Significant learning

Learning is conceptualised in this study as resulting in a changed or more experienced person (Jarvis 2006). Moving on from this foundational idea, the researcher explored the type of learning that creates change in the learner and how a life experience may create that change. Significant learning is a concept that seeks to capture what change looks like in the learner and why change has occurred. The key theories that underpin the idea of significant learning are discussed below.

2.6.1 The origins of the concept of significant learning

Carl Rogers, although a humanistic psychologist rather than an educational theorist, first introduced the idea of significant learning at a time when there was a shift away from behaviourist theories of learning. Rogers’s concept of significant learning is part of the set of “far-reaching types of learning” that imply personality changes or changes to the structure of the self through a “simultaneous restructuring of whole clusters of schemes and patterns” across cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions of learning” (Illeris 2018b, p. 7). Rogers’s work focussed on self-actualisation of the learner and the idea that education should be about creating a fully functioning person (Jarvis 2010). Rogers does not provide a comprehensive theory of adult learning but coming from a humanistic tradition, his ideas champion the learner as the agent in the learning process. Rogers also conceptualises learning as stemming from the human need for self-development and self-direction (Jarvis 2010). The humanistic tradition is inherently linked to life-experience learning and its

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connection to the ongoing growth of the individual throughout adulthood. It draws from theories of life-span developmental psychology which explore change in human behaviour across the lifespan and espouse the principle of lifelong development (Keenan, Evans & Crowley 2016).

Significant learning makes a difference to an individual by driving the development of a person’s behaviour, attitudes, and sense of self (Rogers 1951, p. 232), where there is impact on:

the individual’s behaviour, in the course of action he [sic] chooses in the future, in his [sic] attitudes and his [sic] personality. It is a pervasive learning which is not just an accretion of knowledge, but which interpenetrates with every portion of his [sic] existence.

Rogers (1951, p. 388) proposes that “a person learns significantly only those things [emphasis added] which he [sic] perceives to be involved in the maintenance of, or enhancement of, the structure of the self”. This suggests that significant learning is the kind of learning that enhances or strengthens aspects of self-identity and is personally meaningful. The idea of significance in the context of learning is explored in this research through the vehicle of international study, as a life experience with the potential for significant learning. Significance brings together the centrality of identity espoused by Jarvis (2006) and the developmental psychology lens on learning of building the self through integration of previous behaviours into new, more complex structures (Keenan, Evans & Crowley 2016).

2.6.2 The relationship between life experience and significant learning

Drawing on Rogers’s earlier work, Merriam and Clark (1993) examined the relationship between life experience and significant learning. Building on Rogers’s proposition that significant learning makes a difference to the individual, they considered what determines this difference. They also investigated why a particular experience leads to learning for one individual and not another, and how the effect of an experience might vary from person to person. They asked 400 adults to identify experiences that were especially significant and to explain why those experiences were identified as such. Analysis of their participants’ significant experiences led Merriam and Clark (1993, p. 133) to conclude that “for a learning experience to be considered significant, it (i) must personally affect the learner, and (ii) be subjectively valued by the learner”. This means that significant learning impacts the learner in ways that have personal value. From this conclusion, Merriam and Clark (1993, p. 133) proposed that there is an “inner structure” to significance comprised of two dimensions: personal impact and subjective value.

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The first way that a learning experience may be considered significant is through its personal impact on the individual. Personal impact is the effect of an experience on the person, where they are changed in ways that expand (or transform) the self. Impact may be understood as a continuum, where expansion may be (i) confined to one aspect of a person’s life with no change in other parts, (ii) gradual change, or (iii) it may lead to a total transformation, depending on the extent of the change (Merriam & Clark 1993). One result of expansion (or transformation) of the learner’s identity and their capabilities is the sense that they are better able to handle life experiences in the future (Merriam & Clark 1993). Learning experiences are varied and may impact the learner in different ways, but what they have in common is some kind of extension of personal capabilities and an enhanced self- understanding (Merriam & Clark 1993).

Merriam and Clark’s (1993) study found that personal impact alone is not sufficient for an experience to be considered significant; it needs also to have subjective value to the learner. Having subjective value means the learner has placed a “personal stamp on the experience” and identified its “importance in his or her life” (Merriam & Clark 1993, p. 133). When the learner assigns value to an experience (i.e. it has subjective value), they do so using their own frame of reference (Merriam & Clark 1993). Assigning value to an experience speaks to Mezirow’s (1991) theories of learning where the learner’s ‘frame of reference’ provides “context for meaning-making” (Mezirow 2000, p. 16). This idea recognises that learning experiences may have some kind of effect on the person, but are not significant unless those experiences and their resultant impact matter to the learner (Merriam & Clark 1993).

The participants in Merriam and Clark’s study all identified the significance of their experiences in “growth-enhancing” ways, even if those experiences were difficult or painful for the participants (Merriam & Clark 1993, p. 137). The researchers note it is important to consider “that a significant learning experience might also constrict a person, leading to a perspective that is more rigid and less integrative of new experience” (Merriam & Clark 1993, p. 138). As their study did not uncover any growth-restricting changes to the learner, their theory of the construct of significance is understood to mean change in the learner in growth-enhancing ways.

Summary: Contribution to the framework

Theories on significant learning from the work of Rogers (1951; 1959) and Merriam and Clark (1993) provide a means of conceptualising the kind of learning that is explored in this study. The two significance dimensions (personal impact and subjective value) are inherent in Jarvis’s notion of

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learning. Jarvis (2006) describes the outcome of learning as the changed person; in other words, an experience has impacted the person. He also theorises that learning is a process of transforming and integrating the content of an experience into the structure of the self to create change in the person. This process aligns with the idea of subjectively valuing an experience and its impact to understand and articulate the significance of an experience. The theories of significant learning have been incorporated into the second iteration of the framework, given at Figure 2.4 in the next section of the chapter.