ABSTRACT

This chapter retells the stories of different groups of learners in a range of contexts inside and outside of formal educational institutions. The stories will be presented through the learners’ (imaginary) learning journals. Although the learning journals are part of the learners’ formal courses, they are encouraged, in some cases, to reflect on their experiences outside of the classroom to make connections between theory and practice, as well as the linkages between personal and public forms of knowledge, meaning and experience. The extent to which the learners are able to reflect on their experiences outside of the classroom is shaped by the kind of courses they are engaged in. For example, one group of students is taking a Women’s Studies course, where their personal experiences are explicitly being drawn on to challenge and contribute to the publicly legitimated knowledge within the university and wider field. In contrast, the students who are taking Study Skills on their Foundation Degree Course in IT and Business Studies are also encouraged to consider connections between their experiences outside the classroom, but spending too much attention on personal experiences is strongly discouraged. On this course, writing is constructed as an asocial and decontextualised set of skills and writers are expected to learn the techniques needed to communicate a coherent, linear and evidence-based case or argument. The journal is treated as an opportunity for learners to become skilled at self-evaluation and self-reflection. In this situation, the learning journal entries are formally assessed, and the learners are not invited to reflect on their personal experiences but rather their personal strengths and weaknesses. In the third context, schoolteachers who are undertaking an accredited continuing professional development course within their local education authority on action research are also keeping a learning journal, which will form part of their assessed portfolio. In this context, learners are expected to make connections between their professional experiences and the theoretical literature that they are being introduced to on their courses.