Context as a ‘learning culture’

This chapter started out by referring to a specific context and has outlined vignettes from practice within that context. In order to explore the place of knowledge within

this context, and within a context in general, it may be useful to start with the

conceptualisation of context which is implied by the Transforming Learning Cultures (TLC) project, and its notion of ‘learning cultures’.

The Transforming Learning Cultures project was a large project based ‘in and not on’ FE, from 2000-2005. The project examined 17 detailed case studies of educational practice in four further education colleges (Hodkinson et al., 2007a). The project aimed to explore the complex nature of learning in FE, to identify how learning in the sector might be improved and to develop the capacity of FE practitioners for inquiry into practice (James & Biesta, 2007). The project thus “engages with a series of questions concerning how we can know any context of education” (Peim & Hodkinson, 2007: 388).

The theoretical rationale for the project was based on a concern to recognise the complexity of the relationship between teaching, learning and the wider contexts of learning, based on the view that:

teaching and learning cannot be decontextualised from broader social, economic historical and political forces, and that addressing this complexity directly is the

most likely route to understanding that is useful to policy and practice.

(Hodkinson & James, 2003: 393)

The project proposed the notion of learning cultures in order to capture this concern with complexity, to focus on wider influences on learning and to conceptualise learning as something more than an individualised psychological process. Hodkinson & James report that the project team:

conceptualised learning broadly within a situated learning frame, which sees learning as located in the interactions between context, concept and activity (Brown et al, 1989). Learning is an inseparable part of social practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), closely related to what might be termed the culture of the place of learning. (Hodkinson & James, 2003: 393)

Drawing on Bloomer’s earlier work which explored the importance of students’ social context, culture and the significance of other life events on learning – the notion of ‘studentship’ (Bloomer, 1997) and ‘learning careers’ (Bloomer & Hodkinson, 2000) – the TLC project’s conceptualisation of learning cultures emphasised the mutually constitutive influences of context and the action of individuals. In his previous work, Bloomer suggested that:

Teachers and students do not merely receive and ‘act out’ externally imposed prescriptions of their tasks, they ‘act upon’ those prescriptions in the construction of their own practices. They are actors, acting in accordance with their own understandings and constructions.

(Bloomer, 1997: 187, emphasis in original)

Developing this theoretical position, the project drew on the work of Bourdieu in order to establish a conceptualisation of the nature of the teaching and learning context and to develop thinking about how interventions for improvement could be made. Bourdieu’s work was also used to theorise issues concerning structure and agency, employing his notions of habitus (a collection of durable, transposable dispositions, Hodkinson & James, 2003: 394) and field (a set of positions and relationships defined by the possession and interaction of different amounts of economic, social and cultural capital, p. 394). In foregrounding the mutually constitutive nature of habitus and field, the project then emphasises the “mutual interdependence of social constraint and individual volition” (p. 394). Additional theoretical perspectives such as interdisciplinarity (Hodkinson & James, 2003) and communities of practice theory contribute to a view of learning which is locally negotiated and based in social practice.

The TLC project’s notion of learning culture is “the practice through which people— students and tutors—learn” (Hodkinson et al., 2007b: 420). However, the project also emphasises that learning cultures may not be invented or manipulated at will. It points to the importance of artefacts and institutions which in addition to being expressions of cultural practices also “embody and reify such practices and thus play an important role in the continuation of cultures” (Hodkinson et al., 2007b: 419). Hodkinson et al. also observe that:

governments, policy-makers, employers, administrators, funding agencies and ‘the public’ have ideas and expectations about the educational system in general, and FE in particular. Such expectations influence, structure and limit what is possible for those working inside the system. Expectations are not necessarily consciously held. They exist as ‘ways of doing’ and ‘ways of being’ that are considered to be ‘normal’. This, finally, also means that learning cultures are governed by values and ideals, by normative expectations about good learning, good teaching, good leadership, and so forth – and again, these are from ‘within’ and ‘outside’ any particular setting.

(Hodkinson et al., 2007b: 420)

The notion of learning cultures resonates strongly with the observations that I have made in relation to the variation in forms of meaning. This is because these meanings are negotiated in a local context, in part formed in the process of immediate interaction, but also shaped by habitual practices and normative expectations. The conceptualisation also recognises the importance of meaning-making by both teacher and students. Teachers’ and students’ understandings of their roles in the context are clearly related to the learning cultures which have been established in particular classrooms. In general terms, accounts of teaching and learning which draw upon the learning cultures theoretical framework are highly situated and sound like very authentic accounts of life in FE. For example, Colley et al.’s (2003) discussion of the development of students’ ‘vocational habitus’ is a rich exploration of some of the issues surrounding vocational learning, in particular in relation to the role played by the performance of emotional labour.

The TLC project also makes some significant theoretical proposals. As Hodkinson et

al. (2007b, 2008) argue, the learning cultures concept goes some way towards

addressing a range of problems surrounding the way in which theories of learning conceptualise the context of learning. Emphasising the project’s theoretical affiliations with literatures concerned with situated learning or learning as participation (Sfard, 1998), theories which are usually depicted as being oppositional to cognitive or acquisitionist theories, Hodkinson et al. (2007b) discuss ways in which the notion of learning cultures may be used to suggest alternative conceptualisations of a number of problems which are not successfully addressed in the literature on participatory learning. These issues include, for example, the problem of transfer of learning (Hodkinson et al., 2008), the balance between the consideration of individual learning and wider social participation, the holistic conceptualisation of local and wider contexts, considerations of power relations, structure and agency and the balance between a focus on cognition and the embodied nature of learning (Hodkinson

et al., 2007b). Learning cultures, then, constitute a useful theoretical framework to

explore the shared meanings which are experienced in an educational context.