Towards a Cultural Theory of College-based Learning
Phil Hodkinson[1], Gert Biesta[2] & David James[3]
[1]
University of Leeds, [2]University of Exeter, [3]University of the West of England
A paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research
Association, Manchester, September 2004.
Abstract
This paper develops a cultural understanding of college-based learning, from a
theoretical perspective. In doing so, we set out some of the ways in which such a
perspective on learning differs from more well established views. We base our analysis
on some of the principles established mainly in literature which addresses learning
outside educational settings. This work suggests that individual learning is inherently
embodied and social, and that learning may be valuably understood as a social practice.
Following Bourdieu, we argue that learning should then be understood as cultural and
relational. When this approach is applied to learning within a college, commonly
expressed views about the differences between formal and informal learning become
untenable, as are arguments that somehow college (or school) learning is inherently
inferior to everyday learning, or learning at work. The paper then explores some of the
implications of adopting a cultural perspective on learning. This includes
problematising what counts as ‘good’ learning, and recognising that this varies from
context to context, and from person to person. It is often contested. Implications for
research include the need to see learning cultures as relational ‘wholes’, rather than
searching for isolatable prime causes of learning. We conclude by raising some
problems that the TLC project has encountered in operationalising this sort of theoretical
stance, which is then further developed in then second paper in the symposium.
Introduction
Until relatively recently, the bulk of the literature on learning has shared four
characteristics. Firstly, with the exception of the early learning of young children, it has
concentrated on learning in educational settings, broadly defined to include schools,
colleges and universities, together with adult education classes in diverse locations.
Overall, schools dominate. Secondly, it has concentrated on learning as an almost
exclusively individual activity, with the main theoretical roots located within psychology.
Thirdly, it has adopted, either intentionally or implicitly, what Sfard (1998) terms the
acquisition metaphor of learning. That is, learning is seen and understood as a process
whereby knowledge is acquired. The crude version of this, what Bereiter (2002) terms
the folk theory of learning, sees this process as a form of transmission – filling the vessel
that is the student with the stuff that is to be learned, and with the teacher or lecturer
acting as the conduit down which the stuff passes. The more sophisticated view sees the
process of acquisition as one of construction. Here learning is conceived as requiring
some major or minor adjustment to existing - usually cognitive - structures. This
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sometimes entails ‘unlearning’ previous schemata, in order to allow the new knowledge
to be properly understood. Fourthly, a dominant assumption is that learning is primarily
concerned with the mind and with propositional knowledge, i.e., with rational thought,
and with the ability to describe in words what it is that is known.
Yet if our quest is to understand learning, the prevalence across a range of fields of an
‘acquisition of knowledge’ model can be criticised for what it cannot offer:
‘…the basic structural formula of learning, “transmit-internalize-transfer-apply,”
presupposes the existence of special, secluded institutional arrangements.
Nevertheless, this theory of learning does not allow us a full grasp of the
significance of these institutional arrangements for leaning nor of learning in
these arrangements’ (Dreier, 2001, p.23).
For many years also, but especially more recently, views of learning that differ from this
‘standard paradigm’ (Beckett and Hager, 2002) have been developing. Empirically, they
have been located primarily but not exclusively, outside mainstream educational settings,
looking at what is often termed informal or everyday learning – learning found in the
family, the local community, and the workplace. They see learning as social and move
the centre of focus from the individual to the setting (community of practice or activity
system) where learning is taking place. They share with constructivists the view that
learning is a process, but see that broadly within what Sfard (1998) calls a metaphor of
participation. That is, we learn through participating in activities, and/or through
belonging to communities. Finally, these approaches see learning as embodied. That is,
they are concerned with the practical and emotional, as well as the rational; with learning
to do or to be, as well as learning to understand. Above all, they see learning as integral
to all aspects of life – not some form of special process that is separate from the context
in which it takes place, or which necessarily needs a teacher to function efficiently.
Theories in this second group have been applied to learning in formal educational
settings, but in limited ways, for example to critique formal education as an ineffective
process (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Engestrom, 1991). In our view, this approach, though
insightful, is dangerously partial, and leads to an unwarranted dismissal of formal
educational learning as inherently inferior. In this paper, we examine the relevance of
some of this second group of theoretical approaches to college learning in a hopefully
more complete and certainly more positive way. Our reasons for wishing to do this
derive from the research approach used in a major research project we are all engaged in
– the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC) project. Central to this
project is a cultural understanding of learning. In what follows we outline the main tenets
of our cultural approach to college-based learning, utilising key-insights from the second
group of learning theories.
The TLC Project
2
The TLC project is part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC)
Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) (grant number L139251025). It is
a four-year longitudinal study that takes a ‘cultural’ approach to learning in FE. We
deliberately adopted a cultural perspective, because we believed teaching and learning,
and the relationships between them, to be inherently complex and relational, rather than
simple. Thus, our working assumption, now confirmed through the data collection and
early analysis, was that all of the following dimensions would contribute to learning, and
had to be examined in relation to each other:
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The positions, dispositions and actions of the students
The positions, dispositions and actions of the tutors
The location and resources of the site, which are not neutral, but enable some
approaches and attitudes, and constrain or prevent others
The syllabus or course specification, the assessment and qualification specifications
and requirements
The time tutors and students spend together, their interrelationships, and the range of
other learning sites students are engaged with
Issues of college management and procedures, together with funding and inspection
body procedures and regulations, and government policy
Wider vocational and academic cultures, of which any course or site is part
Wider social and cultural values and practices, for example around issues of social
class, gender and ethnicity, the nature of employment opportunities, social and
family life, and the perceived status of FE as a sector.
In order to examine the relationships between these dimensions, each of which is
complex in its own right, we focussed on 16 learning sites, divided between four partner
FE colleges1. The sites were selected through negotiation with the colleges, to illustrate
some of the great diversity of FE learning, whilst, of course, not claiming to be
representative of it. Changes since the project commenced extended the list to a total of
19 sites (see Hodkinson and James, 2003, for fuller details). One key tutor in each site
worked with us as part of the research team. Data were collected over a three year
period, in a variety of ways: repeated semi-structured interviews with a sample of
students and with the tutors; regular site observations and tutor shadowing; a repeated
questionnaire survey of all students in each site; and diaries or log books kept by each
participating tutor. We also interviewed college managers, as and when relevant.
The framing of the research owes much to the theoretical stance of Pierre Bourdieu.
Although Bourdieu researched and wrote extensively on educational processes and their
relation to wider social and economic matters, his work did not address learning in an
explicit and direct sense. We wanted to explore the potential of his approach in
understanding the cultural complexity of our learning sites. In what follows, we develop
this approach further, drawing upon both the existing social/participatory literature about
learning that was highlighted in the introduction, and on insights from pragmatism. The
discussion that follows draws upon the overlapping but different academic backgrounds
and theoretical preferences of the three authors of the paper, and also on the developing
insights that are arising from the project thus far. Other papers in this symposium will
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focus more directly on some our data, and our interpretation of them. We begin with a
brief discussion of the notion of ‘culture’ and of how we wish to use it in our study of
learning cultures and our cultural approach to learning.
The Notion of ‘Culture’ in a Cultural Approach to Learning
To make learning cultures an object of study and to put forward a cultural approach to
learning requires some clarification of the notion of ‘culture’ – “one of the two or three
most difficult words in the English language” (Williams 1983, p.87). Williams suggests
three broad definitions. Culture as “a general process of intellectual, spiritual and
aesthetic development,” culture as “a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period
or a group,” and culture as “the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic
activity” (ibid., p.90). Our approach stays close to the second, anthropological definition
of culture as a way of life. That is, we see culture as being constituted – that is, produced
and reproduced – by human activity, often but not exclusively, collective activity. To
think of culture as a practice constituted by the activities of those who make up the
practice, does not necessarily entail an agency-driven view of culture, that is, a view
which reduces culture to the intentions and actions of individual agents. As we will
discuss in more detail below, Bourdieu’s notions of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ are precisely
meant to overcome the ‘either-or’ of subjectivist (agency) and objectivist (structure)
readings of culture. What our approach does suggest, is that cultures exist in and through
interaction and communication (see Biesta 1994; 1995; 2004; Carey 1992).
From this it follows that a learning culture is not the same as a learning site. It rather is a
particular way to understand a learning site, viz., as a practice constituted by the actions,
dispositions and interpretations of the participants. This is not a one-way process.
Cultures are (re)produced by individuals, just as much as individuals are (re)produced by
cultures, though individuals are differently positioned with regard to shaping and
changing a culture – in other words, differences in power are always at issue too.
Cultures, then, are both structured and structuring, and individuals’ actions are neither
totally determined by the confines of a learning culture, nor are they totally free. A key
question that a cultural approach to learning brings to the fore is precisely that of the
interplay between ‘constraints’ and ‘affordances’ in a learning culture (see Wertsch 1989,
p.45).
One of the most important implications of a cultural approach to learning is that learning
culture is not seen as shorthand for the context or environment within which learning
takes place. Rather, it is shorthand for the social practices through which people learn, or
which themselves amount to learning. A cultural understanding of learning implies, in
other words, that learning is not simply occurring in a cultural context, but is itself to be
understood as a cultural practice. In what follows, we explore what thinking about
learning in this way entails. First, we consider individual learners.
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Individual Learning is Embodied and Social – and so is Teaching
Long before the current wave of socio-cultural theories of learning, Dewey had argued
strongly that learning was practical as well as mental (Dewey 1957; 1990; Biesta 1995).
In Beckett and Hager’s (2002) terms, he challenged the Cartesian dualism that mind and
body were separate, with the mind being the true location of human cognition, and
mental/rational processes being superior to the emotional and the practical. When the
focus is upon learning at work, the significance of this embodied view of learning is very
clear. For much of what is learned at work entails practical activity, not just thinking.
Beckett and Hager argue that this is a key weakness in Schon’s (1983, 1987) work on
reflective practice – it over-emphasises the mind, as is implied in his use of the metaphor
of reflection. Furthermore, Beckett and Hager (2002) argue that learning at work involves
anticipation of the future, based upon accumulated experiences, not just reflection back.
They prefer to think of this aspect of what they term informal learning as judgement
making – which can be hot - almost instantaneous in the heat of action, or cold and more
considered. But the judgments involve the whole person – emotions and practical
activity, as well as the mind. The claim that people as learners are embodied is an
ontological claim. That is, Beckett and Hager (2002) follow Dewey in arguing that
people are inherently embodied – that the practical and emotional influence mental
processes, and vice versa. It follows, therefore, that students and tutors in colleges are
also embodied, and their learning should be considered as such.
The embodied nature of learning is clearly shown in our data. For example, many
college courses directly involve the practical as well as the mental. In the CACHE
Diploma course, where mainly young women are trained as nursery workers, the
emphasis was mainly on how to do the job, which was learned through a combination of
doing it (both on placement and in college activities) and by thinking about what the
work did and/or should entail, in discussions, group work and workshops. In all sites,
there was a practical and emotional engagement with the learning as an activity that
students participated in. Practical engagement might entail sitting at desks, writing notes,
asking questions, and listening to the teacher (in AS psychology), as well as more
obviously practical actions, such as editing a photographic image or speaking in a foreign
language as in some other sites. Even in classes such as psychology, anyone who has
observed learning will be aware of the physical and spatial nature of what goes on. At
minimum, it can be seen in the ways people sit, move and interact, in the ways they use
books, computers and pens. The emotional is also readily apparent. As well as
indications of joy, boredom, frustration and even anger, in many sites there are deeper
engagements. Thus, CACHE (Council for Awards in Children’s Care and Education)
students were sub-consciously learning that emotional labour – a selfless giving of
themselves whilst repressing their personal feelings, was required in the job, whilst entry
level drama students were active in constructing their course as a second family – a place
where they felt comfortable, and where tutors were pressured to adopt parenting roles.
So college-based learning is embodied, even on the most ‘academic’ courses– such as
psychology.
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It logically follows that learning is also social. Firstly, the practices of learning and
teaching themselves social. This is another key idea in the work of pragmatists like
Dewey and Mead. It is especially Mead who shows in much detail that the social is not
‘outside’ the individual but exists in and through interaction, participation and
communication (see Biesta 1999). Secondly, as Bourdieu points out, all people are
socially positioned, at all times in their lives. Though he concentrates mainly on social
class, the argument equally applies to issues of gender and ethnicity, of nationality or
local community. Whilst this can be seen as part of social identity, Bourdieu prefers the
term habitus. The habitus is a battery of dispositions to all aspects of life that are often
sub-conscious or tacit. They develop from our social positions, and through our lives.
The habitus can also be seen as social structures operating within and through
individuals, rather than being something outside of us. This is another ontological claim,
which closely parallels the non-Cartesian argument of the pragmatists. Just as mind and
body are not separated, neither are the individual and social structures. The point is a
very practical one for research in educational settings: work by Bloomer and Hodkinson
(2000, 2002) shows how students as social individuals act upon the learning opportunities
they encounter, and any courses they participate in. In Bloomer’s (1997) terminology,
they construct their learning through studentship, and are not passive recipients of what
tutors (or the system) tries to do to them. As Bloomer and Hodkinsons’s work also
shows, life outside college can have a major impact on college learning. For whilst there
may be a clear boundary around learning sites from the perspective of college timetable
organisation, the social and embodied student often cannot make such a clear separation
between their college learning and other parts of their lives.
What applies to students also applies tutors. Just as Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004b)
found for schoolteachers, college tutors engage with work as social and embodied
persons. They make judgements about how to teach and what to do, as Beckett and
Hager (2002) describe. Our data provide many examples that illustrate this point.
Tutors’ dispositions strongly influence the ways in which they approach teaching and
their students, even leading them to go well beyond the formal job description (James and
Diment, 2003). Some tutors challenged quite fundamental aspects of their practices as
our fieldwork progressed, and one of our early project findings is that pedagogical
changes sometimes entail significant shifts in a sense of identity. This is one way of
understanding a well known truism that escapes the designers of teaching standards –
what works for one teacher may not work for another, even in the same situation.
The next stage in the cultural understanding of learning lies in changing the focus from
the individual learner or teacher, to the social and cultural settings through which learning
takes place. We do this by drawing upon some existing literature on situated learning,
which considers learning as participation, rather than acquisition (Sfard, 1998).
Situated Learning: Learning as Participation
Work on situated learning became well known about 15 years ago. One of the first major
thrusts in this work was the identification that learning was an inherently context-related
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activity. Thus, Brown et al. (1989) argued that concepts, activities and context were
always interrelated. Put simply, they argued that learning about using a chisel was
different for a cabinet-maker and for a joiner, and that both were significantly different
from such learning within a school (or college). In particular, they differentiated
everyday learning from school learning, arguing that school learning, for example of
mathematics, was based upon structured principles, whereas using number in work or at
home was based on practical experience. They went on to argue that everyday learning
was ‘authentic’, in the sense that concepts, activities and practices were in harmony with
each other. In school, on the other hand, they claimed that there was a basic discordance
between the subject matter to be learned, the activities to be engaged in, and the context
where the learning took place.
Lave and Wenger (1991) took this argument further. They used case studies of
workplace learning in West Africa to focus upon the fact that many people in the world
seemed able to learn without any formal schooling at all. In analysing what was
happening in such learning situations, they argued that
‘In our view, learning is not merely situated in practice – as if it were some
independently reifiable process that just happened to be located somewhere;
learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world.’ (Lave
and Wenger, 1991, p.35)
Two things follow from this view. Firstly, learning can take place anywhere, not just in
educational establishments. Secondly, and more profoundly, there is no clear distinction
between the process of learning, and other activities or processes with which people
(including students) engage. They go on to argue
‘As an aspect of social practice, learning involves the whole person; it implies not
only a relation to specific activities, but also a relation to social communities. …
Learning only partly – and often incidentally – implies becoming able to be
involved in new activities, to perform new tasks and functions, to master new
understandings. Activities, tasks, functions, and understandings do not exist in
isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning.
These systems of relations arise out of and are reproduced and developed within
social communities, which are part of systems of relations among persons. …
[Learning] is itself an evolving form of membership.’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991,
p53)
Put differently, the very thing that many educators and researchers into learning focus
most attention on – the defined content to be taught and hopefully learned, is actually a
small part of something much broader – learning to belong in whatever ‘community of
practice’ a person participates in. Engestrom (2001, 2004) makes a similar point, but
without the focus on communities of practice. For him, the key to understanding learning
is to understand the activities learners are engaged in. He explains these activities
through complex social and institutional systems, which he terms activity systems.
Central to this point, from either Lave and Wenger’s or Engestrom’s perspective, lies the
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move from viewing learning as acquisition of content, to viewing learning as
participation (in a community or activity system). This does not mean that we cannot talk
about what is learned, but it does entail seeing such outcomes as a part of something else,
rather than the central raison d’etre of learning.
Lave and Wenger (1991) are highly critical of school (and, by implication, college) as a
location for learning. For if a college is seen as a community of practice, what students
learn is how to belong to that college – how to be students, in other words. What they do
not learn, according to Lave and Wenger, is how to be mathematicians, or plumbers or
hairdressers. One way of expressing the problem that Lave and Wenger identify, is the
clash between the content and outcomes of the official curriculum, and what Engestrom
(2004, p151), following Bateson (1972), describes as ‘acquiring the deep-seated rules and
patterns of behaviour characteristic of the context’. For Lave and Wenger, it is clear that
the second type of learning is a pre-requisite for the first, which is the reverse of the more
common position, which assumes that the knowledge is learned first, and then applied in
practice. Furthermore, for learning to be truly effective, the two types must by
synergistic (see also Dewey 1963; Biesta & Burbules 2003).
This tension illustrates but also renders problematic a key distinction, drawn in much of
the literature, between formal and informal learning. As Colley et al (2003a) show, this
is a complex minefield of overlapping and even contradictory positions, yet it is usually
seen in simple terms. College learning is generally thought of as ‘formal’. It is preplanned, intentional, often assessed: learning is the prime official objective of attending a
college course. Everyday learning, on the other hand, is generally thought to be informal,
in that it is often unintentional in the sense that people are not explicitly trying to learn
but simply to cope with everyday tasks or problems. It is also often hidden or tacit, in the
sense that people do not think they are learning at all. However, in informal learning, the
argument goes, there is an ‘authentic’ relationship between what is learned, how it is
learned, and the context in which learning takes place. For many writers from a situated
learning perspective, this makes informal learning much more effective than anything
that can be done in college.
Yet, as Colley et al (2003a) show, this division between informal and formal learning
breaks down upon closer examination. They argue that the terms formal and informal are
attributed to learning by writers, in a variety of different, if overlapping ways. They also
argue that what they term ‘attributes of in/formality’ can be found in all learning
situations. Specifically, college and school learning is characterised by significant
degrees of informality, which are every bit as important as any so-called formal
attributes. Thus, Lave and Wenger’s (1991) sense of learning to participate as a student,
and Engestrom’s acquiring deep-seated rules and patterns of behaviour, are exactly the
sorts of learning process that are normally described as informal – but they takes place
within school and college settings. In Colley et al,’s (2003a) terminology, some
attributes of informality are important in colleges.
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College Learning Sites as Communities of Practice
One way of thinking about college learning from this situated perspective, is to consider
each learning site as a community of practice. However, if we are to do this, we need
first to move past some conceptual confusion in Lave and Wenger’s (1991) text, and
Wenger’s (1998) subsequent work. Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004a) argue that there
are two different meanings in the text, and that each confuses the other. The broader
more universal meaning can be derived from the quotes about learning already cited.
From this perspective, Lave and Wenger (1991) are arguing that learning is a
fundamentally social act. That is, we cannot learn without belonging to something – a
something which they term a community of practice. Thus,
‘A community of practice is an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge.
… Thus, participation in the cultural practice in which any knowledge exists is an
epistemological principle of learning. The social structure of this practice, its
power relations, and its conditions for legitimacy define possibilities for learning.’
(Lave and Wenger, 1991, p98, emphasis added).
We return to this conception of community of practice later. However, most of the
subsequent attention to Lave and Wenger’s work focussed upon a much narrower
definition of community of practice. This can be seen in the examples they give, which
are all of relatively close-knit groups of workers. This narrower view is captured by
Wenger’s (1998) definition – that a community of practice exists where there is mutual
engagement, joint enterprise and a shared repertoire of actions amongst its members.
At first glance, many of our sample learning sites meet much of this narrower definition.
Thus, in the CACHE Diploma site, all involved are mutually engaged in the joint
enterprise of learning to become nursery nurses, whilst in AS French, they are mutually
engaged with the joint enterprise of improving their linguistic ability and their associated
understanding of French society and culture. In such sites. the repertoire of actions
amongst students are also shared. However, if such sites are to be thought of as
communities of practice, the differences in position, intention and actions of tutor and
students cannot be underestimated. Engagement between tutor and students is different
in kind from that between student and student; the enterprise of teaching and the actions
of tutors are clearly different from the enterprise of learning and the actions of students
even though the two are declared to be closely linked. Furthermore, if there is continuity
within such a community over time, it lies mainly with the tutor. Students come and go,
and one cohort is replaced by another. Consequently, in Lave and Wenger’s terms, a
learning site community of practice is reconstructed every time an intake changes. The
nature and extent of participation in a community of practice varies also. In some
courses, tutor and students are present together almost on a fulltime basis. In others, they
meet for a relatively short period of time every week. In some sites, it makes little sense
to think about mutual engagement at all: learners may be engaged in very similar tasks
and processes but be isolated from each other, in both the spatial sense of living and
learning in different locations, and also in the social sense that they scarcely know of, let
alone communicate with, each other.
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Such difficulties around the concept community of practice explain one of the reasons
why we use the term ‘culture’ in the title of this paper and the project. In Lave and
Wenger’s (1991) work, communities of practice change when membership changes. Yet
in many of the learning sites we are studying, there are strong elements of continuity that
do not seem to be directly rooted in any individual or even group of individuals. That is,
the culture of a site entails much more than the positions dispositions and inter-relations
between participants at any one time. A learning culture persists in a latent form between
the occasions on which it becomes most manifest or apparent. Put another way, there can
be continuity because the tutor often remains in position, but there are also various
‘reified’ (Wenger, 1998) elements (textual and other learning materials, specifications
from awarding bodies, assessment requirements, physical resources, organisational
practices, relationships, logistical solutions) which will usually impose a good deal of
structure on how things can be done. This means not seeing ‘participation’ as simply a
metaphor for student and tutor activity, but recognising it as an instance of enactment and
reproduction of social relations.
The ‘field’ of Learning
Wenger’s (1998) narrow notion of community of practice is thus too limited to fully
encapsulate the cultures of our learning sites. However, there is greater mileage in the
wider version of the concept in his earlier book with Jean Lave (Lave and Wenger, 1991)
that has already been alluded to. As we have seen, in this wider version the two authors
claim that belonging to a community of practice is an essential precondition for learning.
This is combined with their very loose definition of a community of practice:
‘A community of practice is a set of relations among persons, activity, and world,
over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of
practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p98.)
Thus, they are arguing that learning is an inherently social activity, and part of being a
social human being is to belong to something. Community of practice is simply the term
they use to describe what it is to which we belong. This is a very different position from
that taken later by Wenger. With this wider definition, communities of practice do not
have to possess any of his three defining characteristics at all. Hodkinson and Hodkinson
(2004a) have argued that this wider version of community of practice resembles
Bourdieu’s notion of ‘field’, and we will use the term ‘learning field’ in this paper, to
distinguish this version from the narrower community of practice of Wenger. The
concept of learning field helps us develop a cultural understanding of learning in several
ways. Firstly, it reemphasises the point that learning is a social process, concerned with
much more than just the individual learner. Next, it brings to the centre of the analysis
the differing power relations between participants in a learning field, in ways that Lave
and Wenger’s work does not. Also, it provides a vehicle for the integration of individual
and social perspectives – something that few if any current theories of learning have
achieved. (See Hodkinson and Hodkinson, 2004b, for further discussion of this
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advantage, which we do not have space to fully explore here.) Finally, it makes it easy to
conceptualise influences on learning from a variety of different scales or levels, for
example seeing a learning site as defined not only by the localised setting of a particular
teaching group, but also by the broader issues of college, national policy and social,
economic and political pressures throughout society. How does it make these things
possible?
Bourdieu eschews a precise definition of field, and is unconcerned with identifying
precise boundaries. Also, fields overlap. In particular, any specific field will always
interrelate with what he terms the ‘field of power’ – the more macro structures and
processes of inequality in society.
Instead of a definition, Bourdieu uses two metaphors to describe what a field is (Bourdieu
and Wacquant, 1992). The first is that of a market, and the second a game. A field is a
‘market’ in so far as it describes a social space of relationships that are unequal but
mutually dependent, and where there is some competition. Individuals differ in the
amount of ‘purchasing power’ they have because they have different backgrounds. This
‘purchasing power’ is not always monetary wealth, but may take the form of cultural of
social capital (see below). This ‘market’ metaphor is useful up to a point, though the
view of a field as a ‘game’ may be more helpful for our present purposes2. Bourdieu uses
this metaphor to emphasise some key characteristics of a field. Thus, like a game, a field
is in flux, not some static set of structural relations. Like a game, players in the field are
striving to do well – both in their own terms, but also within the established rules of the
game. He describes this as striving for distinction (Bourdieu, 1984), though this can take
many different forms. As both market and game metaphors make clear, fields are
conflictual as well as consensual.
Like a game a learning field has rules, some of which are explicit – reified procedures, in
Wenger’s (1998) terms. These might include college regulations, examination board
specifications, and OFSTED inspection criteria. However, unlike many formal games,
the rules of a field are also tacit and uncodified. They are determined in part by the
players of the game, who construct the processes and procedures of the field through their
participation in it.
As in a literal game, the players are not equal. Linking back to the market metaphor,
Bourdieu describes the roots of these differences and inequalities in two places. Firstly,
people are unequally positioned in the field. In our sites, not only are tutors and students
differently positioned, but also, students can be differently positioned from each other, as
can be tutors, where more than one is involved. Secondly, such differences and
inequalities relate to the levels and types of capital that players possess – which are, in
turn, reciprocally related to the positions that they occupy. Bourdieu identifies three
types, which overlap and are mutually exchangeable. Economic capital is the most
straightforward, and equates with the financial resources different players possess.
Economic capital impacts upon the learning of students, and on the teaching of tutors
directly, but more importantly through its relations to social class.
11
Social capital, for Bourdieu, roughly equates to whom you know and who knows you. It
is a way of expressing the advantages and disadvantages that come from social relations,
including sponsorship or its opposite – marginalisation, discrimination or even exclusion.
Social capital impacts upon learning within particular sites, in that who can belong, and
the nature of their belonging (for example, friendship groups, and the relationships
between tutor and students) are significant. This also connects with wider societal issues,
as can clearly be seen in the feminine and working class nature of the CACHE Diploma
site, as opposed to the more masculine engineering site (Colley et al., 2003b).
The third, and arguably for Bourdieu most important, form of capital is cultural capital.
This roughly equates to understanding how the game is played. People play such games
largely within what Giddens (1991) terms ‘practical consciousness’. That is, people with
high cultural capital possess
‘pre-perceptive anticipations, a sort of practical induction [to the future] based upon
previous experience … [anticipations that] are the fact of the habitus as a feel for
the game. Having the feel for the game is having the game under the skin; it is to
master, in a practical way the future of the game; it is to have a sense of history of
the game.’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p80).
Put simply, those with superior positions and more capital not only have advantages in
playing the game, or learning. They also have more influence on the rules that determine
the nature of success, and what counts as capital or successful learning. Though these
differences can be thought of at an individual level, Bourdieu seldom does that. He is
more concerned with broader social and cultural differences. Thus, in relation to college
learning, ‘players’ could include governments, college management, examination boards,
OFSTED/ALI, NATFHE and, for some sites and courses, local employers – as well as
the particular tutors and students involved.
It should always be remembered that capital only has value in relation to specific fields.
That is, like all other factors contributing to learning, it is relational. The only sense in
which capital is more universal in nature, lies in its links with the wider field of power,
which, as has already been explained, impinges on all other fields. Thus, issues such as
social class, gender or ethnic inequalities are deep-seated across many if not all fields in
contemporary British society.
For Bourdieu, dispositions within the habitus strongly influence the ways in which people
operate in a field. These dispositions influence their perceptions of the field and the
actions they take within it.
The Benefits and Implications of Adopting a Cultural Theory of Learning
Implicit in the argument advanced thus far is the realisation that different theories of
learning themselves construct and operate with different definitions of what learning is.
12
All such theories and definitions are of course human constructions, not simple
representations of what is external to us as writers and thinkers. Thus far, we have
argued that it makes best sense to see learners as embodied and social beings. Indeed, it
is hard to conceive of them as being anything else. Mind is not separate from the body,
and to be human is to be social. It then follows logically to see learning as a cultural
practice. This entails a different definition of learning, from that often used in noncultural theories. A cultural understanding of learning needs to go beyond the
assumption that learning has only to do with individual change and transformation (as,
for example, in the ‘classic’ definition of learning as any permanent change that is not the
result of maturation). When learning is seen as a cultural practice, the distinction
between change and no change is arbitrary and far from clear. Much learning, if
culturally understood, entails reinforcement and deepening (of understanding, of beliefs,
of practices, of skills). Such learning may be passive or active on the part of the learner,
at least in the sense that a learner may deliberately strive to learn, or learn simply by
being there and taking part. Either way, learning is essentially a process of participation
and construction (or reconstruction), not the transfer of knowledge or skills into the
learner as vessel. Consequently a cultural approach to learning requires a theory of
learning that is not simply individualistic but thoroughly social. In our view, such a
social theory needs to accommodate issues of structure and position, as well as action and
interaction, and Bourdieu’s thinking can help us do that.
One of the benefits of understanding that learning is socially constructed, is that it allows
us to focus on the nature of constructions of learning in FE and in different learning sites.
Too often, educational writers, policy makers and practitioners see ‘learning’ as an
inherent good. Yet learning is conceived and valued differently, within a particular
learning field. On one level ‘learning’ is a descriptive concept that simply denotes
particular processes. This, however, changes dramatically as soon as we focus upon
actual learners in actual college situations. The point is that learners cannot be summed
up as more or less motivated to learn in some general sense; they want to learn particular
things (knowledge, skills), and they want to learn those things for particular purposes
(such as personal development, qualifications, job prospects, etc.), and in particular ways.
In Bourdieu’s terms: the players in a learning field might strive to do well, but they come
with a range of different definitions of what ‘doing well’ means for them (see, e.g., the
contribution to this symposium by Tedder and Biesta’s on young men’s motivations for
learning computer skills). A similar point can be made about teachers’ perceptions of
good or appropriate learning, as well as from an institutional angle: curricula, course aims
and objectives, qualifications and examinations all express particular views about the
kinds of learning that are valued and desired from the institution’s point of view.
Funding agencies, policy makers, college managers, employers’ representatives and other
interests may have yet other normative agendas about the purpose of learning in FE.
The learning field, to put it differently, is partly constituted by the particular values and
normative orientations of the players. While there may be some agreement and
consensus about what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘worthwhile’ learning, there will also be
different and even conflicting ideas about what counts as good learning. The struggle
over the very meaning of learning is an integral part of a learning field. The recent
13
hegemony of credentialism and the economic imperative more generally, and the
subsequent decline of the idea of learning for personal development is a good example of
such a struggle that is relevant to FE. Struggles like this over the meaning of learning are
not simply rhetorical. What counts as learning has real and direct implications for what
can and cannot be learned.
Operationalising a Cultural Theory of Learning
A cultural approach to learning also has implications for research. If it is the case that a
learning culture is a practice through which people learn, and if cultures are both
structured and structuring, then there is little point in trying to identify and isolate prime
causal factors that influence, shape or produce learning. Different factors and influences
interact with each other, without any clear foundational starting point. (Of course,
particular ‘starting points’ can be adopted for specific research purposes, but it must
always be understood that to do so is a simplification that can easily lead to
reductionism.) This is precisely the point made by Cole who argues that a cultural
approach makes it possible to overcome “simplified notions of context as cause” (Cole
1996, p.139). Instead, research needs to try to understand how learning cultures come
into existence and stay in existence, how they are produced and reproduced through
interaction and communication, and what kind of learning takes place through
participation in a learning culture. From a cultural point of view, a central question is
what kind of learning becomes possible through participation in a particular learning field
and also what kind of learning becomes difficult or even impossible as a result of
participation. In short, how participation itself ‘shapes’ the opportunities for learning and
therefore, the learning definitions that particular practices allow, or reproduce. Instead of
a factorial model in which contextual factors are seen as input and learning is seen as
output, a cultural approach calls for a transactional understanding of the relationship
between learning cultures and learning, within a learning field (see Biesta & Burbules
2003).
Whilst Bourdieu’s approach provides a conceptual framework within which to integrate a
range of socio-cultural understandings of learning, our analysis also needs to get below
the levels of generalisation implied in the above analysis. There are two challenges. The
first concerns issues of specificity. Thus, for Bourdieu, the natural scale of analysis is
pretty large. Had he ever addressed learning directly, he would almost certainly have
seen the field in terms of education as a whole, as he did in the work with Passeron
(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). This leaves a key problem in that our data show
significant differences between our sites, all within what we might crudely term the ‘FE
learning field’. We consequently need to operationalise socio-cultural perspectives at a
variety of levels. This is exactly what is suggested in our definition of a learning culture
as the social practices through which people learn, since this allows for an approach
which focuses on specific learning practices rather than on the field of FE as a whole –
which, of course, is not to suggest that the boundaries of such learning practices are
simple, obvious or clear-cut. Bourdieu would almost certainly have agreed with Lave
(1996, p161-162) when she argues:
14
‘There are enormous differences in what and how learners come to shape (or be
shaped into) their identities with respect to different practices…Researchers would
have to explore each practice to understand what is being learned, and how.’
However, whilst appearing to solve one problem, this presents us with its opposite – how
can we say something more general about learning in FE, whilst still retaining the strong
sense in which each learning site is distinctive? The next paper in this symposium takes
up this challenge, in relation to the research evidence being generated in the TLC project.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have advanced some developing thinking about the nature of college
learning as a cultural activity, the benefits of considering college learning in that way,
and some possible means of developing such an approach in relation to the specifics of
particular sites. Our argument is supported by three different types of claim. Firstly, we
are building on recent thinking about learning, in claiming that it makes ontological sense
to see it as holistic, embodied and social at the level of the individual, and also as an
integral part of contexualised social practice. We use the term culture, to encapsulate
both. Secondly, we are taking approaches to learning developed outside formal
education, and applying them to college learning, to see what happens. In doing this, we
are not assuming some simple and unproblematic transfer of concepts and processes, but
asking two questions. Does this sort of thinking work in relation to college learning? If
it does, how can/should such thinking be reconfigured in relation to that learning?
Behind these questions lies a much bigger one. Is it possible or advantageous to consider
workplace and college learning within the same broad theoretical lens? Put differently, is
Billett (2002, p57) right, when he claims that
‘Workplaces and educational institutions merely represent different instances of social
practices in which learning occurs through participation. Learning in both kinds of social
practice can be understood through a consideration of their respective participatory
practices. Therefore, to distinguish between the two … [so that] one is formalised and the
other informal … is not helpful.’
Thirdly, our claims are and increasingly will be empirical. They are based upon the vast
wealth of data collected in the TLC project, and the insights into learning in our 19
learning sites, which these data facilitate. At the time of writing, the process of analysing
this empirical data is partway through. Many of the ideas presented here can already be
broadly supported, and some of this empirical support will be presented in the other
papers in this symposium. However, more still needs to be done to evaluate, refine and
reconstruct the detail of our analysis. This work will continue, over the final year of the
project.
Notes
15
1
We chose the term ‘learning site’ for two principal reasons. Firstly, our knowledge
of the English Further Education sector gave us reason to avoid using terms like
‘classroom’, ‘lesson’ or ‘course’ as if they would apply to a cross-section of the
diverse work of the sector. Secondly, we wished to avoid any assumption that the
spatial and temporal organisation of college provision would always equate with
the ‘where’ of learning. A simple illustration of this might be where a student
attends several scheduled classes each week, but still do most of their learning at
home.
2
Because of the recent domination of certain types of market views within policies
towards education, the ‘market’ metaphor carries some baggage that we wish to
avoid. Consequently, we concentrate here on the metaphor of a game.
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