3.1 Experiential Learning

In 2013 the outline syllabus for the University of Huddersfield PGCE/Cert.Ed. (Lifelong Learning) DFA7230 module requires students to learn about

Factors influencing learning, e.g. previous educational experience, motivation. Theories and models of teaching and learning, including experiential and reflective learning models, behaviourist , cognitivist and constructivist theories, theories of motivation, social and situated theories of learning. Informal and personalised learning. Examination of models of adult learning. Critical discussion of learning style models. (University of Huddersfield 2013: 34)

It is at first glance perhaps surprising that as late as 2013 behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism continue to be considered appropriate theories of learning for VET. One reason could be because these established theories of learning are considered to be received wisdom. In order to unpack this premise I refer to Pinar’s ideas around curriculum theory, and in particular the reconceptualisation movement in the late 1970s. He categorised three types of ‘professors of education’ (p. 4), the traditionalists, the conceptual-empiricists and the re-conceptualists. As Pinar observed ‘There is no longer a curriculum field, with shared views of its purpose’. (1977: 3) and to reconceptualise educational theory according to Pinar would require a preference for ‘consciousness raising’ (1977: 11) over curriculum guidance. Pinar puts it thus:

To understand more fully the efforts of the individuals involved in inquiry of this kind requires an understanding of meta-theory and philosophy of science; without such a grounding, it is difficult, if not impossible, for curricularists to see clearly their own work in the context of the growth of knowledge in general. (1977: 12)

Drawing upon Bernstein’s work Pinar argues that traditional theories will continue to dominate while those who are concerned with curriculum theory and ITE in the LLS cling to the stage-based rationale. In order to reconceptualise educational theory teachers must first develop a maturity of thought based upon refining existing theories (ibid.: 1977).

It could be argued that standard textbooks finding their way into ITE reading lists support the persistence of what constitutes acceptable theory from a stage-based rationale. It would be reasonable to suggest that they keep a close eye on the content of initial training programmes in order to align their topics and chapters. Indeed, in common with many disciplines the authors of many of these textbooks are also members of the teaching staff responsible for curriculum development.

Certainly a glance at one of the more popular texts from the module reading list is consistent with this premise as out of 23 pages devoted to theories of learning one paragraph on the last page offers this to readers:

If a teacher tells students that one must always wash one’s hands before handling food but doesn’t actually do so then students learn that hand-washing is not important. Studies show that what we teachers do is overwhelmingly more influential than what we say. Setting an example in this way is called ‘modelling’. What do you need to ‘model’ in your teaching; enthusiasm? Thoroughness? Patience? Neat presentation? Safe practices? Whatever you decide remember that ‘do as I say not as I do’ simply doesn’t work as a teaching strategy. We also teach unconsciously by our behaviour towards our students. A teacher who smiles at, encourages and helps students of Asian and European origin equally is teaching the students to respect everyone, regardless of their origin. Such inadvertent teaching is sometimes called the ‘hidden curriculum’. (Petty 2009: 21)

Despite referring to studies that show that what teachers do is more influential than what they say, there is no citation or reference at the end of Geoff Petty’s section. Over a 100 years of research into how people learn, from Dewey to Lave and Wenger, is distilled into the above paragraph, so perhaps the lack of student engagement with experiential and socially situated learning theory is not so surprising. This section is an attempt at a remedy.

Experiential learning theory begins to form a structure for modern educational thought in the work of Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and John Dewey (1859–1952), among others. Before this the main theories of learning revolved around behaviourism (Baum 2005). Dewey ’s ideas formed out of the pragmatist tradition , the founders of which were his counterparts Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1913), who he studied under, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) and William James (1842–1910). Pragmatism (from the Greek word pragma for deed or action) is concerned with the concept of truth and practical consequences derived from meaning, where meaning itself was derived from experience, not cognition (Hookway 2010). As Peirce argued in relation to the pragmatist maxim:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (Peirce 1992: 132)

Pragmatism rejects the value neutral perspectives of inquiry, embedding values within what terms ‘the pressing concerns of the wider society’ (Weinberg 2008: 28). This raises a question about what interested Dewey about education. Certainly he was seeking to change the way that society viewed the purpose of education, but in keeping with social constructionism his questions related to what ought to be a democratic and experiential education, and how educationalists could take forward his ideas (Dewey 1897). Dewey (1938) argued strongly for experience to be part of an educational process, defining experience in relation to democracy as the ‘free interaction of individual human beings with the surrounding conditions’ (Dewey 1988). In a similar way to Bourdieu he was concerned with what Holstein and Gubrium term meaningful practical activities in preference to theorising. The central similarity appears to be a rejection of the deterministic ideology of ‘goal-oriented’ education in preference to education for growth. This is certainly the case explicitly in Dewey’s writing where he demonstrated a particular interest in the nature of reflection, and the non-linear process of learning, arguing that

An experience is always what it is because of a transaction taking place between an individual and what, at the time, constitutes his environment, whether the latter consists of persons with whom he is talking about some topic or event, the subject talked about being also a part of the situation; or the toys with which he is playing; the book he is reading [… ]; or the materials of an experiment he is performing. (Dewey 1938: 43–44)

This conception of learning contrasts with those of Piaget and Inhelder (1969), who considered that learning was an individual adaptive process, with each stage of cognitive and intellectual development depending on the full grasp of the last. Competence resulted from a child’s interactions with the world. They stressed that individuals co-exist within a social equilibrium that is task oriented and based on intellect and invention.

It is within the study of assimilation and accommodation that we can find sound applications of experiential learning through observed practice. Piaget and Inhelder (1969) observed that as children grow and develop they create schema (frameworks of existing knowledge and experience that are understood by the child). These allow new objects (experiences) to be assimilated, that is to fit into an existing schema, or conversely to be accommodated, that is to determine that a new schema needs to be created. Piaget’s work also informed that of Kolb and Fry (1975), when they developed a model to describe the experiential learning in terms of a cycle. Dewey , however, was more concerned with the relationships between reflection and thinking, and experience and the environment.

To ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction – discovery of the connection of things. (Dewey 1916: 96)

He affirmed that experience is both active and passive, in that it is not primarily cognitive and in that a valuable experience contains relationships or continuities. In terms of teacher development, Dewey has a great deal to offer, particularly in the contexts of lesson observation. O’Leary invokes Dewey when he makes the case for observation as a professional endeavour:

The starting point for Dewey was the collection of data, or ‘observable facts’ (1933: 104). These data form the raw material from which reflection is made and from which ideas are then generated. (O’Leary 2014: 110)

As an aside, it is interesting to note that in Inuit tradition , learning is mainly achieved by observation, where children learn by observing the activities of the mature community (Rogoff et al. 2003). They argued, drawing upon the work of Dewey (1938) that increased attendance at school, rather than increasing intellectual development, served to limit participation and development because of the lack of direct contact with actual mature activity. Child-focused communities (such as schools), they argue, therefore form cultural traditions that were more aligned to factory routines than intent participation (2003). Echoing their argument Hoel (1999) asserts that

Learning through imitation and observation, and teaching through modelling are approaches that have had low status in Western, individual-centred theories of development and learning.

She further supports the underlying argument:

A full understanding of the zone of proximal development must lead to a new evaluation of the role imitation plays in learning [Vygotsky 1978]. Through imitation children will internalize the adults’ or more capable peers’ language, actions, values, and thus join their cultural community. On the other hand, they will also contribute to the culture, as the individual is always in dialogue with the world around. (Hoel 1999)

To return to Dewey , Stott (1995: 31) describes his philosophy thus:

Surely Dewey was right that humankind is implicated in an organic-material world open to intelligent and creative scientific research.

I like the word ‘implicated’ in this quotation, particularly as it suggests that I must take responsibility for my contribution to the inculcation of new teachers in the LLS . I also take heart from the thought that Dewey has been both castigated and revered by those wishing to influence educational values at a political and philosophical level (Pring 2007: 3).

Education, defined by Dewey as transmission through communication, not only ensures continuity of existence, but existence itself. He argued strongly for experience to be favoured over instruction, in that whereas all genuine education derives from experience, not all experience is positive in the sense of being able to take an individual forward educationally. Indeed, for Dewey, reflection is about problem-solving, the embodiment of learning as a holistic activity and taking into account the accumulated experiences of both (1916).

Dewey employs the word experience in the same sense as life continuity through renewal. According to Dewey (1916), human beings recreate beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery and practices. Where individuals in a social group eventually pass away, through education the social group continues (Dewey 1916). This suggests an emphasis on education as an affordance for life continuity through social groupings. Moreover, Dewey argued, without education this renewal is impossible. Initiation into social practices, in addition to mere physiological preservation, requires mature members of a group to educate the next representatives of the social group (Dewey 1916). His suggestion is that with the growth of civilisation there is an increasing gap between the original capacities of the immature members and the standards and customs required to become mature members (1916). It is broad-based education, rather than simply mastery, which spans this perceived growing gap. In a similar vein Bourdieu argued that action is ‘directed towards certain ends without being consciously directed to these ends, or determined by them’ (Bourdieu 1990a: 10). Dewey’s ideas rely on a view of education as democratic, whereas according to Randle and Brady (1997), charting the impact of changes to college audit and accountability structures after incorporation, and Simmons (2008), writing about pre-incorporation colleges, the prevailing discourse in the LLS was becoming culturally monolithic, managerialist and performative. In contrast Dewey claims that a society that not only changes but also has the ideal of change will have different standards from one that seeks to perpetuate customs. For me as a teacher in FE I was free to imagine and enact democratic idealism in my classroom, however naively. During my time as a teacher educator and managerialism was my lived experience, shared with that of my trainee teachers .

According to Leinhardt and Greeno (1986), and Shulman (1986), teachers develop their knowledge about teaching and learning situations through repeated classroom teaching experiences and interactions with teachers. This has resulted in an increasing alignment of the teacher education curriculum to capitalise on the situated nature of learning for trainee teachers. This formalised nature of experiential learning resonates with Dewey ’s justification of the importance of context for education. Kim and Hannafin (2008: 1837) also scope a framework for a situated perspective on learning and knowing, and thereby teacher knowledge, and this helps us to consider experience in the light of Dewey’s imperative for education.

Dewey ’s notion of experience as continuity and renewal is a useful device to explain how, when applied to educational institutions, traditions ‘crystallise’ around the history and culture of the school. They are functional in that thoughts, actions and allegiances (policies and procedures) are implemented from the symbolic nature of the individual and institutional identities shaped by traditions. Dewey prefers a transformational role for experience rather than a functional one, and the difference in perspective could derive from the comparison between what Dewey calls experience as unfolding and experience as continuous and reconstructive.

In learning an action, instead of having it given ready-made, one of necessity learns to vary its factors to make varied combinations of them, according to change of circumstances. A possibility of continuing progress is opened up by the fact that in learning one act, methods are developed good for use in other situations. Still more important is the fact that the human being acquires a habit of learning. He learns to learn. (Dewey 1916: 37)

Dewey notes the difference between perfecting instincts in order to take appropriate action and experimenting with reactions in order to achieve flexibility and varied control over time. Where it is useful to utilise instinctive reactions (mastery techniques) to adjust to tasks, the adjustment is limited and specialised, rather than varied and transferable to new situations. It may take longer to develop habits and gain from many experiences without immediate success, but it is more successful in the long term as the process of learning (learning how to learn) creates adaptability. Furthermore being open to possibilities, having time to notice what is or may be significant and taking risks resembles Dewey ’s notion of experience as relational (Dewey 1938). The environment allows for possibilities, providing for the conditions for a transformative education.

Many writers developed the social and environmental aspects of experiential learning theory, and one of the earliest exponents of social learning theory was Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896–1934), working and writing in the early part of the twentieth century.

Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and then, later, on the individual level, first between people, then inside the child. (Vygotsky 1978: 57)

There is a tendency to want to situate learning within a context that is meaningful to the learner, with the notion that formal learning (i.e. in a classroom) should give way to non-formal learning (i.e. the workplace, the community and everyday life). These notions of formal and non-formal learning are variously seen as radical and/or innovative. In particular the LLS is feeling the squeeze from government drivers to fund specialist vocationally biased schools at one end of the traditional age range for FE (16–19) and fragmenting the provision for employed learners at the other end (adults and returnees to study).

Teachers create conditions for learning where students can internalise the prevailing truth claims and dominant discourse against a backdrop of contradictions and crises, forming new ways of thinking and performing within a zone of proximal development. This is the distance between the actual development level that is reflected, and the level that is accomplished during the learning process.

Situated learning developed from a new wave of theorists such as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. For them learning is a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs. They have developed a movement from

a view according to which cognitive processes (and thus learning) are primary, and a view according to which social practice is the primary, generative phenomenon, and learning is one of its characteristics. (Lave and Wenger 1991: 34)

Cox (2005) provides different accounts of what constitutes a CoP, that of people working on common endeavours (Lave and Wenger 1991), to people who work on similar or parallel activities to create new practices. The inference is mainly that of employees collaborating within institutionalised structures, such as companies, where knowledge is constructed for the benefit of the organisation (Avis 1999, 2005).

Experiential Learning theory implies the continuous interaction between the person and the context with reflexivity and at the heart of learning from experience. However, there is a significant difference between the idealised version of an ITE in the LLS classroom, and the reality. Stott (1995), commenting on Dewey ’s influence on educational practices in North America, puts it thus:

Dewey’ s educational experiment-revolution designed to bring democracy to North America has not been successful: its humanistic promises lie unfulfilled, and classroom group activities can be even more oppressive and less growthful than superior class instruction. Education is at the crossroads. (1995: 32)

I find his conclusion troubling when viewed through the lenses of the dominant discourses emanating from this coalition government, Hayes’s (2003) challenge to therapeutic education, and the constructions of adult learner identity (Zackrisson and Assarsson 2008).

3.2 Habitus

This section uses Bourdieusian theory as a tool with which to shape the arguments in this book. The literature surrounding concepts of cultural capital, habitus and field are reviewed to better understand the situated nature of trainee teachers’ participation in ITE in the LLS .

One of the most noted theoretical constructs surrounding learner participation is that of habitus . More recently the concept has been associated with the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), but it derives from the Greek term hexis , meaning disposition or active condition that is acquired rather than being the result of innate capacity. As Aristotle stated:

‘Having’ [ hexis ] means (a) In one sense an activity, as it were, of the haver and the thing had, or as in the case of an action or motion; for when one thing makes and another is made, there is between them an act of making. In this way between the man who has a garment and the garment which is had, there is a ‘having.’ Clearly, then, it is impossible to have a ‘having’ in this sense; for there will be an infinite series if we can have the having of what we have. But (b) there is another sense of ‘having’ which means a disposition, in virtue of which the thing which is disposed is disposed well or badly, and either independently or in relation to something else. E.g., health is a state, since it is a disposition of the kind described. Further, any part of such a disposition is called a state; and hence the excellence [arête] of the parts is a kind of state. (Aristotle 1933: 5.1022b)

I referred to the term arete or excellence in Chap. 2 when considering the purpose and function of professional development as a journey into practice. In this section I explore the related term hexis , the act of bringing into being that which has been made, in relation to the disposition of the developing teacher .

For Bourdieu the term habitus refers to

systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu 1990c: 53)

He also describes habitus thus:

The source of historical action, that of the artist, the scientist, or the member of government just as much as that of the worker or the petty civil servant, is not an active subject confronting society as if that society were an object constituted externally. The source resides neither in consciousness nor in things but in the relationship between two stages of the social, that is, between the history objectified in things, in the form of institutions, and in the history incarnated in bodies, in the form of that system of enduring dispositions which I call habitus. (1990b: 190)

In this definition lies the nub of the issue of the relationship between subject and object, not formed in opposition to each other, but relational and connected. Bourdieu defines ‘field’ in an educational context as one of the structural elements that serve to preserve and reproduce the cultural capital that derives from qualifications and credentials for the benefit of dominant groups and institutions. In other words for Bourdieu the precepts of habitus, field and capital are relational and dispositional, echoing Dewey’s call for creative democratic action (Emirbayer and Schneiderhan 2013). Somewhere between Aristotle ’s notions of hexis , arete , and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus , lies the theory of ‘learning as becoming’ (Colley et al. 2007). In her research she began to question the basis of biographical work as a way of understanding professional identity . For Colley et al., habitus and field cannot be separated, even for the purposes of research enquiry. To do so risks too narrow a focus on identity over the ‘structure and functioning of the social world’ (Bourdieu 1986: 242). In previous work concerned with VET , Colley et al. (2003) distinguish between accounts that preface workplace competences through the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge and those which allow for a relational understanding of learning, that of becoming through identity formation. Colley uses the concept of ‘vocational habitus ’ to problematise both the coming into being of those people learning in VET settings through the reinforcement of social inequalities in the workplace and the sensibility that derives from emotional labour capacities in the workplace. This article drew upon the national project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC), within the ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (Hodkinson and James 2003), which argued for vocational education to be studied in authentic, albeit complex settings that more readily represent the socio-cultural nature of teaching and learning.

It is important to set this review alongside the literature on WP in HE, especially as the majority of in-service trainee teachers in this study have had no prior experience of HE. It is already known that there are varying levels of participation in lifelong learning for different groupings in society, such as socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity (Gorard and Smith 2006a). It follows that these inequalities will be reproduced in ITE in the LLS courses. Interestingly for in-service trainee teachers, particularly those following a certificate route, their entry into formal education at HE level is a result of significantly overcoming many of the recognised barriers to participation beyond compulsory education. Gorard and Smith (2006a) categorise these barriers as situational, institutional and dispositional, with the proviso that the use of the term barrier reduces the scope to fully appreciate the many and varied factors which influence learning trajectories for individuals. To understand these barriers more fully from the perspective of what is known about HE participation, it is useful to consider forms of capital, in particular what Bourdieu (1986: 243) termed cultural capital—the long-lasting dispositions of the mind and the body, the objects of use by a group or an individual and the institutionalised appropriation of these dispositions and objects into qualifications, for example. He contrasts this accumulated history and labour to games of chance:

an imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties. (Bourdieu 1986: 241)

Bourdieu suggests that this notion of cultural capital can be used to link inequalities in educational achievement with its distribution between social classes (1986). Educational attainment is necessarily an individualised measurement, whereas the accumulation of life chances and skill sets (objectified and packaged for ease of measurement by awarding institutions as credentials and qualifications) hinge, according to Halsey et al. (1997), on inequalities based on social class thus creating a ‘compensatory education’. Personal and social skills are re-packaged and delivered to those identified and targeted because of their perceived lack of cultural capital in order that those targeted might better exploit the opportunities available (Halsey et al. 1997: 11).

An interesting perspective to explore is the relationship between non-participation and its converse motivation and persistence in the learning journey. Beyond what are seen as extrinsic and intrinsic motivators at an individual level, there is also the process of engagement and participation of learners within an institutional context. If learners are motivated purely by extrinsic factors, then the efforts necessary to participate beyond compulsory education may be weighed against the lack of immediate resolution of social, cultural and economic pressures and may be seen as not worth the journey.

According to Gorard and Smith (2006b), the reasons for lack of aspiration are under researched, leaving, as Watson identifies, a passive and silent group who far from being passive by choice may indeed be ‘seriously angry about the hand they have been dealt’ (Watson 2006: 8). Aspiration is easily displaced by the challenges of participation when faced with the pressures faced by many young people from lower socio-economic groupings (Gorard and Smith 2006b).

The language of identity , according to Saussure (1974: 120), not only names the reality but also produces it through its differences in meaning, becoming a self-narrative. This is often seen in remarks from the middle classes about the rise in vocational education being ‘a great idea for other people’s children’ (Wolf 2002: 56). Policy makers then begin to problematise learners from diverse backgrounds and cultures, bringing to bear a universal ‘WE’, constructed from prevailing social and hierarchical norms and acceptable differences in meaning. Even when HE, for example, is expanded to include a route for those from diverse, often deprived, backgrounds lacking in cultural capital, limited earnings and poor job prospects still prevail:

Certain ethnic minority groups appear to be significantly disadvantaged in the British labour market. Their members experience considerable additional unemployment risks and earnings gaps and these inevitably lead to major material consequences and negatively impact the economic advancement of relevant ethnic groups. Limited economic opportunities are closely bound up with social exclusion. (Tolley and Rundle 2006: 21).

Additionally it involves two main questions, one concerning the truth surrounding what it is to be and the other concerning the evidential basis for knowing what it is to be. One problem is that of change, in that we tend to give an account of the intuition we commonly have that throughout our lives there is something persisting, something that makes us in one sense the same person at 60 years old as at six. This involves a continuity relationship, and when juxtaposed in my research with notions of cultural capital, these relationships may illuminate the accumulation of life histories, bound into memories (Sfard and Prusak 2005). To understand that personal identities are transitive supports the notion of learning as becoming (Colley et al. 2003).

Parfit (1987: 219) argues that our memories or consciousness are a part of our personal identity , not the basis for it, and not deterministic. If this argument is set against the ‘game of chance’ (Bourdieu 1986: 241) then interventions and compensation have at least the power to validate identities. Parfit (1987) calls for a discourse or a language for personal identity that moves away from the belief that there is a ‘special nature of personal identity’ (p. 219). He describes and illuminates the issues by shifting perspectives, moving the debate forward beyond the principle of self-interest, towards a self-reflexive , revisionist discourse. Parfit’s view resonates with notions of a compensatory education, which can impact on access, participation and persistence through a validation, at least, of the continuity and diversity of the subjectivity of learner identity. It also finds an ally in Sfard and Prusak’s notion of identity equating with ‘stories about persons’ (Sfard and Prusak 2005: 14), where insights about identity are gained through narrative. Biesta (2011: 537) also questions sociological notions of identity, seeing these as explanatory and viewed from a third-person perspective, preferring to discuss education in relation to subjectivity. Biesta (2005) adds to the discussion about identity by questioning the whole premise of ‘learning’. He argues against seeing education as an ‘economic exchange between the provider and consumer’ (Biesta 2005). Turning on its head the accepted mantra of ‘meeting learners’ needs’, Biesta argues for a language of ‘trust, violence and responsibility’ (2005: 60). To sign up for this view on education, teachers may need to return to the learning theories and models that they studied in the formal setting of the classroom, re-embracing cognitive , experiential and social learning theories.

According to Kim and Hannafin (2008: 1837), trainee teachers participate in classroom practice firstly by developing a situated understanding of the concepts and principles surrounding teacher knowledge and secondly by employing strategies for using these in a future situation. Finally they assimilate, accommodate and negotiate the shared beliefs, identities and values from the practices of a situated community. Vygotsky would have the development of the first two as interacting lines, interpreted by Ottesen (2007: 42) as knowledge and experience of concepts as taught, derived from knowledge and experience of practice as applied. Ottesen (2007: 34) invokes the Vygotskian idea of cultural meditation in relation to reflective practice . He recognises that

concepts mediate trainee teachers’ understanding of practical experiences, while at the same time, the meaning of the concepts are developed.

One possible danger of an over reliance on experiential learning for trainee teachers lies in the routinised nature of many of these practices, especially as they become so through audit , inspection and standardisation activities. If we accept that education is process of meaning making (Bruner 1996: 13) framed out of perspective, culture and context, then, according to Ottesen, both teacher education and the workplace serve as ‘constraining influences’ (Ottesen 2007: 43) on the trainee teacher . One of the constraining influences in ITE in the LLS within the LLS is the continual surveillance by government and regulatory bodies. Alongside this scrutiny at governmental level the tendency for researchers and practitioners is to observe and criticise policy discourse where they perceive these to entail credentialism, commodification, instrumentalism and privatisation. In doing so there is an inevitable engagement with an ontological and an epistemological subtext from both perspectives. The identification of education and participation becomes a play on language, with realities entrenched from either a technicist or sociological deterministic standpoint. Neither allows for any shared understanding, mutual respect or consensus.

3.3 Summary

This chapter has been concerned with two theoretical frameworks, those of experiential learning and that of habitus . These are important as they speak directly to my main aims for the book which is to develop an understanding of the nature of participation in ITE in the LLS , and to investigate the extent to which ITE in the LLS prepares teachers as professional practitioners in the LLS. The processes and products of the stated ITE in the LLS curriculum and my philosophical approach to education are derived from Deweyan theory in the main. What it is to become a teacher in the LLS forms partly from the dispositional nature of participation, and in this chapter I have demonstrated how the inculcation of professional knowledge and practice may find, or as I argue, more likely fails to find purchase through ‘habits of learning’ (Dewey 1916: 37), ‘social practices’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 34) and ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1990a: 53).

I have sought to reconcile two theoretical frameworks by prefacing the reflexive nature of the book, grounded as it is in the biography of a Deweyan-inspired practitioner, and the socio-cultural nature of the research questions. I have justified the inclusion of both frameworks by discussing the legitimacy of harnessing them in the search for a deeper understanding of the phenomena. The application of these particular theoretical frameworks also develops from the reflexive nature of this book.