Learning as way-finding

This paper is based on case study findings from studying undergraduate students’ perceptions of their navigation in a blended learning environment where different learning spaces are offered. In this paper learning is regarded as a multi-level and multi complex concept. In this regard the concept of learning used in this paper is inspired by the latest work of the Danish professor Illeris and the interwoven concept of knowledge development as revealed in the SECI-model generated by the Japanese professors Nonaka and Takeuchi.

The empirical investigation, which is the basis of the presented assumptions, is based on the findings from research of the implementation of blended learning in two undergraduate programmes at University College North in Denmark.

The data collection methods is based on eighteen focus-group interview collected in a period of the first two years of students enrolment in radiography and teachers education. Furthermore, a survey was conducted after three month of students’ enrolment and some few observations-studies in teachers’ education.
The empirical data are interpreted in a narrative form through the use of prefiguration, configuration and refiguration and presented as themes around plots in a narrative form.

The findings reveal that students’ use of different learning spaces are challenged by inhabited and embodied practices as well as disruptions.
It is argued that learning must be viewed in the light of the new technological possibilities and challenges in spaces. There seem to be “blurred ecotones” between studying, leisure, sociality, identity-seeking and daily life which demands for an extension of the concept of learning.

It is stressed that learning are conditioned by contextual orientations-processes in peripersonal spaces. Spaces of learning seem to guide how learning can be afforded and which kinds of learning. It is revealed that learning can be both constructed socially and individually but is constituted by the contextual orientation of the learner/s.

Based on these findings it is suggested that learning (both formal and informal) can be conceptualized as way-finding both embodied, emotionally and/or cognitive. Way-finding, is argued, to be a concept for learning processes, knowledge development and identity-shaping where humans learn through motions, feeling and thinking in a world in motion and through combined actions of human and non-human agencies.

Furthermore it is argued that cognitive learning-processes are intertwined with embodied learning, and that there are different levels of reflection, cognition and learning driven by outer and inner motifs, meaning, experiences, habits and outer conditions.

In the discussion I suggest that learning in this century must take conditions of attention overload into account as an everyday condition which is more than ever actualized by the extended disruptions both by the information technology and other spaces. Based on the discussion areas for future research are suggested.