Transitional learning: Personal development and learning momenta

Despite the differences in the way social anthropologists, psychologists and feminists approach personal development, my encounter with their views on issues that relate implicitly or explicitly to transition such as rites of passage, occupational choice, change and identity, helped me to realise that transition whether it is part of personal development, whether it relates to learning or whether it is represented by psychological or physical change, it is a continuous process that is grounded in experience. Strangely enough Kolb (1984) observes the same for learning (p.145). The implications of this process seem to have been widely ignored in research on learning or practice in education. Instead the research on transition as a component of human development, has been replaced by a person-centered psychological view of change as a learning process. Social anthropology, psychology and feminism may not refer to it by definition, but it is clear to me that learning, whether it leads to attitudinal, emotional or physical change, whether it is the result of rituals and celestial processes, or whether it relates to occupational choice, HELM relation or sexuality, is common to all cases. In this chapter I try to relate these different approaches and, based on this relation, I develop my hypothesis on transition. The result of this process is to create a context that has the form of a spiral in which I locate transition as my starting point.

Initially I recognise that learning is an important part of the multi-variant process of personal development. As an experiential mechanism, learning relates to change. Some theorists adopt a developmental framework that looks at personal development as series of stages where the process of learning is linear (see Cross, 1981). Others stress opportunity structure and individual differences in the way young people learn about how to choose their future occupations (see Gothard,

1985). Others recognise the importance of learning and the role of stimulus and response in the development of skill and ability. Others look at personal development as a total process, acknowledging the limitations of learning as a consequence of disaffection. Others show that learning is affected by knowledge about the role of the body, self-conflicts or the sexual division of labour.

They refer to fractions of time that pull together past and present experience and future expectations, but not to the transitory character of learning and its relation to the expansion of personal experience. I see these fractions of time as instances of learning that refer to and at the same time are components of personal experience. They are so integrated into our decisions on learning that they are almost imperceptible. When we go to university, for example, we think that we know why. We do not know what is going to happen once we arrive there. The moment when we move house to live in a different neighbourhood or different city we are very aware of the depth of this change, but we cannot control it because we do not know what we will learn once we go there. The first thing I think about when I try to think of learning instances as components of transition as a process that relates to change, is decision-making. Decision-making is a process that punctuates the critical changes of our lives. In most cases we decide to do something based on our the past and present learning, but also based on our expectations of the future. In this context decisions may be defined as learning instances. These learning instances are not independent. They are located in time and space and they can be controlled. They are the result of the fusion between the past, the present and the future, and they are expected to bring change. The question is that, if decisions can be located and measured spatio-temporally, does this mean that the changes that they will bring can be predicted, measured, and controlled?

Undoubtedly, changes may be defined spatio-temporally if we look at them in retrospect. In this respect many theorists (see Van Gennep, 1908; Ginzberg, 1951; Super, 1952; More, 1974) believe that change can be controlled because it is the result of decision. Any personal decision that leads to a new experience can be seen as change and can therefore be measured in spatio-temporal terms., but is it really possible to control change? If it is, can we claim that the learning that is involved in this process may be controlled?

What I previously identified as a learning instance, whether it is a decision, the cause of a decision or the result of a decision, relates directly to change and is set in time and space. There may be a confusion about its precise timing or spacing (Modell & Hareven, 1980; Ankarloo, 1983), but its spatio-temporal attributes are always present. Nevertheless, there are some learning instances whose relation to change does not seem to be direct. At the moment we decide to go to a different country to study, for example, we put ourselves into a process of change, although the learning effects of this are unknown at the time we make the decision. We may define chronically the moment of the decision to start or to finish our studies, but there is still an infinity of other instances in between these two points. Initially, these instances cannot be measured spatio-temporally and therefore they may seem to be out of control. Imperceptible, these instances are still the result of our initial decision. They are the products of our experience of change. At the same time I believe that they constitute experience (Figure 2).

Decision C ha ng_e D eci sio n Cha nge Change L ea rn in g i ns ta nc es Lea rnin g in stan ces L ea rn in g in st an ce s

Learning instances Learning instances

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