Learning-as-Experience: A Phenomenological Account of Educative Erlebnis

• In Event: 47.098 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 47.098-3 - Conceptions of Learning

Abstract

The event of learning is the Achilles heel of the “discourses” or “language[s] of learning” dominant in education today (Meyer-Drawe 2008; Biesta 2012). We have almost no empirical access to or control over this event. It can’t be caused or guaranteed, and its occurrence is visible (if at all) only post facto. For phenomenology, however, learning-as-experience forms a key moment in lived experience (Erlebnis). It appears as something that occurs and can be fostered through the variation of possible experience familiar to phenomenology in the form of the reduction. In describing learning-as-experience, this paper sheds new light on contemporary discourses of learning—from the intricacies of the learning sciences to the effortful learning advocated by the growth mindset.

Authors

• Anja Kraus, Linnaeus University

• Norm Friesen, Boise State University