Cultures of learning and the learning of cultures

1、paper presented to cultures of learning conference, university of bristol, april 2001.cultures of learning and the learning of culturesdavid james university of the west of england, bristolmartin bloomer university of exeter introductionwhilst many would agree with bruners insistence that learning a

2、nd thinking are always situated in a cultural setting, and always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources (bruner, 1996, p.4), the concept of culture nevertheless has several broad distinctive meanings (williams, 1976), each with educational significance. this makes the term culture bot

3、h attractive and difficult to use in understanding educational activity.in this paper, we identify a range of understandings and uses of the concept as revealed in contemporary research and scholarship, giving particular attention to an approach derived from the work of pierre bourdieu and some area

4、s of affinity this has with recent sociocultural work. we then turn our attention to a new esrc-funded research project, transforming learning cultures in further education, and consider the requirements and opportunities presented by that project for theorising a concept of culture. we ponder the n

5、otion of authentic learning sites and consider what it might contribute to conceptualising the temporal, spacial, psychological and social parameters of learning and the notion of learning culture. finally, we present a number of questions which we consider are worth addressing at this early stage i

6、n the project and prior to our attempts to operationalise a concept of culture in our own fieldwork.notions of culture in the study of learningdespite objections from at least as far back as dewey (1901), it is only recently that criticisms of western psychology for its individualistic orientation (

7、rogoff, 1990) and for its treatment of mental functioning as existing, in a cultural, institutional and historical vacuum (wertsch, 1991, p 2) have been made to tell. since the 1980s, the essentialistic functionalism and static models underpinning cognitive psychology have been subject to increasing

8、 critical scrutiny, principally because they emphasise learning as a determined, individualistic cognitive process and have had little regard for context. the old orthodoxies in which learners were treated as disconnected knowledge-processing agents have now largely given way to ones in which learne

9、rs have moved centre stage as active knowledge-makers or constructors who bring to their learning a wide range of social and cultural experiences.such a movement is noticeable in constructivism which rests upon the premise that, knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cogniz

10、ing subject (von glasersfeld, 1989, p 182). cognitive constructivism focuses on the development of the cognitive schemes which make knowledge construction possible and draws significantly from piagets (1950) theory of intellectual development. it is concerned with the progressive adaptation of indiv

11、iduals cognitive schemes to the physical environment (driver, et al., 1994, p 6). however, like cognitive psychology, it is based upon a highly individualist model of human development and offers only limited opportunities for exploring culture.social constructivism has been inspired partly by the w

12、ork of vygotsky (1896-1934), although its emphasis upon the social construction of meaning and personal knowledge in a symbolic world suggests it draws also upon the basic organising ideas of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism. in so far as social constructivism is built upon an understanding

13、 of social, as distinct from individual, constructions of knowledge, it affords some scope for theorising cultural dimensions of learning. however, it maintains in practice a conceptual dichotomy between individual activity and social processes and fails to make explicit their dialectical interdepen

14、dence (john-steiner and mahn, 1996). moreover, much of its research has been conducted within the confines of formally designated educational programmes and institutions. for these reasons, the capacity of social constructivism to relate questions of learning to wider cultural concerns must be consi

15、dered limited.vygotskys work on cultural-historical activity theory, emphasising as it does the cultural context of individual meaning-making, has contributed significantly to the recent rise of interest in culture. activity theory, developed initially by vygotsky (1978), leontev and luria, claims t

16、hat all activity is socially mediated and that consciousness is located not in the head but in practice (nardi, 1996). moreover,context is constituted through the enactment of an activity involving people and artifacts (which) carry with them a particular culture and history and are persistent struc

17、tures that stretch across activities through time and space (rodriguez, 1998, p 2).the aim of activity theory is thus to deepen understanding of the dialectical relations binding the individual and the social, cultural and historical (bannon and bdker, 1991). prominent here is the work of engestrm (

18、1987, 1990) on activity systems and expansive learning and cole (1988, 1996a, 1996b) on cultural diversity and cultural psychology. cole, for instance, argues against simplified notions of context as cause (1996a, p 139), citing the works of giddens on structuration, bourdieu on habitus, and engestr

19、m on activity systems. he makes distinct claims upon the opportunities which culture affords for transcending dualisms of structure and agency, and for pursuing temporal and lateral connectivity :(culture) provides me with a unit of analysis that has natural linkages to the macro pole of society and

20、 its institutions and the micro level of individual thoughts and actions. central is the need to study culturally mediated behavior developmentally to reveal the dynamic interactions uniting different parts of the overall life system. equally important is the need to conduct research at several deve

21、lopmental/historical (genetic) levels in order to analyze the ways in which they intertwine and fuse in human life over time (cole, 1996a, pp 143 and 145).other work in the field draws from social anthropology and incorporates elements of phenomenology as well as vygotskys (1981) work on psychologic

22、al development and the social construction of the mind (leontev, 1981). much of this work is referred to as sociocultural theory and distinguished partly by the importance it attaches to social interaction, community and culture, and inter-relationships between learner, activity and context. explana

23、tions of developmental coupling between persons and activities lie within broader patterns of sociocultural change and their embodiment in activity (beach, 1995, p 302). sociocultural processes and individual functioning are relational, existing in a dynamic, irreducible tension rather than a static

24、 notion of social determination (penuel and wertsch, 1995, p 84). learning, in this view, is to be understood not as acquisition but as activity contributing to change and enrichment of the individual (renshaw, 1992). however, as bereiter (1994) notes, the neo-vygotskyists are not the first to have

25、studied learning in its cultural milieu. educational anthropology has done this from its beginning (p 21). bereiter claims that the distinctive contribution of recent work is its illumination of learning and cognition outside formally prescribed learning situations. driven by a conception of learnin

26、g as participation, and distinguished by an absence of instructional metaphors, this work has released opportunities for theorising learning as a social practice in a range of cultural settings. it has captured some of the complexities of learning in ways not permitted by other approaches through su

27、ch notions as situated cognition (brown et al., 1989), cognitive apprenticeship (collins et al., 1989; rogoff, 1990) and legitimate peripheral participation (lave and wenger, 1991). these have been employed to represent individual-context relationships and learning processes. however, while research

28、 is frequently focused on communities of practice, such anthropology, or situativity theory, takes little account of the complex relational and continually changing patterns of a wide range of cultural experiences as may be relevant in particular cases.activity theory and sociocultural theory appear

29、 to give ample recognition to cultural dimensions of learning. however, a number of concerns should be registered. first, despite strong claims about dialectic relationships of individual and context, theorists frequently fail to consider the concrete social organisation of activity. in the field of

30、 cultural psychology it is exceedingly rare to find a concrete discussion of culture it is even less usual to find cultural psychologists connecting features of a social system in a meaningful way to psychological phenomena (ratner, 1996, p 2). second, while there has been, following scribner (1984)

31、, significant work focused upon learning in the workplace and other naturalistic settings, much research in the field centres upon classroom- or other institution-based interactions between teachers and learners. this latter work obscures the broader cultural and political concerns that are central

32、to the perspective (renshaw, 1992, p 1). third, the primary concerns of many theorists in the field are with the development of mind and higher psychological functions, giving rise to an imbalance in the individual-culture dialectic. this one-sidedness, or mentalist tendency, has been noted by a num

33、ber of critics including ratner (op cit.). packer (1993), for instance, has criticised sociocultural theorys use of the concept of internalization, claiming that it promotes a dualism between the internal and the external: the processes and mechanisms being examined keep creeping back inside the hea

34、d (john-steiner and mahn, 1996, p 197). there is evidently a wide range of interpretations and applications of activity theory and, while a regard for the cultural-historical dynamics of sociocultural processes and for the individual-context dialectic is evident in some works, others display a marke

35、d mentalist tendency or a failure to relate the complexities of learning to their wider cultural contexts. similarly, educational anthropology, or situativity theory, claims learning to be a culturally situated phenomenon. however, not only do studies frequently portray learners as somewhat passive,

36、 guided by experts or masters with little regard for their active construction of knowledge (hughes and greenhough, 1998), they take little account of the complex relational and continually changing patterns of cultural experience.while many such theoretical approaches may be criticised for understa

37、ting the significance of culture, the anthropological works of such figures as geertz, schneider and sahlins have been criticised for their heavy reliance upon cultural explanations to the exclusion of other possibilities. at the end of his comprehensive tour of the anthropological uses of culture,

38、adam kuper argues that whilst these works do constitute a “success story”, the various “critical experiments in cultural determinism fail when they overreach themselves and presume that culture rules, and that other factors can be excluded from the study of cultural processes and social behaviour” (

39、kuper, 1999, p. 246). extending an argument from the cognitive anthropologist dandrade, kuper wants us to consider the “pieces” of culture and their “relations to other things”, rather than expecting cultural explanations to be sufficient.kuper mentions both foucault and bourdieu as theorists who in

40、sist on “relations with other things” (such as power, or institutions) in this connection. but what notion of culture is to be found in bourdieus writing, and what sorts of relations does it give us cause to attend to, especially if we wish to study something as diverse as learning?bourdieu and cult

41、urebourdieus notion of culture grows from a critical position in relation to the anthropological heritage (bourdieu, 1977). it refuses to come down on the side of either subjectivist or objectivist readings:there is a continual dialectic between objectivity and subjectivity. social agents are incorp

42、orated bodies who possess, indeed, are possessed by structural, generative schemes which operate by orienting social practice. this, in a nutshell, is bourdieus theory of practice. practice, the dynamic of which is probably better captured by the word praxis, is a cognitive operation; it is structur

43、ed and tends to reproduce structures of which it is a product. we are, of course, not simply repeating actions endlessly. evolution and change in practice do occur. however, it comes about, not so much through the replication of action but its reproduction. reproduction implies both variation and li

44、mitation in what is and is not possible in the behaviour, thought and physical action of people (grenfell and james, 1998, p 12).a range of conceptual tools are on offer to help us investigate the social world within this theory of practice, which also claims to be a theory-as-method. they include h

45、abitus and field: the former, a durable but transposable set of dispositions, representing the physical and mental embodiment of the social but at the same time offering choices, played out in what bourdieu terms strategy; the latter, a structured system of social relations at micro and macro level,

46、 rather like a field of forces in which positions are defined relationally, that is, in relation to each other. usually there are particular and discernable forms of capital at stake in a field, commonly economic, social or cultural or some combination of these. conceptual tools such as these provid

47、e the researcher with a “way of thinking and a manner of asking questions” (mahar et al, 1990, p.3) and promise to help them avoid constructing reified types and categories in the way that much social science does (talking of “the adult learner”, “the mature student” or “the disaffected learner” and

48、 the like). bourdieus approach holds out the possibility of producing descriptions, explanations and understandings of complex social practices without reducing them to either mentalistic or social variables. it also counsels against the tendency to obscure social practices by seeing them only as ma

49、nifestations of a particular theory or model (e.g., rational choice theory): to do so is, in bourdieus terms, to confuse “the model of reality with the reality of the model”. the approach is furthermore characterised by a radical notion of reflexivity, wherein the background and interests of the inv

50、estigator, and in particular their relation to the object of study, are of primary concern.bourdieu insists that he has absolutely no wish to be part of abstract “theoretical” discussions that are detached from the world of practice (see for example bourdieu, 1989, p 50). he argues that his approach

51、 is a theory-as-method, and only makes sense in relation to empirical matters. it may be helpful at this point to describe an example of the sort of analysis that emerges when some part of the social world is examined via this approach. let us mention one that is not our own.in a recent article enti

52、tled bourdieu, social suffering and working class life, simon charlesworth provides a very good illustration of what can be done to illuminate what some might describe from its outward signs as “the culture of poverty”. charlesworths account is based on interpretations of a series of direct quotatio

53、ns from some of the poorest people in rotherham in the uk. what comes across very clearly is the mutual accommodation of habitus and field (though charlesworth uses merleau-pontys closely related notion of primacy of perception to emphasise the notion of a “horizon” (cf. horizons for action in hodki

54、nson et al, 1996).having suggested that an economic and social “l(fā)evelling” has occurred (which we take to mean in the sense that a bomb might be said to “l(fā)evel” a building), accompanied for these people by a profound sense of vulnerability and insecurity, charlesworth continues:a peculiar effect of

55、domination is that many of the most dispossessed seem unaware of the extent to which their life is circumscribed by such conditions. conditions of dispropriation mean that people do not have access to the resources; the instruments through which their understanding might begin to constitute a concre

56、te sense of the limits of life and, paradoxically, the more fully the limits of life enforce themselves, the more powerfully people inscribe a sense of this life as the only life possiblethere can be little incentive, (there could be no interest) in developing other forms of consciousness beyond tho

57、se of the mindless everyday coping skills through which it makes sense to live such conditions. to begin to develop forms of consciousness that make the world consciously problematic, something to be thought about; to move away from the efficiency of habits attuned to life in this world would be to

58、invite a slide from semi-conscious frustration to absurdity and transform ordinary unhappiness into misery. living life in the context of minimal expectations, the only strategy that makes practical sense is to maintain an ignorance of anything better, to kill ones hopes (charlesworth, 2000, p 54).t

59、his argument, amply supported by data, is not to be read as yet another form of cultural determinism. the people charlesworth interviewed all have and make choices, all make decisions, all function as agents. the point is that they do so from a habitus, i.e. within a sense of reality or a sense of limits, which for the most part is not ex