A translation of a presentation given at the main conference of Finnish Adult Edu-

cation Week and United Nation’s Literacy Day, 8th of September, 2005, Paasi-
torni, Helsinki

From Blue Collar Worker to Academy Researcher:

Reflections on knowledge practices and trialogical learning in
my life path.
Dr. Kai Hakkarainen, Ph.D.

Professor (Learning and Learning environ- Docent, Director, Centre for Networked
ments), Learning and Knowledge Building, Depart-
ment of Psychology
Savonlinna Department of Teacher Education,
P.O. Box 9 00014 University of Helsinki
University of Joensuu
gsm: +358-50-4129572
Kuninkaankartanontie 5
fax: +358-9-19123443
57101 Savonlinna
email: kai.hakkarainen@helsinki.fi
GSM. 050-4129572
www.helsinki.fi/science/networkedlearning
Fax: 015-531060

Introduction

I have functioned as the director of internationally linked research group – currently in-
volving about 15 full-time doctoral and post-doctoral researchers – at the Department of
Psychology, University of Helsinki more than 10 years. The path I started on was quite
different. I have an exceptional background for academics in that I repeated classes
(years) in primary school twice due to my difficulties in learning languages, such as
Finnish, Swedish, and English. I have frequently been asked to reflect on my challeng-
ing learning experiences and cognitive efforts essential in overcoming them that I have
in one way or another touched in my national books, talks or radio or TV interviews. In
many cases, some adult learners have told me that hearing about these reflections had
given them encouragement and impetus to continue or start pursuing their studies. They
have been enlivened by the thought that it is never too late to open the path of learning
and surpassing yourself – even if you have been outside of such a trajectory for a long
time. Because of that I have felt it my duty to put myself on the line in terms of sharing
my own demanding learning experiences in various talks and publications. Perhaps I am
in a better position regarding understanding interactive formation of learning difficulties
than students who have followed “the straight path of studying” from one level to an-
other. Even if developing learning theory on the basis of a single individual's idiosyn-
cratic experiences is problematic, reflection of my experiences may assist in problema-
tizing both everyday beliefs and old-fashioned scientific accounts regarding learning.

When I repeated the last year of junior high school, I was sure that I would not survive
high school: That was the reason for going to a vocational school to pursue a career as a
milling machine and lathe operator (“asentaja-koneistaja” in Finnish). I had got some
experiences in metal work during a summer job at my grandfather’s design-oriented

1
blacksmith factory (Taidetakomo Hakkarainen). He was pretty famous in the field, so
my vocational school teachers knew him by name. Also my own father was educated in
blacksmithing; perhaps it was also my romantic desire to follow my fathers’ footsteps.
After my parents’ divorce, we were not so close to my father; when we were kids he
was always working, so I did not see him too often, but I have warm memories of build-
ing technical toys (e.g., airplanes and boats) together. I felt closer to him after getting
experiences in his type of work; we even once worked at the same metal factory over a
summer.

In the vocational school, I became interested in learning all over again; I am not entirely
sure, why. Vocational studies, however, allowed me to exercise some missing skills as
well as fill certain pressing gaps in my knowledge, And, in a sense, I was able to start
from the beginning. I began doing pretty well in comparison to the other students who
had not been at “comprehensive school”. Somehow I got committed to try to improve
my study record. Gradually I realized that “everything can be learned perfectly”, pro-
vided that you are committed enough. This created such a strong feeling in my power of
learning, my sense of efficacy, that toward the end of my vocational school, I told to
some of my teachers that I am going to study to become a “doctor” (PhD). It was a long
and multi-faceted process. I worked many years at Nokia Cable Factory as a lathe op-
erator within a prototype laboratory. Simultaneously, I entered an evening school that
allowed be to finish my comprehensive education as well as high school. It took four
years. I did not enter the university before I was 25.

In the beginning of my university studies, I felt myself a bit weaker or not as good a
student as the others because of my blue-collar background, or at least somehow differ-
ent. In order to merge into the academic community, it may have been best to hide or
forget my learning history. Some foresighted older colleagues, however, said that I
should never try to cover my past because it would always be the best recommendation
that I could have. After getting enough degrees of freedom through my foreign doctoral
studies (Centre for Applied Cognitive Science, Ontario Institution for Studies in Educa-
tion, University of Toronto, 1991-1994), I focused my whole research interest on exam-
ining problems and phenomena regarding learning. I wanted to better understand the
background of my own and other people’s challenging personal and collective learning
experiences.

How did I learn to write?

It is said that if you do not learn to write, you do not learn to think. It is a process which
is not consciously directed; it simply happens. For me, it did not, at first. Apart from
foreign languages, I had learning difficulties in my mother language. I was not able to
express myself in writing for a long time. In Finnish education, there used to be some-
thing like Lyceum; after 4 yours of basic education, you needed to pass the (entrance)
examination in order to be eligible to go to high school and to do a matriculation ex-
amination. I did not pass the entrance examinations at my first try because I got zero
points from essay writing. Consequently, I had to apply again after the summer. Due to
some practice, I succeeded better the next time. Nevertheless, I did not pass the first
grade of the comprehensive school because I failed mother language and Swedish. One
reason was that I was left handed; my writing process was difficult and I did not have
readable handwriting. At those times, we were not allowed to do block writing (print-
ing). While using an old-fashioned ink pen, my hand used to make a lot of mess.

Toward the end of comprehensive education, I tried to compensate this weakness by

learning to use a typewriter. We did not have any courses in such things, so that I still

2
type with one hand and by using only one or two fingers. Nevertheless, I am typing as
fast as I can think, so that it is not an unbearable problem. I started to make written
notes about issues that appeared to be interesting to me. Gradually, I developed a habit
that whenever I had a problem that I did not really understand, I wrote notes about it.
This helped me gradually to get a better understanding of the problems in question. In
the other words, I learned spontaneously to use writing systematically as a tool to think-
ing and problem solving. This was not something that was, as such, encouraged at
school during those years; rather they focused on "writing assignments" on specified
topics.

Toward the end of comprehensive school, I started to write articles for the newspaper of
the student union of my school about issues that appeared interesting to me. When the
others said that they did not understand what I was trying to say, I started to write my
pieces of text again and again – occasionally even ten times. I used, in these kinds of
activities, several cheap East-German typewriters.

For a long time, I though that I am a weak writer unlike everyone else. I assumed that
others are able to achieve a much better result already during their first writing cycle; I
attributed to talent what was in fact the result of effort. Only when I heard about process
writing long after of these experiences, did I realize that I had independently developed
a corresponding innovative (trialogical, see below) knowledge practice. After some
practice I learned to produce a relatively decent text already during my first try. When I
took the Matriculation Examination, I got almost full points on both compulsory Finnish
essays. A person, formerly a weak writer, had learned to express himself textually. Ever
since, writing has been one of my intellectual strengths; it did not, however, come natu-
rally but through deliberate cultivation.

To what extent are students of primary and secondary schools guided to support their
thinking and problem solving process by writing; that is, to use writing as a tool? To
some extent, but not sufficiently. Writing is too often used only to assess students learn-
ing a competence (exploitation of knowledge) in a prescribed subject, rather than their
inquiry according to their own direction (exploration of knowledge, March, 1999). Self
directed inquiry has been crucial in my research. Many pedagogical experiments that I
have pursued in school have aimed at investigating how technology-enhanced learning
environments can be used to facilitate collaborative building of knowledge (Bereiter &
Scardamalia, 1993) or progressive inquiry (”tutkiva oppiminen” in Finnish, Hak-
karainen et al., 2004a; 2004b). This means that knowledge is intentionally pursued,
from one's intrinsic motivation. Writing has a crucial role in these types of environ-
ments. These types of experiments have been carried out, for instance, in collaboration
with class teacher Marianne Bollström-Huttunen (Hakkarainen et al., 2005).

How did I learn to speak English?

I never learned in school or even at the university to adequately speak or write foreign
languages, although I was just able to inflect perfect tenses so as to pass the Matricula-
tion Examination. At school, I was so shy that I often did not answer in foreign lan-
guage classes. I still remember how it felt when everyone was laughing when I read a
piece of English text in a way that it would be pronounced in Finnish.

When I went to the University of Toronto to do my doctoral studies at age of 35, I still
was not able to gabble more than a couple words in English. I was competently dealing
English literature, and it was not too difficult to understand spoken English related to
my academic studies. As a consequence of my limited oral skills; on the oral (interview)

3
part of the international language examination; my overall score was below the mini-
mum required level. I had been doing an intensive research project days and nights over
several months. They asked me what I had done during my Midsummer festival: I hon-
estly did not have any recollection whatsoever about anything beyond my own research
work. In any case, it was evident that my skills were not adequate.

My dear friend, fellow psychology student, and colleague Kirsti Lonka, who has studied
at the University of Toronto, wrote a letter on my behalf to Professor Fergus Craik who
had visited in Finland some time before. Kirsti testified that ”Kai Hakkarainen is not the
most talkative guy, not even in Finnish.” Professor Craik contacted the Dean of the
University of Toronto who decided to accept me (Carl Bereiter and Keith Oatley had
made similar decision at OISE). I learned to make small talk only after spending a con-
siderable time drinking beer with my Canadian neighbors and when collecting my kids
from school with other parents.

There is an interesting cultural difference between Finnish and Canadian academic cul-
ture. In Finland, it is perfectly acceptable that a student does not say anything during
lectures. In many cases, Finnish students know more than they appear to know. In Ca-
nadian (and American) culture students are very outspoken, but often know less than
they appear to know. It was nice to see how they often, for instance, questioned famous
gurus or confidently provided long explanations of their own, rather than modestly ask-
ing questions in a way more typical for my own country. Consequently, I got in trouble
in an educational psychology course, Marlene Scardamalia’s class, because I did not –
or was not able – say hardly anything. She possibly thought I was being arrogant or hos-
tile. Only after submitting an essay, which she found to be “really marvelous” was my
lack of participation forgiven.

How did I learn to write English?

I had similar problem regarding my written English. When I took part in the Matricula-
tion Examination, I undertook to memorize ten essays in English and Swedish in order
to pass the foreign essay writing task. At this point of time, I was already pretty good at
composing essays in my own language. This allowed me to put the memorized sen-
tences together in a creative way so that it appeared as if I was able to produce text in a
foreign language. I passed the examinations in English and Swedish with satisfactory
grades. I did not learn to produce text in English before starting my doctoral studies in
Toronto. Due to colleague Elisabeth Service’s suggestion – she had studied foreign lan-
guage learning – I wrote everything in English after getting to Toronto. Initially, I was
not supposed to care at all about producing correct sentences, just trying to become as
fluent as possible. With increasing fluency, it was gradually possible to put more and
more effort for paying attention to the correctness of what I wrote. When I had written
the first hundreds pages of text, English writing started to go better and better. This al-
lowed me pretty quickly to apply my well-developed skills of theoretical thinking – thus
far practiced in Finnish – for writing sophisticated essays. These essays gained me the
respect of my professors (e.g., Carl Bereiter, Keith Oatley, David Olson, and Marlene
Scardamalia) in spite of my limited skills in oral communication. I may still need some-
one to fix my preposition or articles while writing in English.

The lesson learned from these experiences is that many things that are hard to learn at
school become accessible when you have a privilege to approach them in a rich context
of cultural participation and in association with the most important issues that interest
you, that, so to say, mediate your life. These constitute your personally critical life
themes. We may ask whether it would be possible for students to overcome what learn-

4
ing difficulties they have – difficulties that would endanger their progress is school – if
they were given an opportunity to take part in such cultural resources and experiences.

I am still not sufficiently good in oral communication of English regarding the require-
ments of my academic work, although I have mastered it at an adequate level for every-
day purposes. Even the youngest of my doctoral student does better due to a different
history of cognitive socialization. 1 I am not sufficiently good at improvising in English
in demanding presentation context. Once in a while I get a reminder regarding how vul-
nerable my linguistic competence still is in the most demanding situations. Luckily, sci-
entific productivity does not only depend of the mastery of oral language.

Learning does not only take place within mind

In my latest publications, I have represented a view according to which learning and

intelligence do not only take place within the individual human head, but are processes
distributed over a network of various cognitive prostheses (Clark, 2002). By relying on
cultural historically evolved tools and instruments, it is possible to achieve something
that otherwise would be completely beyond an individual agent’s possibilities. It may be
that I have a limited working memory, such as many young people with learning diffi-
culties appear to have. (Here my wife might say so!). In any case, who says that human
beings process information only in their working memory? When psychologists go to
workplaces and other demanding environments to examine how people process infor-
mation, it becomes apparent that people are using various external tools and instru-
ments, such as paper and pen, to create notes and documents in order to solve problems
that go beyond the capacity of their working memory.

Merlin Donald (1991; 2001), who investigates cognitive evolution, proposed that the
architecture of human intelligent activity profoundly changed when the emergence of
literacy (writing and visualization) opened up the External Memory Field (EXMF). You
can develop much more complex ideas on paper than you can do in human working
memory due to its processing limitations. It was about harnessing the EXMF to support
the internal memory field when I developed my ideas by writing both in Finnish and
English. Paper and pen, typewriter, and computer, and the documents they produce, are
kinds of intellectual prostheses (Clark, 2002) that help us to expand our natural intellec-
tual resources. Human beings are cyborgs that have artificially boosted both their physi-
cal and intellectual resources for thousands of years. Exceptional intellectual achieve-
ment becomes available when you learn to harness such cyborg technologies for sup-
porting your study projects. While I started, long ago, to develop corresponding knowl-
edge practices spontaneously so as to cope with external constraints and pressures of
learning, I have only gradually come to understand the revolutionary implications of
intellectual prostheses.

I have been reading and writing daily more than 20 years. I have started to feel that my
thinking is like a text. When I am in a flow, and this takes place almost always when I
have an opportunity to concentrate on writing, ideas flow to the paper easily and effort-
lessly. Sometimes I am able to write more than 20 pages of publishable text in a day. I
have been cognitively adapting my neural networks for writing, writing which is the
most important tool of a researcher. Simultaneously, it may be difficult to communicate

1
My own kids (two boys who are in their twenties and one girl (11 years old) have got similar deep en-
culturation to foreign language than many of my students in terms of starting their education in Canada at
age of 5-6 and being in an international schools after coming back to Finland. Such enculturation to for-
eign languages is an example of inter-generational learning (Rogoff, 2003); an earlier generation’s
achievements (doctoral studies abroad) are the basis for the next generation’s cognitive development.

5
ideas orally to other researchers or a general audience. This especially concerns ideas
that are evolving and in the process of emerging so that I do not myself really know
what I am thinking about. Only after finishing a writing task may I know what I am
really thinking about. In my case, it is not that you first think something and then write
it down. The ideas emerge only through explicating them by a longstanding and itera-
tive process of writing. Gilbert Ryle, a philosopher of mind, made similar observation.

In this regard, I am not alone, but in good company. In science and other extremely de-
manding activities, articulation of complex ideas takes place at the boundary surface of
artifacts in interaction between the internal and external memory loops. This fact was
acknowledged, for instance, by Albert Einstein who pointed out that ”my pen is smarter
than I am” (Skagestad, 1999, p. 552). When the Nobel-winning American physicist
Richard Feynman gave a manuscript full of text and diagrams to Charles Weiner who
was investigating the history of his thought, the latter asked if this was ”a record of the
day-to-day working”. ”I actually did the work on the paper” Feynman responded.
Slightly confused Weiner specified: ”Well, the work was done in your head, but the re-
cord of it is still here.” "No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work
on paper, and this is the paper. Okay?” (Gleick, 1992, p. 409, quoted by Donald, 2001,
p. 301). Really complex knowledge, such as philosophy, exists mostly in the form of
written text. That may be reason that philosophers often read their papers in conferences
rather than orally improvising about the topic.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith (1992) has developed a theory regarding representational re-

description that helps to understand these issues, when reinterpreted from cultural-
historical perspective (she does not acknowledge role of working with external repre-
sentations as much as I would like to do). Knowledge structures that emerge through
inquiry are initially implicit in nature and very difficult to communicate to outsiders.
Reflection and explication of these fuzzy hunches and uncertain ideas require objectifi-
cation or externalization based on writing and visualization. When the ideas have taken
an externalized form, they can be repeatedly scanned, elaborated, and refined until a de-
sired conceptual quality has been achieved. 2 Often novel ideas emerge through the writ-
ing process, which were not there to begin with. Reading of these ideas and talking
about them help one to create representations that are more easily manipulated. Gradu-
ally, through deliberate and sustained efforts, for instance, in teaching, there emerge
well-organized and coherent structures of knowledge that can easily be transmitted to
students and other interested parties. Often longstanding efforts are required before
there occurs the emergence of knowledge structures that can easily be communicated. I
believe that such processes of representational re-description (based on reciprocal proc-
esses of internalization and externalization) are going on all the time when people take
active part in knowledge intensive work.

When I returned to Finland from Toronto, my salary was not enough even for paying
the rent. Therefore, I had to take a large number of extra courses to teach; I was teach-
ing courses of cognitive psychology and psychology of learning and thinking several
times a year. Initially it was difficult to transmit complex ideas to students because I had
been just writing for so many years. It become, however, easier and easier from one
course to another. Finally, I got into a state that I was able to talk an hour about practi-
cally any subject addressed in my courses. According to my interpretation, this was pos-
2
Moreover, psychological investigations reveal that experts follow knowledge transformation and nov-
ices knowledge telling strategy (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). The former tend to tell all that they know
about an issue in the same order and form than things come to their mind. The latter assume more chal-
lenging tasks of not only transforming and advancing their knowledge but also tailoring it according to
the needs of the reader.

6
sible because going through these courses pushed me constantly to do redescription of
representations, that transformed knowledge structures initially linked with written text
into a form in which they became easier to manipulate orally.

According to my assessment, my limitations regarding orally improvising in English

can be overcome, at least to a significant extent, on the condition of having an opportu-
nity to lecture in English. As far as I am using 80-90% of my time for reading and writ-
ing without sufficient opportunities to exercise oral competencies, it is very difficult
make any improvement. Spoken improvisation is hard because the knowledge structures
in question are in a form that is optimized for written rather than oral communication.
Concrete efforts, parallel those needed for teaching in your own language, are required
for representational re-description of such knowledge toward spoken communication.
This example illustrates that one's strengths and weaknesses often mirror one another.
My scientific productivity relies on intensive writing. This apparent strength, however,
makes me vulnerable in situations that require different kind of cognitive repertoire.

Learning is collaborative in nature

Learning is a collaborative process. Even when we examine learning of an individual

student, in the background there is a large number of people who instruct, coach, and
channel his or her intellectual efforts. Many youngsters need, for instance, adult pres-
ence and support, especially for structuring and managing their usage of time. Learning
takes place in the whole network rather than merely at an individual node of it, i.e., the
learner. I did not have such strong network support as I can today provide to my own
kids. The significance of such network support should not be underestimated. Even an
individual teacher or educator who believes in your growth possibilities may have a
crucial role in overcoming learning difficulties. In my case, many well-meaning teach-
ers had a lifetime effect and encouraged my learning, even if I was not always able to
appreciate it, and it did not produce results very quickly.

While carrying on my comprehensive education and taking part in an evening school

studies, I focused on learning that was based on collaboration rather than individual
competition. Collaborative learning was something that I and my fellow students em-
phasized from the very beginning of my educational experience. Perhaps because of
Summerhill experiences or some other reasons, The National Student Union of Finnish
High School Students (Teiniliitto) already emphasized the importance of collaborative
rather than competitive learning (and relative evaluation) at the beginning of the 70s
when I was doing my junior high school.

My learning history is full of examples of me being coached by other students and, re-
ciprocally, me providing numerous lessons regarding mathematics or physics to some-
one else. Once my girl friend was having difficulties in physics. She was in high school,
and I was one year behind; I studied her book for a couple days in order to be able to
teach her the most difficult parts of it. These experiences made me understand that
teaching is the most effective form of learning. This is because teaching something to
another person requires much deeper understanding than personal mastery of knowl-
edge. Many gaps of understanding become apparent only after you have tried to instruct
someone else.

7
Deep enculturation for higher-level collaboration

I belong to a generation that rebelled against old-fashioned instructional methods and

the conservative worldview provided by school in the 70s. It was partially because of
my family background and partially something that happened to my whole generation.
In 1960s, my mother and step-father actively took part in the student revolution at the
university. Before we went to sleep, they played us Pete Seeger’s version on Quan-
tanamera. There were nine children in that blended family, and sometimes we got an
opportunity to go to demonstrations. I considered it to be very fun. A couple of times,
our parents allowed us to take part in gluing posters against the Vietnam War around the
city in the middle of night.

My intellectual growth has been deeply embedded in collective student activities across
1970s; it was like being in an extracurricular graduate school that provided me much
more advanced knowledge practices that the school ever did. When I was about 13 year
old, I became interested in the student union of my school and started to take part in
provincial as well as national meetings. From newspapers and television we saw pov-
erty, misery, and war that were difficult to integrate with such “home district” education
(i.e., education addressing mainly local affairs) that we were provided. Simultaneously
with failing in my school studies, I became interested in social and international issues.
I got interested in activities against the Vietnam War, apartheid, and neocolonialism,
and started to actively search for information about these issues from various sources. I
gradually became so knowledgeable about the Vietnam War that some of my classmates
started to ask me to tell them about the war and American imperialism. They called
themselves my disciples. While still not doing very well during lessons, I was answer-
ing all kinds of explanation-seeking questions and providing more or less coherent ar-
guments during the breaks, regarding global issues that were not at all addressed at
school.

Beyond international ones, also educational issues concerned us. We wanted to do

meaningful rather than rote learning, collaboration rather than collaboration. Yrjö
Engeström was the secretary of educational affairs of Finnish National Comprehensive
Students Union (including junior high as well as high school) when the 60s was turning
to the 70s. He had written something about Summerhill that we eagerly assimilated as
well as published a Finnish book entitled Education in Class Society (1970). I took part
in study groups for reading the book. I still remember the central tenet of the book; edu-
cation has three social tasks, i.e., educational selection, behavioral modification (trans-
formation), and indoctrination.

As a consequence of student pressure, there was a school-democracy reform in Finland,

in 1973. Each school was required to organize a school council consisting of representa-
tives of students and teachers. The National Organization of Finnish Comprehensive
School Students had a central role in making this transformation happen. It had a very
powerful organization, so that the activists were often better informed than teachers.
Consequently, teachers started to come to me to ask about this or that issue during the
process of preparing the elections.

My Swedish and English teacher was a conservativist who did not appreciate my social
activities. Just before the elections, he put a great deal of pressure on me. There were
many lessons during which he asked me to read and translate pieces of text in Swedish
(and English, if I remember correctly). I was, of course, completely unable to do it. So I
stuttered couple of sentences. After a while he asked the other students to help. Then I
resumed my desperate efforts for a moment or two, and so on. Many lessons were spent

8
on such activities. Finally, there were the elections, and I was selected to the School
Council together with two other students. My enemy teacher became the chair of the
school council. I got some sort of moral victory when that teacher withdrew from the
council (during the elections, he had promised to allow high school students to smoke.
Other teachers did not accept this. Consequently, he decided to resign from his position)
and I was selected as the chair of school council. Simultaneously, school was ending,
and in spite of my genuine efforts to improve my grades during the last months, I did
not pass the final grade of comprehensive school. I was again about to repeat a year.
Rather than staying at school to do so, I decided to go to a vocational school.

I learned practically all my academic skills though taking part in collective student ac-
tivities. Since my middle-school years, I had a central role in student unions of all those
educational institutions in which I studied. The network that was supporting my intel-
lectual growth emerged from outside rather than inside of school. It took place in activi-
ties organized by students themselves rather than belonged to the official curriculum of
the school. I do not think that it is an accident that, for instance, the present Prime Min-
ister of Finland (Matti Vanhanen) was one of the activists of the organization. From the
13 (my age) to 19-year-old participants in those meetings have come the current politi-
cal, cultural, and scientific elite of Finland. With hindsight, some of the ideas elaborated
were not so smart after all, but overall participation in these activities provided deep en-
culturation to very high-level of knowledge practices, comparable with those of univer-
sity education. This concerned all participants regardless of their political affiliations. A
crucial transition in my educational career took place when it suddenly came to my
mind to apply collectively cultivated knowledge practices for my own school studies.

Productive years in Ressu Evening School

The years in evening school (1975-1979) were perhaps the most productive time in my
life. During the daytime (7.30-16.00), I worked at the Nokia Cable Factory making pro-
totypes on the milling machine and lathe. I functioned pretty independently under su-
pervision of a technician and several engineers. They designed various pieces of elec-
tronic equipment, and I constructed working prototypes of them using various materials
(metals, plastic, and acrylic). The workplace community provided a rich network of re-
lations, and I took active part in the union. I remember warmly how my workmates as
well as central union activists always supported and encouraged my evening studies.
Later on, while doing military service, I was trained to be a gunsmith (a person fixing
rifles and larger guns) due to my vocational training and professional experience. Sev-
eral years after starting to pursue my university studies, I used to go to work in a metal
industry during summer times.

In the evening, I took classes from 17.00-20.00. After that, me and my fellow students
had various meetings of the student union of our school. In the evening, I was either
producing documents to support student activities or preparing to my examination. I
collaborated very closely with the principal and many teachers from our school. Rela-
tions between teachers and students were pretty good. We all felt equal and sometimes
had beers together after finishing classes. For the first time in my life, my student activi-
ties were considered as a legitimate and important aspect of functioning of the whole
school. Later on, I was selected as the chair of national organization of Finnish Evening
School Student Union. I continued these activities one year after graduating from eve-
ning school and finishing my high school.

9
Taking part in expansive learning of social activities

Our school was very large and located in the middle of Helsinki. The principal of our
school, Veikko Huttunen, kept me well informed regarding provincial and national is-
sues regarding evening schools. We were very concerned about socio-economic condi-
tions of the evening-school students. When we heard that unemployed students were not
allowed to study in evening school, we paid a visit, together with the representatives of
teacher organizations, to the Ministry of Employment as well as went to meet represen-
tatives of political parties at the Finnish Parliament (we pretty regularly visited them
during those years). Under my leadership, we initiated a campaign for improving socio-
economic conditions of evening school students. It was less than a kilometer’s distance
to march from our school to the Senate Square, the very centre of Helsinki in which the
administration of the city was located. (Also the parliament was close, but that was an-
other story.) So we organized a demonstration in which a couple hundred students took
part and submitted an invoice to the city regarding our school expenses. The city au-
thorities did not change anything despite their promises. Consequently, during the next
year, we sent another dunning invoice and had a corresponding demonstration. It did not
help. Therefore, before Christmas we made an appointment with the Lord Mayor of
Helsinki and gave him a really trashy bundle of brushwood because the city was treat-
ing us so badly. He smiles nicely when a photographer took pictures for newspapers.
After the photographer left, he became truly violent and we were lucky that he did not
attack us physically.

Finally, we organized a simulated trial chaired with a real judge for sentencing the city
because it had not paid the invoice regarding our school expenses. I was the prosecutor
and representatives of political parties were defenders. While some selected students
testified against the city, several hundred other constituted the jury. It is not difficult to
guess the end result. All of these activities were fully supported by school leadership, so
there were not classes during our demonstrations or school meetings. A huge number of
students were involved, and most of the stuff was completed with certain sense of hu-
mor: we were really having fun and enjoyed the right thing that we were doing. We got
a great deal of provincial and national press coverage.

Simultaneously with these societal activities, I was centrally involved in conceptual

work to analyze and examine evening school students’ socioeconomic conditions by
relying on various reports and studies. We aimed at embedding the socioeconomic is-
sues within a bigger picture regarding also pedagogical development school. This took
place by writing a large document regarding “What kind of evening school we would
like to have?” I carried the main responsibility for writing it. With hindsight it can be
considered a trialogical effort. The produced knowledge was validated and evaluated in
terms of achieving shared understanding among various activists (and corresponding
political parties) taking part in our organization. It is likely that, because our conceptual
work was relevant, the participants invested a great deal of their precious time and re-
sources in our collective efforts. There was a huge number of meetings at the school
level, as well as yearly national conferences in which educational policy programs as
well as concrete activities were discussed and agreed upon.

After I left school, some of our demands were granted, such as free snack for students
coming to school after work. It appears to me that such social activities are trialogical in
nature. We have shared objects of activity — both our documents and the educational
policies of the City of Helsinki – that were collectively addressed in multiple innovative
ways. There certainly was a great deal of expansive learning involved regarding our col-
lective student activities.

10
My last experience of such student communities was participation in activities of the
Student Union of the University of Helsinki. For two years I was a member of the ex-
ecutive board of the student union; first, chair the council of social affairs and the coun-
cil of educational or pedagogical affairs. I was concerned with socioeconomic well-
being of university students as well as promoting innovative pedagogical practices,
unity of teaching and researching (professors teaching those things that they themselves
are studying). The student union was very rich, so it was like running a medium-sized
company. Sometimes when we went to fancy and expensive restaurants to discuss about
the budget, I did not have enough money to give to the doorman. Toward end of my
university studies, I decided to focus my life on doing science. I was not interested in
politics in which appearance and opportunistic marketing of one’s own approach seems
more important than uncovering the truth, understanding substance, or truly transform-
ing the world.

Hybridization of knowledge practices

These social activities made me to tackle extremely complex international (e.g., the
Vietnam War) and national (how to transform Finnish education) issues from a very
early age. In order to understand these issues, I was forced to start reading various types
of research reports, government committee memos, scientific articles, and publications.
It was not enough just to digest this information; I had to utilize it in meetings and talks,
often with relatively large audiences. Over several years, I was constantly occupied with
questioning and explaining extremely complex issues in parallel textual and oral activi-
ties. The issues appeared to be larger than life, so I was completely immersed in these
activities and extremely motivated to do so. Participation in such social activities made
me constantly stretch my cognitive abilities and knowledge resources. Across sustained
periods of time, the very structure of human mind may change as a consequence of tak-
ing an intensive part in such activities.

While the knowledge and understanding in question was constantly validated in face-to-
face meetings and in conducting various projects, its process did not represent mere dia-
logue between minds. I was constantly involved in writing various documents that syn-
thesized our collective understanding regarding the issues involved. These documents
were discussed across a large number of meetings involving conflicts between different
perspectives and political opinions. The documents in question served collective activi-
ties, so that ideas on paper got later on embodied in structures and processes of collec-
tive activity. Some of the documents were very large (close to a hundred pages) involv-
ing complex arguments and detailed analyses. While taking part in student activities, I
often carried many documents with me – to the extent that I was jokingly called as “bag
brain” by my classmates. They were right in terms of the intelligence not being in your
head but distributed across such inscriptions. Another, not so nice colleague called me a
“document idiot” because I was always involved in advancing my knowledge and un-
derstanding by writing documents.

Together with my colleague Sami Paavola (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005; Paavola,
Lipponen, & Hakkarainen, 2004), I am pursuing a novel “trialogical” theory of learning.
We are arguing that learning is neither monologue within your mind nor dialogue be-
tween minds; it is a trialogical process taking place between participating agents (indi-
viduals or collectives), available cultural knowledge resources, and shared objects of
inquiry. Collaborative creation and sharing of knowledge take place though engaging in
working to develop shared knowledge artifacts across long periods of time: these in-
clude reports (both academic and non-academic), presentations, briefs, data compila-
tions, written plans and policies, diagrams, and videotapes. Those issues that we were

11
involved were so complex that it would have been very difficult to manage at all with-
out externalizing and objectifying evolving understanding in the form of various types
of documents.

The trialogical activities that I learned to follow from the age of 13-14 years old appear
to have represented hybridization between educational and academic knowledge prac-
tices. Many older people taking part in the activities described were actually studying at
the university. Together with some other young people, I was trying constantly to imi-
tate their knowledge practices so as to help my own pursuit of knowledge and under-
standing to succeed. They were using professional tools, such as typewriters, and revis-
ing their documents constantly, so my appropriation of such instruments and practices
becomes easier to understand.

When entering evening high school, I was already systematically reading scientific lit-
erature regarding psychology, history, social, and natural sciences (especially astronomy
and physics). I had accumulated a lot of experience regarding leading various types of
organization. Consequently, I was questioning, for instance, adequacy of behaviorist
and psychometric explanations involved in our textbooks. I was reading a lot of Finnish
educational research and certain texts representing the emerging cultural psychology of
my country, including writings of Yrjö Engeström, Yrjö-Paavo Häyrynen, and Jarkko
Hautamäki. Their writings provided me an access not only to Vygotsky’s work but also
to that of Jerome Bruner. The challenge was to apply this knowledge to create programs
for transforming educational practices by promoting collaborative learning so that be-
yond academic issues, my interest addresses also educational policy. My lifelong inter-
est in learning emerged during my high school years, although it took time to find my
way to study psychology. After graduating from high school at age of 23, I had devel-
oped extremely wide interests that took me first to study astronomy, then theoretical
philosophy, literature, and adult education, and psychology after only a couple of years
at university.

Learning is not only an epistemic process

In cognitive psychology, learning has traditionally been examined as an epistemic or

knowledge-related process occuring within an individual or her mind. During the last
few years, I have become aware of the limitations regarding such perspective. Sociocul-
tural approaches to psychology help us to understand that learning is, among other
things, always also a process of building identity and developing agency in interaction
with opening up of the trajectories of future development. Identity is associated with a
person’s image of him- or herself as a member of a social community. Agency, in turn,
is connected with assuming responsibility and working for goals and objects important
personally as well as for a community (Scardamalia, 2002); as well as readiness to work
for attaining the objectives in question. Agency appears to evolve through having cour-
age to break one’s boundaries and put one’s own ass on the line for issues experienced
as important. Even when people are failing in their formal studies, they may have a
great deal of agency that is expressed through pursuing various personal, professional,
or social projects. I do not see any reason why school projects have to be boring and un-
able to capture students' interests.

The first experiences regarding developing my agency, I got from the blended family of
my early school years. There were nine children in this family; I was the second oldest.
Due to their social activities, the adults did not always have time to make much food. I
had a very good appetite, perhaps because I was growing pretty fast. The best way of
meeting the requirements of my stomach turned out to be learning to make food when I

12
was about 11-12 year old. I took responsibility of cooking food for a relatively long pe-
riod when the adults were away. When I was 13 years old, I assumed responsibility of
taking care all of the 7 younger children at country side across three months or so. We
were living in a very small summer house without electricity or water supply. The adult
visited there only couple times during the summer. Because there was no one else to do
it, I carried out main responsibility of buying groceries, making food, cleaning up, and
looking for the younger children. The other older children were helping me in many
ways so that we were collectively doing pretty well and having a lot of fun.

Within that blended family, we were not allowed to read comics, watch television or
read books that were not considered to be high quality. This and other authoritative as-
pects of the family culture made me to try to stay with my friends as far from the home
than possible; this did not improve my school achievements. Nevertheless, among the
children there prevailed pretty good relations, and the long series of summers that we
spent together at the countryside are the best times of my childhood. I believe that I
learned many essential socio-cognitive skills and competencies needed for leading vari-
ous organizations and communities in that family community. One of those things was a
willingness to assume responsibility for collective activity rather than expecting some-
one else to do it. Another thing may be the development of a non-competitive orienta-
tion of activity. When children representing different age groups play together, there is
not too much point in competing, but to create collective activities that allow everyone
to participate and contribute in the own ways (Rogoff, 2003).

Within a learning environment, as important as conceptualizing issues is to create a

safety zone (Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002) that allows the participants to make mistakes
and put themselves under criticism in order to understand a complex issue. Success in
learning does not imply constant success, but most of all meaningful and creative re-
covery of failures (Hakkarainen et al., 2004). If you are succeeding constantly, it means
that you are not setting the level of desired accomplishment at a sufficiently high level.
Together with my colleagues, I argue that students need to have created for them, not
only an epistemic but also an emotional zone of proximal development (John-Steiner,
2001). A good teacher of educator provides students the ”gift of confidence” (Mahn &
John-Steiner, 2002), i.e., belief in their ability to learn and break their boundaries. This
may allow overcoming obstacles even when learning is difficult and the learner needs to
negotiate his or her way across many personal and social constraints and obstacles. The
notion regarding ”gift of confidence” comes from the way Simone de Beauvoir thanked
her life-partner Jean-Paul Sartre for providing such self-confidence that she would have
never been able to develop on her own (John-Steiner, 2001). In my case, collective ac-
tivities of my generation that promised to change the world provided a great deal of the
confidence that I was able to muster across my early life cycle.

My experiences from Ressu Evening School (1975-1979) were, in this regard, very
positive. There was not such an authoritative culture that had characterized my middle
school. Students were eager to learn and teachers were considered our friends. This kind
of cultural transformation appears, by the way, to characterize some of the current day,
primary and secondary schools. The teachers who were instructing foreign languages at
the evening school were already tuned to taking problems of students' self-confidence
into consideration and were always extremely encouraging. This was indicated in their
ways of usually asking questions from me that they knew I was able to answer. Simul-
taneously, they were also as demanding as the limited number of lessons allowed one to
be.

13
Orienting toward “big science”

Andrew Pickering (1995) addresses academic researchers’ personal preferences regard-

ing “small” science and “big” science. Some investigators prefer to work alone or with a
few colleagues whereas some others focus on creating large research groups consisting
of ten to hundred participants. My own research center consists of more than 15 full-
time doctoral or post-doctoral researchers apparently representing big rather than small
science. I never consciously aimed at creating a large research group. It would have not
made too much sense because there are not too many such groups even among profes-
sors within the field of learning sciences in Finland. My group has gradually grown
across the last ten years by relying entirely on funding external of the University of Hel-
sinki.

I feel that it may not have been an accident that I have created such kind of large re-
search group. It may partially be because I have been socialized to function within a
relatively large group during my childhood. Also my societal activities involved some-
times tens of active participants. I am feeling psychically well when working within a
relatively large collaborative community in which the participants are supporting one
another. This does not, of course, mean that these communities would always function
very well. It is never easy or tensionless process to grow up to become an independent
researcher rather than a student. There are always people who have sharp corners or
competitive orientation that may make the process particularly challenging for all of the
participants. Similarly with my fellow senior researchers, I have met my share of doc-
toral students, with whom I have shared all my knowledge and publications, who did
not want to see my name in their publications after learning to do publication. Neverthe-
less, the advantages of collaborative cognition are far more significant than the short-
comings.

Formation of epistemic standards

An interesting observation is that across my school-related and extra-curricular activi-

ties: there gradually emerged extremely tight epistemic criteria of accomplishment that
guided my learning activities. In many situations I noticed that I somehow assumed
much more demanding goals or objectives than most of the other students. Something
that I considered to be a minimal level of accomplishment was considered by the learn-
ing environment to represent an exceptionally high-level achievement. I tended to fol-
low cognitive trails further than the others were willing to do and often deliberately at-
tempted to break into a novel domain of knowledge and inquiry while writing essays
and pursuing studies. It should be noticed that this is some sort of metaskill that guides
direction of intellectual activity rather than simple ”creative” talent or some other sort of
individual characteristic. It appeared to be an emergent result of the sustained effort of
pursuing expert-like knowledge practices.

My approach appeared to share a central characteristic of intentional learning (Bereiter)

in learning to regulate learning efforts according to my evolving understanding rather
than relying on external requirements and demands. Consequently, I was constantly do-
ing more than I had to do. I went further, however, because I adopted a practice of using
course work as a tool of pursuing my own epistemic study projects rather than follow-
ing formal requirements. Consequently, there usually emerged some sorts of trialogical
objects (essays or research reports); these were not simply stored on shelves, but were
drawn upon and enriched from one course to another.

14
An effort to work at the edge of one’s competence assists an agent to extend his or her
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD, Vygotsky, 1978) and, thereby, gradually push
the boundaries of his or her intellectual activity. The ZPD is a dynamic zone at the up-
per limit of competence in which formation of novel intellectual skills and competen-
cies takes place. From this perspective human abilities are dynamic and develop
through systematic pushing of one's boundaries. This is called progressive problem
solving (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993); it is an essential aspect of the process of devel-
oping, cultivating and, keeping up one’s expertise. I believe that adopting corresponding
collectively cultivated, knowledge practices even before entering the university was my
main strength and it has carried on into professional research work.

The human brain is a super plastic system that becomes transformed and restructured
through longstanding and sustained learning experiences. Students adapting easily to
school culture go through enculturation processes regarding literate culture that in many
ways shape their intellectual system. I went through a similar effort slower and at a
more later stage of life than normally happens. Due to intensive efforts, I was able to get
to similar (or almost similar) achievements. The time scale of many of these processes
is about as long as the process of developing expertise. As a rule of thumb, it requires
deliberate practices aimed at improving performance four hours a day across 10 years
(i.e., about 15.000 hours; an intensively practicing agents may accumulate this much of
practice sooner).

Learning is a by-product of taking part in social practice

If I think my learning history, I feel that it was crucial to gradually adopt and cultivate
such social practices that elicit in-depth learning. Many students coming from socio-
economically and culturally well situated families adopt these kinds of practices from
their homes. I mean deliberate focus on learning and studying that involves longstand-
ing and daily effort to pursue challenging tasks and activities related to learning.
Whether you work for learning an issue 15 minutes, an hour, two hours, or four hours a
day has significant longstanding effects on learning. When you have an opportunity to
get support and assistance that is tailored to your evolving level of accomplishment, you
are likely to learn those issues with which you are working in a sustained, disciplined,
and intensive way. In this regard, learning appears to be a side-product of participation
in social practice (Marton & Trigwell, 2000).

What causes learning difficulties?

For a long time, I thought that I am pretty slow or weak learner. If you have once
doubted your ability to learn, but noticed that you are wrong, you are not likely to make
the same mistake. After I had started step by step to overcome significant obstacles of
learning, I started to question the meaningfulness of certain taken-for-granted beliefs
and narrow assumptions regarding learning. Because I did not consider myself as an ex-
ceptional person it was natural to consider through analogies whether the same experi-
ences can be generalized to other students. Because of the critical social implication, I
have been trying to shake and question many of prevailing assumptions; it appears to be
useful even if I would, in some respects, be wrong.

The above described experiences have got me to critically assess prevailing everyday
beliefs and scientific conceptions of learning. In my opinion, we are too often examin-
ing learning as a stable and fixed individual ability that can mostly be explained by in-
dividual characteristics. Without questioning individual differences, I have, in recent
years, tried to better understand the interactive, relational and self-organizing processes

15
of learning. An individual agent is only one node in a whole network of agents, tools,
and practices that make learning possible. In an optimal environment school, parents,
family members, and relatives constitute a network that helps the participant to channel
his or her activities in a way that elicits learning and cognitive development.

Learning cannot be explained by individual characteristics; it is related to the environ-

ment in which the person is functioning. An evolving learning network may self organ-
ize because of small things in a way that produce learning difficulties or in a way that
assist in overcoming obstacles. In my case, lack of motivation, problems of concentra-
tion, disregard of homework, regular skipping of school, and so on made the learning
network initially self organize in the way that led to failure of learning. Although my
personal characteristics may not have essentially changed, the network self-organized
later on in a way that supported overcoming learning difficulties. What was needed was
one degree more of efforts, covering certain critical gaps of knowledge, and systematic
training of missing procedural skills. In my case, it was also crucial to have a network
of social activities assisting my learning, networks that existed outside, rather than in-
side of classroom.

Is individual diversity a positive thing?

Between people there prevail many kinds of natural differences regarding learning. One
develops faster, and another one slower. While this agent may learn novel things
quickly, it may require a considerable effort from another person. When both agents
have sufficient power of will and motivation and they are provided as much time as they
need, both may end up having similar intellectual achievements. However, individual
differences in learning are too often seen as absolute and categorical. Individual differ-
ences in learning and performance become more striking when students who are devel-
oping at an individual rate at instructed in homogeneous age groups. In those cultures
where the participants enter more demanding tasks on the basis of their actually evolv-
ing competencies, the differences are less visible (Rogoff, 2003). It is important to be
aware of these considerations simultaneously with efforts of facilitating educational in-
clusion.

One of my teachers, David Olson (2003) pointed out that individual differences have
social basis: Categorical individual differences emerged with institutions that were fo-
cused on selecting and classifying students to study groups representing various levels
of school achievement and correspondingly varying educational tracks. Mass education,
according to Olson, constructs (creates, so to say) kids with a propensity to disturb oth-
ers as “hyperactive” (ADHD). The best and ideal students from the system’s perspec-
tive, were labled “gifted”. At the boundaries of the normal curve emerged novel classes
of abnormal behavior, such as learning disability, slow learners, and impulsive kids.
Even if these kinds of categorizations emerge on the basis of comparing students with
one another, they are considered and interpreted in an absolute and categorical way. It is
not uncommon to hear a teacher dividing his or her students to goats and sheep in the
following way: ”There are only a few smart students in my class, the rest are just some-
thing that you need to carry along” (this was something that a male elementary-school
teacher actually said in a parents’ meeting).

Further, Olson argued that individual differences are, paradoxically, less closely related
to the individual to whom they are attributed, than to the institutions responsible of edu-
cating herlson, 2003). It is a part of the very nature of bureaucratic institutions, such as a
school, to administratively classify participants as successes and failures, good and bad
students, and evaluate their performance accordingly. According to Foucoult (1995),

16
prisons, hospitals, and schools create systems of surveillance and punishment based on
an ideal persons defined by the nature of the institution. These model prisoners, patients
or students determine what kinds of rewards and punisments are given to the less ideal
ones. The structure and nature of the institution determine qualities of ideal individual;
this information may be utilized for using psychometrics to search for attributes that
predict such persons’ success. Consequently, there are good reasons not to think that
categories used to classify people, such as gifted and non-gifted, intelligent and stupid
are ”natural” or ”innocent” in nature.

Negative assessment regarding one’s ability to learn may have a destructive effect for
one’s learning trajectory in terms of becoming self-fulfilling prophesies. After a false
assessment regarding a student’s learning potential has been made, it might unintention-
ally change that student's, parents', teachers', peers' and other people’s behavior in a way
that increase the likelihood of making the prophecy become reality. Consequently, the
prediction may miraculously become realized even if it is based on ill-grounded prem-
ises. In order to prevent educational exclusion, it is important to create a different kind
of educational culture in which the complexity of human development is more deeply
respected and each young person is treated as a gifted rather a non-gifted being (without
forgetting those who are in a need of special educational support).

Although I have been slow learner, my learning history reveals that it did not actually
mean a lack of capacity to learn. Maria Clay (1998) emphasized that so-called “slow
learners” are able to obtain good results when they are provided guidance tailored to
their specific knowledge, personally meaningful epistemic goals, and personal difficul-
ties. With external assistance, they may become active builders of meaning and knowl-
edge. Learning difficulties can be overcome when teachers and educators engage in in-
tensive interaction with learners, learn to know them as individuals as well as under-
stand their specific ways of learning and development. All learners should be allowed to
build new understanding by relying on what they already know as well as capitalizing
on their personal strengths and resources and proceeding to follows their own interests.
A good learning environment allows many paths for achieving joint learning objectives
that is objectives in which the learner has a say in formulating (Clay, 1998).

In many cases, human diversity is actually a positive thing. One special characteristic in
the background of my trialogical knowledge practices that I have been developing is my
shyness. I do not feel comfortable speaking in front of an audience, small or large. In
order to cope with this psychological constraint, I started from the very beginning to
write down what I was going say in my talks, which in turn helped my confidence. It
appeared that shyness was fertile ground for my creativity. Shyness was quite literally
kicking me to do my inquiry in depth. The lesson to be learned is that many human
weaknesses, if shyness really is one, can be transformed to strengths when appropriately
and creatively addressed (Hakkarainen, Lonka, & Lipponen, 2004). Individuals and
communities need to cultivate cognitive hospitability (Levy, 1997), i.e., acknowledge
the fact that their fellow human beings have complementary knowledge and experience
to that of their own. This complementary competence cannot, even in principle, be
quickly exhausted – there is endless series of novel thing that we can learn from one an-
other. The prevailing culture, however, considers individual differences in a categorical
and even totalitarian way.

17
Transactive path of intellectual development

An unproductive dichotomy between individual and environment, nature and nurture,

has dominated psychological sciences. From self-organization and dynamic systems
theories have emerged transactive models of human development that help to examine
systems processes of human cognitive development. For example, let us assume that a
child is especially interested in stories that he or she hears. This encourages parents to
read more and more stories. This elicits the development of child’s intellectual skills
and makes possible the sharing of even more demanding stories. As a consequence of
dynamic interaction between cultural-historical environments, caretakers and the child
open up a novel transactive developmental pathway (Sameroff & Mackenzie, 2003) in
which the agent and environment are in a dynamic interaction. Here it is also essential
to acknowledge that children growing up in the ostensibly the same environment may
experience it differently; consequently, the psychological environment is not identical
from one to another child.

Corresponding processes take place in cognitive development; an individual’s achieve-

ments and motivated efforts make new environments available. This is called multipli-
catory effects (Ceci, Barnett, & Kanaya, 2003) because factors related to active selec-
tion of the environments of activity multiply environmental effects many times beyond
earlier estimates. Consequently, initially minor differences in intellectual performance,
motivation, and commitment multiply when the agent in question searches for more
challenging environments. These environments, in turn, elicit the development of new
intellectual competencies making even more challenging environments accessible. We
have just started to truly understand and analyze models of such dynamic developmen-
tal processes. Apparently something like that described above was going on in my case.
Like many other people, I actively selected and shaped the environment in which I was
growing. Systematic efforts across long-periods of time explain the fact that I am cur-
rently very far from the trajectory on which I started.

Cultural-historical environment of intellectual socialization

t
nmen
ting enviro
deman - Growing collective
w ard more knowledge network
to
y g radually ( trialogical objects
wa
ki ng one’s and humans)
See
- Reshaping of the brain
and mind
Pursuit of trialogical inquiry - Novel creative potentials
- New epistemic
Gradua trajectories
l growth - Developing agency and
of nove
l intellec transforming identity
tu al skills
and co
mpeten
cies

Developing and transforming agents (individuals & communities)

Transactive development of trialogical knowledge practices

(The graph is inspired by Virkkunen & Ahonen,2003)

18
To conclude, intellectual development is a transactive process in which an individual’s
cognition coevolves with the trialogical objects of his or her activity. An individual’s
developing competencies allow seeking one’s way gradually to more and more demand-
ing environments that further boost the development of cognitive skills and intellectual
capabilities. This multiplies the effects of the environment of intellectual socialization.
Such a transactive developmental process not only produces a growing collective
knowledge network (fellow human agents and shared objects of activity) but also re-
shapes both the human brain and mind, elicits development of new creative potentials,
opens up new trajectories of intellectual development, transforms identity, and elicits
growth of agency.

Concluding comments

The present paper is about how I learned. It is about changes in how I worked and
thought, spoke and wrote. More importantly, it is about how I learned to learn, and, in
particular learned to learn in a different way based on working with others on common
projects, such as reports and proposals to the government. Much of the learning oc-
curred outside of school or outside its programs. These were my own investigations
based on my own interests, and some were even more influential than my school learn-
ing. Now, with hindsight, I know that this story is about my "knowledge practices,"
ways is which knowledge is pursued, developed and advanced in a social setting. I now
call the ideas, writings, reports, plans and so on, "knowledge artifacts" or “trialogical
objects, terms I did not even know at the time.

I have seen the world both bottom up and top down: The history of challenging learning
experiences has taken me from the worst students of a mediocre school to an extremely
selected population of academic researchers. This group of investigators, selected out of
numerous candidates, is often regarded as super-talented or exceptionally creative.
These kinds of characterizations, that I may use when writing a letter of recommenda-
tion, make me to smile. I am convinced that ”giftedness”, if there is such a thing, is
something that emerges from an agent’s whole learning history rather than is something
pre-given. Those things that an agent is able to do today do not exhibit his or her myste-
rious abilities but most of all represent skills and competencies being cultivated and re-
alized socially in a process of surpassing oneself. This is something that I would like to
testify as a person who has gone across challenging learning experiences and become a
learning researcher.

Psychology has been preoccupied with all kinds of limitations and weaknesses of hu-
man cognition. It is said that we do not have sufficient capacity to process information,
our activities are illogical and could not stand rigorous scrutiny, and that we are unable
to learn, remember, and reason adequately. Taking these limitations into consideration,
it becomes truly mysterious to explain how such boundary-breaking processes as I have
described are possible at all. During the last 5 years there has, however, emerged a new
approach to psychology called positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,
2000; Snyder & Lopez, 2005). It is committed to examine hidden strengths that are in
the background of challenging experiences of learning and personal development, such
as altruism, collectivism, companionship, creativity, empathy, flow, hope, humility,
love of learning, optimism, passion to know, resilience, and wisdom. Every human be-
ing is able to cultivate such characteristics that elicit individual and collective develop-
ment and cognitive growth. This capacity is critically important because the traditional
conceptions of learning do not appear to do justice to my own, and other adult’s experi-
ences of surpassing oneself.

19
I do not see any essential differences between those blue collar workers that I met in
Nokia Cable Factory and those whom I currently meet in scientific conferences. Experi-
enced professionals' spirit does not flame because these people would somehow be in-
dividually different from the other; it is a result of human growth taking place, embed-
ded in social context, through longstanding, sustained, resilient, and honest overcoming
of difficulties, crossing boundaries, and going through personal and cultural intellectual
growth. Higher-level agency being formed in social communities appears to be carved
from such tough and resinous wood whether it occurs in university’s lecture hall, at the
loading deck of a harbour or in another challenging environment of activity. Hence I
believe that ”intelligence is not something pre-given or inborn but a result of collective
activity. It grows though overcoming difficulties involved in pursuing courageous and
creative projects and enterprises. It is a bright fire that only interaction between agents
taking part in social networks and artefacts supporting their activities makes to flare up
and grow” (Hakkarainen, Lonka, & Lipponen, 2004, p. 367).

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