Expanding Notions of Educational Opportunities and Trajectories: Studying Norwegian "Learning Lives"

• In Event: 72.018 - Research Knowledge and a Vision of Equal Scholarly Participation: International Perspectives and Opportunities for Collaboration

Abstract

In Norway, as in many other education systems, there is a concern with standardised curricula, measurable testable outcomes, high-stakes forms of assessment and a high degree of state led governance and accountability (OECD, 2013). At the same time, the global competition for jobs, the rise of robotic technologies, aging populations, globalisation and migration have created the conditions in the countries of the global North where the value of education as defined in purely economic terms, is perceived to have declined (Weil, 2014). This has created conditions for educational research that seeks to expand notions of educational opportunities and pathways, as well as equal scholarly participation, defined within broader issues of 21st century learning.
Objectives
There are two main objectives of this paper. One is to report on a research agenda in Norway termed ‘learning lives’, studying how learners’ narratives about themselves (both past and present) become resources which are then mobilized within the learning process. The second is to reflect on national and institutional contexts influencing research teaching, learning, and conduct linked to this research agenda.
Conceptual framing
Drawing on studies of life-long learning, this paper relates learning to agency, looking at particular ‘ecological’ conditions of people’s interaction, as well as philosophical and political concern to disentangle the changing meaning of education in an era of what has been described as encroaching pedagogicization (Biesta, 2011).

Methods and data
Within the large-scale ethnographic project called ‘Local literacies and community spaces’(2009-2013), following 60 students during a two-year period in- and out-of-school in one multicultural community in Oslo, this paper will focus on one school activity as a way of engaging students in social responsibility and experiencing meaningful future possibilities for themselves. The activity is part of entrepreneurship education in upper secondary school with a group of four girls developing a project on environmental awareness and a project to change people’s habits. Different methods were used combining observational and interview methods with methods were the informants self-reported and documented their own practices.

Results and Significance
This paper argues that research must untangle ways of performing and constructing identity related to longer timescales in student life course trajectories. We also demonstrate how students envision possibilities for themselves within a Norwegian public school system with a strong emphasis on quality education provision for all. The paper concludes on how the students with diverse cultural backgrounds, experience future opportunities for themselves as part of their ‘learning lives’ in- and out-of-school.
The significance of this paper concerns the ways ’learning lives’ as an educational approach has been communicated within the research community across national educational contexts and language barriers, as well as ways we have tried to build up a momentum for this research through research collaboration and teaching.

Biesta, G. J. J. (2011). Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy. Boulder Co: Paradigm.

OECD, Centre of Innovation in Education Research. (2013). Trends Shaping Education 2013. Paris: OECD.

Weil, D. (2014). The fissured workplace: Why work became so bad for so many and what can be done to improve it. Harvard University Press.

Author

• Ola Erstad, University of Oslo