Expanding the Theory of Expansive Learning: Toward a Dialectic of the Regressive and the Emancipatory

• In Event: 32.057 - Activity Theory: Mediating Interdisciplinary Methods and Methodologies

Abstract

This paper argues for an expansion of our conceptions of learning - to regard learning as dialectical movement between regression and emancipation. The data of this study consist of 30 videotaped visits of home care workers to the homes of their elderly clients within the municipal home care services of Helsinki, Finland. The learning cycles analyzed in this study were mostly (87 % ) mixed: predominantly defensive cycles contained also some expansive actions and vice versa. The prevalence of “mixed” cases indicates that learning in these encounters is interplay and movement between expansive and defensive learning actions. In studies of learning, such dynamic and tension-laden interplay should be taken as an important focus of analysis in its own right.

Author

• Yrjo H. Engestrom, University of Helsinki