M.P. Introductory Comments
The new book that Professor Anders Örtenblad has edited is entitled Making Sense of the Learning Turn: Why and In What Sense Toys, Organisations, Economies and Cities are ‘Learning’ (2024). There is a vast literature on learning, and much of it speaks about a ‘learning turn’ that characterises the world of today. However, to my knowledge, this is the first book-length endeavour to examine, so uniquely and innovatively, the learning turn itself and to understand it as a central theme of contemporary society and academia with many, and complex, ramifications. Further, it is the first to investigate the use of learning as a premodifier that demarcates the value and prospects of the nouns to which it is attributed. In fulfilling the promise of its title, that is, to engage in the process of making sense of the learning turn, the book covers a broad spectrum of topics and reflects diverse sensibilities, some of which also concern the ambiguous politics of summoning people, organisations, cities and even societies to be learning.
The book discusses the learning turn as manifested in the tendency to use ‘learning’ as a premodifier of nouns as heterogeneous as toys, organisations, nations, the age, even. Learning as a premodifier describes such entities and prescribes how these should be to survive and thrive in a competitive world of changing and challenging circumstances. Thus, most such research explores what should be learned, what knowledge is useful or outdated, how knowledge is acquired, what makes knowledge accessible and how to enhance the practical effects of learning initiatives. In other words, the emphasis of the related scholarship is typically on epistemological and practical matters. Though this new book attractively addresses such issues, it does much more. This is evident already in its subtitle, which asks what it means for an entity to be a learning one. In its indirect question form, the subtitle of the book renders explicit something that seems to me to have escaped the attention of research, focused as it is on epistemological and practical matters: the ontology of a learning entity. Most research uses learning as a claim about one’s being, without thematising this ontological claim. It takes for granted that the ontological status of being a learning entity is good to strive for and obtain. Thereby, the ontological claim also becomes a normative precept. Then it operates politically by becoming a criterion for distributing wealth, distinction and power. Against the tendency to prioritise epistemology and practice, by pressing also the ontological question about being a ‘learning’ entity, the book opens a path for exploring how the ontological, epistemological, normative and political levels at which learning operates intersect and feed off one another.
The following questions aim to tease out some responses to issues such as the above and to those that frame the broader context of the book.
Questions
M.P. As the book also shows, there has recently been a decline in the use of learning as a premodifier. Perhaps this indicates, at least to a degree, that the notion has run out of steam in some circles or that the plea by some thinkers to resist the overreliance on learning (or even to go against learning) has gained momentum. How does the book as a whole deal with the value of learning? What should the global attitude towards learning be, in your opinion?
A.Ö. The book deals with the value of learning, and the dispute of this value, in multiple and different ways, which I think is excellent. I edited this book on the assumption that we, the contributors, all researchers, should offer different perspectives for readers to decide for themselves. I am familiar with the imperative to resist or go against learning and the popularity of this imperative in some circles in educational philosophy. But I find it too prescriptive. I don’t think we should tell readers what to think, do or believe in, but treat them with respect and, for that reason, offer different possible perspectives/standpoints. Readers will find a variety of perspectives on learning and its value in the book. They can make up their minds and decide for themselves.
M.P. In investigating the learning turn, the book advances and further disseminates the learning discourse. This discourse is often canvassed with ignorance as the undesirable foil that will be minimised or controlled, so the expectation goes, if people and organisations adopt learning priorities. Ignorance is thus viewed as a social pathology and risk, especially in a world where truth eroders and post-truth uncertainties proliferate. To what extent does the book reflect such a rationale? What is your position on the issue of ignorance in organisation theory and more broadly?
A.Ö. To say that the book simultaneously advances and further disseminates the learning discourse is a good point, if it means that this dissemination keeps the learning discourse open to intervention, revision and debate! There are different takes on ‘learning’ and the learning discourse in the book, but it is fair to say that the book is mainly critical of it. In the introductory chapter, I felt a need to point out that there are also many good sides to ‘learning.’ I mentioned two examples that come under the notion of ‘learning’ and I consider them very positive: 1) the ‘Young Plato’ project in Northen Ireland, where a school principal has initiated an approach where the kids use philosophical inquiry to solve conflicts and relate to each other and the world; and 2) the movement where people take huge risks to make it possible for young girls in Afghanistan to study again. So, though I acknowledge the significance of critiquing the instrumentalisation of learning, I resist sweeping indictments of learning, as I know you also do. Granted, some of the critique of learning outlooks is justified, but precisely this should lead us to nuanced rather than crude positions. The debate on truth vs. falsity sometimes tends to oversimplify things. Of course, there is space for ignorance and uncertainty, for acknowledging one’s ignorance or even for considering the possibility that, in some cases, it is better to avoid treating everything as knowable. There are always different realities/versions of reality, and who says that researchers have indisputable access to better or truer images of reality than anyone else has? I have tried to write about this too (in the recently published book chapter ‘Aren’t We All Human? On the Illusion of the Extraordinary Academic,’ and, in the future, I may try to put together a collection where researchers problematise this, with the working title ‘This is not a book, it is actually only paper and ink.’ What I consider ‘the way forward’ is to cultivate critical thinking – there is no single, easy way to distinguish between truth and fake facts, so what we can do is to encourage and enable people to think critically, both in academia and elsewhere. Such a thought colours this book – no single conclusion is offered, but instead several different perspectives are presented, for the reader to decide for themselves. This is also what I have wanted to achieve in the book series that I founded (Palgrave Debates in Business and Management).
M.P. Can (or should) learning be claimed as an attainable status and an accomplished reality of a city, an organisation, a world, etc.? Or is there something amiss in attributing learning to some entities? Could it be that such attributions promote a routinised learning and work against learning as a complex, demanding, never-ending and daunting task? Could using learning as a badge undermine the effort to embrace learning and benefit from it? Does it not obscure the fact that not all learnings are worthwhile, nor do they draw us into something better?
A.Ö. To regard ‘learning,’ as in, e.g., ‘learning city,’ as a dichotomy, which a city is or is not, is problematic. Especially when considering that there is probably no city that is not ‘learning’ in some little sense, and no city that is fully living up to all that the ‘learning city’ cure prescribes. One way would be to use a dimension instead of a distinction, a dimension, for instance, from 1 to 10. Or – as I have written a lot about – a set of different standards should be made available, to give cities with different conditions the same opportunity to turn into ‘learning cities’ (but ‘learning city’ would, thus, be given somewhat different meanings given the specific conditions). Another alternative would be for researchers to stop interfering, letting those ‘learning terms’ that currently are vaguely and ambiguously defined be the kind of campfire that people can gather around and be inspired by, without placing excessive demands on precise definitions. After all, precise definitions may lead one to formulate problematic yardsticks that eventually serve unintended and dubious purposes.
M.P. Occasionally, the learning organisation is further premodified as adaptive learning organisation, transformative learning organisation, etc., to indicate that being learning-oriented is somewhat vague or insufficient and that there are further requirements for the desirable goals to be specified or accomplished. What learning environment better prepares the organisation and the person for meaningful learning experiences? Does the book touch upon this issue?
A.Ö. There is one chapter on ‘learning climate’ (by Max Visser), and other chapters en passant touch upon this subject. I don’t think there should be a single take on this theme in the book – just as with most other themes covered in the book, there are several perspectives. A learning climate is, in the book, occasionally praised, sometimes made sense of and often criticised. However, to give a more specific answer to this question about premodifying learning, I agree that there have been instances in the related literature of using another adjective (e.g., ‘adaptive’) to premodify the learning organisation (thus: ‘adaptive learning organisation’); this may be to specify an additional task or purpose of the learning project, e.g., to ensure that the obtained learning helps a company adapt to an ever changing global environment. Or, the added adjective (e.g., ‘transformative’) may set a higher, more demanding goal, e.g., the transformation of the company and its orientation toward constant innovation. In a way, such operations further contextualise learning and what is required of an organisation or city to be considered a learning one. All this constitutes fertile ground for further research that refines theoretical and practical engagements with learning, that is, with a notion that, as you also note, has, in our times, been extensively used as a keyword and organising principle of most efforts to rethink our relationship with ourselves and our world.
M.P. Apart from the practical difficulties of empirical prospects for acknowledging entities as learning ones (e.g., entities certified as learning ones), what are, in your view, the major theoretical challenges surrounding learning today?
A.Ö. There are, as I see it, three important challenges, which are both theoretical and practical. I will be referring, in my answer, to two somewhat different areas, both of which I know well – the learning organisation and higher education – and I will draw parallels between the two.
The first of these three challenges is to find a balance between thinking and doing in learning. I am a Deweyan, in the sense that I believe that both need to be included for good learning. I watched, the other day, a YouTube video of a workshop on the learning organisation that took place in Sweden three years ago, and it seems that many organisations (at least in Sweden) still struggle to get away from ‘learning by taking courses’ to ‘learning off courses’ – life-long learning. The same tendency can be identified in higher education – we still struggle to move away from traditional lecturing to other forms of learning. The demands to make higher education work-relevant have severely increased, so the demands – from students, employers and policy-makers – to include practical ingredients have also increased drastically. The difficulty, though, is not to involve practice-oriented teaching elements, but to make clear connections between practice and theory, and to use both – to achieve some kind of balance. This is most likely relevant also outside academia. Many organisations still seem to struggle to reduce, or even minimise, ’learning by taking courses’ to encourage learning, instead, in less formalised ways. I take this as a sign that both courses and other forms of learning are needed, and that there is a need for a balance between the two, as well as finding ways for the two to pollinate one another.
(As a matter of fact, my colleagues and I have very recently published a book on this balance [in higher education] – the book is in Norwegian, although the abstracts are available in English in the book, which is open access).
The other challenge is about power, hidden power. One could ask, for instance, ‘who is the learning organisation for?’ (I have dealt with this in various texts, such as a book chapter called ‘Achieving organisational independence of employees’ knowledge using knowledge management, organisational learning, and the learning organisation’). In higher education (and in education in general, too), there is the question of whether education can be completely voluntary, based on and motivated by the student’s interest (as Carl Rogers claimed), or a more knowledgeable person, an authority, necessarily should be there for learning to be achieved. I happen to be against marking in higher education – even if the marks are pass and fail only – because I believe they represent an external motive to learn and thus unburden the students from the responsibility for their learning. But neither such an opinion comes without problems….
The third and final challenge is about context-dependency. Just as there is a need to develop different standards for what can be demanded of organisations in different industries (as well as national cultures), which I have written a lot about, different academic contexts count too. The specific academic discipline, the individual students, as well as the individual teachers, are factors that need to be considered when designing higher education offerings.
M.P. If the decline in the use of the ‘learning’ premodifier (that you have also mapped in your related book chapter) accelerates, how should the relevant scholarship react, in your view? Should it cling to the notion of learning, re-imagine it and reshuffle its meanings and operations, or should it search for other normative words to replace learning in the tasks that have so far been assigned to it? Who or what should decide on this?
A.Ö. I think reactions will happen automatically, by zeitgeist. But, concerning the direction that I would want such reactions to take, one may easily extrapolate from my writings and from the very commitment further to explore learning with an edited volume such as the recent one, that I would not wish the engagement with learning to stand or fall on popularity. Learning merits a research endeavour and is far from an epistemically exhausted notion. As for other epistemic notions, instead of replacing learning as topics of inquiry or implementation, I think they should be examined alongside learning, as you claim in your work, in their synergy and tensions with the notion of learning.
M.P. Ultimately, the topic of learning is also one of education. How does the book educate the readership, and what educational vision is its driving force?
A.Ö. The driving force is critical thinking and reflection. The book contains multiple perspectives and standpoints, so the unifying factor is to offer a ‘smorgasbord’ for people to reflect upon. I like it that way, especially in a collection such as this one – it is the best way, I think, to use and manage the fact that different scholars, some even from different disciplines, have contributed to the book. I prefer to do books such as this one, over collections where all voices agree and point in the same direction. I am not a relativist or perspectivist in the sense of believing that all perspectives are equally good, but I am proud of thinking that there is always (at least in social science) another possible perspective. The book enacts the intellectual openness I consider constitutive of edifying experiences and new learning.
M.P. Do you consider the intellectual climate and the global context propitious for nuanced and critically weighed conceptions of learning, such as those your book aspires to promote?
A.Ö. No, especially since the book doesn’t have one voice but several, which tends to be a bit controversial per se, especially in an era of political correctness that we live in – one which ironically enforces the very homogeneity and conformity that it was meant to combat. However, this speaks even more for the need to produce a book like this one.
M.P. In a year’s hindsight, what do you think the book should also have addressed? Or what constitutes a theme worthy of a supplementary new volume? (for example, learning as a premodified concept [e.g., adaptive learning, collective learning, transformative learning, etc.] rather than as a premodifier?) Shall we expect such a twin volume, and, if yes, how should it relate to the present edited volume?
A.Ö. I was about to do a collection on the ‘knowledge turn,’ which, I guess, is the term that has been dominating after ‘learning’ had its peak (at least until now, when ‘smart’ seems to become increasingly popular). But ‘learning’ has another dimension to it, in comparison with ‘knowledge’ – what, for instance, a ‘learning city’ is, is more open for interpretations than what ‘knowledge city’ is – since learning can be both process and an outcome, and who learns is neither clear; is it the city per se? Or the individuals? If the latter, why isn’t it ‘learning individuals in a city,’ why say it is a learning city? In other words, I would push further the research and elaboration on what you have philosophically called in your introductory comments above ‘an ontology of a learning entity.’ I also think it is time for some introspection – we should not only critically write about those ‘out there’ who use the term ‘learning,’ but also ponder our reliance on it in academia. As far as I know, you have also formulated such a consideration. What, for instance, would the critique and criticism that we have put forward in the book mean if we instead used the perspectives and arguments to say something about our reality as teachers, educators and learning facilitators?
A.Ö. Why now? That is, why was this book published now, not 10 or even 25 years earlier, not 10 or even 25 years later? Is it ‘timely’? Timely to criticise ‘learning,’ a concept which (also) includes so much good (or doesn’t it?)?
M.P. This is an intriguing and very difficult question to answer due to the complexity of what makes something timely. Perhaps an intellectual endeavour appears timely not so much, or not only, because of its inherent qualities that attune it to its epoch, but also because the time was ripe for this specific endeavour, in other words, because the endeavour reflects what the spirit of the times encourages, accepts, requires or promotes. Sometimes, however, the inherent qualities of an endeavour stand out and make it a most appropriate response to what is at stake at a given time. In that sense, the endeavour may not only be timely, but even ‘untimely’ in a positive way, as an unexpected response to one’s contemporary world that aspires to contribute a glimpse of a future time, a time to come. I think that authors would like their books to have such qualities, and this book has them too.
To make a less abstract effort to answer your question: accidental reasons (such as the chance encounter of possible contributors) aside, a book on learning that brings together diverse perspectives, as you imagined it and carried it out through your editing initiative, is timely in catering for most of the learning sensibilities of its times. It is also timely because the contributors are in a better position than years before to have a somewhat dispassionate overview of learning’s ascending course in scholarly discourses. They have benefited from the years’ hindsight of learning being both a valued term and one that has attracted critiques of its extreme valorisation. We cannot know the future of the notion of learning in academia, or of learning in real life, or of the future of this book 25 years later. But one of the book’s strengths that makes it a timely and valuable contribution to the related literature is its respect for diversity and the interdisciplinary hospitality that it has offered to divergent outlooks on learning.
