Business Fit Magazine January 2019 Issue 1 | Page 65

through previous experiences at school, but
also very strongly through the values in their
social surroundings, we need to be aware of
how unequally strong or developed those
internal motivations and learning skills are.
The concept of lifelong learning, learning as a
continuous habit, developed out of a change
of society in the modern age, the idea of a
fluid knowledge which is constantly changing
and expanding. It is based on the idea of
constructivism, that the subject is constructing
its own perception of reality. The perception
of the new is based on old knowledge and
experience. E.g. I wear blue glasses, so I think
the world is blue. It’s very different to the idea of
downloading given knowledge directly into our
memory. The ability to connect the previous
with the new and motivation are key factors
influencing the amount an adult will learn.
Learning Cultures
The pedagogical question is not “How do
you learn a specific content?” but “Which
learning environment is stimulating learning?”.
In the light of the above mentioned, active
participation and problem-solved learning is
very important in adult education. Very often
adult learning is a search for a solution, a
movement to an undefined or defined goal.
Limiting adult learning to self-organised
learning assumes the learner would know
what to learn. This is basically the contrast of
being told what, how and when to learn. It can
overload the responsibility to the adult learner,
rather relevant when it comes to the need of
state funding for adult education. What may be
better is the concept of self-directed learning,
which does not exclude the (self-directed)
usage of externally organised material. The
outside influence is not conflicting with the
idea of constructivism. Relationships and
outside stimulation of the adult is actually key
to learning.
Learning through Relationships
Emotions have a very strong impact on
learning. Sure all of you can remember from
school how we suddenly loved geography,
because we loved the teacher. The memory
is not a copy machine, but the intensity of an
emotion influences, what we keep and what
we forget.
The motivation of adult learning is actually
very often motivated through an exchange
with the peer group or driven by meeting like
minded people. So learning through and in
relationships is not limited to social skills.
Biography and identity as a
negotiation process of the old
and new
Another argument towards a learning cultural
approach are the consequences of this fast-
changing time on the personal biography.
Classical careers divided in the three phases of
education, working life and retirement, seem
to be broken apart or shuffled around and are
only applicable to a very small amount (mainly
male) lives. The majority today have patchwork
resumes (former mainly female biographies)
with recurring periods of employment,
voluntarily resting or involuntary inactivity and
education. Adult life is not equal continuing
full-time employment. A formal education
nowadays won’t guarantee a lifetime of full
time employment. The preformed pathways
are disappearing and the difficulties for adults
mainly occur during the passages from one
period to another. The biography itself turns
into a learning subject which includes the
anticipation and mastering of changes and
transitions. Identity becomes something fluid
that is in a continuing or at least recurring
negotiation process between different
activities and surroundings. The personal skills
of being able to reflect and integrate new and
old is becoming more and more relevant to
master life.
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