Exploring Learning Contexts: Implications for Access, Learning Careers and Identities

The concept of learning context is underpinned by different theoretical approaches and is open to a range of meanings in adult education. On the one hand, we can think about learning contexts as a phenomenon distributed across the social order of educational institutions, the workplace, home or community: they are embedded in practices. On the other hand, the learning context can be seen as an outcome of activity or a set of practices itself. At another level it is important to consider that the notion of lifewide learning and the distinction between formal/non-formal/informal learning are not universally accepted. Different scholars have warned that if the whole of life becomes “pedagogised" many aspects belonging to the private sphere are at risk of being exposed to external scrutiny, evaluation and intervention with related issues of power and control. Furthermore a vision in which learning contexts are everywhere, without a general agreement on their specificity, risks to reduce the concept to an empty signifier without real meaning and significance. This raises questions of: what is specific to a learning context which is not to be found in other contexts? And who names these contexts as learning contexts?