Notes on Illeris (2007) Chapter 13: Learning, Education, and Society

Illeris, K. (2007). How we learn: Learning and non-learning in school and beyond (M. Malone, Trans.). London and New York: Routledge.

Chapter 13: Learning, education, and society (pp 234-252)

Before you begin reading these notes on Chapter 13 , you may want to read my overview/review of the entire book.  Notes from Chapter 12 can be found here.

Key Points

1. Assumptions/Misunderstandings about Learning/Education that are prevalent in society
1. Even those who know they are these conceptions are false tend to embrace them because they are that engrained in the culture.
2. “The key function of the misunderstandings has precisely been to veil the adaptation, disciplining and selection that suited the old industrial society” (p. 238)
3. Ideological misunderstanding
1. Belief that goals/objectives that are adopted as a matter of policy have anything to do with the way a program is actually run
4. Technological misunderstanding
1. Belief that, for every objective, if the right teaching technique can identified and deployed uniformly, all learners will successfully meet the goal.
2. Fails to realize that all learners have different abilities and learn differently
3. Tends to drive administrative decision making
4. The opposite of differentiated learning
5. Sees education as a “production process” (p. 236)
5. Psychological misunderstanding
1. Belief that “there is a correspondence between what is taught and what is learned” (p. 237)
2. Allows teachers to feel absolved if cover the material. If it isn’t learned, it is the learner’s fault.
3. The point: stop focusing on teaching and focus on learning
6. Utopian misunderstanding
1. Belief that education can solve all problems, even those that are contradictory
2. We can have the old or the new, but not both
2. Compulsory Formal Education
1. Formal, institutionalized learning exists primarily to meet society’s needs, not necessarily the individual’s, so some individuals may not feel completely comfortable there
2. Educational requirements (i.e., compulsory education) should parallel natural developmental needs
3. Compulsory education tends to make sense with children (< 13 years old) because they “basically accept adults controlling and organizing the conditions of their learning” (p. 239).
4. Since the primary developmental need of teenagers is identity, it make no sense to compel them to go to school if they are not motivated to be there. “This is not the way for them to develop a sustainable identity. … What these young people need, first and foremost, is access to real working life. It is this and only this that counts because it is the path to an adult identity they can accept, and more directly education-oriented measures must take their point of departure from this” (p. 240)
5. Government regulation may be required to create such “real” working opportunities.
3. Curriculum
1. There is no need to talk about curriculum, until “motivational preconditions” are addressed.
2. This requires “learning opportunities they can experience as relevant and engaging” (p. 241)
3. General curricular planning extrapolated from Illeris’ three-part (content, incentive/affective, interactive/social) model of learning:
4. All three dimensions should be addressed by curricular plans. It is especially important to be sure the incentive dimension is addressed. This means paying special attention to motivational concerns, and doing things to increase motivation and interest overall.
5. Try to set things up so that learners are primarily using assimilative or accommodative processes. Cumulative processes need not receive much attention, except where rote learning (e.g., times tables) is helpful. Transformative processes will not be used much; but, if the goal is personality development, planners should aim for it.
6. Curricular plans should include preparation for the common types of resistance/barriers to learning.
7. Should also address the amount of ownership (“co-determination”) learners have
4. Teaching Activities
1. Types chosen affect characteristics of learning
2. Types of
1. Subject-oriented procedures
2. Problem-oriented procedures
1. Advantages
1. Is relevant because it has/provides a context
2. Requires learners to DO something with the problem, giving them a perspective/role in the problem
3. Experience-oriented procedures
4. Practice-oriented procedures
5. Who is in charge?
1. Levels of direction (co-determination)
1. Teacher direction
2. Participant direction (all participants, including teachers, take an active part in directing the learning)
3. Self-direction
1. Self-direction and participant direction are very similar. “The difference is perhaps rather on the cultural level where the Nordic countries have a very firm tradition of participant direction in the field of public enlightenment, while the English-speaking countries do not have this tradition but are, on the other hand, more individualistically oriented by tradition” (p. 246).
2. Three levels exist side-by-side and interact
3. “The question of direction is important and central, because awareness of who has, and takes, responsibility in the final analysis is of great importance for the attitude and responsibility of the participants” (p. 247)
6. Illeris shows how all the chapter’s topics are interrelated in this GREAT graphic (p. 248):
   
    
7. Educational Policy/General Management
1. Tends to first concern itself with the content dimension (“i.e. in society’s need for up-to-date qualifications and competences” [p. 250]) THEN the interactive dimension (“i.e. the way in which the education programmes are structured” [p. 250]) AND THEN the incentive dimension which usually takes the form of counseling or negative (financial) penalties
2. “In general, it is clear enough that education policy is fundamentally directed on economic rather than learning premises. … The net result of all this, as clearly demonstrated, is steadily increasing problems and tendencies towards less and worse learning” (p. 250).
3. A case could be made that more money would help education’s woes, but Illeris thinks this is unnecessary: “One could also choose to attempt to resolve an issue that fundamentally concerns learning, on a learning basis” (p. 251)
4. Refocusing education on learning would require that the three dimensions of learning command equal attention
5. Illeris further recommends that they be addressed in the opposite order than usually are. In other words: incentive --> interaction --> content
1. This would force institutions to focus on motivation and engagement first and foremost
2. “motivation is not necessarily the same thing as desire” (p. 251)
3. “children are actually highly motivated to learn what adults whom they trust present to them” (p. 251)
4. Keyword here (I think) is TRUST
5. So this is the time to learn the fundamentals
6. For teens, organize learning around identity formation, which probably requires a more problem-based approach
7. For adults, allow their learning to be driven by their own motivation, which requires that they be treated as adults
8. Starting here means that PEOPLE are placed first. If this happens, the learning society needs to happen will happen

Terms & Definitions

• Curriculum Theory: “In the classically narrow sense this has to do with the selection of the content of the teaching and teaching forms, but today is also used more broadly about everything from the grounding and legitimacy of the teaching, its societal function, objectives, planning, management and evaluation, and the participants’ qualifications and interests, to its practical implementation and different teaching methods” (p. 241).

Great Quotes

• “There are rarely any systematic attempts to find out how best to design a school or an education programme on the basis of objectives that have been adopted” (p. 235).
• “there is a tendency to hang on to the technological thinking …. This may be because the irrational human features are so impractical and unmanageable when it comes to economy and efficiency. But living people are not rational in the this sense and, therefore, to put it bluntly, it is not at all rational to employ such a rational approach. It is, in fact, far more rational to ensure that there is space and room for the development of irrational human diversity” (p. 236)
• “In sum, the technological misunderstanding consists in regarding people as things, and learning as the external provision of competences. But people are living beings who themselves develop their competences, and education is about creating the best possible conditions and materials for this development in relationship to the participants in question with the capacities they may have” (p. 236).
• “It is only some of what is taught that is learned, what each individual learns is different, there is a great deal of mislearning, and we also learn something other than what is taught” (p. 237)
• “A teacher’s work should not fundamentally be understood as teaching, but as helping and supporting the participants’ learning processes” (p. 237).
• “To sum up, the psychological misunderstanding thus consists in focusing on teaching rather than learning, and the consequence is that masses of resources on activities that are inappropriate, have no effect, or in some cases work directly contrary to the intentions” (p. 237)
• “resistance is an excellent point of departure for important learning, and therefore it can also be a good idea to have thought about it in advance” (p. 243)
• “It is a fact that young people and adults are far more prepared to mobilize the mental energy necessary for accommodative and transformative learning processes if they, themselves, can play a part in deciding what the learning is about and the forms of activity that are utilized. It is also inherent here that their attitudes will typically be less defensive and that the chances of new impulses being halted by everyday consciousness are fewer” (p. 245).
• “identity formation is a learning process of a breadth and depth that goes much further than ‘learning as syllabus acquisition’” (p. 251)
• “With respect to adults, what is most important is that their motivation requires them to be treated as adult persons and not just potential labour” (p. 252)
• “The paradox here is that economic thinking and the need on the part of the authorities to decide in far too much detail gets in the way of the great social economic potential inherent in offering qualifying adult education programmes on the adults’ own terms” (p. 252)