You need to think about what learning means and to question whether collaboration and active participation are all there is to learning. Your assumptions about learning drive what you do to bring learning to yourself or others. Two core metaphors underpin learning - the acquisition metaphor (AM) and the participation metaphor (PM).
Metaphors and approaches to learning
Often educationalists concentrate on how learning happens as opposed to what learning is because it is difficult to define. Kolb learning cycle 1984 introduced the concept that reflection on concrete experience plays a role in the learning process, and not just abstract knowledge and thinking. Kolb draws on the ideas of both participation and acquisition in his work on learning. A metaphor asserts one thing is the same as another, thus the quality of one known thing are used to say something about another. Sfard (1998) argues that metaphors play a key role in thinking and shape approaches to research and the development of theory. Technologies impact on the meaning of learning. When you explore what learning means, you have to see how TEL affects this. You need to test out the metaphors against your experience of TEL.
Sfard, A. (1998) On two metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just one in Educational Researcher, Vol 27 No 2 (March 1998). American Educational Research Association.
- about how humans conceptualise learning, and the role that the two dominant metaphors for learning have played.
Read Sfard - 1. How Sfard defines the A and P metaphors
2. How she distinguishes between them
3. The significance of Table 1 and the difference between questions of what learning is v. how learning happens.
The AM is more likely to be present in older texts, the PM is more prominent in more recent studies.
AM - Human learning is conceived as an acquisition of something, growth of knowledge, concept development. Basic units of knowledge (concepts) that can be accumulated, refined and form ever richer cognitive structures. Human mind as a container to be filled with certain materials and about the learner as becoming an owner of these materials.AM is learning as an acquisition of goods, implying gaining ownership.
PM Knowledge is replaced with the noun knowing, which implies action - having gives way to doing. AM implies that there is a clear end point to the process of learning, PM states that there is no end to learning. PM is linked to practice, reflection, discourse, communicating and that the learner is a person interested in participation in activities rather than in accumulating private possessions. Learning is seen as a process of becoming a part of a community. Learners contribute to the very existence of the group.
AM stresses the individual mind and what goes into it, PM shifts the focus to the evolving bonds between the individual and others.
Most learning theories cannot be regarded as purely AM or PM, the act of Acquisition is often tantamount to the act of becoming a participant. Each has something to offer that the other does not. Metaphorical pluralism leads to better research and more satisfactory practice. No two students have the same needs and no two teachers arrive at their best performance in the same way, theoretical exclusivity and didactic single mindedness should be avoided.
The most powerful research is that research which depends on more than one metaphor.A combination of AM and PM would bring fore the advantages of both of them and keeping their respective drawbacks at bay. Dictatorship of a single metaphor may lead to theories that serve the interest of certain groups and disadvantages others.
But this plurality does not imply the anything goes and theory/practice should still be based on sound research.
The metaphorical mappings (table from Sfard 1998)
| AM | PM | |
| Individual Enrichment | Goal of learning | Community building |
| Acquisition of something | Learning | Becoming a participant |
| Recipient | Student | Peripheral participant, apprentice |
| Provider, facilitator, mediator | Teacher | Expert participant, preserver of practice/discourse |
| Property, possession, commodity | Knowledge, concept | Aspect of practice/discourse/activity |
| Having, possessing | Knowing | Belonging, participating and communicating |
Comparing the metaphors to my own learning experiences (from wk 1)
a) do all of them refer to learning in terms of either acquisition or participation?
Learning how to use captivate was acquisition because I just read the instructions, but it was participation in terms of action as in order to establish the learning I had to practice it.
b) Any instances that do not fit into either AM or PM? No - all involve AM, most involve PM.
c) Is your learning process more oriented to you as an individual or to you within a social context? Social. I prefer to learn from doing, sharing and discussing than from reading/listening.
