Jarvis, P. (2006) Toward a comprehensive theory of human learning
From WikEd
Jarvis takes the foundational understanding of experiential learning of Dewey and Kolb to a broader level human experience by extending in this volume experiential learning to the learning of the every day in all settings. He brings the issue of how one learns to the vary nature of being in the world. In this chapter he situates the phenomena of learning in a socio-cultural frame embracing the influence of the social and cultural aspects of one’s life as integral aspect of and constitutive of individual learning. Opening by situating experiential learning as a part of one’s life world he next delineates three spheres; culture, space and time as representative of the life world, which influence individuals and especially individual experiential learning.
Culture he represents as the aggregation of the skills, attitudes, beliefs, values, emotions that set a people apart as a society descriptive beyond the simple physical nature of individuals. Culture is learned through experience, experiential learning is interwoven with development of identity and a part of acquiring membership. This is seen in sub-sets of primary socialization, secondary socialization, brainwashing and indoctrination and, cultural and social capital. Primary socialization has to do with the interactive process of engaging in the culture directly from childhood through engagement with parents, others near a child through the use of language and symbols representative of the culture. Each sub-group of a society has their own particular value and structural system with which one engages in the process of life thorough secondary socialization. Socialization, Jarvis contends, is a process of becoming particularly in secondary socialization it is the process of acquiring membership and with membership comes perceptions and values as one internalizes the external culture of a particular sub-group. The issue of brainwashing and indoctrination reveal the aspects of socialization gone amiss in which one is subjected to pressures to conform as a part of secondary socialization. Culture is most significant as means of social interaction and provides specific positions relative the socialization forming a foundation of social capital of groups and individual within groups.
Space is addressed in the terms of physical space or the geo-physical location of individuals in their relationship to their setting and world and social space. The influence of how one is touched as he or she encounters experience through the various media of communication impacts the nature of learning and development. Social space takes on the context of social interpretation of space and distance, or class and difference among people.
The continuous nature of experience draws out the inclusion of a historical perspective in understanding learning through external and internal history. External history is seen as a linier separation of an event and the individual’s present position in time. With internal history one confronts the aspects of the temporary nature of time as a continuous process as we strive to advance not so much to a goal but to move on in the process of being in the world situated in the experience in the socio-cultural setting.
