Learning and ‘the everyday’

These notes are part of a series for the book. This is one of the most meaningful and interesting articles I’ve read about learning.

Lave, J. (2008) ‘Everyday Life and Learning’, in Murphy, P. and McCormick, R. (eds) (2012) Knowledge and Practice: Representations and Identities, London, SAGE Publications Ltd. in association with The Open University.

Outline

Introduction
Everyday life
1. Everyday life as social practice
2. The voice of the hermit
Reification and the politics of telos
Conclusion

Notes

With most learning theories, ‘[l]earning is generally assumed to be entirely an epistemological problem’ (Lave, 2008, p. 3). That is, learning theories focus their attention on understanding the nature of knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, is seen as something that is different, or away from, the everyday. Talk about learning in ‘everyday life’ requires us to look more closely as what ‘everyday’ means, and what learning involves in relation to everyday life.

About ‘the everyday’

Definitions

‘Everyday’ can have 4 different meanings:

The mundane and boring
The recurring, routine, and unchanging (this includes managing the household and raising children, which usually is associated with women)
The customary, commonplace, culture
The social practice (that is, as opposed to the social theory)

Locations

In the first 3 definitions, the ‘everyday’ has a location that separates it from other aspects of life. By having ‘everyday’ things, the implication is that some things are not ‘everyday’. Therefore, learning usually is seen as moving from the ‘everyday’ to something else (such as, from ignorance to knowledge, or from childishness to maturity). It also means that there is a boundary between the ‘everyday’ and the things that are not ‘everyday’.

If there is a boundary between the everyday and things that are not the everyday, then where is the everyday located? There are three main concepts of the location, which can be thought of as existing on a continuum:

	A category	The banal	Social practice
Understanding of the everyday is:	Asocial	Partially social	Fully social (this is the sociocultural view)
'The everyday' is:	Seen as a logical operator, a form of categorization used in relation to philosophy, culture, science, etc.	That which is banal, which means there are zones separating the banal from the special	Part of living socially
It tells us this about knowledge:	'The everyday' helps define what knowledge is.	'The everyday' tells us whose knowledge is valued and who can access the culturally-valued knowledge.
The telos (direction) of learning in this view:	'involves a belief that some knowledge is more scientific, truthful, general, or abstract (or transferable) than other knowledge' (Lave, 2008, p. 10).	'involves a belief that some social categories or cultures or locations have better knowledge than others' (Lave, 2008, p. 11) 'A theory that posits a telos of refinement (a move away from the messiness of practical concerns, to a realm of reflection and detachment where genuine knowledge resides) embodies suppositions about unequal social categories' (Lave, 2008, p. 11).	learning moves 'more deeply into and through social existence' (Lave, 2008, p. 13).

About learning

Given the above about ‘everyday’, we are now led to the question of learning. What is learning, and what is learning theory?

‘Learning’ often implies that we are moving toward higher knowledge and away from lower knowledge. Lower knowledge is usually the everyday knowledge, which means that the everyday is limiting.

Learning, then, requires distance from the everyday. We can see representations of this idea in stories (real and fictional) about prophets, poets, and philosophers living in the wilderness or in solitude. This requires moving toward a monastery (for example) and away from the contamination of the everyday life. It’s important to note that this is not true solitude — it was a position of privilege as it was only a move away from some settings but toward others. ‘The nature of that ‘solitude,’ as one guise for the separation of social life and learning, requires careful thought — it is only a symbolic (or ideological) solitude;… it requires withdrawing into certain kinds of — notably privileged — social and institutional settings… and often pointedly announces withdrawal from specific contaminants (e.g. the company of women and the hurly burly of ‘ordinary’ life). This is also only made possible by the scientists’ access to wealth and position, and by the labor of others.’ (Lave, 2008, p. 8).

See also: In Sfard’s discussion of weaknesses associated with the acquisition metaphor for learning, she notes that the metaphor lends itself to equating knowledge with wealth; Sfard, A. (1998) ‘On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One’.
See also: This idea of the separation of knowledge, such as with monasteries, is the opposite of what was discussed in Boreham, N. and Morgan, C. (2012) ‘A Sociocultural Analysis of Organisational Learning’.

‘Learning’ can also imply moving to high culture, which is defined as away from lower social class and further away from economic necessity. Again it is about privilege, and also about displaying class markers.

BUT: Learning isn’t causing these boundaries inherent in the definitions of the everyday; learning theories are. ‘It isn’t learning itself, surely, that generates these distinctions, distances and relations of domination. Rather, theories of learning are instruments in bringing them about’ (Lave, 2012, p. 9). Who defines the theories?

Reifying learning as a process

We reify learning as a process — a movement toward/away — and this is a political act. ‘Mainstream and unintended assumptions and claims about ‘learning’ are not apolitical or neutral, as they might wish to claim’ (Lave, 2008, p. 10).

Several negative things happen when we reify learning:

It follows that learning must happen in a place that is not where learning is ‘applied’
It divides learning and using knowledge
It divides time into ‘before’ and ‘after’ learning
It supports the idea that places, usually institutions, are where ‘real’ learning happen, which means that learning outside those places is not ‘real’
It separates learning from living.

This also affects how professors are viewed (teaching versus research): ‘Widespread belief in academic circles underwrites distinctions between teaching and research, the equation of mental and manual labor with conception and execution, not to mention those distinctions themselves’ (Lave, 2008, p. 12).

See also: This reminds me of the discussion about rewarding teaching in Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V. and Freeman, A. (2015) NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition.