100
Exploring learning lives: community,
identity, literacy and meaning
Ola Erstad, ystein Gilje, Julian Sefton-Green and Kristin Vasb
Abstract
This article explores the term learning lives by
reporting on three research projects conducted by
members of the Oslo-based research group TransAc-
tions. By stressing the term learning lives within a
range of social educational contexts, the article aims
to look at learning within and across different learning
sites exploring the positioning and repositioning of
learner identity across these different locations. We
emphasise how the individual learner relates to other
people and objects, drawing on deeper trajectories or
narratives of the self as it exists within and outside the
immediate learning contexts. We pay attention to
processes occurring between people which we find
significant for the individuals identity, literacy and
learning. By doing so we hope to make explicit the
mobilisation of resources within and across specific
contexts, in the learning lives of Norwegian youngsters.
Keywords: learning lives, identity, community, digital
literacy, multimodality
Introduction
The main current scholarly use of the phrase learning
lives comes from Gert Biestas project Learning lives:
learning, identity and agency in the life course (2003
2007), which focuses on the different learning processes
adults use as they respond to different events in their
lives. In this article we want to use the phrase to capture
a distinct way of framing research into learning and
literacy. Our aim here is to map out our learning lives
approach to literacy research, articulating the theoretical
space that it offers. This article opens by sketching our
understanding of how learning lives represents a
convergence of interpretative traditions. To illustrate
our approach, we offer examples, drawn from projects
conducted by members who are part of the TransActions
research group at the University of Oslo. The three
snapshots illustrate how learning lives has helped us
focus attention on original and important educational
implications from literacy interventions. These form the
basis for our preliminary policy and practice implica-
tions of this approach, which concludes this essay.
A learning lives approach
In Biestas project, mentioned above, the term learning
lives refers to the coherence between learning, identity
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Exploring learning lives
and agency in the individual framed by a biographical
approach studying adults learning trajectories over
the life course. We place a focus on describing learning
within social contexts and ultimately aim to look at
learning among young persons within and across
different learning sites exploring the positioning and
repositioning of the self or learner identity across these
different locations. We aim, first, to make explicit
the mobilisation of resources or affordances within
specific contexts (Wertsch, 1998) at the same time as
focusing on an approach which characterises learning
as the capacity to adapt to changing roles within
different contexts (Holland et al., 1998; Hull and
Shultz, 2002). And secondly, our emphasis is on
how the individual learner relates to other persons
and objects, in order to grasp processes occurring
between people, which we find significant for
young peoples identity and learning. We examine
how personal histories and future orientations are
used to create narratives of the self and it is these
selves (or their narrativisations) which, we suggest,
are central to productive learning. Much literacy
research these days is motivated and interested in
forms of new literacies and multimodality (Jewitt
and Kress, 2003; Kalantzis and Cope, 1999, 2008).
These approaches are key to the range of literacy
events in our studies (Walsh, 2008). We thus pay
attention to an ethnographic understanding of situated
literacies in a range of social contexts (Heath, 1983;
Street, 2003).
It would be naive and misplaced to claim that this
holistic and pluralist approach is in and of itself new,
but we would contend that this approach is all the
more necessary at this time as it offers a way of
bridging the binary opposition between formal and
informal learning which is underpinning much debate
about how homes and schools may be re-inscribed as
changed and changing sites of learning (Sefton-Green,
2008). Equally, we suggest much research into new
literacies and their impact often fails to take account of
life-wide and lifelong processes.
We draw on the socio-cultural tradition of studying
literacy cultures (Cole, 1996). We have drawn on
culturalist and anthropological approaches exploring
literacy events, especially those which have offered
ethnographic accounts of literacy practices, like Local
Literacies (Barton and Hamilton, 1998). At the same
Literacy Volume 43 Number 2 July 2009
time we are trying to integrate two other kinds of
scholarly traditions with these principles. The first
derives from Buckingham and Sefton-Greens (1994)
work on formal and informal media cultures. This
approach is located in the socio-cultural literacies
tradition but has concentrated on studying childhood
and youth media cultures (Buckingham et al., 2005). In
so doing, it has broadened the debate to include the
study of informal learning, as that term captures how
learning in the new informational economy takes place
alongside traditional disciplinary boundaries, within
the spaces of commercial media culture, and some-
times in conflict or contrast with schooling (Knobel
et al., 2007).
Our second influence is longitudinal or longer-term
studies of the place of learning as part of whole-lives
and individual growth trajectory studies. The large
OECD studies looking at the wider benefits of learn-
ing mesh with workplace and lifelong learning ap-
proaches and are complemented with a new genera-
tion of pupil career and life-history studies exploring
growth over time (Pollard and Filer, 1999; Schuller and
Desjardins, 2007). The life-history approach is clearly
consonant with some of the literacy location-based
studies and draws attention to the nature of social
change, to inter- and cross-generational experiences, to
the distinctness of types of cultural change and to the
contexts of learners lives both in their micro
specificity, like the digital bedroom, and larger spaces
such as the family or institutional experiences. We are
particularly interested in how learners narratives
about themselves (both past and present) become
resources which are then mobilised within the learning
process.
This mapping does not for one moment imply that
scholars working in one or other of these traditions
may or may not see incompatibilities and contra-
dictions in such a broad scoping exercise, nor would
we seek to minimise such possible contradictions.
Nevertheless, we suggest that a learning lives
approach is helpful in moving beyond some of the
oppositions that litter ambitions to study this area.
The tension between formal and informal modes of
learning can, at times, lead to a sterile impasse; and
allowing long-term perspectives into study of literacy
events with a clear interest in social change and
local contexts offers, we believe, a fruitful way to
conceptualise learning in ways that can have purchase
on policy as well as generating new and interesting
perspectives for educational research.
We present three snapshots in order to reflect and
elaborate a learning lives approach. The first snapshot
is a description of a project where students from two
schools, located in two different communities of Oslo,
reflect upon their own learning lives, each making an
online newspaper about prejudices in society and
especially between the two communities. We have
included this as an example of how schools try to bring
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the broader experiences of students into the setting of
academic learning. The next two snapshots present
qualitative data gathered in two different settings. The
first is taken from a study of an out-of-school centre
engaging drop-outs or low-motivated young people
in different activities with the intention to motivate
them for further education or work. Some of the
participants took part in a youth exchange programme
travelling to Brazil meeting young people from four
different countries. The extract focuses on the experi-
ences of one young male participant at two different
communicative moments in his learning experiences.
The last snapshot presents young film-makers who
are positioning themselves within diverse learn-
ing contexts, from out-of-school film-making experi-
ences to more formal educational contexts for media
production.
Snapshot 1: significance, meaning and
identity
Our first example is taken from a project taking place
between two lower secondary schools: one in the
eastern part of Oslo and one in the western suburbs. At
each school a group of students (about 20 in the east
and about 40 in the west) took part in the project over a
2-week period. The school in the western suburbs had
students from families from high socio-economic
backgrounds with only one student who was non-
white (adopted from Chile). At the school in the
eastern inner city of Oslo the students came from many
different cultural backgrounds with about 65 per cent
of the students from minority-speaking families and
from poorer socio-economic backgrounds. After dis-
cussing these socio-economic features with the stu-
dents, the teachers decided that the topic of
collaboration should revolve around prejudices held
by east and west in Oslo. Additionally technology
would form a central part of the project work.
In the project the students used different digital tools to
collaborate and create an online newspaper, one for
each school, which consisted of reportages about the
students on the other side of town, their community
and their school. In each group they divided them-
selves into an editorial board with responsibilities for
different sections of the paper: on culture, religion and
ethics, sport, statistics about their communities and
interviews with inhabitants. They created and sent
questions to each other, using a collaborative online
platform and MSN. Halfway through the project a
group of students from each school travelled without
the teachers to visit the students at the other school
using public transportation. None of the students had
ever been in the area of the other school. To document
this visit each group made a video film to use in their
own production.
All through the project the students worked with
different modalities and information sources in the
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Figure 1: Front cover western Oslo school newspaper
making of the online newspapers. They shifted from
working individually on different computers looking
for images, statistical data, graphs, illustrations,
written texts, or editing audio interviews with players
from the local soccer team, editing the video films to
put on the web and then getting together to negotiate
how to integrate and remix the different content
sources into something new in their online newspaper.
The two online papers turned out very different, where
the one from the west of the city possessed different
visual effects, with a more formal printed newspaper
layout with more corporate images on the front page
and then links to other sections. The online paper from
the eastern school was simpler in its aesthetic. It looks
more like a Youtube listing offering more direct video
material, for example the interviews with students at
their own school and interviews with students from
the other school recorded during their visit (Figures 1
and 2).
The project approach captured the students learning
about the lives of other students (through the uses of
meditational processes), and also exploring and then
drawing on their own life situations in their own
communities. The perspective offered by this process
enabled the students to develop a sense of life
trajectories. This was exemplified in the ways the
students combined different content they found on the
Internet with their own work, either written texts
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Exploring learning lives
Figure 2: Front cover eastern Oslo school newspaper
through collaborative writing or audio- and video-
tapes. The editorial group at each school had the last
word on how things should be presented in their
online newspaper. The academic video observations of
the two groups showed an intense and creative process
among the students working with different materials
and sending them between the two schools. Often
there were rapid changes in the way they related to
content, for example when one of the Muslim girls at
the school in the eastern part of Oslo described why
she was wearing a veil. This created a host of questions
from the students at the other school on what this
meant in everyday terms like what she did during
gymnastics lessons, did she have ethnic Norwegian
friends, what were her interests in music or films or
what did her parents think about her growing up in
Norway? In documenting this life story the students
remixed different materials they found on the Internet
about Islam, about world incidents connected to
religious conflicts and then connected them to this
girls personal narrative, which was then presented on
the online newspapers of both schools. As shown
above, the students involved in this project were
engaged on a personal level, drawing on experiences
from outside the school, yet reworking such experi-
ences within a school context. In negotiating meaning-
making about differences and similarities between the
Literacy Volume 43 Number 2 July 2009
two communities in Oslo the students started reflect-
ing on their own lives about how they appeared to
others and how the material conditions of their lives
determined life opportunities: all of which was re-
flected in the articles they wrote in the online news-
papers. The use of personal stories set against found
material facilitated this process of placing the self
within larger narratives enabling all involved to
contrast schooled learning with other community-
based kinds of learning and personal development.
Snapshot 2: changing identities
This attention to changing beliefs and values as an
object of an embedded whole-life centred interven-
tion is further developed by our next example, which
explores changing selfhood as a result of a cultural
literacy project. Whereas the example above brought
ways of learning and experiences into school, devel-
oping a reflexive notion of a learning life, this next
example is more person centred, making such reflex-
ivity an explicit part of the curriculum, although
whether such terminology is appropriate for discuss-
ing such questions of personal development is a matter
for conjecture. In our particular study participation in
an international youth exchange programme was
investigated by one of us (Vasb) as a process within
a socio-cultural perspective on learning. By observing
and interviewing participants, questions of identity
and learning were addressed across contexts.
The empirical data were collected at an out-of-school
centre (a voluntary vocational-oriented training alter-
native for young people, 1618 years old), which was
initiated and supported by a local municipality in
Norway, and as part of a youth exchange project
supported by the European Unions non-formal
education programme: Youth. The study aimed to
develop the work of Svane (2006) who argued for a
dynamic viewpoint which emphasises cultural en-
counters as open and creative learning processes, and
Thomas et al. (2006) who claimed that international
youth exchange experiences represent a turning point
in ones biography. The purpose of Vasbs study is to
examine what kinds of learning processes take place in
young peoples formalised intercultural encounters.
We present data on a Norwegian boy, Jon Terje, who was
16 years old at the time. He was a talkative and friendly
person whose main interests were computers, computer
games and comics. Below, we present Jon Terje, first at
the out-of-school centre, and second as part of the non-
formal youth exchange in Brazil, trying to capture his
learning life from one context to another.
Jon Terje did apply for a course in electronics in upper
secondary school, but due to low marks in compre-
hensive school, and because his parents perceived him
as immature, he was sent to the out-of-school centre. At
the centre he joined the two non-formal workshops for
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catering and computers. He also improved his marks
in maths and English in a formal workshop, where his
work was assessed by teachers. Jon Terje often looked
sleepy and disinterested during the different classes
while hiding his face behind a long forelock. He
disliked the milieu among the youngsters and char-
acterised their attitude as using bad language.
Interviewer: Do you think that most of the youngsters at
the Centre are using bad language?
Jon Terje: more or less everyone except Tor, Jon and Janne
whom I always hang round with at the Centre.
Interviewer: Why do you join them?
Jon Terje: Because they are more like me.
Interviewer: And how are you?
Jon Terje: I am actually like a normal boy, but when I first
drive on high gear then something is happening all the time.
Besides not being very interested in school activities,
Jon Terje also seems to dis-identify with most of the
youngsters at the Centre. However, this all clearly
altered during a youth exchange in Brazil, where his
attitude changed from being a sleepy, disinterested boy
to one who looked people in the eye when making
contact, and who stayed concentrated during language
lessons and other formal activities. He also met others
who shared his interest in computers and Japanese
cartoons like DragonballZ. When the researcher con-
ducted an interview with him six months later, he
reflected on one particular event in the formalised
midway evaluation during the youth exchange.
Interviewer: Did some of the experiences from the youth
exchange have any impact on how you perceive yourself?
Jon Terje: I am thinking about the episode when I had to
talk English to the whole group.
Interviewer: When you presented the work of your group?
Jon Terje: Yes, I could not have done this in a Norwegian
school without a lot of practice in advance. But in Brazil I
did it unprepared without any foolishness. It was not
planned or anything. It was just one of the boys in the
group who said: Jon Terje I think you are the best
English-speaker in our group so you have to talk! So I
just said: Ok, I can do it.
Interviewer: But it was not only the group leader who
pointed you out.
Jon Terje: No, the whole group did choose me to do it, so I
was chosen. I just took the poster we made and started to
talk about it. But I dont think I would have done this in a
Norwegian school.
Interviewer: But why did you manage to do this in
Brazil?
Jon Terje: I dont know. But I was a lot more self-confident
than I used to be, when I was in Brazil. I am not usually
like that in Norway.
Interviewer: How did your self-reliance increase?
Jon Terje: I think it was because when I talked to people
there, they all responded in a friendly way and they looked
upon me in another way than people in Norway used to
do. In Norway you always get a negative remark, but in
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Brazil it never happened. Even if I went grumpy, they
were nice and told me that I was sensitive and to be
sensitive is a good thing they said. It was never anything
negative.
Jon Terje made a spontaneous connection between how
he perceives himself and his experience when present-
ing the evaluation work of his group. In Brazil Jon Terje
was acknowledged as the best English speaker in his
group. The positive social milieu in Brazil encouraged
him to engage in both formal and informal activities
with commitment.
Interviewer: When do you think about this experience?
Jon Terje: I do not know. It comes all the time. I really felt
that I did something really important. I asked questions to
the whole group and tried to include them.
Interviewer: Did you surprise yourself in Brazil?
Jon Terje: Yes I was surprised about myself because every
challenge I got in Brazil I managed to deal with in a much
better way than if I had gotten the same challenges in
Norway. I felt capable to manage everything.
Interviewer: Do you know why it was like that?
Jon Terje: No. It was actually quite strange. How much I
did change during these ten days. How I suddenly
changed my personality, just like that!
We would argue that Jon Terje is positioning himself
differently as a learner in these two events, and it
seems as if the youth exchange plays a significant role
in his learning life. Jon Terje experienced the
presentation of the group work as a turning point in
how he perceived himself as a participant in a formal
activity. During the presentation he pushed his own
limits and experienced success. His presentation may
be seen as a reply to the expectations of the new peer
group represented by the young participants from
Brazil, Portugal, Chile and Slovakia. Unlike the
situation at the out-of-school centre, Jon Terje identi-
fied more with many of the youngsters in the youth
exchange. He was also inspired by the friendly
atmosphere and the way people treated him in Brazil,
which was quite different from the bad milieu and the
nasty way of talking he knew from the out-of-school
centre. It seems as if the positive new surroundings
together with an experience of mastery led to what Jon
Terje described as an increased overall self-confidence.
His ability to reflect on his new capabilities and to
gain a more mature understanding of how he might
function as a learner stem from this perspectival
comparison between older and newer selves just as
the participants in the online newspapers learned how
to position themselves within larger social frames.
Snapshot 3: learner identity and self-
expression
Our third example builds on the theme of learner
identity by exploring the growth of young film-makers
thus exposing the relationship between film-making as
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Exploring learning lives
a process and more goal-oriented questions about
becoming a film-maker as a creative role.
Young film-makers in Norway might learn about film-
making through a wide range of formal and informal
contexts. Media Studies in upper secondary schools
have become very popular and a wide array of film
festivals, workshops and after-school programmes
offer more informal opportunities for young film-
makers (Gilje et al., in press). In addition, a Nordic site
for young film-makers dvoted.net was launched in
November 2006, offering young film-makers a social
web for publishing, discussing films and mentoring by
experienced film-makers. On the other hand, different
sites have popped up in relation to amateur media
production and camcorder cultures at large (Bucking-
ham and Willett, in press).
For the purpose of this article we present data on two
young film-makers, a 20-year-old girl and 19-year-old
boy. Both live and make their films in the northern part
of Norway. We present the film-makers and their
experiences, to understand their personal interest in
becoming film-makers and how they shape their
learning lives across diverse contexts for film-making.
Ragnhild is a 20-year-old woman from Troms. She
does not have her own camcorder, but she has made
films since, at the age of 14, she joined a special course
arranged by den kulturelle skolesekken [the cultural
schoolbag] when she was at lower secondary school.
After this she applied for the course Media and
Communication at upper secondary school and in the
last year she has joined a Norwegian film school on a 1-
year programme. Ragnhild has made several films,
mostly as school assignments and as projects in
relation to workshops and film festivals.
She has shown these films to an audience in school,
participated at film festivals, where she has received
prizes and uploaded films to dvoted.net. When asked
about her experiences with education and formal
training in relation to film-making, Ragnhild found
formal media education extremely valuable for how
she developed as a film-maker.
Ragnhild: Education is somewhat safe for me, and has
always been important, thus I know that others work their
way up in the business, for me it is easier to join schools
that [offer media education].
Interviewer: Why do you think education [in this field]
works best for you?
Ragnhild: Maybe it is because my Mom is a teacher, I have
always been good in school and I have always heard that
education is important. And I felt that I was not qualified in
any way after secondary school to work on film produc-
tions. . . . more education was safer for me, I felt it safer.
Ragnhilds interest in film-making is oriented towards
formal education. As the daughter of a teacher, she
seeks to explore her interest in film-making within this
Literacy Volume 43 Number 2 July 2009
formal context. She brings with her the film-making
interest into a familiar context.
Martin is a 19-year-old young film-maker from the
northern part of Norway. He started out by making
small films on his cell phone. These spoofs became
notorious among his mates at lower secondary school,
and at school he achieved a kind of a status as the
film-maker. After a while and work over a whole
summer he bought a semi-professional camcorder
and a Macintosh costing approximately h5,000. He
learned to use the editing software at school and
together with friends. He subsequently joined a
multimedia design programme at a college in a city
close to his home. He has made more than 15 films,
including a 30-minute documentary where the film
team travelled to Canada and Svalbard to do the
research and shooting. Basically this was a school
assignment, but he also received local funding. Unlike
Ragnhild, Martin does not appreciate the formal
learning context or the school subject Media and
Communication. Although he enjoyed working with
other students, he found the milieu quite poor.
Martin: The teacher has no competence, bottom-line. Of
course I have learned a lot, but not as much as expected
after three years with training in this subject. Film was
not prioritised as an issue, compared to working with
journalism. . . . I have learned most of the things on my
own, after a little help from the subject [the teachers and
other students].
He thus worked in his leisure time on different ideas
and films. Together with three other students he
established a film company. He basically worked on
films within this company together with his friends,
and after a while he then transformed them into
school projects and discussed the solutions with the
teachers.
Martin: All the films are made in my leisure time, they
were brought to school and assessed there. Not much of
the shooting and editing happened in the school time.
He admits that the only thing he has learned in school
in relation to film-making is to write film scripts. As a
young film-maker he participates in different forums
online, but prefers forums for video amateurs in
contrast to dvoted.net, which he found a bit eccentric
and academic.
Ragnhild and Martin share an interest in film-making,
and their learning lives have to some extent simila-
rities. They both started out their film-making when
they were around 1415 years old: they applied and
joined the same media programme at upper secondary
school, and they are doing Media Studies at college this
year (2008/2009). In other words, they have become
quite experienced as film-makers and they have
developed a range of film-making skills and other
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105
kinds of media literacies. However, they each con-
ceptualise their routes to their own learning in
fundamentally opposed ways. When they talk about
their learning lives, there are obvious differences.
Ragnhilds films are produced as part of an organised
curriculum, and she finds formal educational settings
extremely important for her development as a film-
maker. She appreciates the literacy achieved in these
formal contexts. Martin does not share her view. He
has another attitude towards formal education, and
finds the milieu in his school not at all stimulating. In
their practice on the Internet, Ragnhild has submitted
films to http://www.dvoted.net, while Martin finds
this site strange and prefers forums on the Internet that
have evolved more authentically as part of camcorder
culture.
Conclusions
These three examples are located either in digital or
cultural literacy projects and explicitly explore traver-
sals of boundaries between formal and non-formal
study. They focus on how learner identity and the
control of that identity in different contexts are crucial
to the exercise of literacy. They suggest that literacy
practices, by being located at intersections with real-
world activities support and reinforce the explicit
and reflexive creation of a learner identity and imply
that for the learner to understand his or her own
learner identity is crucial to their literacy performance
(Leander and Wells, 2006). This is most evident in the
cultural exchange example. They all make the point
very clearly that literacy is, as Wortham (2005) puts it,
ontological. They all point to deep whole-person
outcomes and to how formal and informal or school
and out-of-schoolare permeable boundaries at work
here. The literacy practices of the students are
embedded in social relations between individuals in
and across contexts.
We have called this a learning lives approach in an
effort to find a phrase which helped us move a
technical approach to understanding literacy into
the mainstream. This will help us understand how
the learners reflexive sense of self, through the way
that narratives of the self are mobilised, may be central
to the productive exercise of literacies. There would
clearly seem to be something in the ways that digital
literacies work across traditional knowledge bound-
aries which support this sense of the self and thus
facilitate expression.
One inference from this work is that the teaching of
literacy needs to pay explicit attention to the formation
of learner identity, in ways that the cultural exchange
project demonstrates. It also implies that curriculum
needs to find ways to cross barriers into practices in the
world outside the school gates, as in the online
newspapers. The real-world activities of Martin also
suggest that literacy practices need assessment beyond
106
their frame within school assignments. All of these
hypotheses need further study and we recognise that
they pose challenges for traditional ways of organising
literacy learning, especially how to develop the
learners sense of self as an integral part of pedagogy.
Acknowledgements
The second snapshot presents data from the ongoing
PhD project Learning processes in culture encoun-
ters funded by the Institute for Educational Research,
University of Oslo. The third snapshot presents data
from the project Making a film-maker funded by the
Norwegian media authority, Radet for anvendt medie-
forskning. The study seeks to explore young film-
makers (age 1620) learning paths in Norway,
Sweden and Denmark.
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CONTACT THE AUTHORS
Ola Erstad, Institute for Educational Research,
University of Oslo, PO Box 1092, Blindern, 0317
Oslo, Norway.
e-mail: ola.erstad@ped.uio.no
ystein Gilje, Institute for Educational Research,
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
e-mail: oystein.gilje@ped.uio.no
Julian Sefton-Green, Special Professor, School of
Education, University of Nottingham, UK.
e-mail: Julian@julianseftongreen.net
Kristin Vasb, Institute for Educational Research,
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
e-mail: k.b.vasbo@ped.uio.no