Thesis for Ed.D. at University of Toronto, 1994.
CHAPTER 1 - RESEARCH STANCE
D'Arcy Martin
This study deals with learning more than education. It deals with learning in a collective context more than in self-directed individual projects. And it encompasses a broader process than assimilating information, extending to the emotional, relational and other dimensions of human experience51. The focus will be on experiential learning:
"Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. This definition emphasizes several critical aspects of the learning process as viewed from the experiential perspective. First is the emphasis on the process of adaptation and learning as opposed to content or outcomes. Second is that knowledge is a transformation process, being continuously created and recreated, not an independent entity to be acquired or transmitted. Third, learning transforms experience in both its objective and subjective forms. Finally, to understand learning, we must understand the nature of knowledge, and vice versa."52
Two sets of experiential learning are being explored. On the one hand, I will be considering the conditions for learning among members enrolled in trade union courses, and my own role in facilitating that learning. On the other hand, I will be assessing the process by which I personally learned the information, attitudes and skills needed to be effective and comfortable in union work.53
The learning perspective, both on my own process and on that of people with whom I have worked, can yield rich results:
"It seems that learning is to education as physics is to engineering. The study of learning as both an individual and a social phenomenon is likely to be more productive in formulating basic principles of change than is the study of education."54
Since unions are not part of the "educational domain", and are perceived, both internally and externally, as an instrument for economic and social action rather than a place to transmit information, the odds for learning over education are comparatively good.55
Three characteristics of learning are particularly important for this study.56 The portrayal of learning as action is particularly important in the context of an action oriented social movement. The acknowledgement that learning is influenced by other people is relevant in relation to an organizational culture that values collective advancement. The assertion that learning cannot be coerced opens the door to discussion of power relations in union education, a model of democratic practice that has implications for the whole field of adult education.
Individuals engage in learning, but not in a social vacuum.57 They do so in specific historical and economic conditions.58 When a newly-elected local union president attends a weekend union course on how to run meetings, he or she has some strong pressures for learning, apart from intrinsic motivation. After all, the funding to attend the course is in the hands of the local membership meeting in almost all cases. At the next meeting after the course, the participant will be expected to report on what has been learned, and to demonstrate in conducting that very meeting the lessons acquired. If the local meeting has a better balance of order and participation59 after the president attends the course, then all is well. If not, questions will be raised about the costs of enrolment and lost wages which were paid by the local, and about the materials and resource people at the class itself. While the sanctions for poor quality of learning may be informal, they are nonetheless powerful.
The trigger and accountability of such learning is often collective, and certainly the whole of individual learnings can be greater than the sum of its parts. Yet it is not necessary to assert that the learning itself is collective.60 While the context and impact of learning may be collective, the process itself is individual. The decision to learn, the synapses, the muscles and the spirit of learning rest with a specific person.
Yet clearly the dynamics surrounding the learning are not classically "self-directed". The initial decisions associated with the learner role, as described by Allen Tough and his students61 include: what is to be learned and how; the cost, time and criteria for completion. Yet in the union movement all five of these decisions are subject to collective discussion. In both the unions where I have worked, it is a local union meeting which reviews the courses offered by the national, and chooses who will attend which course. The conditions of cost, time and completion criteria are set by the national office. The individual learner, can accept or decline nomination for the course, and then can provide feedback during and after the course which may influence future programs. Yet the learning process is not undertaken by the learner in a kind of splendid isolation, as portrayed so often in the adult education mainstream:
"The impetus to learn in adults is seen to arise largely from personal or psycho-social factors in the individual such as `developmental tasks, social roles, life crises, and transition periods'. Learning activities must therefore respond to those factors by focusing on concrete and immediate situations, always maintaining the position of the learner as subject of his/her own learning."62
Williams points out that individual learners have experiences which are broadly shared, that their ideas are socially conditioned, and that their motivations for learning are often externally structured. Certainly these conditions apply to the learning of participants in trade union courses. While the centre of learning remains individual, then, the individualist fallacy of much adult education literature is highlighted in unions because the context and outcomes are intimately collective and social. In particular, the social environment, the `union culture', sets distinct limits as well as opening possibilities within which an individual may follow a planned learning path. The shape of this learning environment is charted by people, much as a mime can capture with a few gestures the shape of an imaginary room before beginning to perform within it.
The relation of the learner to the union itself is dialectical but not bi-polar. Rather than the individual negotiating largely with the union leadership, he or she has to deal with fellow workers, fellow course participants, the course leader and so on.63 Similarly, the ideas and feelings generated in the course will interact with others in the "common sense" of that unionist, and will compete there for legitimacy... for hegemony. At stake here are ways of being, not just data and skills:
"Many adult learners come to learning settings with the socialized belief that they will be called on to use only their rational minds or intellect. My experience has been that when the expectation that they will use more of themselves in learning is explained, they are greatly relieved, even if a bit frightened of this strange new world."64
A good union course is a dialogue among whole people, mediated by the world. It engages the desire to know, to feel and to act differently in the world.65 The collective and applied nature of learning in the union culture is striking. As workers with limited formal education grapple with concepts, many take ideas very seriously. It has been humbling for me to work with them as a formally trained intellectual for whom ideas have been routine raw material in my daily work.66 Vividly, it has been brought home to me that the application of ideas is not the only form of practical impact in my work... the act of learning is in itself a form of action, a praxis, especially for adults who have often come to believe that it is beyond their capacities and their station in life.67