European Journal of Education, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2007

The Big Picture: understanding learning andmeta-learning challenges

ROBERTO CARNEIRO

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Futures of Learning — A Compelling Agenda

We stand at the start of a new century that promises complexity and no let up inthe scale and pace of change. Learning how to understand, adapt to and prosperin these turbulent times has become an urgent matter and a critical competence.Hence the decision to produce an issue of the

European Journal of Education

(EJE)that is entirely devoted to the debate around the broad directions of learning policyand practice in Europe.This publication follows two seminars that were organisedin 2005, one in Glasgow (24–25 June) and the other in Paris (25–26 November)and which aimed to provide ‘food for thought’. Its purpose is to raise awarenessabout research in the field of learning that is likely to have a significant impact onfuture practice, both in the formal and non-formal sectors.As an overall outcomeof the exercise, we wish to ensure that this knowledge is disseminated amongstpolicy-makers, decision-makers and practitioners.But acting on these priorities to advance learning, using evolving theory todevelop new policies is not easy. The biggest challenge remains effective imple-mentation. As we look ahead, there are many uncertainties that tax the ingenuityand foresight of decision-makers in government, enterprise and civil society.Theyraise such questions as:•Can we foresee how a new generation of technologies and interfaces — ubiquitous, embedded and mobile — will reshape access to and delivery of learning?•Do we have the will to bridge effectively the digital divide?•How will effective lifelong learning policies and practices change the supply-demand equation?•Will the locus of learning move away from the traditional institutions of education? What will be the future roles of governments, enterprises andcivil society when learning is taken out of the traditional institutions?•If it is true that brain research remains in its infancy, then how will a betterunderstanding of the human mind influence learning in the 21

st

century?•Can we expect dramatic changes in the ways we organise and transmitknowledge between generations?•Is the network society an enhanced learning society?To tackle such a vast and complex agenda lies well beyond the possibilities of onesingle enterprise. Rather, this issue of EJE will focus on how the learning systems

European Journal of Education

,Vol. 42, No. 2, 2007

learn and new paradigms of learning, in particular drawing together and furtherexploring broad questions such as: — If we do not like the present situation, should we change it, change thepeople in it, or change ourselves? — How do we govern the emerging, highly densely networked society? Howcan we plan for innovation in a complex environment where ‘planningcauses failure and fails to reduce risk’? How can we adapt our learningsystems for conditions of complexity and a lifelong continuum of learning? — How can co-production and co-creation ﬂourish in a system based on theassessment of individuals? Can we match universal requirements andindividual needs? — Can our 19

th

-century institutions lead us into the 21

st

? How can theeducation system successfully link the past, present and future? How canschools adjust their role within wider structures of society? How can weaddress the gaps in culture and mindset between pupils and teachers? Howcan we enable a shift in the balance from control to participation — forlearners and teachers? — We can innovate where learning is voluntary. How can we innovate in thecompulsory education sector? — How can we embed successful innovation? Replicate and scale (the differ-ence between ‘fresh’ and ‘canned’)? If novelty and unfamiliarity are key toinnovation, how can it be sustainable? Is ‘sustainable unfamiliarity’ aparadox?What can we learn from the failure to learn from previous roundsof innovation? Much of today’s ‘innovation’ reinvents yesterday’s wheel. — What are the theoretical resources from outside education policy andpractice that we can draw on for our challenge? — How can we balance spontaneity and innovation with needs for order,assessment and evaluation? — How can we address the ‘soul’ needs of learners? — How do we reconcile diverse approaches with equity and coherence?We will be witnessing exponential change in the ways we teach and learn. Littledoubt can remain about that. Just imagine the scope and breadth of consequencesof the mass distribution of the US $100 laptop to all classrooms of the planet; orthe impact of high speed broadband Internet on students’ learning styles andpreferences; or the day when podcasting classes become the norm; or the gener-alisation of open source campus serving disenfranchised regions and peoples of theglobe;or the dissemination of quantum computing working on solar energy panels;or the merging of new media companies with traditional universities to generatenew forms of customised learning networks and communities of practice.The future agenda challenges our capacity to dream and our common vision of what will constitute a true and lasting learning society.

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Industrial Societies, Informational Societies, Knowledge Societies,Learning Societies: a value chain

3

Human beings are compelling inventors of technology.They are hardly a

species

,forthe simple reason that they are not very

specialised

. Unlike other species, humansare anatomically indigent

4

— they are destitute of ‘high-tech parts’, such as the152

European Journal of Education

crab’s pincers, the bird’s beak or the octopus’ tentacle. Indeed, human survival isdependent on the production and use of technology. From his very early days,

Homo faber

has resorted to technological breakthroughs to extend the power of thebrain, his only truly specialised organ.Technological creation is a way of humandifferentiation. Its formidable advances have served well the

Homo faber

in hisconstant search for tools of survival, protection, shelter, hunting and gathering.Ironically, technological progress has also come to shape the minds of those whoare their prime inventors. Humankind gradually learns to study, understand,interpret and make sense with and through technology:

Homo sapiens

has acquireda unique technological nature. However, one ought to say that

Homo sapiens

precedes technology in his quest for meaning — mind before machine — in thesame way that

complexity

overrules

linearity

— the supremacy of a world of culturaldiversity and plurality over a world of ﬁrst-order technological uniformity.Education is the ultimate realm of the

Homo sapiens sapiens

. Nonetheless, it isfraught with oracles preaching technological novelty, and one cannot help elicitinginnovation and enterprise as growing concerns in learning; but also, by mission — even design — education is a place of preservation and transmission.This dual roleof both conserving and liberating, with its potential for contradiction, conﬂict andeven immobilisation, is more present today than ever before.

5

One could even saythat this pervasive duality in education is compounded today by a rapidly changingsociety. It is as if the ‘old order’ of thinking is being replaced by new paradigms of understanding reality and of foreseeing our common predicament.Technological discovery has seized our daily life. The increasing speed of change makes it difficult for us to stop and reflect.The future proves less and lessto be the simple projection of the past.This is the ‘age of discontinuity’ to quote aremarkable contemporary analyst, P. Drucker.Education — the supreme social function — is‘caught’between‘two fires’,twokinds of society, in the transition of millennia. Evermore placed in the thinborderline between stability and change, between preservation and innovation,education undergoes unprecedented tensions. Indeed, educational systems are amirror of all the contradictions that strike our modern societies.In our

old

society — stable,simple and repetitive — memory controlled project,principles were immutably passed on, and exemplary patterns could be preservedas archetypes. It is the primacy of structure over genesis. In our

new

society — unstable, inventive and innovative — project overcomes memory, future controlsthe past, patterns are constantly being put to question. It is the primacy of genesisover structure. Society — old or new — is the natural environment for humans.Human beings cannot survive out of society. Education, in its intrinsic sociality, isforged by cultural experience and social learning.Knowledge and learning constitute the two faces of one same coin: theyrepresent the process of societal ascent from the ‘primitive’ forms of industry andinformation — predominantly economic-driven — to the more ‘advanced’ formsof community and freedom — determined by cultural achievement. Technologyprovides the ladder to climb the value chain.

Knowledge as Meta-information, Learning as Meta-cognition

Bridging the gulf between knowledge and learning steers the way to overcome atragic ﬂaw of our modern age.The more knowledge seems generalised, insofar as

Roberto Carneiro

153

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