What Do We Mean by "Learning"?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: Education and the Limits of Learning: How Much Learning Does Education Need?

Abstract

The term ‘learning’ has recently become questionable in philosophy of education, especially among those one might place within the continental school of thought. This begins with the powerful argument leveraged against “learnification” in Gert Biesta’s Beyond Learning (2006). In his recent book On Study (2013), Tyson Lewis draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben to develop his own unique critique of learning with study as its replacement. Eduardo Duarte, by contrast, has embraced learning in his recent book, Being and Learning (2012), working from multiple sources especially Heidegger’s use of the term in What is Called Thinking? (1976).

This paper seeks to show three distinct senses of the term ‘learning’ used by each of the aforementioned authors, and to analyze them according to a Christian theological taxonomy corresponding to the scriptural figures Paul, Peter, and John. The purpose of this theological approach to understanding these senses of the term ‘learning’ will be to offer more than a purely semantic or analytical assessment, moving into the more nuanced descriptive differences that distinguish each author from the other and their corresponding notions of learning. The final point will be pragmatic: To show that it greatly depends what we mean by “learning” to make sense of how much learning education needs. It may be the case that each author is simultaneously correct—a classic pragmatic outcome.

Another instrumental purpose of this paper will be to show how theology can be used as a constructive tool for philosophy of education. These authors all share a theological openness in their work: From Biesta’s (2014) sequel to Beyond Learning that engages with John Caputo’s theology, Lewis’ understanding of Agamben’s theological imagination, and Duarte’s Hellenic and Eastern mystical sources. In other words, my theological approach is not meant to add something from the outside of these contemporary texts in philosophy of education; on the contrary, my approach will be to show a certain fidelity to the transcendent spirit of their engagement with the concept of learning, providing some clarity to the potential meaning of learning for the philosophical discussion within education.

References
Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Duarte, E. (2012). Being and learning: A poetic phenomenology of education. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Heidegger, M. (1976). What is called thinking? New York: Harper Perennial.
Lewis, T. (2014). On study: Giorigio Agamben and educational potentiality. London and New York: Routledge.

Author

• Samuel Rocha, The University of British Columbia