 1978).
A fi nal point relates to the place of emotion and feeling. It is often said that
all “cognitive psychology,” even its cultural version, neglects or even ignores
the place of these in the life of mind. But it is neither necessary that this be so
nor, at least in my view, is it so. Why should an interest in cognition preclude
feeling and emotion (see e.g. Oatley 1992)? Surely emotions and feelings are
represented in the processes of meaning making and in our constructions of
reality. Whether one adopts the Zajonc view that emotion is a direct and
unmediated response to the world with subsequent cognitive consequences
or the Lazarus view that emotion requires prior cognitive inference, it is still
“there,” still to be reckoned with (Zajonc 1980, 1984, Lazarus 1981, 1982,
1984). And as we shall see, particularly in dealing with the role of schools in
“self construction,” it is very much a part of education.
References
Brinton, C. (1965): The Anatomy of Revolution. New York: Vintage Books.
Bruer, J.T. (1993): Schools for Thought: A Science of Learning in the Classroom. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Bruner, J. (1985): “Narrative and Pragmatic Modes of Thought.” In E. Eisner (ed.): Learning
and Teaching the Ways of Knowing: Eighty-Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of
Education. Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 97–115.

168 Jerome Bruner
Bruner, J. (1990): Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chi, M.T.H. – Glaser, R. – Farr, M.J. (eds.) (1988): The Nature of Expertise. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Chipman, S. – Meyrowitz, A.L. (1993): Foundations of Knowledge Acquisition: Cognitive Models of
Complex Learning, vols. 1 and 2. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Crutchfi eld, J.P. – Mitchell, M. (1994): The Evolution of Emergent Computation. Santa Fe Institute
Technical Report 94–03–012, Santa Fe, NM: Santa Fe Institute.
Goodman, N. (1978): Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
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Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979): A Functional Approach to Child Language: A Study of Determiners and
Reference. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992): Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kroeber, A.L. (1917): “The Superorganic.” American Anthropologist, 19 (2), pp. 163–213.
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Psychologist, 36, pp. 222–223.
Lazarus, R.S. (1982): “Thoughts on the Relations between Emotion and Cognition.” American
Psychologist, 37 (9), pp. 1019–1024.
Lazarus, R.S. (1984): “On the Primacy of Cognition.” American Psychologist, 39 (2), pp. 124–129.
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and J.L. McClelland: Parallel Distributed Processing: Psychological and Biological Models, vol. 2.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 122–169.
Mitchell, M. (1995): “What Can Complex System Approaches Offer the Cognitive Sciences?”
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, State
University of New York at Stony Brook, June 10.
Oatley, K. (1992): Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Olson, D.R. (1994): The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing
and Reading. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ong, W.J. (1991): Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge.
Rumelhart, D.E. – McClelland, J.L. (eds.) (1986): Parallel Distributed Processing: Explanations in
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Schank, R.C. (1990): Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artifi cial Memory. New York:
Scribner.
Segal, J.W. – Chipman, S.F. – Glaser, R. (1985): Thinking and Learning Skills: Volume 2, Relating
Instruction to Research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Sperber, D. – Wilson, D. (1986): Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Von Wright, G.H. (1971): Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
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Zajonc, R.B. (1980): “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences.” American
Psychologist, 35 (2), pp. 151–175.
Zajonc, R.B. (1984): “On the Primacy of Affect.” American Psychologist, 39 (2), pp. 117–123.

Chapter 12
Experience, pedagogy,
and social practices
Robin Usher
In international learning and educational theory, British-Australian philosopher
and educator Robin Usher has a clear position as the fi rst spokesman of the postmodern
approach, strongly inspired by Michel Foucault and other French postmodernists. Since
the late 1990s, Usher has been the Research Director of the Royal Melbourne Institute
of Technology. Before that he was a Reader at the University of Southampton, and
in 1997, together with his colleagues Ian Bryant and Rennie Johnston, he published
what may be regarded as his most signifi cant book, entitled Adult Education and the
Postmodern Challenge: Learning Beyond the Limits. The following chapter, of
which Usher is the main author, is an abridged version of the last part of chapter 5 of
that book, describing what Usher and his co-authors understand as the four postmodern
modes of learning and practice as seen in relation to adult education.
Experience, pedagogy, and social practices
In adult education discourse, experience has mainly signifi ed freedom from
regulation in the service of personal autonomy and/or social empowerment.
Autonomy, empowerment, self-expression and self-realisation are key signifi ers.
Other hitherto more submerged signifi ers such as ‘application’ and ‘adaptation’
now also have a key signifi cance. The meaning of experience will vary according
to different discursive practices, as too will the particular signifi cance given to
learning derived from experience. Although experiential learning has become
central to the theory and practice of education in the postmodern moment, as a
pedagogy it is inherently ambivalent and capable of many signifi cations. There
is a need to stop seeing experiential learning in purely logocentric terms, as a
natural characteristic of the individual learner or as a pedagogical technique,
and more in terms of the contexts – socio-cultural and institutional – in which
it functions and from which it derives its signifi cations. In itself, therefore, it
has no unequivocal or ‘given’ meaning – it is inherently neither emancipatory
nor oppressive, neither domesticating nor transformative. Rather, its meaning
is constantly shifting between and across these polarities. It is perhaps
most usefully seen as having a potential for emancipation and oppression,
domestication and transformation, where at any one time and according to

170 Robin Usher
context both tendencies can be present and in confl ict with one another.
Accordingly, it offers a contestable and ambiguous terrain where different
socio-economic and cultural assumptions and strategies can be differentially
articulated. As a fi eld of tension, it can be exploited by different groups, each
emphasising certain dimensions over others.
Experiential learning can, for example, be deployed as a pedagogical strategy
both in a disciplines-based curriculum and within a competences-based
curriculum. Equally, it can be deployed as part of a continued questioning of
and resistance to the forms of power that situate us as subjects. But at the same
time, even here, experiential teaming can function as both a more effective
means of disciplining the ‘whole’ subject rather than simply the reasoning part
and as a strategy to subvert the dominance of an oppressive universalistic reason
by giving ‘voice’ to difference. What this implies, then, is that experience
is always a site of struggle, a terrain where the meaning and signifi cance of
the experience to be cultivated in learning contexts is fought over. Central
to this struggle is the reconfi guration of emancipation and oppression in the
postmodern moment.
The schema or ‘map’ of experiential learning shown in Figure 12.1 attempts
to depict the various possibilities. It is structured around two continua:
Autonomy–Adaptation and Expression–Application. The resulting four
quadrants represent four discursive/material practices, here referred to as
Lifestyle, Confessional, Vocational and Critical. In effect, what is being
depicted here is that application/expression/autonomy/adaptation are the
continua around which the pedagogy of experiential learning is differentially
structured within different discursive/material practices. What these signify
will differ relatively to the different discursive practices and the pedagogic
Autonomy
Adaptation
Application Expression
LifestyleCritical
Vocational Confessional
Figure 12.1 A ‘map’ of experiential learning in the social practices of postmodernity.

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 171
and epistemological relationships within each practice. The schema enables an
exploration of the contexts and meanings of experience, and hence the location
of learning from experience, both between and within the quadrants.
Lifestyle practices
Today lifestyle practices have signifi cant implications for a reconfi guring of the
theory and practice of adult education. In the postmodern, the educational is
recast as the cultivation of desire through experience, both conditional upon
and responsive to contemporary socio-economic and cultural fragmentation.
Learning does not simplistically derive from experience; rather, experience
and learning are mutually positioned in an interactive dynamic. Learning
becomes the experience gained through consumption and novelty, which then
produces new experience. Consequently, the boundaries defi ning ‘acceptable’
learning break down – in lifestyle practices learning can be found anywhere
in a multiplicity of sites of learning. The predominant concern is with an
ever-changing identity through the consumption of experience and of a
learning stance towards life as a means of expressing identity. Pedagogically,
experiential learning, sitting comfortably within the postmodern, gains an
increasingly privileged place as the means by which desire is cultivated and
identity formed.
Lifestyle practices centre on the achievement of autonomy through
individuality and self-expression, particularly in taste and sense of style.
Within a general stylisation of life, the mark of autonomy is a stylistic self-
consciousness inscribed in the body, in clothes, in ways of speaking, in leisure
pursuits, in holidays and the like. A lifestyle is adopted and cultivated but in
a refl exive and self-referential way – lifestyle is never practised ‘blindly’ and
un-self-consciously.
Lifestyle practices are fi rmly located within the play of difference that is
characteristic of consumer culture. Unlike the mass consumption of modernity,
consumption in the postmodern is based on choice as difference and difference as
choice. In the postmodern, a lifestyle revolves around difference, the acquisition
of the distinctive and the different within a signifying culture (Featherstone
1991) that summons up dreams, desires and fantasies in developing a life-
project of self and where there is a continual construction (and reconstruction)
of identity and a trying-on of relationships.
Empowerment through autonomy and self-actualisation (self-expression)
becomes important but assumes a range of very different meanings, from
the crumbling of hierarchy in new post-Fordist management to social
and cultural empowerment in new social movements, e.g. the women’s
movement and movements for ethnic and sexual awareness. One effect of
this is that intellectuals, and indeed educators, are forced to assume the role
of commentators and interpreters rather than legislators and ‘enlightened’
pedagogues. Educational practitioners, rather than being the source/producers

172 Robin Usher
of knowledge/taste, become facilitators helping to interpret everybody’s
knowledge and helping to open up possibilities for further experience. They
become part of the ‘culture’ industry, vendors in the educational hypermarket.
In a reversal of modernist education, the consumer (the learner) rather than the
producer (educator) is articulated as having greater signifi cance and power.
On the other hand, consumerism knows no boundaries nor does it respect
existing markers. Image, style and design take over from modernist meta-
narratives in conferring meaning. The ‘culture’ industry, advertising and
the media both ‘educate’ the consumer and, through the bombardment of
images with which people must experientially identify and interpret, make
consumption necessary and compulsive.
It is the promotion of lifestyle practices – the obligation to shape a life
through choices in a world of self-referenced objects and images – that infl u-
ences the self in postmodernity. Autonomy becomes a matter of expressing
identity through the consumption of signifying choices. The project of self,
rather than being unidirectional and governed by instrumental rationality,
becomes one of the possession of desired goods and the pursuit of a lifestyle
governed by the incitement of desire. Pleasure, once the enemy, is now
considered indispensable. Rather than life being seen as a search for coherent
and lasting meaning, it is construed as the pleasure of experiencing – from the
immersion in images, from the fl ow of images in consumption and leisure and
their combination in postmodern pursuits such as shopping. Here, experiences
are valued as experiences – for example, one does not shop for the sake of
satisfying ‘real’ needs (since needs are defi ned by the demands of lifestyle
practices, there are no ‘real’ or ‘underlying’ needs), let alone for the utility of
the goods purchased. When consumption is a matter of consuming signs, it is
the experience itself that counts, i.e. that signifi es and defi nes.
Selves become constructed through ‘media-ted’ experience. Consumption
requires each individual to choose from a variety of products in response to
a repertoire of wants that may be shaped and legitimised by advertising but
must be experienced and justifi ed as personal desires. However constrained by
external or internal factors, economic or psychological, the postmodern self is
required to construct a life through the exercise of choice amongst alternatives.
Every aspect of life, like every commodity, is imbued with a self-referential
meaning; every choice we make is an emblem of our identity, a mark of our
individuality; each is a message to ourselves and others as to the sort of person
we are; each casts back a glow illuminating the self who consumes.
Lifestyle is not confi ned to any one particular social or age group, nor is it
purely a matter of economic determination. Economic capital is important
but so too is cultural capital – both play a part in infl uencing the capacity of
individuals to be more or less active in their exercise of lifestyle choices. The
social group that is most readily associated with lifestyle practices, the so-called
new middle class, demonstrates this. Their involvement in lifestyle practices
cannot be explained simply as a function of income or ideology. I will argue

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 173
rather that the key to their postmodern sensibility is the adoption of a learning
mode towards life. Their habitus – their unconscious dispositions, classifi catory
schemes, taken-for-granted preferences – is evident in their sense of the
appropriateness and validity of their taste for cultural goods and practices.
They are the bearers of explicit notions of lifelong learning which are integral
to their sensibility, values, assumptions and the aspirations of their cultural
stance. They adopt a learning mode towards life – the conscious and refl exive
education of self in the fi eld of taste and style. They express their opposition to
the established order by giving priority to experience as the mediator through
which meaning is constructed, and to the demand for new experiences and
new meanings. Thus, an emphasis is given to experiential learning which, for
them, is invested with the signifi cance of autonomy and self-expression in the
pursuit of lifestyle practices. Coupled with this is a general tendency towards
the relativisation of knowledge with knowledges generated from a number of
local sources, including everyday life. Here, experience is not pre-given but
constantly reconstructed. Meaning is constructed through experience rather than
simply being conveyed by it. Experiential learning is established as a legitimate
ground for education but with contestation over its meaning and signifi cance.
Within lifestyle practices, the relationship between experience, knowledge
and pedagogy is articulated in a particular way. Experience is something
to get immersed in, valued as a means of defi ning a lifestyle rather than
something whose value lies in its potential for knowledge. It is consumed
because it signifi es in relation to a lifestyle. Knowledge is multiple, based on
multiple realities and the multiplicity of experience. It is neither canonical
nor hierarchical. There is no notion of intrinsically ‘worthwhile’ knowledge
other than in terms of taste and style. Pedagogy does not seek to transmit a
canon of knowledge or a single ordered view of the world. It is not concerned
with Enlightenment ‘messages’. Given this, therefore, the learner is positioned
within a multiplicity of experience whose meanings are located within a
consumerist market-led culture. Experience is the means by which a lifestyle
is created and ‘re-created’.
In one sense, therefore, learners are positioned by lifestyle practices as
active subjects, creating themselves, free from constraining traditions and
ideologies. But they are also positioned as passive subjects, since lifestyle is
socially defi ned, culturally legitimised, economically infl uenced and prey to
consumerism and media-generated images. Flexible accumulation and the
techno-scientifi c revolution have changed processes of production and reduced
the need for manual work (hence creating active ‘power-ful’ subjects) but at the
same time have invaded people’s lives with a fl ood of commodities, seductive
images and signifying rivalries. All of this can be seen as liberating but also
as a seduction that constitutes a new form of social control and which, in the
process, creates ‘subjectifi ed’ power-less subjects. Furthermore, seduction goes
hand-in-hand with repression (Bauman 1992), as those who are excluded from
the realms of choice yet who are nonetheless affected by the global reach of

174 Robin Usher
consumer society fi nd themselves increasingly subjected to the repression of
poverty and marginalisation.
Vocational practices
Postmodernity is a global condition where both dispersal and fragmentation
coexist. Flexible accumulation and post-Fordism bring more volatile labour
markets, faster switches from one product to another, niche marketing and a
greater consumer orientation. Post-Fordism involves changes in production
and consumption – from mass-production, mass-market, machine-paced
systems to the production of specialist, niche and luxury goods, and to
production systems based on the application of information technology (IT).
These fundamental changes in production – ‘fl exible specialisation’ – have
reduced the need for manual work and led to the development of a new form
of social labour. At the same time, contemporary education is characterised
by its increasing transformation into a market form, a transformation which
is best understood as a postmodern phenomenon. Education appears to gain
increasing autonomy from central and local government control but also
loses autonomy through the emphasis on privatisation, marketisation and
vocationalism. As nonmarket relations are redefi ned according to the logic
of the market, education, unable to insulate itself from these developments,
assumes a market/consumer orientation.
Vocational practices are constructed through the market form where multi-
skilling and personal motivation are privileged. Here, learning signifies
‘application’, with pedagogy structured around problem solving and project-
based activities. The learner is required to be highly motivated in the direction
of a personal change linked to ‘reading’ the market and continually adapting
to the needs of the socio-economic environment. This refl ects the post-Fordist
organisation of work, marked by informal and networked social relations
and fl at/lateral hierarchies. Vocationalist discourse, therefore, personalises
economic competitiveness by stressing the need for motivation and for
becoming skilled. At the same time, it offers a formula for economic recovery,
based on a reconfi guration of human capital theory, and a metonymic of
blame (‘If only you were trained and motivated, we wouldn’t be where we
are today!’ – Ball 1993: 74). Education is cast as turning out the product
which industry consumes. Changes in industry and changes in the processes
of schooling go hand in hand, with educational institutions being expected to
produce enterprising, consumption-oriented individuals with the attitudes and
competencies, the fl exibility and predisposition to change appropriate to the
post-Fordist economy and ready to take their place in the market.
Vocationalism then is designed to produce fl exible competencies and a
predisposition to change. This is allied to a critique of the dominant liberal-
humanist academic curriculum and draws upon some aspects of progressivist
theories of motivation and learning (process-orientation, cooperation, problem

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 175
solving, open-ended investigation). It argues, fi rst, that the ‘real’ world (by
which is meant the world of post-Fordism and flexible specialisation) is
not subsumable under academic subject divisions, and hence the academic
curriculum provides an ‘irrelevant’ education and preparation for this world,
and second, that the didacticism and teacher-centredness of this curriculum
does not provide the appropriate attitudes and capabilities. These curricular
changes, intended to enhance learning experiences and increase motivation,
are implicated with the technological changes affecting the labour process
and modes of production. New attitudes and competences are required from
employees, and hence the relationship between pedagogy, knowledge and the
labour process changes. What is foregrounded is the need for fl exibility and
continuous learning, social skills and fl exible competences, rather than subject-
based knowledge.
As a pedagogy, experiential learning has the capacity to unsettle the
established order and hence has a transformative potential. In vocational
practices, experiential learning holds out the promise of breaking the strangle-
hold of a selective and elitist higher education. It challenges the notion that
knowledge is only to be found within educational institutions and through a
subject-based curriculum. It challenges also the prerogative of self-selecting
and unaccountable academic professionals in controlling and defi ning what is
to count as knowledge. Experiential learning, therefore, becomes the key to
broadening access to higher education and to ‘democratising’ the curriculum.
At the same time, however, vocationalist pedagogy creates a context where
learning means proceeding to the correct answer in the most effi cient way.
Here, adaptation and application have no room for experimentation, open-
endedness or unforeseen outcomes. Hence, the experience and knowledge of
learners and knowledge arising from it becomes a mere device, a means for best
achieving a pre-defi ned end. Learners are manipulated pedagogically to access
already-existing forms of knowledge either in the form of disciplines or, more
usually, in the form of sets of behavioural objectives. Learner experience appears
to be valued, but its use is instrumental, selective and at best illustrative. It is
only accorded signifi cance if it contributes to the learning of the pre-defi ned
knowledge or skills; if not, it is discounted. This is then a ‘techni-cised’
pedagogy, where experience has no inherent value but functions merely as a
tool for enhancing motivation. Experience becomes assimilated to behavioural
competences.
Experiential learning is itself a pedagogy constructed through vocational
practices; thus, it is both socially constructed and contested. Different social
groups give it their own meanings, represent it in different ways. Thus, as
we have seen, the new middle class invest it with a signifi cation of autonomy
and expression. For those groups associated with the New Right, it means
adaptation to a pre-defi ned world and learning applicable and relevant to that
world. Experience represents relevance, usefulness, self-discipline and market
effectiveness. Paradoxically, however, and this is where there are resonances with

176 Robin Usher
contemporary lifestyle practices, experiential learning is the means by which
the cultural and educational establishment can be resisted and subverted – for
example, through challenging the power of the academy to defi ne ‘worthwhile’
knowledge and by presenting alternatives to curricula based on disciplinary
knowledge. Of course, this challenge has to be related to rapid economic and
social change – fl exible capital accumulation, specialisation, the rise of core and
periphery workforces coupled with the growth of an underclass, fear of infl ation
and the loss of confi dence in government’s ability to manage the economy. The
resulting uncertainty and breakdown of established patterns of work and life
lead to the possibility of deviance, delinquency and disorder.
For government, instability must be managed either directly through the
law and order system or indirectly through education. One way of manag-
ing instability through education is by normalising discipline and, more
importantly, self-discipline. In the post-compulsory sector this poses some
diffi culty since students are there by choice. Yet the need for self-discipline
is not diminished nor is self-discipline easily attained. Rather than taking
control of what happens in the post-school arena, government divests itself
of control – directly by giving more power to employers, indirectly by
encouraging opportunities for people to learn outside educational institutions
and to have it accredited outside of the educational system. Hence, young
adults are ‘educated’ into and by the self-discipline of labour. The focus is
on an employability that somehow reinvents and captures the work ethic yet
does not necessarily lead to paid work. Here then, we see experiential learning
circumscribed by employers’ needs for particular kinds of labour and particular
kinds of consumers and by government’s need for a means of social control
through self-discipline.
Thus, a pedagogy of experiential learning can also have a domesticating
potential. In vocational practices, experiential learning can be the means to
control change – at the same time that it unsettles the established order, it also
functions to ensure that the unsettling remains within established parameters of
social order. Thus, for example, assessment and accreditation procedures ensure
that only certain forms of experience are valued. Furthermore, the regulation
of experience is taken out of the control of educational practitioners and placed
instead in centrally formulated anticipated outcomes. Within vocational
practices, what we see happening is the commodifi cation of experiences –
experience becomes a commodity to be exchanged in the marketplace of
educational credit.
In vocational practices the relationship between experience, knowledge and
pedagogy is articulated in such a way that experience functions to provide a
personal motivation and a feet-on-the-ground pragmatism. Learning becomes
a matter of applying knowledge where knowledge itself is narrowly defi ned,
a heuristic, ‘factual’ knowledge which enables the learner to adapt to a taken-
for-granted, pre-defi ned ‘real world’. Pedagogy is the link between personal
motivation and the learning of pre-defi ned outcomes in the form of adaptive

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 177
skills. In this context, the learner is positioned as a subject in need of skills
in the post-Fordist marketplace. Skills are empowering – through them one
becomes more competent and ‘employable’. Learning is a matter of applying
what is learnt so that one can become better adapted and adaptable to the
perceived needs of the economy. Experiential learning is open and closed in
the same moment.
Confessional practices
‘Selves’ are not natural givens in the world and to have knowledge of them is
not simply a matter of discovering or uncovering their reality. Conceptions
of the self have signifi catory power and selves are constructed through these
conceptions and their associated discursive practices. A pastoral power which
works by enabling people to actively and committedly participate in disciplinary
regimes seems to have a contemporary signifi cance. In effect, people are
educated to govern themselves through bringing their inner lives into the
domain of power. Pastoral power works, not through imposition or coercion
but through people investing their identity, subjectivity and desires with those
ascribed to them through certain ‘knowledgeable’ or expert discourses.
In this process, people’s self-regulating capacities become allied with social
and economic objectives. To know one’s inner self is for that inner self to be
known, and being known becomes the condition for a more effective regulation
in the service of contemporary political rationalities which foreground the
individual and the market. The private, in effect, becomes public and becomes
a support for enterprise culture and the market. In other words, to realise
oneself, to fi nd out the truth about oneself, to accept responsibility for oneself,
becomes both personally desirable and economically functional.
Contemporary governmentality works in terms of the affective and effective
governing of persons where positioning and investment in a subject position
is a crucial factor. What is involved here is a ‘bringing forth of one’s self’ as
an object of knowledge through a pedagogy which functions to open up for
intervention those aspects of a person which have hitherto remained unspoken.
The self is constituted as an object of knowledge through discovering the
‘truth’ about itself. However, in confessing, subjects have already accepted
the legitimacy and truth of confessional practices and the particular meanings
and investments that these invoke. Adults, for example, accept themselves
as ‘learners’ in need of ‘learning’ provided by professional adult educators for
their future development. In doing so, they align their subjectivities with
these educational discourses and meanings they invoke. They become enfolded
within a discursive matrix of practices which constitute their felt needs and
paths of self-development.
In contemporary society externally imposed discipline gives way to the self-
discipline of an autonomous subjectivity. With confession, the emphasis is on
self-improvement, self-development and self-regulation. It displaces canonical

178 Robin Usher
knowledge by valorising individual experience but, at the same time, rather
than displacing power as such it extends the range of pastoral power embedded
in the confessional regime of truth and self-knowledge. Confessional practices
therefore create productive and empowered subjects who are, however, already
governed (by themselves). Thus, externally imposed discipline and regulation
is not required. There is regulation through self-regulation, discipline through
self-discipline, a process which is pleasurable and even empowering, but only
within a matrix from which power is never absent (Usher and Edwards 1995).
In confessional practices, psychotherapeutic expertise in a variety of forms
from the academic to the ‘popular’ plays a key role in presenting a morality
of freedom, fulfi lment and empowerment. It offers the means by which the
regulation of selves by others and by the self is made consonant with the current
situation. Thus, in confessional practices, autonomy becomes adaptation, an
autonomy enhanced through the application of expertise. Empowerment is
psychological and individualistic. Political, social and institutional goals
are realigned with individual pleasures and desires, with self-expression, the
happiness and fulfi lment of the self. Pedagogic practices, such as assertiveness
training and educational guidance, illustrate this very clearly. They emphasise
the ‘liberation’ of the self but only within the confi nes and limitations of
understood and unchallenged contexts and systems.
Knowledge/expertise of the self stimulates subjectivity, promotes self-
knowledge and seeks to maximise capacities. Persons are cast as active citizens,
ardent consumers, enthusiastic employees and loving parents – and all of
this as if they were seeking to realise their own most fundamental desires
and innermost needs. At the same time, however, by enhancing subjectivity
(creating active subjects), subjectivity is connected to power by means of
new languages (psychotherapeutic expertise) for speaking about subjectivity.
However, confessional practices are not recognised as powerful because they
are cloaked in an esoteric yet seemingly objective expertise and a humanistic
discourse of helping and empowerment. Thus, an active, autonomous and
productive subjectivity is brought forth in confessional practices even as it
remains subject to the power/knowledge formations which bring forth this
form of subjectivity and invest it with signifi cance.
In confessional practices, the relationship between experience, knowledge
and pedagogy is articulated in terms of a representation of experience as
enabling access to knowledge and the innermost truths of self. Pedagogy
involves the deployment of psychodynamic expertise to facilitate this process.
Given this relationship, the learner is positioned to discover the meaning of his/
her experience by becoming an active subject within a network of confession.
The meaning of experience is bound up with fi nding the truth about self in
order to enhance capacities and become adapted and well adjusted, but this
active subject in control of self is at the same time subjectifi ed within a network
of pastoral power. Experiential learning becomes a matter of self-expression in
the interests of adaptation.

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 179
Critical practices
Critical practices work through particular meanings given to autonomy and
application. Autonomy in critical practices has a different signifi cation to the
autonomy of lifestyle practices. In the latter, it is oriented towards expression
through the cultivation of desire and the display of difference through con-
sumption. In the former, it is oriented towards application, which again is not
the same as the ‘application’ of vocational practices. It is not the application
of learning in the service of adaptation to the existing techno-social order but
rather an application of learning in the cause of self and social transformation. It
is in changing particular contexts rather than adapting to them that autonomy
is ultimately to be found.
In critical practices, there is more of a recognition that meaning is discursively
produced and that experience, therefore, is never simply an ‘innocent’ or basic
given. Experience and the way it is represented are the stakes in the struggle
to fi nd ‘voice’, to exercise control and power. The key question, then, becomes
how representations of experience are discursively produced and how subjects
both position themselves and are positioned discursively. This opens up
issues of power, given that discourses serve the interests of particular groups.
Thus a pedagogy that assumes experience is innocent is challenged because
it must inevitably be uncritically supportive of the status quo. The refusal to
accept that the representation of experience is political means that the power
relations embedded in discourses and the interests of particular groups served
by particular discourses remain unseen and unquestioned.
In critical practices, therefore, pedagogy becomes a political practice. Allied to
this is an emphasis on the cultural, a recognition that culture is a lived ongoing
process as important as the material and the economic and as much a terrain
of struggle. Pedagogy is not seen as a technical matter directed to imparting
a canon of knowledge but as vitally implicated in a politics of representation
(how people present and understand or are presented and understood) in the
cultural processes that shape the meanings and understanding of experience
and the formation of identity.
The relationship between experience, knowledge and pedagogy is articulated
in terms of a self-conscious questioning of the representation(s) of experience.
There is an explicit recognition that experience ‘signifies’ and that the
signifi cations of experience are imbued with power and are infl uential in the
shaping of identity. The relationship between experience and knowledge is
not taken as either given or unproblematic, nor is it seen as purely a matter
of deploying methodical will or eradicating false consciousness. There is an
acknowledging of the place of desire in how people are positioning vis-à-
vis their experience, the investments that tie people to particular positions
and identities and the multiple and ambiguous positioning that people fi nd
themselves in.
Critical practices have a clear and explicit transformative potential, but

180 Robin Usher
this resides in localised contexts and operates through the deployment of
specifi c knowledge. In their pedagogical aspects (and in a sense they are almost
exclusively pedagogic), they reject the conventional domesticating effects
of pedagogy. Experiential learning becomes a strategy designed to privilege
‘voice’ in the service of self and social empowerment and transformation. At the
same time, however, it is this very emphasis which can give critical practices a
regulatory dimension. The ‘critical’ easily becomes a norm, a fi nal truth which
is just as heavy in its regulation as any openly oppressive discourse – as, for
example, in the worst excesses of political correctness. Indeed, in some ways
this regulation may be even more diffi cult to resist, speaking as it does in the
name of empowerment and transformation. As Gore (1993) argues, critical
pedagogy, whilst rhetorically opposing ‘regimes of truth’, can itself easily
become one. She refers to this as the difference between the pedagogy argued
for and the pedagogy of the argument – in the case of critical pedagogy, the
former liberatory and transformative, the latter totalising and regulative.
New forms of critical practice have been associated with what some commen-
tators have referred to as ‘postmodern’ social movements. They are characterised
by a cultural activism and an emphasis on experience as an intense ‘here and
now’. Whilst seeking personal and social transformation, they do so in a non-
totalising and non-teleological way and outside the comforting rationales of the
grand narratives of modernity. Although pedagogic, they deploy a pedagogy
of performance, often transgressive and sometimes ‘outrageous’ to bourgeois
sensibilities. In critical practices, experience is not regarded as something that
leads to knowledge but as knowledge. Knowledge, however, is in the service
of action, an activity, a practice which does things.
Rethinking experience in the context of contemporary
adult learning
At this point it might be useful to relate these quadrants and the practices
they represent to the well-known ‘villages’ of experiential learning as identifi ed
originally by Weil and McGill (1989a). To some extent they are repre-
sentative of the mainstream discourse of experiential learning within adult
education. These ‘villages’ have served a useful purpose as a heuristic device for
conceptualising and categorising the various forms of experiential learning and
for examining the assumptions, infl uences and purposes within and between
these forms. Indeed, the very concept of ‘village’ was formulated in order to
avoid creating exclusive distinctions and divisions between various forms
and practices of experiential learning and as a means of encouraging dialogue
between them.
The exploration and development of the quadrants may help to complement
and expand upon the impact of the villages. Indeed, meaningful distinctions
and connections can be made between these categorisations in terms of their
emphases, their dynamics and their complexity. Within the quadrants as

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 181
they have been formulated here, the emphasis is as much on problematising
and understanding experience in relation to different contexts and discourses
as it is on focusing on the learning process contingent on experience. This
wider emphasis may serve to avoid the danger of ‘locking onto’ a particular
village because of its association with a specific ideological tradition or
institutionalised educational practice. Equally, it may make it less likely that
existing social relations are left unquestioned within a preoccupation with
experiential techniques and methods.
The signifi cance of the interrelationship of application/expression/autonomy/
adaptation within and between the different quadrants is that it allows greater
fl uidity in representing the dynamic interconnections between experience,
knowledge and pedagogy in relation to different and changing discursive
practices. By this means, it is possible to move away from the tendency of
the villages concept to be overdescriptive and overschematic and to counter
the very real possibility of reifying the different villages. It also allows a more
complex and fl exible understanding of experience and experiential learning,
which can take account of context, theory and practice, enabling a move
from what Wildemeersch (1992: 25) calls an essentially ‘narrative type of
conversation’ to a more challenging ‘discursive type of conversation’ about
education and learning. This can help show the way towards the paradigm
shift aspired to by Weil and McGill which looks to ‘push the boundaries of our
visions and our villages to acknowledge the inter-connectedness of the whole’
(Weil and McGill 1989b: 269). In this wider context we can better understand
the potential within the various discursive practices for experiential learning
to be both domesticating and transformative.
I have argued that experience is not unproblematic, that it needs to be
understood and interpreted in relation to differing contexts and the infl uence
of a variety of discourses. It can function both to empower and control, to
create both powerful and powerless selves. What, then, are the implications
for educational practice?
In focusing on student experience, I suggest that educators need to help
students to problematise and interrogate experience as much as to access and
validate it. Complementary to the acknowledgement that experiential learning
is a holistic process, that it is socially and culturally constructed and that it is
infl uenced by the socio-emotional context in which it occurs (Boud et al. 1993)
must be a similar understanding about the nature, construction and context of
experience itself. First, educators need to be wary of basing their practice on
the proposition that experiential learning involves a ‘direct encounter’ with
experience (Weil and McGill 1989b: 248). Whereas experience can provide
new and useful insights into a wide range of issues and problems and can
clearly be used to access, supplement, complement, critique and challenge
understandings of the world derived from disciplinary knowledge, I agree with
Wildemeersch (1992: 22) that the creation of a specifi c ‘opposition between
experiential and theoretical knowledge is unfruitful and even false’.

182 Robin Usher
A learning focus on experience certainly has the potential to be ‘liberating’
in its concern for the ‘neglected learner’ and its opposition to ‘banking’
education, in that it highlights and confers meaning on knowledge, skills
and attitudes previously undervalued and motivates students to extend their
learning and pursuit of knowledge. Yet it can also be domesticating, in that
learners can become unrefl exive prisoners of their experience or have their
experiences colonised and reduced, on the one hand, by oppressive educational
institutions and, on the other hand, by totalising ‘radical’ discourses. Such
approaches run the risk of selling learners short on culturally valued knowledge
and, at worst, lock them into second-best knowledge and, through uncritical
and unrigorous approaches to recognising and accrediting prior learning
from experience, even into second-best qualifi cations. At the same time, by
continuing to see experience as the ‘raw material’ of knowledge, we are unable
to create situations where we can examine how, as selves, we move back and
forth between our own particular stories through which we construct our
identities and the social production that is knowledge. In the process, we fail
to challenge dominant knowledge taxonomies and the relations of power in
which they are implicated.
Educators need to move beyond practice based on overly simplistic
observations that ‘you can always learn from experience’ etc. and look more
carefully at the necessary preconditions for experiential learning. Part of this
might involve, rather than an unsophisticated, untheorised and potentially
threatening delving into student experience, working towards building the
necessary psychological climate and infrastructure from which experience
can both be explored and problematised. This might mean creating suffi cient
student security and self-confi dence, ‘the right emotional tone under which
authentic discourse can occur’ (Brookfi eld 1993: 27), and at least an outline
theoretical framework from which to examine and understand student
experience. It might mean acknowledging more explicitly, honestly and
sensitively the possibility of limiting or oppressive experience – for example,
the experience of personal unemployment, bereavement or loss – as well as
the diffi culties involved in transferring learning from one experiential and
cultural context to another – for example, the problematic connection between
domestic management skills and knowledge and those in a more regulated,
hierarchical and gendered workplace (Butler 1993).
A more productive approach to knowledge might be to engage in the
process of ‘re-view’ (Usher 1992; Brookfi eld 1993), exploring how and why
we theorise experience and critically examining the infl uence on experience
of contexts, cultures and discourses in the past and for the future. Such a
procedure avoids the pitfalls of a naive and even potentially manipulative
pedagogical approach to learner experience where educator theories are present
but unacknowledged and learner experience is foregrounded but inadequately
framed or contextualised.
Equally, it may be necessary to reformulate Weil and McGill’s location

Experience, pedagogy, and social practices 183
of experience in individuals who give personal meaning to different ways of
knowing so that more account can be taken of selves as meaning-takers as well as
meaning-givers. With this in mind, in reconfi guring a pedagogy of experiential
learning, it may be insuffi cient to rely exclusively either on psychologistic
models to uncover, diagnose, categorise or sequence individual experience or
on the artifi cial creation of shared experience through gaming, role-play and
simulations. An alternative approach to experiential learning might be, rather,
to attempt to triangulate experience through an investigation of personal
meanings alongside the meanings of engaged others and the presence and
infl uence of different contexts and different discourses. Here, the quadrants
could themselves function as a useful heuristic device. This might help learners
to see their experience more as ‘text’ than as ‘raw material’, thus leaving open
the possibility of a variety of interpretations and assessments of experience,
including the possibility that experiential learning might be both ‘liberating’
and ‘domesticating’, according to its contextual and discursive location.
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Chapter 13
‘Normal learning problems’ in youth
In the context of underlying cultural
convictions
Thomas Ziehe
Ever since the publication of his dissertation Puberty and Narcissism (in German) in
1975, Thomas Ziehe, now Professor at the Hanover University, has been well known in
Germany and Scandinavia for his insights and interpretations of youth psychology, youth
culture and youth education. In 1982 he published, together with Herbert Stubenrauch,
probably his most important book, Pleading for Unusual Learning (in German),
which broke with prevailing understandings and introduced a new view on youth and
education in modern society. Since then, Ziehe has produced a continuous fl ow of papers
and articles closely following the changes and developments in the thinking, feeling,
learning, understandings and behaviour of teenagers and suggesting corresponding
changes in teaching and schooling. As a sociologist and social psychologist, Ziehe belongs
to what has been termed the third generation of the so-called Frankfurt School, and his
solid theoretical basis is accompanied by an almost seismographic empathy in the ever-
changing conditions and movements of the youth generation. In the following chapter,
which compiles three recent papers in German, Ziehe explains his understanding of the
basic forces which today are directing learning, development and culture in youth.
Underlying convictions as symbolic context of learning
styles in youth
School research and youth research usually work without any integration. This
is a bit curious because the everyday professional experiences of most teachers
are profoundly infl uenced by the fact that the behaviour of their students has
changed in many ways. The appearances and consequences of the cultural break
in school traditions have only gradually been realized, and what is focused on
is then usually how the fascination of youth cultures infl uences the habitus of
the students.
In my work I choose another approach. My main interest is to reconstruct
theoretically the systems of knowledge and rules as the basic symbolic
structures that underlie the socialization of individuals. From the point of
view of cultural theory, these basic structures precede any individuation.
Most psychological approaches must for methodical reasons omit the level
of symbolic–cultural constitution of social reality and relate directly to the

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 185
internal mental world of the individuals they examine: their motives, attitudes
and learning styles. Cultural theory, on the other hand, is occupied with the
symbolic conditions of the origin and basic structures of which the single
individual has already prepared and which have always culturally pre-coded the
most intimate relationship of the individual with him- or herself.
When I try to interpret the appearances and problems of learning and school,
I use an analytic procedure with three steps which, according to my approach,
proceed as follows:
The investigated school processes should be contextualized with reference •
to how they are experienced in light of the meaning horizons of the
students. This will be a subject-oriented contextualization.
However, the meaning structures of the students, their forms of experience, •
their social and emotional worlds and their self-thematization cannot just
be taken at the words, but must – as any other hermeneutic activity – be
interpreted by the social scientist (although most conventional survey
inquiry desists from this). A second level of interpretation must therefore
be a meaning structure-oriented contextualization, in which latent meaning
content, which the involved actors do not command intentionally, is also
taken into consideration.
The third level of contextualization includes a further investigation of •
the latent ascriptions of meaning in order to detect if it is possible to
reconstruct meaning patterns and knowledge structures which, in a
constitutional way, precede the meaning expressions of the individuals.
This will be a meaning system-oriented contextualization, which should also
include the ‘great’ semantic changes in supra-subjective meaning patterns,
cultural understandings and general social orientations.
I hope that these short references do not sound too boastful. They are intended
to indicate the perspectives of my orientation. Whether and to what extent I
live up to them is, after all, a question that I am unable to answer myself.
Anyway, contextualization in a cultural-analytical sense is what I am dealing
with. I try to connect ‘learning style’ and ‘youth culture’ as two items of
investigation with special attention to available general cultural knowledge
structures and rule systems. I take interest in the cultural-analytical question
to the extent that changed symbolic meaning structures can be detected on an
underlying level of investigation. These meaning structures pre-condition what
we at any time consider to be ‘normal’ or unquestionable matters, of course.
Therefore these meaning structures are general and abstract and, from a
cultural-analytical point of view, they come before the empirical appearances
of various youth cultures. The phenomenology of youth cultures can then be
regarded as derived consequences of changes in the underlying symbolic structures.
Youth cultures are formed by changes in general underlying convictions which
include a deeply based kind of ‘knowledge’ fostering our motives, expectations

186 Thomas Ziehe
and actions in ways which we are not conscious of in everyday life.
This understanding of knowledge systems includes certain pre-
assumptions:
The cultural-analytical concept of knowledge excludes the question of (at •
least defi nitive) truth or validity of cultural knowledge. All the symbolic
rules and systems are understood as knowledge that precedes and regulates
the ways of observing and experiencing human reality. This conception
of knowledge also includes what is regarded as real or considered by the
construction of cognitive reality independently of the content of objective
reality.
Furthermore, knowledge is then not understood as being of an individual •
or subjectively internal origin, but as an elaboration of culturally available
and intersubjectively shared schemes of interpretation, functioning as a
kind of draft for the individually constructed stock of knowledge.
The cultural knowledge systems form a • ‘grammatical’ pre-structure, not only
of the cognitive epistemology, but also of the valuations, assessments and
expressions of world and self-references. Emotions, wishes and motives are
also based on cultural patterns concerning what, in a historically situated
culture, can be accepted as expected and normal emotions, wishes and
motives.
From the cultural knowledge systems people build their underlying •
convictions. They consist of routines, everyday certainties and notions
of normality, which are already implied by our experiences of reality.
The underlying convictions form a major part of our knowledge. They
are accessible to refl ection when we convert our life world participant
perspectives into observer perspectives, but in ‘day-to-day life’ the underlying
convictions form a nonconscious implicit context of understanding. On these
nonconscious conditions, our handling of symbols and meanings is then
the basis of our conscious, explicit and everyday-life-applicable knowledge.
However, such underlying symbolic structures should not be understood as a
rigid and restricting girdle secondarily forced upon a (potentially authentic)
individual. The structures are much more ambiguous, in the best meaning of
this term. They restrict the range of possible symbol elaboration and meaning
ascription, but they also have a disposing function – in a situation of action they
make something topical. They offer the actors world-opening semantics and
place, in any context, appropriate interpretations at their disposal.
Thus, the change of such underlying convictions is a change of what is typical, a
change of what is not striking. If they sometimes may be actualized anyway,
the reactions of the actors will be made up of expressions like ‘Why, this is
really quite simple!’ or ‘And what then is the problem?’ When something is
culturally obvious, one does not wonder about it (at least, not as long as one
is in a participating position).

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 187
The modernization of underlying convictions
In the social sciences, the fundamental concepts of culture, society and
personality have a high value of structuring. I shall here present a change to
the underlying convictions on these three levels: (1) culture, (2) society and
(3) the self. I shall do this in a strongly generalizing way, i.e. abstracting from
differences in environments, life circumstances and life ages and focusing on
particular analytical common features in the heterogeneous.
The changed underlying convictions which I shall here deal with theoretically
are not strongly generation-specifi c. They shall not immediately be fi xed as
characteristics of the life age of youth, as the underlying convictions change
inside society as a whole. What is generation-specifi c, but only in a limited way, is
the intensity and the social conventions of the approach to the changed cultural
rule systems. For the young generation, they, from a developmental point
of view, constitute the ‘fi rst’ symbolic frames of socialization. For the older
generations, they are cultural possibilities and risks, which are already carried
by biographical pre-impressions, and thus they are elaborated secondarily.
Each age group must, therefore, elaborate the cultural changes and new
challenges, which potentially concern all groups, by means that are specifi c to
the generational and social groupings.
Eligibility and noneligibility of knowledge content
The kind of everyday culture, and what is regarded as matters of course, into
which the young generation of today grows up is not norm-regulated, as was
the case for earlier generations. Rather it is preference-related, i.e. it is oriented
towards personal preferences and sensitivity. This is caused by a comprehensive
detraditionalization which we have all been through during the last thirty
years. For the young that now grow up into this context, it means on the one
hand an increase in liberation and more individual scope for interpretation
and action, but on the other hand, this detraditionalization for the individual
causes a more demanding strain on orientation.
Individuals are today only weakly normatively directed by a general culture.
The earlier fall of prestige between high culture and popular culture is today
widely dehierarchirized, i.e. the importance of high culture has to a great
extent become relative. Before, the high culture was a kind of symbolic roof of
society to which people had to relate (or at least to not damage). By this, I do
not indicate that a majority of the population earlier had access to the high
culture. But the high culture functioned as a stock of symbols to which it was
important to relate positively. In Germany, for instance, a principal speech
should include a quotation from Goethe – not because most people had read
Goethe, but because he could not be omitted as a symbol. This had considerable
consequences for all cultural areas. I think here of the gratitude that earlier
has been felt and expressed by people who had no immediate biographical

188 Thomas Ziehe
access to cultural knowledge and then later through general adult education
opened up to participation in such cultural processes. This moved these
people to considerable gratitude – a kind of gratitude which we can hardly
fi nd today because the situation has changed radically. Now a much broader
understanding of culture has broken through, and it is an individual option
whether one will embark on high culture or not.
In a sort of counterbalance to this, popular culture at the same time changes
its way of banalizing people’s forms of knowledge and social conventions, their
habits of observation and their mentalities. Popular culture is restless and
practicable, integrated in everyday life and omnipresent. What it subjectively
provokes is as imperative as noise irrigation in a capital airport. The consequence
is a displacement of measures and scales or a gradual permeation of changed
cultural normalities.
This places all forms of production and knowledge which differ from
current popular culture under a pressure for justifi cation, especially regarding
subjective standards of attraction, pleasure, excitement, exaltation, intensity
or fun. Popular cultural standards function today as sharp competitors with
high culture and educational institutions. However, the current distance to
high culture is no longer caused by strong social restrictions, but rather by
a question of acceptance: high culture is increasingly avoided due to entirely
different habits of attention and enjoyment.
The subjective distance of most young people to the products and practices
of high culture has therefore become tremendous. Even the historically
strongly expanded youth education is hardly able to compensate for this. When
Beethoven is mentioned, 11-year-old children think of a dog in a certain movie
and only with surprise do they learn that there has also existed a composer by
that name. However, the consequences of this big distance are not immediately
the end of Western civilization as it has often been claimed, but merely a
general marginalization of high culture. High culture is pushed back to the level
of a subculture among other subcultures. The status of high culture becomes
optional: those who want can embark on it, and those who do not can leave it
out without any severe loss of reputation. And more and more, young people
especially leave it out.
My contrasting of popular culture and high culture should not be understood
as a mutually aesthetic theoretical exclusion. I do not share the cultural
pessimistic idea of ‘arts versus entertainment’. My approach is rather cultural-
sociological: not a critique of the products of popular culture as such, but a
critique of everyday conventions turning into ‘pop’. This results in subjective
conclusions about such products and forms of experience which are different
from popular culture.
Positively considered, there is in this turning into ‘pop’ an increased measure
of motivational liberty. The mode of optionality, i.e. the possibility and at the
same time the necessity of choosing and deciding for one’s self, has become
part of everyday life, and individuals grow right from childhood into this

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 189
mode. Optionality includes the possibility of choosing as well as of not choosing.
It has become easier in everyday culture to say ‘no’ to any expectations from
outside which are experienced as unpleasant or risky. The internal individual
space of deviance from what institutions present as knowledge content has
clearly expanded. And the avoidance of knowledge forms which are subjectively
experienced as unpleasant has become a widespread everyday attitude.
Liberation and re-establishment of role patterns
In the social dimension, the symbolic meaning structures are changing the
relations between society and the individual. The social integration of the
individual in society changes by the process of a social detraditionalization.
In the past era of the modern industrialized society, the normative idea of the
‘individuum’ expanded. But this individual had to stick to internalized norms
of duty, self-discipline and emotional control. This means that the earlier social
normativity enjoined the individual to conform, externally as well as internally,
with the common role patterns of the class and position to which he or she
belonged. In this way the strict lines of the merger of social role and personal
individuality had to be followed. The exposition of individuality must be
accommodated within the rules of discipline.
In contrast to this, the current modern symbolic order has much less the
nature of fi xed behaviour programmes. The modern rule systems are not
literally to be executed, but only make a frame which can be fi lled up by the
individual in accordance with the context and situation. This means that a
higher degree of personal performance is socially left to – and at the same time
enjoined on – the modern individual. Simple rule conformity is no longer
enough to ensure social recognition.
In this way, a more extensive change of underlying convictions arises. Today
there is room for different possibilities inside the scope of social roles. At the
same time there are demands of individual performance behind the system of
social roles. The modern social order has normatively become more abstract,
implicit and demanding. Jürgen Habermas has characterized this change as the
request of a non-conventional ego identity. The conventional forms of identity are
breaking down – and this means that the duty-oriented dimension of identity
is brought into a tension with the ego-ideal-oriented dimension. The guidance
of the individual is no longer primarily directed towards the conventional
dichotomy between what is forbidden and what is allowed, but towards the
subjective dichotomy between what is acceptable and what is not.
Self-observation and recognition of individuals
This change in the direction of a non-conventional form of identity is the
core of the much-discussed individualization. From the point of view of social
theory, individualization does not mean absolute isolation but rather a change

190 Thomas Ziehe
of the mental self-reference. The modern social expectations of sanity suggest that
the individual, if necessary, is able to give reasons for and discuss his or her
social practice. The modern mental self-reference means letting all expectations
of and requests from the outside world pass through a ‘subjective fi lter’. It is
this type of self-observation which entails the individualizing changes.
In this way, the mental has gotten a public space. Self-references and
discussions of relations become part of everyday interaction, and these are not
so much based on conformity with the outside social order as on the current
awareness of one’s own incentives and existential mood.
Consequently the public sphere appears as a extension of the private. The
mass media – especially through talk shows, daily soaps and the like – push
the semantics of mental self-observation. From a positive point of view, the
right to a self-directed private life is in this way consolidated; from a critical
point of view, the forms of internal self-confl icts are sharpened. Mass media
personify expressions of the outer world and thereby also continue moments
of doubt into the area of everyday life.
Thus, the sharpened observation of one’s own self does not immediately offer
the individual any possibilities of retreat. Rather, the individual comes into
a spiral of self-doubt – a diffuse kind of ‘identity pain’ that makes one more
dependent on the recognition of others. A longing for continual recognition of
self-confi dence also infl uences the self-reference as well as the social relations
to others. Everything must be considered with a view to what it ‘does to me’.
Identity is then primarily constituted by one’s own self-images. The modern
underlying conviction includes an implicit rule of action: do it so that it is
in accordance with your self-images and so that you precisely for this reason are
recognized by others.
But at the same time, of course, external compulsion, demands and exclusions
are still functioning in individual life connections and limiting the individual
possibilities of life management. Thus a perceptible imbalance arises between
the demands of self-esteem and self-recognition on the one hand and the
sharpened consciousness of lost and withheld life possibilities on the other
hand. This may lead to feelings of shame and decreased self-esteem.
The uneasy identity increases action patterns that tend to lead to avoidance.
The world is not so much observed through glasses which make visible
the increased options. Much more, it is increased objects of avoidance and
uneasiness that catch the eye. The symbolic systems of knowledge which are
at the disposal of individual preferences will then be applied in ways which
make the culturally increased options and spaces for deviance be experienced
precisely as possibilities of not choosing and spaces of avoidance. This will
typically result in motivational reticence which may sometimes be cautious
and sometimes already resistant.
Shortly summarized, the changed underlying convictions lead to the
following implicit leitmotifs:

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 191
an increased space for resorting to preferred contents and increased •
rejection of unpleasant contents;
a freer management of roles with an increased dependence on an ego-ideal- •
oriented role administration;
a sharpened self-observation with an increased dependence on recognition •
from subjectively important others.
These leitmotifs are, as already stated, only generation-specifi c in a limited
sense. Rather, they are generally distributed independently of age. But I think
there are some taperings of these leitmotifs which are totally youth specifi c
and which cause ever-increasing problems for schools in their endeavours to
cultivate learning styles.
Consequences for everyday life in youth
Orientation towards personal affairs
I have already stated that symbolic systems up till now have included normative
rules about the kinds of knowledge that were relevant in relation to different
social roles. In the case of the symbolic functions of the ‘old school’, i.e. before
the break-up of former traditions, this hardly needs further explanation. The
former symbolic system pre-defi ned the knowledge relations. And this was
mirrored in the underlying convictions, cognitively and socially as well as
motivationally. These pre-defi nitions followed on available inherent cultural
conditions which both relieved and strained the educational institutions, the
teachers and the students. Of course, the well-known critique of the ‘old school’
could here be drawn in. But the symbolic backing of the school, which existed
and did not have to be created and maintained all the time, provided a supply
of content horizons, social forms and subjective motives anyway.
The ‘old school’ as an institution relied on the functions of the existing
symbolic systems. These symbolic rules made it easy for students on the
cognitive level to refer to a cultural canon, which was propagated by the
historical tradition of education and, as its core programme, had the meeting
and opposition with the cultural artifacts. ‘Culture’ in this connection implies
an acquaintance with the various horizons of life philosophy, especially as they
were valued by the differentiated branches of high culture.
However, such a symbolic pre-defi nition worked not only in the cognitive
content dimension but also in the social normative dimension. To access the
cultural artifacts also implied to meet the institutionalized aura of the school,
including the hierarchy of generations and the demand of serious ‘adult’
knowledge. Of course, the experience of this condensed and socially exacting
atmosphere included elements of empathy as well as anxiety. But it also produced
intensive identifi cations, even when there is a demarcation from school itself.
Finally, the former symbolic system also pre-stamped ego-ideal images which

192 Thomas Ziehe
imposed a positive attitude towards education. The earlier ascetic patterns of
self-images included encumbrances of self-discipline as well as the potential
experiences of pride, which projectively accompanied the efforts of the personal
culturing processes: empathetically, it was part of the content of the ego-ideal
to culturally become an adult.
Until now, we have been through a huge neutralization of and defascination
with the symbolic system elements of canon, aura and asceticism. The former
pre-fi guration does not work any more. The knowledge references are hardly
culturally pre-defi ned but – at least from the point of view of students and
youth – they are individually liberated. The idea of education is no more a
strain, but at the same time the former railing of orientation, evaluation and
motivation has also disappeared.
The everyday world that surrounds young people today has merged with
popular culture to an extent which makes it almost impossible to recognize.
Pedestrian precincts, H&M stores, cell phones, text-messaging, hip-hop music,
body piercing, daily soaps, MTV and MP3 players are all omnipresent as they
are integrated in everyday life, and insistently present as they are absolutely
customary. The socializing environment consists of a merger of everyday life and
popular culture. This allows the young people to keep a distance and when they
want it, in any situation, to enter into a space which operates parallel to the
space of parents and institutions.
Popular culture as an all-embracing environment allows that one can join
an almost full-time entertainment programme and constantly investigate and
selectively choose from a worldwide supply of picture, music and information
fl ows. In this situation, individuals tend to assume a position of cultural self-
supporters. They take note of the mix of symbols, signs, interpretation patterns
and ways of behaving offered by the popular culture, but merge it into their
own everyday life and ‘scenarios’ according to their subjective preferences.
They do not assume the ready-made products of the popular culture, but they
apply them. From these symbolic elements, individuals piece together their
own mental world.
These mental worlds should not be understood as places – they are not the
local social environment. They are not (only) to be understood as reifi cations,
but they function especially through changes in knowledge and convention
styles: the personal mental worlds include the self-determination of particular
practices, preferences, priorities and life approaches.
Today such personal mental worlds are forming the structures of the psycho-
logical equipment of individuals. They are no longer, as for earlier generations
of youth, a recess area which with great trouble must be defended against the
demands of the outside world. On the contrary, they can now be understood
as the mental centre of the personal lifestyle. Thus the personal worlds are
not only important as such. They also, so to speak, radiate into all life areas
and give them a special colouring. Therefore, they are not simply a generally
accepted parallel world, but they have become real ‘leit-cultures’. The measures

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 193
of the personal worlds become scales of what is reasonable, meaningful and
acceptable. And these measures from the personal worlds are practically
unfi ltered and then transferred to the various life areas, including the schools.
By their implicit scales, they exercise a strong normative pressure, which
exposes schools and teachers to intensifi ed confl icts from the students about
what can be accepted.
A certain positive effect of the relativation of high culture may be seen in the
fact that the once so-scary content of the educational canon has decreased
extremely, and as a consequence, feelings of educational shame hardly occur
today. In an episode of a popular TV quiz programme the following could be
observed: a young man in his twenties could repeatedly not answer questions
outside the topics of popular culture and sport. In these cases, he said to the
moderator, ‘This was before my time’. Meaning that everything ‘before his
time’ did not belong to his world – and that’s that.
Informalization of the social pattern of behaviour
A second consequence of modernization involves the social conventions in
youth. This problem is due to the fundamental informalization of current
everyday life. Strict behavioural and disciplining contexts which rigidly and
emphatically formed people’s internal life belong more or less to the past.
A brief look at a school photo, e.g. from the 1950s, would immediately
make it clear just how signifi cant facial expressions, body language, dressing
conventions and role symbols were in the details of everyday life. The social life
worlds were extensively regulated. Disciplinary and role-related behavioural
norms ensured the detailed regulation of human interaction and the internal
psychological self-observation. The former rule systems also included a clear
discrimination between social territories of validity. This especially meant
being able to separate between the private and the public spheres, and not to
confuse external symbolic systems with internal imagination. Such distinctions
between what is ‘internal’ and ‘external’ functioned right down to the micro
social details of behavioural styles and self-images.
Today this seems like a long time ago. Now the phenomena of abolition
of territories of validity and the repeal of self-withdrawal have become
extraordinary to the extent that the classical modern diagnosis of ‘nervousness’
simply appears as an understatement. It is no longer about a temporary
loosening or postponement of the rule systems during puberty, but about
changes of the total social habitus. The everyday life world is characterized by
delimitations, confusions and excesses, which have become the state of affairs.
Of course, like before, there are institutional and private territories in which
things are different, but rather they have the nature of islands in an ocean of
obvious informalization.
Thus, when children reach the age of puberty, they do not experience their
developmentally conditioned desire for excesses in contrast to the social world

194 Thomas Ziehe
of adults, but at most as intensifi ed variations of what is already happening.
One only needs to accompany thirty 14-year-olds on a school excursion
and, for instance, join the common supper at the youth hostel – impulsive,
expansive, unconcentrated behaviour and excessive dropping out of any kind
of regulation have become the norm. Everyday behaviour has, just to point out
two characteristics, become informalized and unstructured. And it expands in
two ways: it expands outwards, i.e. it is ‘transferred’ almost unfi ltered from the
private into the institutions, and it expands inwards, i.e. the informalization
and lack of structure are also dominating the internal personal conditions.
In the classroom, for instance, the individual ‘edginess’ in relation to an
incalculable interacting mixture of offi cial teaching on the surface and quite
different peripheral happenings, which constantly take place, can only be
partially settled even by very experienced teachers and only with extreme
diffi culty and exertion. As to institution-related behaviour, young people have
considerable problems with respect to rules, time structures and agreements.
This can also be seen as part of the lack of structure, i.e. as a kind of behaviour
which usually in no way is personally directed towards the teacher, but just is
‘something that happens’ for the students in question.
Likewise, the changed modes of individual attention are touched by infor-
malization and lack of structure. Particularly, attention takes on quicker and
less concentrated forms. This acceleration of attention implies a habituation
to fragmentation, segmentation, interruptions, dissolving and huddling
together of moments, and at the same time an inclination to sudden reversals
into boredom and loathing. Subjectively, the mode of sliding and jumping is
preferred, whereas modes of attention of a slower nature or a linear structure
are refused.
Subjectivation of motivation
A third phenomenon of the cultural modernization is about the relation to the
self, the personal internal world and its motives. It seems to involve a changed
quality of self-observation. The individual cannot avoid a more accurate and
isolated observation of him- or herself, as someone also different from and unlike
‘society’. The classic questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What do I want?’ in some ways
have become more psychological and part of everyday life. Niklas Luhmann
once said about this that the internal lighting has been switched on. Parts of
what was earlier professional knowledge of psychology and social science have
been included in everyday knowledge. Such knowledge is sometimes even
applied for self-description by the participants in afternoon talk shows and
simulated therapy programmes. Thus, subjectivation of motivation means
that the self-orientation is strongly directed towards very personal standards of
valuation. The daily TV soaps are a never-ending demonstration of this urge for
subjectivation. There, inside intimate friendship groups, everybody talks about
everything, particularly about relational confl icts and self-observations. There

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 195
is an absolute demand for psychological transparency. Through infi nite talking
together, everyone must, in the perspective of a pipe dream of self-insight, if
possible come to know ‘everything’ about him- or herself and (relevant) others.
This then stands in the way of routine self-delusions – otherwise the soap would
lack any kind of dramaturgic tension. Only in ever-repeated loops of talk can
an actor fi nally be convinced that he for a long time has been in love. He has
not wanted to recognize it, the others have already known for a long time, and
he realizes it himself. Until the next internal mystery turns up …
The pressure for introspection is not without consequences for self-valuation.
There is a considerable need for criteria of an authentic, ego-directed self-
valuation. At the same time the mainstream popular culture supply of images
of grandiosity and perfection is both invading and importunate. Often, for
the individual, unfi ltered notions of grandiosity stand without any mediation
by negative valuations of personal skills. The notions of grandiosity limit
the psychological possibilities of making intermediate aims of efforts and
needs attainable and of coping with the lack of grandiosity of such aims. The
consequences are internal confl icts of shame, a strong sensitivity to experiences
of offence and disregard and permanent occupation with the precarious
question of how one is then regarded ‘in the eyes of others’.
To protect themselves from such risks of the self-valuation, many individuals
develop mechanisms of avoidance, which in a defensive way helps them escape
from the confl ict. For teachers, these young people typically appear as doped,
deprived or drowsing. The consequences of such avoidance strategies for the
teachers mean a strong increase in professional demands, because these young
students are very diffi cult to rouse whenever the teachers try to captivate them.
The core problem can then no more be described in the way that the individual
wills something, but cannot realize it. Much more these individuals do not
know themselves what they could altogether think of realizing. This means that
the core problem is now a nondetermination which can hardly be understood
or a weakness lying right down in the basic conditions of self-direction.
I hope that it is possible in this perspective of interpretation to understand
that these young people are not very inclined to ‘swallow’ liberal pedagogical
offers of thematic participation or self-motivation in highly individual learning
arrangements. For these individuals, the problem is, fi rst of all, that they
have to learn what it is to ‘demonstrate a will’. It is about the acquisition of
motivational competence itself. The problem is not so much about the usage
of volition, but about the procurement of volition.
The need for meaning supporting structuring
I have now specifi ed the three earlier-mentioned leitmotifs of changed under-
lying convictions in relation to contemporary youth, not relating to a cultural
pessimistic diagnosis of decay, but to, I particularly see, the possibilities of a
productive learning culture being under a pressure from strong risks:

196 Thomas Ziehe
the larger space for recourse to preferred content and increased possibilities •
of not choosing ‘unpleasant’ content can predispose for a kind of ‘self-
provincialization’ which limits the horizons of the personal world;
the more liberal development of role management can result in a problem •
promoting a cumulative-nervous way of behaving;
sharpened self-observation with increased dependence on the achievement •
of recognition from others can, in relation to the ‘will’, mount into so
complex premises that it becomes nearly habit to defi ne one’s self by the
sum of what one will not.
I repeat: this does not mean the end of Western civilization, but rather does
mean a regrettable drain of symbolic possibilities, which have been nearby
because of the liberalization of everyday life.
An atmosphere of ‘post-detraditionalization’
However, it is possible to maintain a desirable gain of liberation in comparison
with the earlier authoritarian everyday culture. But with a growing distance
from the strong detraditionalization of the 1970s, the habitus consequences
of this destructuring become an important topic, also in the public discourse.
In the meantime, it has become clear that a continued push for the delimiting
and destructuring processes can hardly be a contemporary solution.
Also, interestingly, the young people rarely any longer express their crises
about themselves in terms of wishes for liberation. Rather, they explain
themselves in relation to the consequences of liberation and destructuring.
Thus their identity work seems not to be centred around problems with too
many strict rules and bans or too much repression. Essential wishes are much
more about how to remove orientation diffusions and instability.
By ‘post-detraditionalization’, I refer to a context of experience in which
counterbalances of the contexts of destructuring are wanted. In this context,
rules and structures of the life world are no longer felt as illegitimate
constrictions in any way. Quite opposite, it is my impression that ‘counter-
desires’ for liberation and destructuring have arisen, such as
counter-desires for stable relations, integration and support and com- •
munity;
counter-desires for some kind of shielding in relation to continually •
being observed by society and authorities, a ‘quasi-romantic’ secrecy and
opaqueness (probably the colossal attraction of Harry Potter or movies like
Lord of the Rings have to do with this); and
counter-desires for normative clarity, i.e. distinct rules of orientation, •
security and barriers, and also for an atmosphere of nonrelativism and
fi xed boundaries.

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 197
Current interest in close structures
A comparison between the current youth generation and the preceding
generation could somewhat abstractly be expressed as follows: earlier, an indi-
vidual, after a (relatively) free childhood, at the commencement of adolescence
stepped into a life age in which structures gradually became closer. Or
expressed more simply: during youth, almost everything became more serious
and strict with increasing age. Today, commencement of adolescence in no
way means that the surrounding structures become closer. On the contrary,
at the commencement of adolescence, the areas in which one can choose
for oneself, make decisions and to a high degree follow one’s own partiality
increase considerably, i.e. structures become looser. Actually, it can be stated
that in the age of adolescence today, we have to do a double destructuring. The
reorganisation of subjectivity – the big internal psychological ‘building site’, so
to speak – must be managed at the same time as the societal environment also
becomes increasingly incalculable and unstable. The biographical timetables
are no more unambiguous.
In this connection I must to some degree argue anti-cyclically, i.e. towards
a compensation of experiences of diffusion, respective of problems due to
informalization and destructuring. I fi nd it eminently important that young
people can learn by experiences of structures.
In the much noteworthy movie Rhythm Is It!, it is shown how so-called
problematic young people participate in an aesthetic-social project. Under
the instruction of a professional choreographer, they prepare a collective dance
version of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, which is fi nally to be performed
together with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. As the movie shows, this
process is both painful and pleasurable. Again and again some of the young
actors at the rehearsals over several weeks reject giving up their own habits. At
the beginning of each rehearsal, all the participants are requested to assume a
certain start position – they must stand motionless in front of the empty wall
and concentrate for a while. As could be expected some of the young thwart
this small ritual by talking and fooling around. This leads to repeated clashes
and symbolic fi ghts with the choreographer. The self-conceit of the young,
according to the obvious interpretation of the choreographer, is so small that
they can hardly endure any serious demand. However, he is persistent and
sensible, and at the end he is able to persuade them. After serious crises, the
rehearsals fi nally lead to a magnifi cent performance.
I refer to this example here to illustrate the importance of the setting of
learning processes. In therapeutic and social-pedagogical contexts, the setting
designates the totality of rules and agreements that defi ne and regulate the
standard work conditions of a fi eld of action. The rules of the setting fi x the
orders and bans and also imply the communal defi nitions of what is normal,
agreements of objectives and meaning contexts. Thus, a setting not only has
technically regulating functions, but also a supporting, meaning-generating

198 Thomas Ziehe
and expressive impact. A setting can contain supporting rituals of recognition
of formal and personal differences between the persons who are involved. A
setting can ensure and explain specifi c regulations in different places (e.g. the
difference between what is public and what is private). And it can contain
ego-supporting borderlines and in this way promote self-reassurance, rule
observance and relief of ambivalences.
In the movie Rhythm Is It!, precisely the regular frames are both confl ict-
generating and productively extensive, because they provide a provisional
abolition of everyday habits – even when it is about such a modest rule as
standing and concentrating in front of the wall before the start of the rehearsals.
A perfect artifi ciality in the design of the situation ‘seduces’ the young people
to engage in the alien situation. Not an approximation to what is already
familiar, not a levelling of the difference in relation to everyday routines, but
on the contrary, the experience of a small and fi xed deviation from the usual is
offered. Of course, teachers are not choreographers and obviously educational
situations are usually not a preparation for a dance performance. But still,
educational situations also contain a factor of staging. And to introduce special
‘rules of the play’ in various situations of educational work in order to establish
new self-understanding may be both stabilizing and stimulating.
A simultaneousness of weakness in decision-making and increased self-
observation can lead to the unlucky consequence of connecting to an existing
self-fi xation. The parole of ‘not-wanting’ will then, so to speak, be omnipresent.
A loosening of such paralyzing self-fi xations presupposes a distance to the
immediate emotions and taking a personal interest in the topic. In this way we
can develop ideals of volition or images of how one’s volition could be shaped.
The way to do so, as already stated, lies in the ability to create an internal distance
or an imagination, which encourages one to ‘try out internal possibilities’. This
is about increasing an internal communication ability which could further be
connected to possible abilities of symbol creation – i.e. to learn to fi nd means
of articulation in words or images of the valuing determination of our wishes.
Thus, by a loosening of the habitual self-fi xations, it is possible to change the
ideals of volition – the ideal images about which relations one wants to develop
to one’s own volition. I suppose that in this connection, an element of narcissism
is inevitable. I call this the ‘emotional future II’. By this I mean that to be able
to realize a long-term wish – e.g. to learn to play a guitar – there must be a force
to set up imaginary intermediate aims. This force is in an internal connection
with the imaginative ability to make an image of how good it will feel when
I ‘have learnt’ to play the guitar (future II). The anticipation of this condition
of pride and self-satisfaction is nothing but the ability to create an intensive
expectancy which is resistant to intermediate frustrations. Between the needs
of pride, the stable expectancy and the extension of ego-possibilities, in my
opinion, there is a narrow connection. But the extension of ego-possibilities
is nothing but an extension of one’s own horizon of motivation: one becomes
more imaginative concerning how and what one is able to will.

‘Normal learning problems’ in youth 199
Close structures cannot disregard the load of openness, but make it easier to
carry. Anyway, an establishment and a valuing attention of settings would be a
kind of counter-attention which could be able to completely relieve the diffusing
consequences of the destructuring, informalization and subjectivation.

Chapter 14
The practice of learning
Jean Lave
The American anthropologist Jean Lave is Professor at the University of California,
Berkeley. She has studied education and schooling in pre-industrial societies and,
through comparisons with the corresponding American conditions, she has become a strong
advocate of “practice learning.” Most signifi cantly this approach has been formulated in
the famous book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation which she
published together with Etienne Wenger in 1991. The following chapter is an extract
of Lave’s introduction to the anthology Understanding Practice: Perspectives on
Activity and Context, edited together with Seth Chaiklin and published in 1993 as
a kind of programmatic update, reformulation and overview of the learning approach of
the Russian cultural-historical and activity theoretical school as developed in the 1930s
by Lev Vygotsky and others.
The problem with “context”
Understanding Practice grew out of the work of a two-part conference in which
the participants came together to consider what we initially called “the context
problem.” All of us were involved in research on socially situated activity.
We were concerned about conventional limitations on various approaches to
the study of activity. In particular, we wished to explore questions about the
“socially constituted world” – the context of socially situated activity – that
our work often seemed merely to take for granted.
I had tried in previous research to understand how math activity in grocery
stores involved being “in” the “store,” walking up and down “aisles,” looking at
“shelves” full of cans, bottles, packages, and jars of food and other commodities.
My analyses were about shoppers’ activities, sometimes together, and about the
relations between these activities and the distractingly material, historically
constituted, subjectively selective character of space–time relations and their
meaning. Both Seth Chaiklin and I knew that other people conceived of the
problem in quite different terms. We decided to hold a collective inquiry into
these old, but still perplexing questions.
But why would a diverse group of students of the human condition participate
over months, and even years, to try to understand each other’s perspective? Seth

The practice of learning 201
Chaiklin and I initially proposed the following rationale: Theories of situated
everyday practice insist that persons acting and the social world of activity
cannot be separated. This creates a dilemma: Research on everyday practice
typically focuses on the activities of persons acting, although there is agreement
that such phenomena cannot be analyzed in isolation from the socially material
world of that activity. But less attention has been given to the diffi cult task of
conceptualizing relations between persons acting and the social world. Nor has
there been suffi cient attention to rethinking the “social world of activity” in
relational terms. Together, these constitute the problem of context.
The participants in the conference agreed to this set of priorities, with the
obvious proviso that relational concepts of the social world should not be
explored in isolation from conceptions of persons acting and interacting and
their activities. That proviso gradually took on a more central meaning and, as a
result, our conception of the common task crystallized into a double focus – on
context and, to our surprise, learning. A focus on one provided occasions on which
to consider the other. If context is viewed as a social world constituted in relation
with persons acting, both context and activity seem inescapably fl exible and
changing. And thus characterized, changing participation and understanding
in practice – the problem of learning – cannot help but become central as well.
It is difficult, when looking closely at everyday activity, to avoid the
conclusion that learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often
unrecognized as such. Situated activity always involves changes in knowledge
and action, and “changes in knowledge and action” are central to what we mean
by “learning.” It is not the case that the world consists of newcomers who drop
unaccompanied into unpeopled problem spaces. People in activity are skillful
at, and are more often than not engaged in, helping each other to participate
in changing ways in a changing world. So in describing and analyzing people’s
involvement in practical action in the world, even those authors whose work
generally would be least identified with educational foci (e.g. Suchman
and Trigg, 1993; Keller and Keller, 1993) are in effect analyzing peoples’
engagement in learning. We have come to the conclusion, as McDermott (1993)
suggests, that there is no such thing as “learning” sui generis, but only changing
participation in the culturally designed settings of everyday life. Or, to put
it the other way around, participation in everyday life may be thought of as a
process of changing understanding in practice, that is, as learning.
Learning became one focus of our work, even where unintended, partly
because of our concern with everyday activity as social and historical process
and with the improvisational, future-creating character of mundane practice;
partly, also, because those of us whose research has touched on educational
questions have come to insist on denaturalizing the social processes that unfold
within educational institutions by turning them into analytic objects. So
whether the researchers have approached the problem of context through its
temporal dimension, as activity (or practice), or whether they have looked at
institutions of learning as contexts, learning has become a central issue.

202 Jean Lave
The discussion of context suggests a problem, however: Conventional
theories of learning and schooling appeal to the decontextualized character of
some knowledge and forms of knowledge transmission, whereas in a theory
of situated activity, “decontextualized learning activity” is a contradiction
in terms. These two very different ways of conceiving of learning are hardly
compatible. Nonetheless, a belief that the world is divided into contex tualized
and decontextualized phenomena is not merely an academic speculation that
can be discarded when found theoretically inadequate or incomplete.
Craftwork learning and social production
Traditionally, learning researchers have studied learning as if it were a process
contained in the mind of the learner and have ignored the lived-in world.
This disjuncture, which ratifi es a dichotomy of mind and body, sidetracks or
derails the question of how to construct a theory that encompasses mind and
lived-in world. It is not enough to say that some designated cognitive theory
of learning could be amended by adding a theory of “situation,” for this raises
crucial questions about the compatibility of particular theories (cf. Soviet
psychologists’ discussion of the “match” between psychologies and sociologies
in the 1920s: Davydov and Radzhikovskii, 1985, p. 49). Nor is it suffi cient
to pursue a principled account of situated activity armed only with a theory of
cognition and good intentions. Without a theoretical conception of the social
world one cannot analyze activity in situ. A more promising alternative lies
in treating relations among person, activity, and situation, as they are given
in social practice, itself viewed as a single encompassing theoretical entity. It
is possible to detect such a trend in most if not all of the research traditions
represented in Understanding Practice – the chapters are working toward a more
inclusive, intensive development of the socially situated character of activity
in theoretically consistent terms.
Theories of situated activity do not separate action, thought, feeling, and
value and their collective, cultural-historical forms of located, interested,
confl ictual, meaningful activity. Traditional cognitive theory is “distanced from
experience” and divides the learning mind from the world. This “release” from
the narrow confi nes of body and immediate experience is rejected on varied
grounds in the chapters collected in Understanding Practice in favor of more
complex relations between person and world. The idea of learning as cognitive
acquisition – whether of facts, knowledge, problem-solving strategies, or
metacognitive skills – seems to dissolve when learning is conceived of as the
construction of present versions of past experience for several persons acting
together (e.g. Hutchins, 1993). And when scientifi c practice is viewed as just
another everyday practice (e.g. Lave, 1988), it is clear that theories of “situated
activity” provide different perspectives on “learning” and its “contexts.”
Participants in the conference agreed, on the whole, on four premises
concerning knowledge and learning in practice:

The practice of learning 203
1 Knowledge always undergoes construction and transformation in use.
2 Learning is an integral aspect of activity in and with the world at all
times. That learning occurs is not problematic.
3 What is learned is always complexly problematic.
4 Acquisition of knowledge is not a simple matter of taking in know-
ledge; rather, things assumed to be natural categories, such as “bodies
of knowledge,” “learners,” and “cultural transmission,” require reconcep-
tualization as cultural, social products.
It should be said that the conceptions of craftwork in most of the chapters bear
little resemblance to the small-scale problem-solving tasks typical of cognitive
learning research: Forging a cooking utensil or taking part in the work of a
national university examination committee are substantial, meaningful forms
of activity. In all cases the work described takes on meaning from its broader
interconnections with(in) other activity systems.
Relations with theory past: Some paradoxes and silences of
cognitive theory
Silences and paradoxes are generated in any theoretical problematic: questions
that cannot be asked and issues for which no principled resolution is possible.
At least four such issues trouble traditional cognitive theory. They concern
the conventional divisions between learning and what is not (supposed to be)
learning. Resolutions to these diffi culties have been anticipated in the four
premises concerning knowledge and learning in practice mentioned earlier.
The problems include, fi rst, an assumed division between learning and other
kinds of activity. Second, both the invention and reinvention of knowledge
are diffi cult problems for cognitive theory if learning is viewed as a matter
of acquiring existing knowledge. Third, cognitive theory assumes universal
processes of learning and the homogeneous character of knowledge and of
learners (save in quantity or capacity). This makes it diffi cult to account for
the richly varied participants and projects in any situation of learning. Finally,
there is a problem of reconceptualizing the meaning of erroneous, mistaken
understanding in a heterogeneous world.
First, how is “learning” to be distinguished from human activity as such?
Within cognitive theories it has been assumed that learning and development
are distinctive processes, not to be confused with the more general category of
human activity. This involves two theoretical claims that are in question here:
One is that actors’ relations with knowledge-in-activity are static and do not
change except when subject to special periods of “learning” or “development.”
The other is that institutional arrangements for inculcating knowledge are the
necessary, special circumstances for learning, separate from everyday practices.
The difference may be at heart a very deep epistemological one, between a view
of knowledge as a collection of real entities, located in heads, and of learning

204 Jean Lave
as a process of internalizing them, versus a view of knowing and learning
as engagement in changing processes of human activity. In the latter case,
“knowledge” becomes a complex and problematic concept, whereas in the
former it is “learning” that is problematic.
A second, related issue concerns the narrow focus of learning theories on
the transmission of existing knowledge, while remaining silent about the
invention of new knowledge in practice. Engeström (1987) argues that this
is a central lacuna in contemporary learning theory. Certainly, any simple
assumption that transmission or transfer or internalization are apt descriptors
for the circulation of knowledge in society faces the diffi culty that they imply
uniformity of knowledge. They do not acknowledge the fundamental imprint
of interested parties, multiple activities, and different goals and circumstances
on what constitutes “knowing” on a given occasion or across a multitude
of interrelated events. These terms imply that humans engage first and
foremost in the reproduction of given knowledge rather than in the production
of knowledgeability as a fl exible process of engagement with the world.
Engeström’s conceptualization of how people learn to do things that have not
been done before elaborates the idea that zones of proximal development are
collective, rather than individual, phenomena and that “the new” is a collective
invention in the face of felt dilemmas and contradictions that impede ongoing
activity and impel movement and change.
Further, part of what it means to engage in learning activity is extending
what one knows beyond the immediate situation, rather than involuting
one’s understanding “metacognitively” by thinking about one’s own cog-
nitive processes. Critical psychologists of the Berlin school (e.g. Dreier, 1991;
Holzkamp, 1983) insist on the importance of a distinction between experiencing
or knowing the immediate circumstances (“interpretive thinking,” “restricted
action”) and processes of thinking beyond and about the immediate situation
in more general terms (“comprehensive thinking,” “extended, generalized
action”). Together, in a dialectical process by which each helps to generate the
other, they produce new understanding (see Wenger, 1991).
Doing and knowing are inventive in another sense: They are open-ended
processes of improvisation with the social, material, and experiential resources
at hand. Keller and Keller’s research illustrates this: The blacksmith’s practices
as he creates a skimming spoon draw on rich resources of experience, his own and
that of other people, present and past. But his understanding of the skimmer
also emerges in the forging process. He does not know what it will be until it is
fi nished. At one point he spreads one section of the spoon handle for the second
time but goes too far and, in evaluating the work, fi nds it necessary to reduce
the width of the handle again. “It is as though he has to cross a boundary in
order to discover the appropriate limits of the design” (Keller and Keller, 1993).
The work of researchers in artifi cial intelligence appears to have the same
character: Suchman and Trigg (1993) describe it as “a skilled improvisation,
organized in orderly ways that are designed to maintain a lively openness to

The practice of learning 205
the possibilities that the materials at hand present.” And “analyses of situated
action … point to the contingencies of practical action on which logic in use,
including the production and use of scenarios and formalisms, inevitably and
in every instance relies.”
Fuhrer (1993) emphasizes the varying emotional effects of the improvisational
character of activity. These effects are perhaps most intensely felt by newcomers,
but he equates newcomers’ predicaments with those of learners in general. He
insists that in addition to cognitive and environmental dimensions, there is an
emotional dimension to all learning. He argues that:
to some degree, all individual actions within everyday settings, especially
those of newcomers, are somewhat discrepant from what is expected; the
settings change continuously. Most emotions within social situations,
such as embarrassment, audience anxiety, shyness, or shame, follow such
discrepancies, just because these discrepancies produce visceral arousal.
And it is the combination of that arousal with an ongoing evaluative
cognition that produces the subjective experience of an emotion.
Given these considerations, Fuhrer raises the question of how people manage
and coordinate “the various actions that arise from cognitive, social, and envi-
ronmental demands or goals.” Old-timers as well as newcomers try to carry
out the usual activities in given settings, but they are also trying to address
many other goals, among which are impression management and “developing
interpersonal relations to other setting inhabitants … Thus the newcomers
simultaneously pursue several goals and therefore they may simultaneously
perform different actions.”
The third issue, the assumed homogeneity of actors, goals, motives, and
activity itself, is challenged in many chapters, replaced with quite different
assumptions that emphasize their heterogeneity. I believe this view is new to
discussions of learning. It derives from an intense focus on the multiplicity of
actors engaged in activity together and on the interdependencies, confl icts, and
relations of power so produced. These views are elaborated in Understanding
Practice by several authors: Keller and Keller (1993) argue that “the goal of
production is not monolithic but multifaceted … based on considerations
aesthetic, stylistic, functional, procedural, fi nancial, and academic as well
as conceptions of self and other, and material conditions of work.” Dreier
(1993) proposes that “different participants’ interpretations are based on
different contextual social positions with inherent differences in possibilities,
interests, and perspectives on confl icts arising from different locations.”
Suchman and Trigg (1993) describe artifi cial intelligence research as a socially
organized process of craftsmanship consisting of “the crafting together of a
complex machinery made of heterogeneous materials, mobilized in the service
of developing a theory of mind.” And McDermott (1993) proposes that “by
institutional arrangements, we must consider everything from the most local

206 Jean Lave
level of the classroom to the more inclusive level of inequities throughout
the political economy (preferably from both ends of the continuum at the
same time).” These statements refer to a wide variety of relations, but each
challenges research on knowing and learning that depends implicitly on
a homogeneity of community, culture, participants, their motives, and the
meaning of events.
The heterogeneous, multifocal character of situated activity implies that
confl ict is a ubiquitous aspect of human existence. This follows if we assume
that people in the same situation, people who are helping to constitute “a situa-
tion” together, know different things and speak with different interests and
experience from different social locations. Suddenly assumptions concerning
the uniformity of opinion, knowledge, and belief become, on the one hand,
matters of common historical tradition and complexly shared relations with
larger societal forces (whatever these might mean – now an important question)
and, on the other hand, matters of imposed conformity and symbolic violence.
Analysis focused on confl ictual practices of changing understanding in activity
is not so likely to concentrate on the truth or error of some knowledge claim. It
is more likely to explore disagreements over what is relevant; whether, and how
much, something is worth knowing and doing; what to make of ambiguous
circumstances; what is convenient for whom; what to do next when one does
not know what to expect; and who cares most about what. There are always
confl icts of power, so mislearning cannot be understood independently of
someone imposing her or his view. There is, of course, and at the same time,
much uniformity and agreement in the world. The perspectives represented
here differ about whether this is always, or only much of the time, a matter of
one party imposing assent, subtly or otherwise, on others.
The fourth and final issue concerns “failure to learn.” In mainstream
theorizing about learning, this is commonly assumed to result from the
inability or refusal on the part of an individual to engage in something
called “learning.” The alternative view explored earlier is that not-learning
and “failure” identities are active normal social locations and processes. The
latter generates further questions, however: If failure is a socially arranged
identity, what is left to be said about the making of “errors”? Given that
several of the authors provide novel construals of failure to learn, question
the meaning of “consensus,” and call attention to the defi ciencies of claims
that knowing unfolds without confl ict and without engaging the interests
of involved participants, does the term error still have meaning? The answer
depends on whose socially positioned point of view is adopted, and on
historically and socially situated conceptions of erroneous action and belief.
Several of the chapters in Understanding Practice develop powerful ways of
conceptualizing socially, historically situated nonlearning or mislearning. They
discuss nonlearning activities that occur when embarrassment is too great
or that result from anxiety, from the social delegitimation of learning or the
learner, and from the retarding effects of denying learners access to connections

The practice of learning 207
between immediate appearances and broader, deeper social forces, or to
concrete interrelations within and across situations (e.g. Fuhrer, 1993; Levine,
1993). Mehan explores the discoordination of voices in interactions between
school psychologist, teacher, and parent, who speak in different “languages”
– psychological, sociological, and historical – and between physicians and
patients. Engeström (1987) locates unproductive encounters between patients
and physicians in the mismatch among historically engendered discourses –
thus, in practice, among the biomedical and psychosocial registers or voices the
physician and patient use for communicating about medical issues.
Hutchins’s analysis (1993) raises questions about the location of error-
making in historical systems of activity and in relations among participants. He
describes what it is possible for novice navigators to learn in practice in terms
of task partitioning, instruments, lines of communication, and limitations
and openness of access for observing others, their interactions, and tools. He
argues that these defi ne the portion of the task environment that is available
as a learning context to each task performer – this constitutes the performer’s
“horizon of observability.” The density of error correction (which helps to make
learning possible) depends on the contours of this horizon.
In sum, the assumptions proposed here amount to a preliminary account of
what is meant by situated learning. Knowledgeability is routinely in a state of
change rather than stasis, in the medium of socially, culturally, and historically
ongoing systems of activity, involving people who are related in multiple and
heterogeneous ways, whose social locations, interests, reasons, and subjective
possibilities are different, and who improvise struggles in situated ways with
each other over the value of particular defi nitions of the situation, in both
immediate and comprehensive terms, and for whom the production of failure
is as much a part of routine collective activity as the production of average,
ordinary knowledgeability.
References
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perspectives (pp. 35–65). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dreier, O. (1991). Client interests and possibilities in psychotherapy. In C.W. Tolman and
W. Maiers (Eds.), Critical psychology: Contributions to an historical science of the subject
(pp. 196–211). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dreier, O. (1993). Re-searching psychotherapeutic practice. In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (Eds.),
Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
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Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie [Foundations of psychology]. Frankfurt a.M.:
Campus.
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Chapter 15
A social theory of learning
Etienne Wenger
American Etienne Wenger was born in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and, as
a young man, he lived in Hong Kong for three years. Later he studied computer science
in Switzerland and the US, fi nishing by writing a dissertation on artifi cial intelligence.
For ten years he was then a researcher at the Institute for Research on Learning in Palo
Alto, California, and it was by the end of this period that he, together with Jean Lave,
published the famous book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
in 1991. This book also launched the concept of “communities of practice” as the
environment of important learning, a term Wenger cemented in 1998 and elaborated
further in his book Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.
The following chapter is made up of the more programmatic part of the introduction to
that book and a note in which Wenger gives an account of his understanding of other
important approaches to learning.
Introduction
Our institutions, to the extent that they address issues of learning explicitly,
are largely based on the assumption that learning is an individual process,
that it has a beginning and an end, that it is best separated from the rest
of our activities, and that it is the result of teaching. Hence we arrange
classrooms where students – free from the distractions of their participation
in the outside world – can pay attention to a teacher or focus on exercises.
We design computer-based training programs that walk students through
individualized sessions covering reams of information and drill practice.
To assess learning, we use tests with which students struggle in one-on-
one combat, where knowledge must be demonstrated out of context, and
where collaborating is considered cheating. As a result, much of our
institutionalized teaching and training is perceived by would-be learners as
irrelevant, and most of us come out of this treatment feeling that learning
is boring and arduous, and that we are not really cut out for it.
So, what if we adopted a different perspective, one that placed learning
in the context of our lived experience of participation in the world? What
if we assumed that learning is as much a part of our human nature as eating

210 Etienne Wenger
or sleeping, that it is both life-sustaining and inevitable, and that – given a
chance – we are quite good at it? And what if, in addition, we assumed that
learning is, in its essence, a fundamentally social phenomenon, refl ecting our
own deeply social nature as human beings capable of knowing? What kind
of understanding would such a perspective yield on how learning takes place
and on what is required to support it? In this chapter, I will try to develop
such a perspective.
A conceptual perspective: theory and practice
There are many different kinds of learning theory. Each emphasizes different
aspects of learning, and each is therefore useful for different purposes. To
some extent these differences in emphasis refl ect a deliberate focus on a slice
of the multidimensional problem of learning, and to some extent they refl ect
more fundamental differences in assumptions about the nature of knowledge,
knowing, and knowers, and consequently about what matters in learning. (For
those who are interested, a number of such theories with a brief description of
their focus are listed in a note at the end of this chapter.)
The kind of social theory of learning I propose is not a replacement for other
theories of learning that address different aspects of the problem. But it does
have its own set of assumptions and its own focus. Within this context, it does
constitute a coherent level of analysis; it does yield a conceptual framework from
which to derive a consistent set of general principles and recommendations for
understanding and enabling learning.
My assumptions as to what matters about learning and as to the nature of
knowledge, knowing, and knowers can be succinctly summarized as follows.
I start with four premises:
We are social beings. Far from being trivially true, this fact is a central •
aspect of learning.
Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises •
– such as singing in tune, discovering scientifi c facts, fi xing machines,
writing poetry, being convivial, growing up as a boy or a girl, and so forth.
Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, •
that is, of active engagement in the world.
Meaning – our ability to experience the world and our engagement with •
it as meaningful – is ultimately what learning is to produce.
As a refl ection of these assumptions, the primary focus of this theory is on
learning as social participation. Participation here refers not just to local
events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more
encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social
communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities.
Participating in a playground clique or in a work team, for instance, is both

A social theory of learning 211
a kind of action and a form of belonging. Such participation shapes not only
what we do, but also who we are and how we interpret what we do.
A social theory of learning must therefore integrate the components necessary
to characterize social participation as a process of learning and of knowing.
These components, shown in Figure 15.1, include the following:
meaning: • a way of talking about our (changing) ability – individually and
collectively – to experience our life and the world as meaningful;
practice: • a way of talking about the shared historical and social resources,
frameworks, and perspectives that can sustain mutual engagement in
action;
community: • a way of talking about the social confi gurations in which
our enterprises are defi ned as worth pursuing and our participation is
recognizable as competence;
identity: • a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates
personal histories of becoming in the context of our communities.
Clearly, these elements are deeply interconnected and mutually defi ning.
In fact, looking at Figure 15.1, you could switch any of the four peripheral
components with learning, place it in the center as the primary focus, and the
fi gure would still make sense.
Therefore, when I use the concept of “community of practice” in the title of
the book, I really use it as a point of entry into a broader conceptual framework
Figure 15.1 Components of a social theory of learning: an initial inventory.

212 Etienne Wenger
of which it is a constitutive element. The analytical power of the concept lies
precisely in that it integrates the components of Figure 15.1 while referring
to a familiar experience.
Communities of practice are everywhere
We all belong to communities of practice. At home, at work, at school, in our
hobbies – we belong to several communities of practice at any given time. And
the communities of practice to which we belong change over the course of our
lives. In fact, communities of practice are everywhere.
Families struggle to establish an habitable way of life. They develop their
own practices, routines, rituals, artifacts, symbols, conventions, stories, and
histories. Family members hate each other and they love each other; they agree
and they disagree. They do what it takes to keep going. Even when families
fall apart, members create ways of dealing with each other. Surviving together
is an important enterprise, whether surviving consists of the search for food
and shelter or of the quest for a viable identity.
Workers organize their lives with their immediate colleagues and customers
to get their jobs done. In doing so, they develop or preserve a sense of
themselves they can live with, have some fun, and fulfi ll the requirements of
their employers and clients. No matter what their offi cial job description may
be, they create a practice to do what needs to be done. Although workers may be
contractually employed by a large institution, in day-to-day practice they work
with – and, in a sense, for – a much smaller set of people and communities.
Students go to school and, as they come together to deal in their own fashion
with the agenda of the imposing institution and the unsettling mysteries of
youth, communities of practice sprout everywhere – in the classroom as well
as on the playground, offi cially or in the cracks. And in spite of curriculum,
discipline, and exhortation, the learning that is most personally transformative
turns out to be the learning that involves membership in these communities
of practice.
In garages, bands rehearse the same songs for yet another wedding gig.
In attics, ham radio enthusiasts become part of worldwide clusters of com-
municators. In the back rooms of churches, recovering alcoholics go to their
weekly meetings to fi nd the courage to remain sober. In laboratories, scientists
correspond with colleagues, near and far, in order to advance their inquiries.
Across a worldwide web of computers, people congregate in virtual spaces and
develop shared ways of pursuing their common interests. In offi ces, computer
users count on each other to cope with the intricacies of obscure systems. In
neighborhoods, youths gang together to confi gure their life on the street and
their sense of themselves.
Communities of practice are an integral part of our daily lives. They are so
informal and so pervasive that they rarely come into explicit focus, but for
the same reasons they are also quite familiar. Although the term may be new,

A social theory of learning 213
the experience is not. Most communities of practice do not have a name and
do not issue membership cards. Yet, if we care to consider our own life from
that perspective for a moment, we can all construct a fairly good picture of the
communities of practice we belong to now, those we belonged to in the past,
and those we would like to belong to in the future. We also have a fairly good
idea of who belongs to our communities of practice and why, even though
membership is rarely made explicit on a roster or a checklist of qualifying
criteria. Furthermore, we can probably distinguish a few communities of
practice in which we are core members from a larger number of communities
in which we have a more peripheral kind of membership.
In all these ways, the concept of community of practice is not unfamiliar. By
exploring it more systematically, I mean only to sharpen it, to make it more
useful as a thinking tool. Toward this end, its familiarity will serve me well.
Articulating a familiar phenomenon is a chance to push our intuitions: to
deepen and expand them, to examine and rethink them. The perspective that
results is not foreign, yet it can shed new light on our world. In this sense, the
concept of community of practice is neither new nor old. It has both the eye-
opening character of novelty and the forgotten familiarity of obviousness – but
perhaps that is the mark of our most useful insights.
Rethinking learning
Placing the focus on participation has broad implications for what it takes to
understand and support learning:
For • individuals, it means that learning is an issue of engaging in and
contributing to the practices of their communities.
For • communities, it means that learning is an issue of refi ning their practice
and ensuring new generations of members.
For • organizations, it means that learning is an issue of sustaining the
interconnected communities of practice through which an organization
knows what it knows and thus becomes effective and valuable as an
organization.
Learning in this sense is not a separate activity. It is not something we do
when we do nothing else or stop doing when we do something else. There are
times in our lives when learning is intensifi ed: when situations shake our sense
of familiarity, when we are challenged beyond our ability to respond, when
we wish to engage in new practices and seek to join new communities. There
are also times when society explicitly places us in situations where the issue
of learning becomes problematic and requires our focus: we attend classes,
memorize, take exams, and receive a diploma. And there are times when
learning gels: an infant utters a fi rst word, we have a sudden insight when
someone’s remark provides a missing link, we are fi nally recognized as a full

214 Etienne Wenger
member of a community. But situations that bring learning into focus are not
necessarily those in which we learn most, or most deeply. The events of learning
we can point to are perhaps more like volcanic eruptions whose fi ery bursts
reveal for one dramatic moment the ongoing labor of the earth. Learning is
something we can assume – whether we see it or not, whether we like the way
it goes or not, whether what we are learning is to repeat the past or to shake it
off. Even failing to learn what is expected in a given situation usually involves
learning something else instead.
For many of us, the concept of learning immediately conjures up images of
classrooms, training sessions, teachers, textbooks, homework, and exercises. Yet
in our experience, learning is an integral part of our everyday lives. It is part of
our participation in our communities and organizations. The problem is not
that we do not know this, but rather that we do not have very systematic ways
of talking about this familiar experience. Even though the topic of Communities
of Practice covers mostly things that everybody knows in some ways, having
a systematic vocabulary to talk about it does make a difference. An adequate
vocabulary is important because the concepts we use to make sense of the
world direct both our perception and our actions. We pay attention to what
we expect to see, we hear what we can place in our understanding, and we act
according to our worldviews.
Although learning can be assumed to take place, modern societies have come
to see it as a topic of concern – in all sorts of ways and for a host of different
reasons. We develop national curriculums, ambitious corporate training
programs, complex schooling systems. We wish to cause learning, to take
charge of it, direct it, accelerate it, demand it, or even simply stop getting in
the way of it. In any case, we want to do something about it. Therefore, our
perspectives on learning matter: what we think about learning infl uences where
we recognize learning, as well as what we do when we decide that we must do
something about it – as individuals, as communities, and as organizations.
If we proceed without refl ecting on our fundamental assumptions about the
nature of learning, we run an increasing risk that our conceptions will have
misleading ramifi cations. In a world that is changing and becoming more
complexly interconnected at an accelerating pace, concerns about learning are
certainly justifi ed. But perhaps more than learning itself, it is our conception
of learning that needs urgent attention when we choose to meddle with it on
the scale on which we do today. Indeed, the more we concern ourselves with
any kind of design, the more profound are the effects of our discourses on
the topic we want to address. The farther you aim, the more an initial error
matters. As we become more ambitious in attempts to organize our lives and
our environment, the implications of our perspectives, theories, and beliefs
extend further. As we take more responsibility for our future on larger and
larger scales, it becomes more imperative that we refl ect on the perspectives
that inform our enterprises. A key implication of our attempts to organize
learning is that we must become refl ective with regard to our own discourses of

A social theory of learning 215
learning and to their effects on the ways we design for learning. By proposing
a framework that considers learning in social terms, I hope to contribute
to this urgent need for reflection and rethinking.
The practicality of theory
A perspective is not a recipe; it does not tell you just what to do. Rather, it
acts as a guide about what to pay attention to, what diffi culties to expect, and
how to approach problems.
If we believe, for instance, that knowledge consists of pieces of information •
explicitly stored in the brain, then it makes sense to package this
information in well-designed units, to assemble prospective recipients of
this information in a classroom where they are perfectly still and isolated
from any distraction, and to deliver this information to them as succinctly
and articulately as possible. From that perspective, what has come to stand
for the epitome of a learning event makes sense: a teacher lecturing a class,
whether in a school, in a corporate training center, or in the back room
of a library. But if we believe that information stored in explicit ways is
only a small part of knowing, and that knowing involves primarily active
participation in social communities, then the traditional format does
not look so productive. What does look promising are inventive ways of
engaging students in meaningful practices, of providing access to resources
that enhance their participation, of opening their horizons so they can put
themselves on learning trajectories they can identify with, and of involving
them in actions, discussions, and refl ections that make a difference to the
communities that they value.
Similarly, if we believe that productive people in organizations are the •
diligent implementers of organizational processes and that the key to
organizational performance is therefore the defi nition of increasingly more
effi cient and detailed processes by which people’s actions are prescribed,
then it makes sense to engineer and re-engineer these processes in abstract
ways and then roll them out for implementation. But if we believe that
people in organizations contribute to organizational goals by participating
inventively in practices that can never be fully captured by institutionalized
processes, then we will minimize prescription, suspecting that too much
of it discourages the very inventiveness that makes practices effective. We
will have to make sure that our organizations are contexts within which
the communities that develop these practices may prosper. We will have
to value the work of community building and make sure that participants
have access to the resources necessary to learn what they need to learn
in order to take actions and make decisions that fully engage their own
knowledgeability.

216 Etienne Wenger
If all this seems like common sense, then we must ask ourselves why our
institutions so often seem not merely to fail to bring about these outcomes
but to work against them with a relentless zeal. Of course, some of the blame
can justifi ably be attributed to confl icts of interest, power struggles, and
even human wickedness. But that is too simple an answer and unnecessarily
pessimistic. We must also remember that our institutions are designs and that
our designs are hostage to our understanding, perspectives, and theories. In
this sense, our theories are very practical because they frame not just the ways
we act, but also – and perhaps most importantly when design involves social
systems – the ways we justify our actions to ourselves and to each other. In an
institutional context, it is diffi cult to act without justifying your actions in
the discourse of the institution.
A social theory of learning is therefore not exclusively an academic enterprise.
While its perspective can indeed inform our academic investigations, it is also
relevant to our daily actions, our policies, and the technical, organizational,
and educational systems we design. A new conceptual framework for thinking
about learning is thus of value not only to theorists but to all of us – teachers,
students, parents, youths, spouses, health practitioners, patients, managers,
workers, policy makers, citizens – who in one way or another must take
steps to foster learning (our own and that of others) in our relationships, our
communities, and our organizations. In this spirit, Communities of Practice is
written with both the theoretician and the practitioner in mind.
Note
I am not claiming that a social perspective of the sort proposed here says
everything there is to say about learning. It takes for granted the biological,
neurophysiological, cultural, linguistic, and historical developments that
have made our human experience possible. Nor do I make any sweeping claim
that the assumptions that underlie my approach are incompatible with those
of other theories. There is no room here to go into very much detail, but for
contrast it is useful to mention the themes and pedagogical focus of some other
theories in order to sketch the landscape in which this perspective is situated.
Learning is a natural concern for students of neurological functions.
Neurophysiological theories focus on the biological mechanisms of •
learning. They are informative about physiological limits and rhythms
and about issues of stimulation and optimization of memory processes
(Edelman 1993; Sylwester 1995).
Learning has traditionally been the province of psychological theories.
Behaviorist • theories focus on behavior modifi cation via stimulus-response
pairs and selective reinforcement. Their pedagogical focus is on control

A social theory of learning 217
and adaptive response. Because they completely ignore issues of meaning,
their usefulness lies in cases where addressing issues of social meaning
is made impossible or is not relevant, such as automatisms, severe social
dysfunctionality, or animal training (Skinner 1974).
Cognitive • theories focus on internal cognitive structures and view learning as
transformations in these cognitive structures. Their pedagogical focus is on
the processing and transmission of information through communication,
explanation, recombination, contrast, inference, and problem solving.
They are useful for designing sequences of conceptual material that build
upon existing information structures. (Anderson 1983; Wenger 1987;
Hutchins 1995).
Constructivist • theories focus on the processes by which learners build their
own mental structures when interacting with an environment. Their
pedagogical focus is task-oriented. They favor hands-on, self-directed
activities oriented towards design and discovery. They are useful for
structuring learning environments, such as simulated worlds, so as to afford
the construction of certain conceptual structures through engagement in
self-directed tasks (Piaget 1954; Papert 1980).
Social learning • theories take social interactions into account, but still from
a primarily psychological perspective. They place the emphasis on in-
terpersonal relations involving imitation and modeling, and thus focus
on the study of cognitive processes by which observation can become
a source of learning. They are useful for understanding the detailed
information-processing mechanisms by which social interactions affect
behavior (Bandura 1977).
Some theories are moving away from an exclusively psychological approach,
but with a different focus from mine.
Activity • theories focus on the structure of activities as historically con-
stituted entities. Their pedagogical focus is on bridging the gap between
the historical state of an activity and the developmental stage of a person
with respect to that activity – for instance, the gap between the current
state of a language and a child’s ability to speak that language. The purpose
is to defi ne a “zone of proximal development” in which learners who
receive help can perform an activity they would not be able to perform by
themselves (Vygotsky 1934; Wertsch 1985; Engeström 1987).
Socialization • theories focus on the acquisition of membership by newcomers
within a functionalist framework where acquiring membership is defi ned as
internalizing the norms of a social group (Parsons 1962). As I argue, there is a
subtle difference between imitation or the internalization of norms by indi-
viduals and the construction of identities within communities of practice.
Organizational • theories concern themselves both with the ways individuals
learn in organizational contexts and with the ways in which organizations

218 Etienne Wenger
can be said to learn as organizations. Their pedagogical focus is on
organizational systems, structures, and politics and on institutional forms
of memory (Argyris and Schön 1978; Senge 1990; Brown 1991; Brown and
Duguid 1991; Hock 1995; Leonard-Barton 1995; Nonaka and Takeuchi
1995; Snyder 1996).
References
Anderson, J.R. (1983). The Architecture of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Brown, J.S. (1991). Research that reinvents the corporation. Harvard Business Review, Jan.–Feb.,
pp. 102–11.
Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice:
Toward a unifi ed view of working, learning, and innovation. Organization Science, 2(1):
pp. 40–57.
Edelman, G. (1993). Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. New York: Basic Books.
Engeström, Y. (1987): Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental
Research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.
Hock, D.W. (1995). The chaordic century: The rise of enabling organizations. Governors
State University Consortium and The South Metropolitan College/University Consortium,
University Park, IL.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leonard-Barton, D. (1995). Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources
of Innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies
Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms. New York: Basic Books.
Parsons, T. (1962). The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press.
Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books.
Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.
New York: Doubleday.
Skinner, B.F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Knopf.
Snyder, W. (1996). Organization, learning and performance: An exploration of the linkages
between organization learning, knowledge, and performance. Doctoral dissertation, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Sylwester, R. (1995). A Celebration of Neurons: An Educator’s Guide to the Human Brain. Alexandria,
VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1934). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wenger, E. (1987). Artificial Intelligence and Tutoring Systems: Computational and Cognitive
Approaches to the Communication of Knowledge. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. (1985). Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Chapter 16
Transitional learning and
reflexive facilitation
The case of learning for work
Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
Danny Wildemeersch, Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), is a
well-known scholar in European youth and adult education research. He has a special
interest in educational and learning activities in grassroots movements, initiatives and
organisations dealing with social exclusion, participation, sustainable development,
etc. For ten years, from 1993 to 2003, he worked closely together with two younger
researchers, Veerle Stroobants and Marc Jans, among others, in a cross-national EU
research project, investigating the situation and possibilities of socially vulnerable youth
in six European countries. The research resulted in various contributions, including
the book Unemployed Youth and Social Exclusion in Europe: Learning for
Inclusion? (Weil, Wildemeersch and Jansen, 2005). The following chapter is written
by Wildemeersch and Stroobants and presents a framework on transitional learning,
building on Stroobants’ dissertation (2001) and on fi ndings from the European research.
Some of these insights were presented earlier in a 2001 article ‘Making sense of learning
for work: Towards a framework of transitional learning’ by Stroobants, Jans and
Wildemeersch in the International Journal of Lifelong Education.
Introduction
In this contribution we look back at some ten years of research in which we
have tried to interpret the processes of transitional learning taking place in
the context of various education, training and guidance practices, mostly in
support of people who have diffi culty in fi nding or in keeping a job. One
of the outcomes of this research is a framework that helps to interpret the
changing conditions of individual learning processes and educational practices
against the background of transformations in present-day society. Various
observers describe the changes in society today in terms of individualisation.
Individuals are said to be at the same time free, obliged and responsible to make
adequate choices and decisions regarding their own private and professional
lives. Such processes of individualisation increase the need for individual and
social refl exivity. Consequently, individualisation processes go together with
interrelated developments in the learning of people on the one hand and with
challenges to educational models and practices on the other hand. People are

220 Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
faced with the task of developing self-refl exive biographies to anticipate and
cope with changing circumstances (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991). Meanwhile,
educational practitioners need to refl exively reconsider their role as facilitators
of this learning for personal and social change.
We do not want to interpret these developments exclusively in terms of
individualisation processes. In line with various theories that try to avoid one-
sided structural determinism or naive voluntarism (Giddens, 1984; Bourdieu,
1990; Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), we argue that refl exive biographies not
only may allow people to adapt to rapidly evolving conditions, but that they
possibly create opportunities to develop alternative, singularised answers to the
changing conditions and to infl uence the social context (Alheit, 1995; Fischer-
Rosenthal, 1995; Biesta, 2006). In this respect, we believe that educational
practices, just like educational research, can and even should play their part.
The theory on transitional learning we present here (see also Stroobants et al.,
2001) is a descriptive and explanatory framework aimed at making sense of the
learning processes of individuals in relation to work and their participation in
initiatives of adult and continuing education. We are convinced that this theory
of transitional learning will be helpful to support the decision-making process
of the refl exive professional whose role is said to be dramatically shifting today
from a position of ‘legislator’ to a position of ‘interpreter’ (Bauman, 1987). For
this reason, a genuine understanding of the way in which learning is related to
one’s biography is of utmost importance.
Between reflexive and restrictive activation
In 1998 we started the fi rst international research project on the education,
training and guidance of unemployed young people (Wildemeersch, 2001).
Over the course of this project and later on, when we wrote a book about
our observations, we noted signifi cant shifts in social policy discourses (Weil
et al., 2005; Wildemeersch and Weil, 2008). The naming and framing of
programmes for unemployed young people as ‘activation practices’ became
more and more apparent. During the previous decade, an emphasis on active
citizens, active job-seekers, active senior citizens, active communities and the
active welfare state has become prominent in social policy discourses all across
Europe. In this context, individuals are meant to assume active responsibility
for their own learning, employment and community welfare. In line with
this, a more ‘client-centred’ approach towards the unemployed has engendered
increased ‘humanistic’ modes of activation where individual counselling,
trajectory guidance and continuous monitoring are important principles.
Activation practitioners are nowadays very well aware that their clients – such
as unemployed young adults, women and the long-term unemployed – need
special rather than standardised treatments and approaches. Most practitioners
acknowledge, although to different degrees across the projects we studied,
that an approach characterised by open communication and understanding, by

Transitional learning and reflexive facilitation 221
consideration of the clients’ lifeworld and by an attitude of respect is of great
importance. Our research revealed that they favour what we called ‘refl exive’
forms of activation. Yet, we will notice further on that in these practices,
refl exive activation is sometimes the espoused theory, whereas restrictive
activation is the theory-in-use (Argyris and Schön, 1978).
Furthermore, refl exive activation implies the need to balance respect for
the singularity of young adults on the one hand with the needs and demands
of the labour market on the other hand. Moreover, the ideal balance seems to
be different for each particular individual. This tension makes the activation
practice a rather delicate and sometimes frustrating experience, requiring
careful refl exivity on behalf of the facilitator. This implies that professionals
and young adults co-interpret and negotiate possibilities and limitations of
particular activation strategies, given the complex nature of labour markets and
social policies, but also given the context of ambivalent relationships between
young adults and professionals. Respect for the singularity of the young adults
inevitably moves the facilitators towards a more biographical approach. They
have to construct concrete actions based on insecure interpretations. Problem
solving in practice is a reflexive activity of an ‘interpretive professional’
(Wildemeersch, 2000).
Interpreting and negotiating in this perspective constitute an open-ended
process. Professionals use the information coming out of boundary tensions
between their own and their participant’s lifeworlds and those of the
system, by staying critical and creative about the choices that cannot be
seen except through new forms of dialogue, inquiry, and action research
in practice’
(Weil et al., 2005, p. 159)
Transitional learning
In another research project in our research centre (Stroobants, 2001), we
focused on biographical learning processes in which women make sense of
work through the construction of their life courses and their life stories.
Presupposing an ambiguous relationship between the promise of emancipation
through paid labour, women’s actual work experiences and the current
opportunity structures on the labour market, we researched the way women
learn to handle the different and changing meanings of work in their lives
and in overall society. We started the research with some scepticism about the
emancipatory potential of paid labour for women as well as of lifelong learning
and participation in adult and continuing education. However, we were equally
fascinated by the way women have to look for adequate ways to connect their
own biography to broader social issues and, in one way or another, also seem
to succeed in doing so, often via work and/or education, be it with or in spite
of the help of education and training professionals.

222 Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
Throughout the research process we began to understand that the real ‘job’
women perform, during their life, is the (re)construction of the self in relation
to society (Fenwick, 1998; Rossiter, 1999; Tennant, 1998). In this process
of searching for and developing the self, work does represent a possible and
desirable way for women to structure and make sense of their life and to
widen their action space in society. However, fi nding a job attuned to their
own capacities and personal and social aspirations on the one hand, and to the
demands and structures of the labour market on the other hand, is not taken
for granted. We consider the search for meaningful connections between self
and society when engaging with work, as a process of transitional learning.
Transitional learning and meaningful connections
Transitional learning emerges when individuals are faced with unpredictable
changes in the dynamics between their life course and the transforming
context, and when they are confronted with the need to (learn to) anticipate,
handle and reorganise these changing conditions. This situation triggers
a continuous process of constructing meaning, making choices, taking up
responsibilities and dealing with the changes in the personal and societal
context. In line with Alheit (1995) we refer to this lifelong process of shaping
one’s own biography as a process of transitional learning. It is about creating
meaningful connections between one’s narrative understanding of the self as
an actor in past, present and future on the one side, and one’s understanding
of the context in which one operates and lives in terms of broader themes
and issues on the other. While transitional learning refers to a permanent
learning process, meaningful connections are its varying and concrete stakes
and possible outcomes at a specifi c moment. It is important to mention here
that this process of creating meaningful connections is not a process that is
located ‘in’ the person. The telling of a story – who one is, where one stands,
where one goes to – is always a ‘response’ to a question coming from someone
else. Therefore, the development of a singular life story relates to the act of
‘coming into presence’ into an inter subjective space that is constituted by the
company of others who ‘interrupt’ the self-evidence of one’s biography. ‘To ask
the question of human subjectivity in this way, as a question about where the
subject as a unique singular being – as someone – comes into presence, allows
us to get away from the deter mination of the human subject as a substance or
essence’ (Biesta, 2006, p. 43).
Adaptation, growth, distinction and resistance: Four basic strategies
Processes of transitional learning are located in the centre of a symbolic
space created by two dimensions (see Figure 16.1). The fi rst – horizontal –
dimension, relates to action and refl ection dealing with tensions between
societal demands and personal demands. These demands are needs, values,

Transitional learning and reflexive facilitation 223
norms and aspirations that may converge or diverge. Priority may be given to
societal criteria or to personal criteria or, what is more real, to a combination
of both criteria. The second dimension – the vertical one – is about the actor’s
perception of the extent to which the fi elds in which s/he operates (e.g. the
fi eld of work, training, leisure, etc.) can be altered in view of individual or
social/societal expectations, plans and projects. In other words, it concerns the
subjectively experienced and perceived possibilities and limitations to infl uence
or change arrangements and structures (e.g. a distribution of opportunities)
within a particular domain of life and within society at large.
Within this two-dimensional space, four basic strategies or logics of making
meaningful connections can be distinguished: adaptation, growth, distinction
and resistance.
Adaptation is a strategy which gives priority to societal demands and
which takes as a point of departure the alleged unchangeable character of the
opportunity structures on the labour market. With respect to this position,
the process of connecting the self and the context is mainly directed by the
(changing) needs and conditions of the labour market. Adaptation is about
trying to acquire the necessary competencies to meet these needs and to come
to terms with the social expectations.
Growth is the person-oriented counterpart of adaptation within a societal
ACTION AND REFLECTION
ORIENTATION
TRANSITIONAL LEARNING
SOCIETY-ORIENTED PERSON-ORIENTED
resistance
adaptation growth
(re)design
stimulation
(re)construction
challenge
distinction
social learning
meaningful
connections
biographical learning
Figure 16.1 Transitional learning.

224 Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
context that is predominantly perceived as hard to infl uence. It refers to the
holistic development of the individual as an authentic, free and responsible
subject, both in the sense of developing all aspects and potentialities of the
whole person and in the sense of caring for the well-being and recovery of the
self in order to personally cope with the society-in-transformation.
In both strategies, actors direct and interpret their lives in the best possible
way within the given social context. Yet, when the changeability of societal
opportunity structures is taken as a starting point, activities of critical refl ection
and action come into focus, in combination with attempts to shape particular
social fi elds and life contexts, e.g. labour market practices, in a wilful way.
In the strategy of distinction, the development of an alternative, individual
lifestyle, in view of fi nding a personalised way out of societal demands that are
experienced as oppressive, is at stake (e.g. the demands of the labour market
which are at odds with images of freedom, creativity and authenticity).
Resistance, on the other hand, directs critical refl ection and action explicitly
towards infl uencing and maybe transforming the demands of society. It refers
to social commitment. In order to demonstrate the relevance of these four
strategies, we now present some of the interpretations made by Stroobants
(2001) on the basis of biographical interviews with a selective group of women.
Anita’s search for a job can be interpreted with reference to the strategies
discussed above. She is a young married woman without children, looking for
‘the right job’ after some frustrating work experiences. She wants to continue
a training trajectory preparing her for a ‘male’ job. Yet, she is not allowed to
fi nish it because the counsellors are convinced that there is no way to get work
for her in that sector. Instead, she is guided towards a nursing job. Having no
alternative option and because in that sector employment is guaranteed, she
goes for it (adaptation). Soon she realises that this job is not what she expected.
She cannot attune it to her own aspirations, competencies and dreams. The job
is getting her down and undermines her self-esteem. Therapy helps her to gain
back her self-respect and to cope with the situation (growth). By attending
evening courses in pottery and furniture making, she tries to develop the
forgotten creative aspects of her self (growth). In a certain way, she develops a
proper lifestyle by doing all sorts of courses and evening classes (distinction).
Actually, she wants to be a furniture maker and dreams of starting her own
little business, but at the moment, taking into account the limitations of the
context in which she has to operate, this is not a realistic option. She decides
to become a cab driver, for she wants to prove that she is able to do a man’s
job (resistance).
The four strategies or logics mentioned above are more-or-less ideal-typical
and theoretical constructions and are to be understood as combinations of two
extreme poles of the two structuring dimensions. As the tensions with other
poles cannot really be ignored in the construction of meaningful connections,
these strategies do not often occur in their pure form. When they seem to do
so, like in Anita’s story, they make sense in view of coping with a concrete

Transitional learning and reflexive facilitation 225
situation (e.g. she can only continue with her nursing job because she fi nds
compensation in courses and therapy), but – from a biographical point of view
– they are not really connected. At the same time, through acts of resistance,
Anita creates space to relate her personal development to her own lifestyle
that she wants to develop further. It thus seems more true to assume that
most of the time, a combination or a mix of strategies – at the crossroads of
the two dimensions – is applied so as to achieve meaningful connections. It is
important to see that the fi elds of tension either have opportunities to produce
dynamic and productive outcomes which can be converted to one’s own use,
or that they stimulate activities of control within the subject. The combined
strategies of stimulation, challenge, (re)design and (re)construction described
below explicitly take into account the tension on one of the two dimensions.
Thereby, the poles of the dimensions are connected in such a way that and–and
combinations do occur rather than or–or combinations.
Stimulation, challenge, (re)design and (re)construction: Four combined
strategies
Stimulation is the first combined strategy operating within the given
opportunity structures, by attuning societal and personal demands. It tries
to meet the changing needs produced by a society in transformation on the
one hand (adaptation) and to take individual orientations into consideration
(growth) on the other. In view of the importance nowadays attached to inte-
gration in the labour market, this combined strategy is frequently applied.
However, because the demands of the labour market are considered to be hard to
transform, some risks may occur. For example, mechanisms of exclusion remain
tangible in the context of practices that cultivate the myth of individual liberty
and responsibility, as is the case with the employability discourse that tends to
reproduce the ‘blaming-the-victim model’ ( Jansen and Wildemeersch, 1996).
As a second combined strategy, challenge equally relates to the tension
between societal and personal demands, yet takes the changeability of the
social context as a point of departure. It means that resistance can fi nd an
individualized expression in particular lifestyle practices and in reverse
order, that distinction is allowed to play a role in activities of resistance. The
remaining one-sidedness here is that the possibility to transform the social
order may be overestimated, or that existing restrictive mechanisms are not
taken into account well enough. This may lead to disappointment, despair and
even self-exclusion.
The third combined strategy of (re)design is situated on the borderline of two
opposing perceptions concerning the transformability of opportunity structures
and is preoccupied exclusively with the meeting of personal demands. It refers
to a personal developmental process, not only within (personal growth) or
beyond (distinction through lifestyle) existing opportunity structures, but by
calculating realistically the opportunities, possibilities and limitations of the

226 Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
self and of the action environment and by actively interacting with these. The
(re)design strategy does not address societal demands.
(Re)construction as the fourth combined strategy counterbalances the
strategy of designing. It is directed to societal demands rather than to per-
sonal demands. It is about the (re)establishment of practices based on a
critical (resistance) and yet pragmatic and realistic (adaptation) perception
of opportunity structures and their moral and political dimensions. (Re)
construction runs the risk of turning a blind eye to the individual perspective
of the issues at stake.
Monique is a single mother who eventually, after several moves in and out of
the labour market, has found a job that fi ts her chosen lifestyle. As a vegetarian
who lives in accordance with anthroposophic principles, she is a co-owner of
a natural health shop. She experiences her work as a continuation of her way
of living and being. One could say that she has created ((re)designed) her own
life, fi nding personal development in a particular lifestyle. By extending it to
an income-generating activity and attaching her own profi le and meaning to
work as a self-employed woman, her example represents an alternative way for
women to relate to the labour market ((re)construction).
Remarks and nuances
When explaining the combined strategies, we pointed to some risks resulting
from the one-sided focus on only one of the two dimensions against which we
situate transitional learning. The process of creating meaningful connections
tries to take into account the tensions on both dimensions. Taking social
agency within dynamic social structures as a point of departure, it is about
attuning social and personal demands and realistically integrating acceptance
of and change in the surrounding context. To this goal, several of the presented
strategies will be followed in a creative and changing order and direction.
Yet, transitional learning is not an intentional linear process towards mean-
ingful connections that can be directed in a systematic and rational way.
Nor is it always successful or even possible. Coincidence, luck, differences in
opportunity structures, unexpected possibilities and structural limitations,
amongst other things, play an important role in the generation of meaningful
connections that shape the process of transitional learning. What matters is
that one is (or learns to be) able to react in an adequate way to this situation of
serendipity or ‘happenstance’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997).
From Denise’s story we learn that fi nding a meaningful connection is not
always easy or evident. She tries out different strategies to enter the labour
market, none of which have been successful thus far. She is a single woman
without children. Although she has a university degree, she doesn’t feel
able to meet the corresponding social demands. She has worked in several
different jobs and sectors but has not yet found the suitable and useful job
she is looking for. She has been out of a regular job for a few years now and

Transitional learning and reflexive facilitation 227
attends various labour market-oriented training (adaptation) and counselling
(growth) activities. Denise is almost desperately looking for a job, trying to
develop her own competencies in harmony with the demands on the labour
market (stimulation/activation). But at the same time, she is very critical of the
current fl exible and stressful labour market. She cannot fi t in her proper values
and principles and she does not actually want to be part of it (resistance). She
wants to work on her own terms, while also countering the labour market, but
she has not yet found a way to do so.
However, this relative unpredictability on the individual level does not mean
that it is not important to create positive opportunity structures and enable
meaningful connections on a societal level. Though our theoretical approach
is not meant to offer a normative framework, we do stress that the processes
of deliberation and choice with regard to work do not take place in a neutral
social context. They are explicitly related to different opinions that exist about
the way in which the fi eld of work and labour operates, to the public debate
concerning issues of social responsibility and to the obligation to (re)organise
this fi eld in view of a (re)distribution of opportunity structures. New balances
or relations between individual autonomy and responsibility on the one hand
and collective arrangements and opportunities on the other can bring about
and facilitate meaningful connections on the personal and social levels alike.
An educational perspective on transitional learning
Meaningful connections through adult and continuing education
In the lives and life stories of the interviewees of our biographical research, not
only work, but also participation in adult and continuing education initiatives,
is experienced as a structuring and meaningful activity. In many, often-
surprising and changing ways, adult and continuing education initiatives,
amongst other media, are often considered helpful for the process of transitional
learning that they experienced. The participants in this research on women and
work attended several educational and counselling activities, thereby inevitably
giving personal meaning to their learning from a biographical and situated
perspective. They more or less believe in education as a means of responding
to the demands of the labour market and of society in transformation. If
education fails to do so, it still retains relevancy for the sake of personal growth
and self-development, or as a means of helping to design a proper lifestyle
or to construct alternative ways of being employed. The way in which the
interviewees at various occasions integrate education and learning experiences
into their particular life plan and life story sometimes questions or counters
outcomes which have been constructed from an educational framework.
Magda’s story illustrates well the way in which the female interviewees
give meaning to educational experiences, thereby relating their learning to
different strategies of transitional learning. She grows up as the youngest of

228 Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
nine children in a family of merchants. It is her childhood dream to one day
have a shop of her own. When she gets married and has children of her own, she
stops working as an offi ce assistant. She takes the role of mother and housewife
to heart and helps her husband with the bookkeeping of his business. After a
few years, Magda looks for ways to break free from the ‘patterns’ that limit her
actions. Eventually, she decides to attend evening classes orienting her towards
the bakery business. At that moment, it is not certain what the outcome of that
commitment will be. Retrospectively, it is clear from Magda’s life story that
she succeeded in making her dream come true. Attending the baker’s training,
however, must be understood as a multilayered strategy possibly serving several
aims, sometimes opposing the predetermined educational objectives. For
Magda, it is a way to exercise her hobby (personal growth fi tting her role as a
mother and housewife), to get qualifi ed in bookkeeping (useful for her ‘job’ as
cooperating spouse – stimulation) and to keep open the possibility of starting
her own business (and realise her dream – construct/design/challenge).
Meaningful connections and activation strategies: The case of ‘Flexi Job’
The theory of transitional learning can also be of interest from a facilitation
point of view, as the entire framework is not limited to the perspective of
the learner. It is also applicable to the activities of professionals of education,
training, guidance and counselling who try to support individual learning
processes. The framework also refers to the ways in which these professionals
make sense of their own position and practices as facilitators and to the (mix
of ) strategies they use. Their actions vis-à-vis the learning individuals can be
understood in terms of either facilitating and stimulating or inhibiting each
of the strategies we distinguished. The framework of transitional learning
can thus be approached from different perspectives. This makes it possible to
interpret some of the tensions, confl icts and contradictions in the interactions
between professionals and participants. In order to illustrate the relevance
of the theory of transitional learning in this respect, we briefly present
the case of ‘Flexi Job’ (Weil et al., 2005, p. 38). The data we present here
were collected on the occasion of a case study organised in the context of
the ‘Balancing Competencies’ project about which we report extensively in
our book Unemployed Youth and Social Exclusion in Europe (Weil et al., 2005).
The interpretation of these data also helped us to develop the framework of
transitional learning. Simultaneously, this emerging framework gave us a
better understanding of some of the tensions and contradictions at stake in
this case. The case we present below is indeed an interpretation based on a
partial observation. Therefore, this interpretation should not be considered as
the ultimate truth about this case. On the contrary, it is an invitation – also
for the practitioners involved – to consider this practice with the help of the
framework of transitional learning and to experience that this framework may
reveal elements which they have not yet taken into consideration.

Transitional learning and reflexive facilitation 229
Flexi Job is a fi ctitious name for a ‘social’ employment agency in Belgium.
It is purposefully located in an underprivileged area in the bigger cities of
Flanders and Antwerp, in contrast with other agencies that are located in the
centre of the city. The agency has the ambition to create a connection between
the lifeworld of disadvantaged young people and the present-day situation of
the labour market. The model which has been developed and which seems
promising in the eyes of policy-makers and the Flemish Employment Agency
(VDAB) is based on a long and intensive outreach contact of the youth worker
involved in the project with the target group of long-term unemployed young
adults. These experiences gave rise to the hypotheses that the envisaged group
is not really ready for, or willing to accept, steady jobs and that it is better to
look for unconventional ways to create work experience for them. Therefore,
Flexi Job wants to support the young unemployed adults in their attempt to
alternate periods of leisure and employment. The concept of Flexi Job is based
on the principle that short-term jobs (1–30 days) should be offered to this
particular group. These jobs are supposed to encourage young adults who want
an income but are not motivated to subject themselves to regular labour market
discipline. The ‘maximum 30 days’ slogan is thought to match their relation
to labour and therefore is used to attract them. It promises a combination of
‘work’ and ‘freedom’, of ‘stability’ and some sort of ‘nomadic lifestyle’. Flexi
Job wants to support these young adults in experimenting with ‘new ways of
life’ that refl ect their culture of ‘resistance’. This culture is considered to refl ect
their opposition to mainstream society, including the norm of lifelong work,
and their ambition to ‘distinguish’ themselves through alternative lifestyles.
However, the interviews we had with these young people revealed other
aspirations. We did not fi nd much evidence of this form of resistance espoused
by the group. On the contrary, we encountered many traditional dreams of
‘lifelong work’. In the eyes of these young people, temporary employment
is either an emergency solution or an intermediate step towards a long-term
contract. Let us just consider the group of ‘alternative dreamers’ to develop our
argument. The form of resistance that Flexi Job refers to may eventually not
be resistance at all, but rather a new trajectory to adaptation. Three arguments
support this viewpoint:
The resistance can be meaningful for young people who productively •
succeed in juggling this fl exibility as an introductory step in their career
development. It is then a resistance strategy or maybe some kind of lifestyle
distinction strategy that relates at the same time to a growth strategy.
Take the examples of the highly qualifi ed young graduate who succeeds in
building a career, while making use of several short assignments in close
connection with his/her personality and individual agenda. The alternation
of periods of work and non-work is, for instance, exemplifi ed in the trend of
travelling around the world for a couple of months.

230 Danny Wildemeersch and Veerle Stroobants
This perspective makes sense, especially for the highly qualifi ed young
adults. Yet, the opportunity structures of low-qualifi ed people are so restricted
that this form of resistance or distinction may eventually turn into conditions
of mere adaptation and even self-exclusion for those who are in disadvantaged
positions in society and on the labour market.
The labour market is not indifferent to this kind of resistance. The •
resistance matches the fl exibility discourse perfectly well. In that way, the
resistance is not resistance in the fi rst place, but rather an invitation to
adapt to the fl exibility demands of the labour market. Some young adults
experience this shift in the labour market as disturbing. Adaptation is
considered a necessity: the best of all unsatisfactory solutions or a survival
strategy rather than a new way of life. Temporary employment goes
together with a crisis in their lives and helps them to overcome acute
fi nancial problems. There seems to be a gap between the new ‘values’ of
the labour market, notably fl exibility, and the expectation of low-skilled
people in general to fi nd a long-term job.
Flexi Job seems to create the illusion that there is some kind of experimental •
moratorium where the young adults can alternate between work and non-
work while simultaneously developing their own plans so as to arrive at
a point where they fi nd sustainable employment in harmony with their
own plans and agenda. Yet, the real experimental room is restricted by the
defective opportunity structures of an unschooled, fl exible workforce. The
young people in the interviews discussed their dreams, such as becoming
a telephone operator, a policeman or a security agent. There is no place to
experiment with these plans and dreams within Flexi Job, unless they earn
enough money to be able to afford training at a later stage.
In conclusion we would argue that Flexi Job predominantly meets the short-
term needs of the young unemployed adults. The young people it addresses
indeed want a job, and they want it fast, because they need instant money.
Temporary employment perfectly meets this need. However, the difference in
aspirations between Flexi Job and some of its participants has to do with the
long-term perspective. In some respects, Flexi Job supports a new way of life,
in which temporary employment takes a central place, and thus contributes
to new understandings of quality of life. Yet, the perspective of the young
adults that we interviewed is different. Temporary employment for them has
the character of emergency help. What they actually clearly strive for (and
prefer as soon as possible) are long-term contracts in sustainable jobs, enabling
them to develop traditional lifestyles rather than the unconventional lifestyles
that the mentor has in mind. For this reason we would argue that this case
is an example of ‘restrictive activation’, which we characterised as a strategy
that problematises the excluded rather than exclusion, that gives limited
responsibilities to the participants to co-direct their trajectory and that does

Transitional learning and reflexive facilitation 231
little to create meaningful connections while learning for jobs (Weil et al.,
2005, p. 200). With the help of our framework on transitional learning, we
were able to reconsider some of the assumptions which directed the actions
of Flexi Job. We hope to have convincingly demonstrated that the framework
indeed helps to further explore and discuss the relevance of particular activation
strategies.
Conclusions
We have argued in this chapter that transitional learning is a process that takes
place not only ‘in’ the person, but also, to an important extent, through the
interaction initiated by external people who ask for a response. That is why in
this chapter we have also brought practices of adult and continuing education
into the picture. Adult and continuing education today increasingly operate
as providers of vocational and market-oriented training activities aimed at
activating individuals to fi t economic demands. Yet, adult and continuing
education initiatives can also play a role in other learning practices. They can
stimulate the search for work and the creation of meaningful work in relation
to self and society. They can help people to develop an overview of personal
and structural possibilities for and limitations to the realisation of alternative
ways of living and working. They can help to create new opportunities. They
can invite people to develop their life stories and thereby create opportunities
for them to come into presence as ‘singularised persons’. In such cases it may
be relevant to ‘interrupt’ the taken-for-granted stories of participants. In doing
so, they can also create new signifi cant connections between the initiatives’ own
aims and missions and the surrounding society by attaching a social signifi cance
to the choices and decisions of individuals, by strengthening signals to society
and in this way infl uencing social structures and creating possibilities to design
new realities and construct new practices. Such activity today is to a large
extent a ‘refl exive facilitation practice’. The cases we have presented based on
different research experiences in the last decade make clear how such practices
can be inspired by emerging theories, both on transitional learning and on
refl exive activation. Such theories can be an important basis for refl ection,
dialogue and decision-making among practitioners and policy-makers and
within the organisations that provide education, training and guidance. We
hope our considerations in this chapter will help to deepen such processes.
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Index
accommodative learning 13–14
activity theory 4, 53–71
actor-network theory 56, 60
adult education 4, 22–3, 41, 49–50, 90–2,
96–9, 101–4, 147–9, 151–5, 157–8, 169,
171, 180, 188, 227, 231
affective mode 130, 132–3, 137, 139–40,
142–3
Alheit, Peter 5, 222
artifi cial intelligence 162–3, 204–5, 209
assimilative learning 13–14, 41
authority 35–6, 46, 50–2, 91, 104
autonomy (personal) 47, 123, 144–5, 149,
155, 158, 169–75, 178–9, 181, 227
barriers to learning 8, 14–17, 196
Bateson, Gregory 53, 58, 61
Bauman, Z. 26, 173
Beck, Ulrich 121
Belenky, Mary 99
Bennett-Goleman, T. 100–1
Berger, Peter 28
biographical learning 116–127, 221,223
Boud, D. 149
Boundary Crossing Laboratory 53, 59–71
Bourdieu, P. 28, 119, 124, 220
Boyd, Robert 102
Brookfi eld, Stephen 97, 103
Bruer, John: Schools for Thought 165
Bruner, Jerome: The Culture of Education 159
Buber, Martin: I and Thou 32
Chaiklin, Seth 200–1
class (social) 76, 95, 98, 103, 122, 172, 175, 189
cognition 28, 60, 74, 77, 80, 82, 84, 86, 92,
152, 159, 167, 202, 205
cognitive theory 32, 166, 202–7
Commission of the European Communities:
Memorandum of Lifelong Learning 116
communicative learning 91, 93–4
communities of practice 60, 87, 209–17
computationalism 159–67
conditioning 13, 58
confessional practice 153–4, 170, 177–8
constructive-developmental approach 35–52,
99
constructivist theory 147, 154, 217
consumerism 119, 121, 171–4, 176, 178
content dimension 10,12, 191
co-operative inquiry 129
counselling 138–9, 153–4, 220, 227–8
Cranton, Patricia 101
critical: practices 177–80; refl ection 94,
96–7, 99, 101, 104, 224
cultural knowledge 185–6, 188
culturalism 159–67
culture 17, 27, 31–2, 40, 46, 50–1, 75, 92,
95–6, 98, 103, 151–2, 155, 159–67,
172–3, 179, 182, 206; consumer 171;
as experience 87–8; learning 127, 146;
organizational 40, 93, 177; and youth
184–99, 229
cumulative learning 13–14, 82
Davydov, V.V. 71, 202
defence mechanisms 15–16, 18–19, 61, 65,
69, 131, 134, 136, 195
defi nition of learning 3, 7, 25, 84, 86, 102

234 Index
Dewey, John 74–88
Dirkx, John 101–2
discipline, academic 110, 170, 175;
economic 229; imposed 176–8, 189, 212;
self- 153–4, 175–8, 189, 192
disjuncture 22, 25–8, 202
directionality 54, 70–1
distributed cognition 60
Dreier, O. 205
ego 101, 125, 130–43, 146, 189, 191–2,
195, 198
Elias, Dean 102
empathy 91–2, 101, 140–2, 145–6, 191–2
empowerment 51, 149, 153–4, 169, 171,
177–8, 180–1
expectation 38, 43, 46, 48–9, 51–2, 90, 92, 95,
99, 103, 118, 121, 185, 189–90, 223, 230
Engeström, Yrjö 2–4, 204, 207
epistemology 42, 44–6, 48–9, 92–3, 95–6,
98–9, 164, 186
Erikson, Erik H. 41
ethnicity 95, 98, 103, 117, 121, 124, 171
existential 4, 24–5, 30, 100, 108, 190
experiential learning 3–4, 24, 32, 74, 76,
84, 145–6, 169–71, 173, 175–8, 180–3
externalisation 33, 69, 156–7
Falzon, C. 26
Field, John 117–18, 120
‘Flexi Job’ 228–31
Foucault, Michel 147–8, 152–3, 155–6, 169
frame of reference 41–4, 49, 90–2, 101
Freire, Paulo 90, 97, 103
Fuhrer, U. 205
Gardner, Howard 3, 4, 17, 41, 145–6;
The Disciplined Mind 106
gender 17, 90, 95, 98, 103, 121–2, 124, 171
General Problem Solver 166
Giddens, Anthony 121
Gould, Roger 90, 99–100
Grow, Gerald 50
guidance 19, 62, 153, 178, 189, 219–20,
228, 231
guilt 94, 135–6, 163
Habermas, Jürgen 90–2, 96, 189
Hall, S. 152–3, 155–6
habitus 28, 124, 173, 184, 193, 196
Hegel, G.W.F.: The Phenomenology of Mind 52
Heifetz, Ronald 49
hermeneutics 155, 163–4, 185
Heron, John: Feeling and Personhood:
Psychology in Another Key 129
human capital theory 120, 174
Hutchins, E. 207
identity 14–16, 18–19, 21, 30, 41, 109,
131, 151, 153–4, 171–2, 177, 179,
189–90, 196, 211–12; cultural 161;
mind/brain identity 31–32; social 206
Illeris, Knud: Adult Education and Adult
Learning 2; How We Learn 2, 7, 17;
Learning Theories: Six Contemporary
Approaches (ed. Illeris) 2; The Three
Dimensions of Learning 1, 7
imagination 75, 77, 83, 87, 95, 113, 144–5,
193, 198
incentive dimension 4, 9–12
individualisation 118, 121, 189, 219–20
individuation 47, 101–2, 131, 184
information processing 32, 159, 161–3, 217
informative learning 41–4, 49
inquiry 75–83, 86–88, 91, 99, 102, 146,
1 5 9
instrumental learning 91, 93–4
intelligence 17, 106, 110, 145–6, 162
interaction dimension 5, 11–12
intuition 76, 94–5, 101, 123, 130, 133,
137, 140–42, 145, 213
Jarvis, Peter 2, 3, 4, 158; Adult Learning
in the Social Context 23; Lifelong Learning
and the Learning Society 21; Paradoxes of
Learning 24;
Jung, Carl 101–2
Karmiloff-Smith, Annette 165–6
Kegan, Robert 99; In Over Our Heads 40;
The Evolving Self 3
Keller, C. and Keller, J.D. 204–5
King, P. and Kitchener, K.: Developing
Refl ective Judgment 94, 99
Kolb, David 22–3, 76, 84–7; Experiential
Learning 2

Index 235
Lave, Jean 5; and Etienne Wenger 87;
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation 125, 200; Understanding
Practice: Perspective on Activity and Context
200, 202, 205–6
Lazarus, R.S. 167
learning cycle 22–3, 84–5, 129–46
learning style 17, 51, 84–6, 93, 184–5,
191
Leont’ev, Alexei 54, 56
lifewide learning 117, 120
Luhmann, Niklas 4, 124, 194
McDermott, R.P. 201, 205
McLaren, P. 157
Martin, L. et al.: Technologies of the Self:
A Seminar with Michel Foucault 147
Maslin, K.T. 31
mass media 103, 126, 172–3, 190
mediation 28, 54
Mezirow, Jack 2– 4, 35, 41, 44, 50
mindfulness 100, 132–3, 137–8, 142–3
modernism 51–2
motivation 4, 10, 12–13, 61, 86, 116, 120,
137, 174–6, 182, 188, 190–2, 194–5,
198, 229
multiple intelligences 3, 4, 17, 41, 106–115,
145–6
ontology 31, 79, 83, 86, 167
‘organic circle’ 79–80
organizational learning 4, 69
O’Sullivan, Edmund et al.: Expanding the
Boundaries of Transformative Learning 98
Parker, Stella 24
Peirce, Charles Sanders 125
Peters, John 103
Piaget, Jean 7, 13–14, 41, 54
post-Fordism 171, 174–5, 177
post-industrial society 118–19, 126
postmodern 5, 52, 103, 147–58, 169–74,
180
practice learning 4, 5, 87, 200
pragmatism (learning theory) 4, 74 –89
propositional learning 145–6
psyche 54, 101, 130, 133, 137–38, 141,
145, 150
Putnam, Robert D. 122
‘refl ex arc’ 78–9, 88
refl exive modernisation 118, 121
rules 57–8, 77, 93, 100, 162–3, 184, 186,
189, 191, 194, 196–7
schema therapy 100–1
self-authoring 46–51, 99
self-directed learning 27, 37, 50–1
Siegal, Harvey 90, 96
situated learning 60–1, 127, 207, 216
(see also Lave, Jean)
social change 96, 109, 148–9, 157, 176,
220
Suchman, L.A. and Trigg, R.H. 204–5
technology 57, 114, 119, 147–57, 174
transaction 74–5, 78–9, 81–3, 86
transcendent learning 13, 16
transformative learning theory 3, 4, 14, 16,
19, 35–52, 90–105
transitional learning 125, 219–231
Usher, Robin 5, 149–51, 153, 155; Adult
Education and the Postmodern Challenge:
Learning Beyond the Limits 169
Villa, Dana: Socratic Citizenship 96
vocational practices 170, 174–6, 179;
training 123, 231
Vygotsky, Lev 14, 53–5, 70–1, 200
Weil, S. and McGill, I. 180–2
Weil, S. et al.: Unemployed Youth and Social
Exclusion in Europe: Learning for Inclusion
219, 228
Wenger, Etienne 2, 5, 30, 32, 74, 87, 200;
Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning
and identity 209; (see also Lave, Jean)
White, Michael 156
Wildemeersch, Danny 5, 181
youth education 3, 18, 184–99, 212, 216,
229
Zajonc, R.B. 167
Ziehe, Thomas 2–3, 5