Abstract
Accepting that human understanding of learning inevitably employs metaphor, this chapter argues that the idea of professional learning is most fruitfully illuminated by employing the metaphor of becoming. The argument has two strands. Firstly, we show that becoming enjoys significant advantages over common alternative metaphors, such as, acquisition and transfer, participation and construction, which are still favoured by various policy makers and industry bodies. Secondly, we outline and discuss several examples of profession learning, derived from various research projects, to illustrate the value of the becoming metaphor for analysing and enhancing professional learning.
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Notes
- 1.
Whilst the business of defining formal and informal learning is a complex one (see Hager and Halliday 2006, pp. 27–40), for present purposes the following will suffice. ‘Formal learning typically applies to a situation that includes these three items: a specified curriculum, taught by a designated teacher, with the extent of the learning attained by individual learners being assessed and certified…… All other situations in which people learn are for us informal learning situations’. (Hager and Halliday 2006, pp. 29–30)
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Hager, P., Hodkinson, P. (2011). Becoming As an Appropriate Metaphor for Understanding Professional Learning. In: Scanlon, L. (eds) “Becoming” a Professional. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9_2
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