The Learning Society and Learner Identities - Essay Example

? Learning History and Learner Identities Outline Introduction 3 Learning History 3 Working Conflicts 4 Post-modernism 6 Functionalism 8 Future as a Learner 9 Conclusion 10 References 12 1. Introduction The learning identity and tendencies of any given person are influenced not only by their own internal beliefs and perceptions but also by the learning environment around them and events that occur within their life. These influences have the ability to influence the progress of a learner and the decisions that they make about their future. The purpose of this essay is to consider the importance of the environment and learning society and how these factors influenced my own learning history and what this means for my future from the perspective of conflicts, post-modernism and functionalism. Learning History Learning is something that has always been a passion for me, although I have not had as much time to pursue this interest as I would like to. When I was young, schooling was something I enjoyed, much to the surprise of people around me. During school holidays I was always looking forward to when I could get back to the class, and even classes that I did not enjoy provided me with opportunities to learn more about things that I was unfamiliar with. It surprised me that the more I learnt, the more there was left to learn. It seemed like there were far too many options and avenues of learning that a person could pursue in their lifetime, and this was disheartening. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn, but by the time I was mid-way through high school I realised that this was not even a remote possibility. I was certain that I wanted to continue learning once I left high school, but this was not something that happened. Instead of continuing my education, I was offered a full-time job in my last year of high school. It was a really good job, and my family convinced me that it was more practical to take a job like this while I had the opportunity, rather than doing a degree, and then being unable to find a well-paid job at the end of it. I stopped working when the economic depression became significant, and I was laid off my job. The move left me re-examining what I wanted from my life, and who I wanted to be. Helping my elder sister to home school her daughter reminded me of the passion that I used to have for learning, and I became interested in going back to schooling myself, and followed the ideas that had been inspiring me when I was much younger. Eventually I settled on beginning a Bachelor’s Degree in Teaching and Learning. I found that I wanted to understand more about the processes that were behind learning, and about how knowledge was imparted from one person to another, and one generation to the next. This was an immediate step for me, and I moved to my Bachelor’s degree immediately after finishing high school. The degree was fascinating, and I learnt a lot about myself and about education. I was certain that this was the area that I wanted to continue to study in and I decided to continue my education with a Master’s Degree in Learning and Development. I was strongly interested in the focus that this degree had on development. This is the degree that I am studying currently, and I am glad that I made the decision to do this. Working-class Conflicts One of the conflicts that are often observed between schools and families is through working-class relationships. Working classes inherently have different priorities and viewpoints than many people within the school system, and this can lead to differences of opinion for the direction that the child should go in school and in life (Reay, 2001). Reforms have attempted to make Australian schools more more of the differences between working-class families and other types of families that are encountered. However, issues of class remain present in many schools, as well as in the school system itself (Connel, 2003). The conflict between working-class families and schooling was one that was present during my own secondary education. My parents are both from the working class, with my father being a builder and my mother being employed in the food industry part-time while caring for our family. Both of my parents were more interested in me obtaining skills that were physically demonstrable, rather than abstract knowledge. They wanted me to stay in secondary school until I graduated, because they felt that finishing high school was an essential component of me getting a ‘real’ job. They strongly pushed me to take courses that were more practically orientated, and to avoid ones that were mostly theoretical, with little application to the ‘real world’. The perception of my parents that I should pursue a job rather than further education was a significant influencing factor in my learning history. My personal aspirations at that point in time were very different than the choices I made. The desires of parents can be pervasive and continuous throughout a child’s life and the development of their career (Dick and Rallis, 1991). This was certainly the case throughout my time at high school as my parents made it clear that they did not want me pursuing further education. I did not decide against going into tertiary education because of what my parents wanted, but instead I did so because of what they believed. They were adamant that in the long term, a decision to remain in schooling would limit my ability to care for myself or for my family and was to be something that I would ultimately regret. Because of this, I chose to move away from further education and towards a career that I believed at the time would be the beginning of a life-long career pathway. Post-modernism People return to education for many different reasons, and this is especially true for adult learners. For some, education is a chance to increase their skills in order to perform a job better or to make them more attractive for a specific job. For others, like me, education is sought not because it is a tool for a better future, but for the sake of learning itself. In that respect, adult education is for me and many others, a social endeavour and the process of learning are often associated with reinventing oneself (Briton, 1996). I did not return to learning in order to gain a better job at the end of it. Instead, I wanted to grow within myself and to understand more about the world around me. Returning to education as an adult learner was not an easy task and the environment which I entered was considerably different than the one I left. In my youth knowledge was always a relatively static concept. There was much more of it than I could ever reasonably hope to acquire, but I believed that once I had learnt about a subject, that knowledge would remain valid throughout my whole lifetime as long as I could remember it. In society today and particularly in tertiary education, knowledge changes rapidly. Theories might be relevant at one point, and not at another, and things that were once perceived as facts are perceived differently as time goes along. Furthermore, knowledge is no longer something that is available from only a few locations. The increasing reach of the Internet has resulted in a decentring of knowledge, where information is readily and rapidly available in overwhelming quantities (Usher et al., 1997). This has many implications. For me, it has meant that there is much more critical thinking involved. There is no longer a right or a wrong answer. Instead, things can be interpreted from different perspectives and there is a lot more information available on any given theory or fact. The change in the way that knowledge is presented and can be found from my initial schooling to what I experienced as part of my Bachelor’s and now my Master’s education was a significant aspect of my learning history that necessitated strong decision making on my part. At the end of my Bachelor’s degree, I was faced once more with the decision of whether to continue on with my education or to seek a job. This time, my parents were not an influencing factor; instead, I had to carefully evaluate my own desires and aspirations against the possible choices that were in front of me. This decision was not an easy one, and this was largely because I felt that I had so many options before me. I had the ability to go on with my education or to look at a new job either in my old industry or something entirely new based on my Bachelor’s. The concept of moving forward and onto a Master’s degree was a little frightening, and part of me was uncertain whether I had the skills required to complete the degree well. Ultimately, it was sociology itself that helped me to arrive at an answer. The social sciences, which have been the focus of my studies, are different than natural sciences because social sciences are strongly focused on people (Giddens, 1986). By studying for my Bachelor’s degree, I learnt a lot about myself and about the way that I interacted with people around me. My study was a positive influence in my own life and helped me to develop better interactions with family members that I had not previously got along well with. Because of this, I felt that continuing on with my education was the right decision for me as it would bring value to my own life and relationships, even if I never end up using the degree from the perspective of a career. Functionalism In sociology, one important perspective that applies well to my learning history is the functionalist perspective. This perspective considers the way that different parts of society interact with one another to create a stable whole (Jureidini et al., 2003). This viewpoint is one that I have found important in my own life, and one that has helped me to continue with my education, and also to decide what I will do in my future. In my early education, I always considered the perspective that it was me against the world. I felt that my decisions only had to take into account what was best for me, and the perspectives of anyone else did not matter. Functionalist perspectives suggest that the interaction of components of society with one another is a critical aspect of society functioning effectively. One area where this is important is within education, where many actors are involved in ensuring that information is effectively conveyed (de Beaugrande, 1997) . This is something that I have found to be particularly important throughout my education as an adult. There are a lot of different people involved in education, and it is critical that these interact well with one another. When I was in secondary education, I was not aware of the role that teachers played in my life, or of the influence that they had over my perceptions of the world and my thoughts about the future. One early learning experience that I had where this was important was near the beginning of high school after I had witnessed a bad fight between my parents, and was disillusioned about the concept of school. Because it was my parents who had taught me that it was important to finish school, observing them fight made me feel like everything they had taught me was a lie. I began to seriously consider stopping caring about my grades and drop out of school as soon as I was able to. I had one teacher who was extremely patient with me during this time, and spent a lot of time discussing with me the value of staying in school. Perhaps what is most important about this memory is that the teacher seemed to know that talking to me about job prospects would not help me to find my way. Instead, we talked about how learning could change a person’s life, and the way that they felt about themselves. She told me that if I did not do my best at school, I would always look back and wonder what I could have been. This incident is a strong example of the way that parts of society are critical for one another; in this case, how good teachers help to create a strong next generation. For me, without the advice of that one teacher, I would never be where I am today, and that would be a waste. It is a reinforcement of functionalist theories, which postulate that the solutions to social and educational problems are possible within the current social structure (Levinson et al., 2002). The incident is also an important reminder of how much influence one person can have over the life of another. Future as a Learner My learning history has taken me from early schooling where I was passionate about learning, through a time where I focused on a career and finally back to learning again. A lot of my life remains to be decided, and there are significant decisions that I must make about my future. One thing that I have found out is that I do not want to stop learning. When I spent time developing my career I found that my days were monotonous and it felt like my life was going around in circles, rather than me actually getting anywhere. Although they have been challenging, the years that I have spent working on my tertiary education have been extremely rewarding. Although there are many doors open for me after I complete my Master’s degree, there are only two main avenues that I am considering. The first one is becoming involved in teaching. One of the strongest drivers for this is the role that teachers play in the lives of children, and the fact that my own life’s direction was influenced by one teacher deciding to invest time and effort into me. The second avenue is to continue with my education and work on a PhD, with the eventual aim of being involved in research. Both of these options appeal to me, and I have not made a decision as to what my future will be. One thing that I am certain of is that there are many perspectives that can be considered for any one life (Wilson and Hayes, 2000), and that it is important to carefully weigh up options before making them. Finally, I know that whatever decision I make will follow my heart and that I will remain an avid learner. I turned my back from learning once already in my life, and that is a decision that I regret. Conclusion My identity as a learner has been significantly shaped by my family, by the time that I spent working for a living, by the things that I learnt as part of my Bachelor’s degree and the learning that I am continuing to do. While my parents played an important role in my learning experience in my early life, at this point in time, my decisions are my own, and I must consider carefully what I do next in my life. Both the functionalist and post-modern perspectives play an important role in explaining my learning history and the decisions that I made. Regardless of what my future holds, I know that I want to continue learning, and that I will take the past into account. References Briton, D., 1996. The modern practice of adult education: a post-modern critique, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Connel, R. W., 2003. Working-class families and the new secondary education. Australian Journal of Education, 47, pp. 237–252. de Beaugrande, R., 1997. Society, education, linguistics, and language: inclusion and exclusion in theory and practice. Linguistics and Education, 9, pp. 99–158. Dick, T. P. and Rallis, S. F., 1991. Factors and influences on high school students' career choices. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 22, pp. 281–292. Giddens, A. 1986. Sociology: a brief but critical introduction. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Jureidini, R., Kenny, S. and Poole, M., 2003. The search for society. In: R. Jureidini and M. Poole, eds. Sociology: Australian connections. Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest. Levinson, D. L., Cookson Jr., P. W. and Sadovnik, A. R. eds., 2002. Education and sociology: an encyclopedia. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer. Reay, D., 2001. Finding or losing yourself?: working-class relationships to education. Jounal of Education Policy, 16, pp. 333–346. Usher, R., Byrant, I. and Johnston, R., 1997. Adult education and the postmodern challenge: Learning beyond the limits. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, A. L. and Hayes, E. R., 2000. Handbook of adult and continuing education. Lanhorn, MD. Read More