1. education

Learning In and Across Contexts:
Reimagining Education
Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur
The University of British Columbia
Hitaf Kady-Rachid
The University of British Columbia
Bruce Moghtader
The University of British Columbia
The chapter introduces the volume on the basis of four principles: seeing education
holistically as inclusive of diverse learning contexts; recognizing that learning opportunities emerge both in and across contexts; advancing research on learning in
ways that enable the study of learning over time and across contexts; and attending
to possible futures in the present.
This yearbook brings together current conceptual and empirical research
on learning in and across a wide range of contexts that are purpose-built
with young people in mind. Whether they are designed for or with children
and youth, these learning contexts are intended to engage young people,
to provide access to and enable participation in an expanded range of
learning opportunities that supplement and/or supplant the learning opportunities available through public schooling. As a result, they are designed with children and youth at the center: to build on and expand their
interests and to respond to their concerns. The learning contexts included here are diverse—afterschool programs, informal contexts for learning, and flexible and alternative school programs—and largely, though
not always, voluntary. Together with learning opportunities in homes,
schools, neighborhoods, and communities, these contexts contribute to
the learning histories of children and youth and, in so doing, they are very
much about the creation of possible futures.
National Society for the Study of Education, Volume 113, Issue 2, pp. 339–358
Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University
340 National Society for the Study of Education
Afterschool programs, informal contexts, and flexible and alternative
school programs afford possibilities for learning that are defined both
in relation to and as against the learning opportunities in schools. When
defined in relation to school learning, these learning contexts are seen as
providing rich learning opportunities that benefit or improve academic
interest, performance, and/or achievement (e.g., Huang & Cho, 2009;
Shernoff, 2010). Concerns, however, have been raised about reducing
learning, particularly in afterschool programs, to “more-school-afterschool”; for example, intensive homework help, and drill and repetition,
aimed at improving grades and test scores (e.g., Hirsch, 2005). When defined as against learning in school, these learning contexts become responses to what school is not: They are defined by what public schooling
does not provide, the gaps in and limits of educational provision, and they
seek to provide the kind of learning opportunities that are not available
within the confines of schools as they are structured. They may offer smaller class, school, and/or program sizes, increased student-centeredness,
alternative or discipline-focused curricula, and/or a space free of formal
assessments and/or standardized testing (e.g., Vadeboncoeur, 2009). In
these contexts, concerns have been raised about availability, access, and
affordability, as well as the effects of governance and policy limitations
(e.g., Raywid & Schmerler, 2003). Defining learning contexts in relation to
or as against schools continues to dichotomize school and not-school (e.g.,
Sefton-Green, 2013). And, ultimately, neither seriously challenges or overcomes the conventional wisdom that equates the traditional school curricula with knowledge, and classroom assessment and standardized testing
as metrics for what counts as learning.
Our interest is to sidestep this dichotomy, do something more foundational, and begin with a different question. Why not reimagine education? Reimagine education as inclusive of all learning contexts from those
constructed in homes, to schools, to neighborhoods, to communities? If
education is redefined holistically, then all learning contexts come into
view as valuable and as potentially interconnected. In relation to this initial question, at least four additional questions follow:
1. What is the rationale for reimagining education broadly, as
inclusive of schools but not reduced to them, and what might
first steps look like?
2. How does the definition of learning change when learning
opportunities occur in and across diverse contexts?
3. How might research methodologies evolve and enable us to
examine learning in and across multiple contexts?
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 341
4. What possible futures are imagined as a result of recognizing
learning in and across multiple contexts?
This volume undertakes to contribute responses to these questions that
are current and at the same time historical, and that are theoretically and
methodologically grounded and at the same time open to dialogue.
Taken together, the chapters in this yearbook advance four responses
as principles in relation to education and learning that build from scholarship that dates back to the early 20th century and extends through
current research. These principles are interrelated and values-oriented.
They are elaborated in relation to the chapters in this volume in the next
four sections.
1. Seeing education holistically as inclusive of diverse learning contexts.
This principle redefines education broadly across all learning
contexts. It works against equating education and schooling,
instead noting that education occurs in and out of schools, and
that school and non-school contexts are neither homogeneous
nor opposites in a binary. Education evolves from a history
of learning experiences that are more or less compatible,
continuous, and enabling across diverse learning contexts,
including afterschool programs, informal contexts for learning,
and flexible and alternative school programs.
2. Recognizing that learning opportunities emerge both in and across
contexts. The recognition that learning opportunities happen
both in and across contexts enables us to move toward a
process view of learning: learning as a process that occurs over
time and across space. This view supports a broad definition
of learning by advancing two interrelated lines of thinking.
First, it challenges defining learning by default as the academic
skills and/or knowledge measured on classroom assessments
and standardized tests. Instead, learning is inclusive of forms
of knowledge that have not historically been valued in schools,
ways of being and becoming that enable engagement and
participation in multiple contexts, and the cultural and historical
values associated with different ways of knowing, being, and
doing. Second, implicit in this definition of learning is the role
of social relationships in learning: We learn from people, with
people, through people. By learning, we access, transform, and
produce cultural forms of knowledge, we negotiate identities
with significant adults and peers—identifying with and being
identified as a certain kind of person—and we value what is
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socially meaningful, or meaningful to “us” and people like “us,”
however defined. Learning transforms whole people.
3. Advancing research on learning in ways that enable the study of learning
over time and across contexts. When research on learning is no
longer limited by institutional time and space, when it moves
in and across contexts with children and youth, it generates a
living history of learning as the result of potentially continuous
lived experiences. Advancing innovative methodologies enables
researchers to produce a dynamic portrait of learning, rather
than static images of proxies for learning and development.
In addition, linking past, present, and future to honor the
dynamic quality of learning requires researchers who work
together across disciplines, fields, and/or contexts to engage
in a more accurate study of learning. Conducting research
from this perspective is motivated by concerns regarding
ethics: When research methodologies enable researchers to
document learning and development as dynamic, complex,
and potentially occurring both in and across contexts, research
values and commitments are foregrounded.
4. Attending to possible futures in the present. The relationship between
education and possible futures builds from ideas gathered
historically across educational philosophy, and developmental
and cultural-historical psychology. In educational philosophy,
the ideal of development that is the basis for the articulation
of educational goals and outcomes implies growth toward an
endpoint, a particular future. In developmental psychology,
some scholars theorize an endpoint to development that
is definable and defined, while for others development is
continually evolving. In cultural-historical psychology, learning
fosters development, and both processes are social, cultural, and
historical. To what extent are learning contexts intentionally
constructed to enable possible futures? To what extent do
they operate this way in practice? A key point here is that, as
educators and researchers, we can, in a sense, see futures in the
learning conditions that shape the experiences of children
and youth in the present. We can also intentionally imagine,
reimagine, and transform learning contexts in ways that offer
different possible futures.
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 343
SEEING EDUCATION HOLISTICALLY
This principle, seeing education holistically as inclusive of diverse learning contexts, builds historically from the moment universal, compulsory education was defined around the beginning of the 20th century in countries
like the United States, Australia, and England. The discussion by Ryan
Coughlan, Alan Sadovnik, and Susan Semel provides a historical context
for the development of afterschool and informal learning contexts, while
also framing the intention of flexible and alternative school programs to
offer something “other than” universal compulsory schooling. A significant point advanced by this chapter is the idea that, although they are
sometimes positioned this way, schools and other learning contexts are
not always dichotomous, discontinuous, and disconnected. While they can
be all of these things, they can also be mutually supportive, continuous,
and deeply connected. Indeed, the authors remind us that when John
Dewey imagined schools early in the 20th century, they included “health
services, adult education, physical activities, educational enrichment, job
training, and community organizing” with the expectation that by meeting the needs of children and their families through accessible and organized social services “schools would be providing students with the resources needed to succeed academically” (Coughlan, Sadovnik, & Semel,
this volume, p. 366). Dewey’s model blurred the lines between learning in
school and learning out-of-school by creating a holistic approach: one that
recognized the effects of material conditions on the learning of children
and youth in schools, as well as the ways in which learning across contexts
contributed to the development of children.
Reimagining education holistically has also gained support, more recently, given concerns about the effects of three decades of standardsbased reforms on schools, educators, and students, and, more specifically,
the narrowing of definitions for education, teaching, and learning (e.g.,
Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2006), as well as the impact of inequality and poverty on learning (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2010). Education must be uncoupled from schooling and redefined as a process that is much broader
than what schooling has become. To date, however, most schools have not
adopted holistic models, leaving the development of organized social services and additional learning opportunities to a diverse group of loosely
connected organizations that identify gaps, needs, and interests, and build
programs to suit the learners they envision engaging and participating.
As highlighted by the authors of this chapter, afterschool programs and
contexts for informal learning can enable children to overcome learning
histories shaped by unequal resources, but they can also contribute to inequity. The availability of and access to learning opportunities provided
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by social service organizations, cultural institutions, and special interest
organizations is a significant issue. Dewey (1938) utilized continuity as a
criterion for differentiating educative from mis-educative experiences:
educative experiences lead to and enhance further growth while mis-educative experiences arrest or distort growth, for example, because they are
fragmented. While some children may piece together learning opportunities across diverse contexts and experience a semblance of continuity in
spite of a fragmented system, reimagining education holistically may be
the impetus required to begin to organize learning more intentionally.
Education is conceptualized based upon discussions regarding what
constitutes educative experiences, child growth and development, the
roles of learning and teaching, the relationship between curriculum,
pedagogy, and assessment, as well as the purpose of education in relation to the political economy and cultural and historical values. For many,
education plays a vital role in democracy, in preparation for democratic
participation and deliberation. Deirdre M. Kelly offers a consideration of
the ways in which democracy in education is defined both as a function
of the role of schooling in society and as a function of the ways that alternative education programs are understood. This chapter inquires deeply
into flexible and alternative schools—nonconventional in either form,
content, or both—including what they have to offer and to whom, as well
as the argument for alternative schooling as a democratizing influence in
society. A central question raised is how different forms of education both
assume and imply different forms of democracy, in part, by preparing students to enact citizenship in different ways and by establishing boundaries
of inclusion and exclusion, sameness and difference.
In addition to alternative schools, a key component of the strength of
afterschool and informal learning contexts is that they create a space for
difference: for a specific learning opportunity, such as science education
for girls, or a context specifically for addressing the needs and interests of
children and youth with learning differences. The ability to offer a specific
learning opportunity is a strength of alternative education, and a potential weakness as well. Alternative programs that are built to support the
education of children and youth from a specific minority group, or young
people who have been pushed out of mainstream schooling, become defined by their difference from the mainstream in part because it marks
the boundary of a learning context: who is included, who is excluded,
whether or not by “choice.” Marked by difference, alternative school programs can also become “containers for difference” (Vadeboncoeur, 2005)
and “safety valves” (Kelly, 1993) that enable mainstream schools to avoid
responsibility for creating safe, equitable, and relational spaces where all
students can learn. Alternative programs, however, may also be framed as
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 345
prefigurative practices, drawing on Nancy Fraser’s work: a microcosm of
democratic society that is embodied and lived and, therefore, “proof that
a more participatory democratic life is possible, now and in the future”
(Kelly, this volume, p. 389). The work of defining the purposes of education broadly, and the purposes of schooling in democratic societies in
relation to notions of child development, is an ongoing, values-oriented
process (Vadeboncoeur, 1997). Considering the kind of democracy our
flexible and alternative schools contribute to is central to this ongoing
discussion.
In the next chapter, Kalervo Gulson provides an in-depth examination
of the critical possibilities of place-based education to foster the political
engagement and participation of students and teachers in the local community. In so doing, he challenges us to be mindful of the assumption that
any program, simply by virtue of its content and pedagogy, will produce
specific experiences for program participants. Approaches to place-conscious education link place making, attachment, and meaning making,
with political participation. The local is the scale for engagement. At odds
with this approach is the larger system of school choice that operates on
the ideal that parents can choose a school for their child from a range of
school choices in locations that may or may not be near home. School
choice has the potential to reduce ties to the local, the neighborhood, and
increase geographical mobility for the students who have access to transportation to a different school program. Uncoupling people from places
raises issues regarding who can claim to be “a local,” an issue also raised
when diversity, immigration, and mobility are recognized. Thus, the question emerges: “what sort of political involvement in education is enabled
and constituted in and through different notions of place?” (Gulson, this
volume, p. 422). In response, Gulson argues for “utilizing mobility as a theoretical and methodological contribution to the repertoires of understanding
about how places are made and contested through interconnection” (Gulson, this volume, p. 422, emphasis added).
Advancing mobility as a theoretical and methodological concept is helpful in a number of ways. First, theorizing mobility contributes a pathway
forward for seeing education holistically because it provides an example of
the ways in which new concepts enable us to think about and reimagine
how education can be constituted by learning in and across diverse contexts. Second, it reminds us that the ways that we think about concepts like
place (see Gulson, this volume), democracy (see Kelly, this volume), and
education (see Coughlan, Sadovnik, and Semel, this volume) both frame
and are framed by cultural and historical values that we hold, and what
those values mean to us, as well as by the conceptual systems for which
new concepts are constructed. For example, the current mandate for
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schools—to focus on academic content narrowly defined—is the result of
values about the role of school in society, the responsibilities and rights of
teachers, what constitutes the curriculum and how to assess it, in addition
to conceptions of the learner. Schools today are also structured, governed,
and funded by values that have little to do with education, learning, and
development, and more to do with political strategy and will, economic
policies and concerns, and corporate interests and expectations. We wonder to what extent and in what ways these latter values will come to shape
afterschool programs, informal contexts for learning, and flexible and alternative school programs as well.
All three of these chapters highlight the porousness of education,
schooling, and learning contexts: the ways in which they are entangled
with societal values. Each also foregrounds the significance of equity, inclusion, engagement, participation, and mobility as some of the central
values that are advanced in this volume when we begin to reimagine education holistically as inclusive of diverse learning contexts.
LEARNING IN AND ACROSS CONTEXTS WITH CHILDREN AND YOUTH
The chapters in this section reflect experiences in specific learning contexts that implicitly and/or explicitly link to learning in other contexts.
They provide highlights of learning as potentially both intracontextual,
within a defined context, and intercontextual, across a set of defined contexts (Vadeboncoeur & Rahal, 2013). What defines the context is significant here, whether it is place, program, or relationship, or a combination
of these features. What do we learn about learning by looking in and across
contexts at the different ways in which children and youth engage and
participate? How does this compare with what we have access to if we only
consider classroom and school contexts? The principle, recognizing that
learning opportunities emerge both in and across contexts, advances two overlapping perspectives on learning: first, learning is “a unified process of coming
to know about the world, others, and oneself; becoming a social individual;
and coming to value ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Vadeboncoeur &
Rahal, 2013, p. 4, emphasis added); second, learning is profoundly social,
relational, and embodied.
Although learning may begin with the construction of knowledge, this
definition must be extended to include knowledge beyond traditionally
valued academic knowledge and to attend to the process of coming to
know. This extension enables us to ask questions about the qualitative
differences between “knowing when,” “knowing how,” “knowing what,”
“knowing that,” and “knowing with whom,” along with the ways in which
learning contexts become engaging as a result of these differences. This
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 347
perspective on knowledge and coming to know challenges the reductionism inherent in academic assessments by defining knowledge more broadly,
including what is not easy to assess or should not be assessed quantitatively
(Ladwig, 2010). It also challenges the reductionism in standardized testing, which assumes word recall or recognition on multiple-choice tests
is a legitimate way to assess knowledge, by defining knowledge more deeply,
including the development of concepts (e.g., Vygotsky, 1987) and conceptual systems that require assessments of conceptual change (e.g., Vadeboncoeur, 2013).
Learning is more than the construction of knowledge, however; it includes ways of being and becoming as a learner that are influenced by
when, how, what, that, and with whom a person has come to know. These
ways of being and becoming enable new and different ways of engaging
and participating in social practices in and across contexts. They also enable new ways of performing or enacting identities that are recognizable
to the self and to others, as well as the cultural capital and status that
accrue in relation to performing “legitimate” identities in “legitimizing”
contexts. Constructing knowledge and identities in and across contexts is
also a process of constructing values: values about the kind of knowledge
that matters, what successful knowing looks like, how someone who is a
good learner acts, and the identities that meet with the most success in different contexts (e.g., Vadeboncoeur, Vellos, & Goessling, 2011). Values for
knowledge and identities may vary according to cultures and contexts; for
example, ways of being a successful technology entrepreneur in an out-ofschool technology program may or may not translate into valued ways of
being successful in schools (Gee & Hayes, 2010). The seven chapters in
this section foreground this perspective and compatible perspectives on
learning in a variety of ways.
To begin this section, Bonny Gildin describes an afterschool program
called the All Stars Project that challenges youth and adults to create a
“new story of learning,” new theories and methodologies that account
for human development and each child’s subjective experience of learning (Gildin, this volume, p. 430). The All Stars Project operates outside of
the public school funding process, supported by private donations and
responsive to neighborhood interests, and aims specifically at engaging
children and youth growing up in conditions of poverty. Their work, in
part, undertakes to help children “unlearn” what they have learned at
school, for example, about their own identities as learners, and their ability or lack of ability to learn and contribute in meaningful ways. Based in
part on Lois Holzman and Fred Newman’s work, this program focuses on
public performances as contexts for youth to “learn that” they are capable
of doing something that they do not yet know how to do, or “that-ness”
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(see, for discussion, Holzman, 2009). Participants range in age from 5 to
25 years old, and are taken seriously: They are both expected and enabled
to perform in advance of their development. Performance is a transformative activity, one that transforms the performers’ perceptions of what
they can do, as well as the perceptions of audience members who are family, friends, and community members. The importance of performance in
this context lies in retelling, and to an extent problematizing, the static
perception of children and youth. Performances are a public process of
witnessing possibilities, raising collective awareness of community experiences and resources, and creating new social and educational alternatives.
Central to this process is the mentoring and support provided by peers,
directors, and audience members who constitute a public that relates to
participants as capable in the process of learning and developing. In addition, and also central, concerns about an “achievement gap” are reframed
as concerns about the impact of poverty on the lives of children.
Examining the experiences of several young people engaged in science
programs and the way these experiences shape their learning trajectories over time is the subject of the chapter by Jrène Rahm. This chapter,
grounded in multi-sited ethnographic research with participants in three
science programs, is in part an exploration of the social worlds that youth
draw upon to make sense of science and what they have learned about science as they move between afterschool programs, homes, and schools. For
the participants, many of whom are girls, “engagement with science and
the meaning of the club has to be understood in light of their mobilities:
who they are as learners and the experiences they bring with them from
earlier contexts constitutes the manner engagement with science is made
sense of within and beyond a social space” (Rahm, this volume, p. 448).
Through engagement, science is made meaningful, participants come to
see themselves as capable of doing science, and, for some, this capability
becomes something they value and an aspect of their identities. This chapter provides a glimpse of what learning in and across contexts may become
for youth, a complex spatial geography of educational practices where
some practices are welcomed across multiple contexts and others are not.
Mapping the mobilities of learners enables new insights into learning. It
also exposes the tensions between deficit and empowerment discourses
that run through the programs, as well as an emphasis that is at the core of
all of the programs: youth participants “learning that” they can do science.
Natalia Panina-Beard describes the ongoing impact of transgenerational trauma for some Aboriginal learners, and notes as well several partnerships and programs that have established successful learning opportunities with learners from different First Nations groups. Each partnership
has a slightly different focus: from reconstructing K-16 education for a
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 349
particular Nation, to vocational and career counseling programs for youth
and young adults, to post-secondary programs that provide preparation
for careers in early childhood education, education, and nursing. What is
common across the partnerships is collaboration with Aboriginal communities, an attention to honoring the epistemologies, worldviews, and ways
of knowing that are culturally relevant for each community, and “the development of an organized system of supports for addressing the legacy of
colonial relations” (Panina-Beard, this volume, p. 486). Transitions from
one grade to the next in secondary school, from secondary school to postsecondary education (Heslop, 2009), and from school to work (Bruce &
Marlin, 2012) are moments in learning histories when youth may or may
not make the move from one learning context to the next. However, research shows that having career aspirations is not an issue for many Aboriginal learners (e.g., Consulbec, 2002). Instead, as argued by PaninaBeard, barriers include access to information, the availability of culturally
relevant learning contexts, and strategies and supports for overcoming
poverty. A significant educative experience for children and youth from
Aboriginal backgrounds may be in the process of reimagining possibilities for learning opportunities and creating pathways toward their career
aspirations. What is clear from each of the partnerships highlighted in this
chapter is that when partnerships are collaborative, and supports are put
in place, students learn and develop.
In the next chapter, Shirley Brice Heath examines the post-1990s history of cultural and community organizations and provides two examples
of “the collective force of art, science, and technology for accelerating
the commitment of young adults to building creative social enterprises
in their own communities and beyond” (Heath, this volume, p. 496). She
reminds us that, while some countries provide significant funding that
contributes to the development and continuation of learning contexts beyond formal schooling, the United States has provided less funding and
paid less attention to the learning opportunities afforded by these organizations, focusing, instead, on schooling as the “centerpiece” of democracy. Countering this are the forms of knowledge, life skills, and academic
and vocational aspirations that derive from engagement and participation
in creative community programs, the kinds of qualities and experiences
that are important for both academic and vocational success. Of significant interest for us are the ways in which learning experiences in informal
contexts bring about an awareness of the need for further learning and
development in science and mathematics: the experience becomes motivation for future learning by establishing a purpose that is meaningful
and relevant to the young person. Lifelong learning begins this way. As
young people engage in meaningful experiences, they begin to build a
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framework of aspirations that includes anticipated next steps for realizing
academic pursuits and moving into the workplace. For some, this process
is less about fitting into work spaces as they exist in the present, and more
about contributing to the creation of new ways of working and new forms
of labor for the future.
How to design learning contexts for children and youth with learning
differences in ways that do not lead to additional forms of social disadvantage is the dilemma addressed in the next chapter by Harry Daniels. This
chapter builds on Vygotsky’s legacy to argue that cooperation and collaboration, being able to do together what we cannot do alone, are central
to both teaching and learning, and that the role of educators is to ensure
that the “organization and content of teaching . . . is directed toward the
formation of developmental possibilities, rather than trailing behind developmental inevitabilities” (Daniels, this volume, p. 519, emphasis added).
A fundamental concern is that the learning context does not provide additional or secondary handicapping conditions, for example, those that
result from educators’ and peers’ perceptions of differences only as deficiencies to be corrected. The dilemma foregrounded by this chapter
occurs when contexts that purportedly operate under a principle of inclusion are not actually inclusive: They are not equipped with educated,
experienced, and caring educators and the resources necessary to provide
learning opportunities that are educative, rather than disabling. Under
these circumstances, a question must be raised about whether it is more
beneficial to ensure that the child’s needs for acceptance and instruction
are met, even if it must be in a separate setting. The ability to draw on a
particular child’s strengths as a pedagogical resource may not be possible
in a regular classroom. Ultimately, Daniels argues, pedagogy must be designed to meet the learning needs of each child and youth, rather than
driven by the interests of curriculum designers, publishers, or politicians.
Making museums and aquariums family friendly and understanding the
ways in which newcomers to these informal learning contexts experience
interactive exhibits is the motivation behind the next chapter by Doris Ash.
How do children, youth, and families engage with exhibits in informal learning contexts? What resources do they bring to the context, what experiences do they have, and what learning do they leave with? This chapter foregrounds the importance of bilingual exhibits and museum educators as a
method for reaching museum visitors from different language backgrounds.
Drawing on the concept of hybridity advanced by Kris Gutiérrez, Patricia
Baquedano-López, and Carlos Tejeda (1999), it offers a way of rethinking
diversity, and in particular diverse language practices. Gutiérrez et al. advanced the idea that multiple, even conflicting forms of mediation, such
as different languages and language practices, can create developmental
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 351
contexts that are productive. In fact, the differences in perspectives and experiences afforded with hybrid activities, roles, and practices may be the key
to creating contexts that lead to development. As educators and researchers
in informal learning contexts study the engagement and participation of
visitors, their own perspective is likely to become hybrid, thus shaping the
official script of the museum. For all visitors, this means offering “a more
valid perspective” (Ash, this volume, p. 550).
Peter Westoby, Paul Toon, and Ken Morris share their experience working with staff and youth at Jabiru Community College to both construct and
explicate a practice framework that guides their work together. The practice
framework’s seven principles include: recentering community within learning, creating safe contexts and a climate for community learning, and focusing practice and learning on the needs and interests of young people.
Dialogue is central to the construction of the practice framework. Through
intentional, deliberative, and ongoing dialogue, a relational context is created within which to reflect on and adjust practice. For the authors, “[d]
ialogue is not only an experience and attitude, but is also a social ‘process’
and, therefore, is nurtured by a ‘practice’ that is intentionally and purposefully built both through connection and commitment to change” (Westoby,
Toon, & Morris, this volume, p. 566). The practice framework is a living process; it is a continuing conversation that requires the attention of every member of the learning community. Jabiru Community College is an important
example of a learning context where staff seek to avoid the social critique
of public schooling and the social critique of young people and, instead,
engage youth in a different kind of learning community: one that moves
toward life-enhancing learning and excellence in teaching and learning.
Common across these chapters are values that foreground equity, inclusion, engagement, participation, and mobility as pathways through
which knowing and becoming are made possible. These values expand
to include: the value of taking risks; the value of performing in order to
become competent; the value of practicing in public; the value of building culturally relevant partnerships; the value of using humor to engage;
the value of addressing learners’ needs, interests, and strengths; the value
of collaborative reflection and dialogue with children and youth; and the
value of engaging children and youth in opportunities for learning and
development and seeing them differently when they change. Values influence the ways engagement and participation are supported in learning
contexts and have ethical implications for action in and transformation
of contexts. They are also mutually constitutive of cultures and contexts,
providing a medium through which learning opportunities contribute to
the embodiment of children, youth, and adults, their relationships with
each other, with themselves, and with the world.
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ADVANCING RESEARCH ON LEARNING
Educational researchers have noted the limitations of learning research
that is conducted over narrow time scales and in contained spaces (e.g.,
Leander, Phillips, & Taylor, 2010; Lemke, 2000, 2001; Nespor, 1997). The
assumptions that we make about time, which ground our developmental
theories, “set up limits for our understanding of development” (Valsiner,
1993, p. 14). Our assumptions about space matter as well. For example,
Lemke (2001) asked: “Why do we observe students on the time scale of
the lesson, inside the math classroom, and not follow them out the door,
down the hall, to another classroom, lunchroom, street corner, work, or
home?” (p. 20). Further, what is it that we observe in their development if
the block of time we observe is a 42-minute class and we ignore the hours
outside of school? Further still, what research questions must we refrain
from asking as a result of the limitations of our data? Advancing research on
learning in ways that enable the study of learning over time and across contexts is
the principle we begin to address here.
Recognizing learning opportunities in and across contexts creates a
space for a more complicated view of learning, and it requires research
methodologies that can be used to examine learning that is both intracontextual and intercontextual. If we conceptualize change over time (Valsiner, 1993) and challenge the “space-as-container” metaphor, an issue raised
by Nespor (1997) and more recently by Leander et al. (2010), we can
begin to create the conditions for thinking about learning as trajectories
over time and across space, and thinking about research as mapping mobility in ways that produce learning histories. Studying mobility offers new
ways of conducting research appropriate for these new perspectives on education and learning; however, this is not simply a shift toward increased
precision in documenting learning. This shift is profoundly values-oriented in a number of ways (e.g., O’Connor & Penuel, 2010), as noted by the
two chapters in this section.
To begin this section Eduardo Vianna and Anna Stetsenko draw on the
work of Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Paulo Freire to radically revise
the principles of learning and development: from a unidirectional process of adaptation to an existing environment to a recursive process of
transforming an environment that must be continually created and that
transforms us as well. To view learning and development as human activities that are ultimately transformative provides a foundation for statements
of values and questions of ethics in educational research. For example,
we might ask, if participatory democracy is something we value, then how
should we transform our environments? If equity is something we value,
in what ways should we act to transform the world? All human activities
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 353
contribute a vision for the future; engagement in them brings to life the
ethical commitments of people and communities, commitments that affirm how the world ought to be. From this perspective, educational research
is more than a process of constructing knowledge about or with participants. It is also a process that transforms both researcher and participants
as knowers, influences their identities with each other, with themselves,
and in the world, and leaves traces of values related to the experience of
participation in the research. The authors argue that researchers both
acknowledge and build on their own transformative activist stance in the
research they undertake with participants. This, in part, locates the educational researcher who, in the conduct of research, intervenes in the lives
of the participants. The research affords a learning opportunity for both
the researcher and the participants to negotiate with and provide access
to “cultural tools that facilitate participants taking an activist stance toward
creating their futures in a society that itself needs to be created, rather
than merely reproduced or adapted to” (Vianna & Stetsenko, this volume,
p. 576). This work recenters the relationships between researchers and
participants and redefines research as a collaborative project working toward a negotiated values-oriented endpoint.
Learning from the lives of children and youth by going beyond the
walls of the classroom into homes, neighborhoods, and communities requires new methodological approaches. The chapter by Shirin Vossoughi
and Kris Gutiérrez, offers an in-depth discussion of the development of a
“multi-sited sensibility”: an innovative methodological blending of multisited ethnography, cultural-historical approaches to learning and development, and interpretive educational ethnography that enables the study of
learning as movement (Gutiérrez, 2008). The authors unpack both the possibilities created and the challenges surfaced by studying learning as an
ongoing process that unfolds across time and space. By addressing deficit
perceptions of and discourses about children and youth, problematizing
static views of children and cultural communities, and inviting researchers to develop a disposition toward equity-oriented research, their work
enables researchers to study the complexity and depth of learning. Significantly, the authors propose that a “multi-sited sensibility” would “involve
approaching the out-of-school spaces young people occupy and create with
the guiding assumption that one will find complex intellectual activity, and
then staying long enough to gain a deeper understanding of the developmental demands participation in such settings requires” (Vossoughi &
Gutiérrez, this volume, pp. 612–613). The discussion is crafted to model
the sensibility that the authors are detailing; for example, they unpack
the difference between “assuming a ‘disjunctive’ experience between
learning in formal and informal settings, and studying learning across
354 National Society for the Study of Education
settings in ways that make experiences of disjuncture visible in specific
ways. Analytically, this involves dwelling in, rather than downplaying data
that challenge the researchers’ prior assumptions about the nature and
experience of learning across different kinds of settings” (Vossoughi &
Gutiérrez, this volume, p. 624, emphasis in original). This principle, attending to possible futures in the present, requires us to consider several
questions. This nuanced examination and analysis is crucial as we move
toward more complex definitions of learning and development.
Both chapters in this section advance research methodologies in ways
that foreground values related to learning from participants’ and researchers’ perspectives (see O’Connor & Penuel, 2010). Learning from participants how they engage in learning contexts, why they choose one context
over another, what previous experiences they draw upon to learn, and how
an activity in the present is made meaningful in relation to past experiences and possible futures are just some of the interpretations of learning that are shaped by values. Recognizing the ways in which research is
guided by values—including what researchers choose to research, how they
conduct research and see participants, and the kinds of claims they would
like to make from interpretations of data—is a significant point of departure from claims of being objective and value-neutral. Research questions
and questions of research design and conduct are all points at which we
are both socially responsible for and accountable to child and youth participants in unique ways; research is “‘inescapably . . . a space of ethical
questions’” (Taylor, 1992b, p. 305, cited in O’Connor & Penuel, 2010, p.
4). Ethical questions may include questions in the domains of knowledge
and identity; however, they are always permeated by and permeating social
values and their construction. An ongoing question for us relates to the
difference between reimagining education for children and youth, and
reimagining education with children and youth. This work begins with
changing our perceptions of children and youth from objects of educational practices to subjects who ought to be heard and respected, subjects
whose perspectives we value, and subjects with something to teach us.
ATTENDING TO POSSIBLE FUTURES IN THE PRESENT
Frequently, learning contexts are designed and implemented to meet the
needs, interests, and concerns of different groups of people, including
children and youth, educators and program administrators, parents, community members, and policymakers. Contending with competing goals
and attempting to achieve them can lead to a loss of the intention(s) behind these contexts, leaving them partially- or un-realized. The principle,
attending to possible futures in the present, requires us to consider several
Learning In and Across Contexts: Reimagining Education 355
questions. What futures do we see when we look at the experiences of children and youth in the present? What conditions shape their experiences
in the present, what are the effects of these conditions likely to be over
time, and how might lived experiences differ as a result of different conditions? In countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and England,
as well as in others, we are likely to find that most people are comfortable with the adage “children are our future,” but we are decidedly less
comfortable providing the conditions for all children and youth to have
experiences that support their learning and development in ways that afford a range of possible futures. We are less comfortable still ensuring
that they have diverse learning opportunities that are equally accessible,
available, and affordable. In principle, the sentiment that children are our
future is an important reminder, but it becomes a platitude that implicitly
erases the social relationships that growing into and transforming a world
require—a world that is, for much of the time if not most, organized by
adults for children.
In what way is saying “children are our future” different from conceptualizing learning as the organizing of social futures, following O’Connor
and Allen (2010)? If we focused our attention on the idea of learning as
the organizing of social futures, how would that influence our work as educators and researchers, individually and collectively? With what potential
effects? For us, the issue is one of making explicit the intentions behind
the learning contexts created for and with children and youth, as well as
engaging in ongoing dialogue around what the purposes ought to be and for
which possible futures. These issues are at the center of the discussion in the
final chapter by Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur and Dale Murray.
CONTINUING THOUGHTS
We began this chapter by sidestepping the common dichotomy between
school and not-school and proposing, instead, that reimagining education
as inclusive of diverse learning contexts may be a more generative project. We moved to articulating principles and linking them to chapters in
this volume, including: seeing education holistically as inclusive of diverse
learning contexts; recognizing that learning opportunities emerge both
in and across contexts; advancing research on learning in ways that enable
the study of learning over time and across contexts; and attending to possible futures in the present.
Along with these principles, our work with the authors of this volume
has also raised many questions: What is a learning context? How is it defined and by whom? How does defining it through place, program, and/
or relationship shape perspectives and the conduct of research? Which
356 National Society for the Study of Education
learning opportunities are important? For whom? Why? How do we learn
from and build contexts with children and youth? How does what we learn
in one context speak to other contexts? How do we think through, evaluate, and respond to questions of quality in experiences in and across
learning contexts? How are quality experiences related to those that are
meaningful? For whom? What roles and responsibilities do educators have
for the creation and transformation of learning opportunities in the present that are linked with possible futures? What roles and responsibilities
do researchers have as they intervene in the lives of children and youth?
With these questions in mind—and with the recognition that the ways we
respond to each of these questions has ethical implications that are “inescapable”—we close this introductory chapter and continue on the project
of reimagining education.
Acknowledgments
Jennifer Vadeboncoeur acknowledges the support of several people who
enabled her to undertake the work of editing and contributing to this
volume. Acknowledgements go, with deepest thanks, to the outstanding
educators at Learning Tree—Branka, Dawn, Issac, Myrna, Elisabeth, and
Alex—as well as to Honeyvy and Shevonne, and most especially to Ibolya
and László Szentirmai.
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358 National Society for the Study of Education
Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur is Associate Professor of Human Development, Learning and Culture in the Department of Educational
and Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia. Her
research includes learning from young people about their experiences
engaging in informal learning contexts, as well as rethinking learning and
teaching relationships with educators. Related publications include Re/
Constructing “The Adolescent”: Sign, Symbol, and Body, co-edited with L. P. Stevens and published in 2005 by Peter Lang. Recent publications include:
Framing achievement when learning is unified, in Phillipson, Ku, and
Phillipson (Eds.), Constructing Educational Achievement: A Sociocultural Perspective, published in 2013 by Routledge; and "Locating Social and Emotional Learning in Schooled Environments," in Mind, Culture, and Activity,
with Collie in 2013.
Hitaf Kady-Rachid holds a master’s degree in Media Psychology and
Social Change, and is pursuing a PhD at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic diversity in print and visual media and explores trends that shape and frame minorities in North
America. As a minority in both her native home, Lebanon, and in Canada,
where she has been living for most of her life, she is committed to examining the inequitable representation and participation of minority groups
in mainstream society, and in promoting potentially beneficial ways for
diversifying mainstream environments.
Bruce Moghtader is a master’s student in Human Development,
Learning and Culture in the Department of Educational and Counselling
Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia.
His research interests include the formation of educational practices in
relation to their historical, cultural and social context.