The Coming of the Ecological Learner

Abstract

If, as it is suggested in a metaphor by Zygmunt Bauman, we live in a liquid world, then learning, in turn, becomes a liquid matter and students become liquid learners. There are two alternative learning strategies here. On the one hand, students can take up learning opportunities wherever these present themselves, on or off campus, and whether pursuing one’s personal projects and ambitions or being subject to external frameworks for learning. In this scenario, students take advantage of spaces for so-called lifewide learning that is, their learning takes place in multiple spaces simultaneously. This is likely to turn into a kind of promiscuous learning, unbounded and unconstrained, a form of personal learning opportunism that is merely contingent on the exigencies of opportunities that present themselves. On the other hand, such lifewide learning may be subject to considerations of well-being, both that of the learner and of the world around himself or herself. In this case, an individual takes up learning opportunities against a horizon of values and caring about the wider world as well as himself or herself. This latter learning profile presages – as it might be termed – the coming of the ecological learner. This learner’s sense of being part of a learning ecology is imbued with a concern for sustainability in its most general sense, with the learner becoming no less than a learning citizen of the world.