Chapter 10: Learning as (One Part) Identity Construction: Educational Implications of a Sociocultural Perspective

Over the past 2 decades, there has been a shift of emphasis from teaching to learning as the focal point of the work of educators and students, a shift that decenters teaching and curriculum. The attention to learning has provided us with the inspiration to revisit this ubiquitous concept. Like other concepts that are used in everyday language by a range of people in different social practices and institutions, what people mean by “learning” is frequently assumed to be self-evident. We would argue, however, that it is the concepts that are taken for granted—for example, learning, identity, context—that require even more careful explication than less common concepts precisely because their meanings seem obvious. For us, and something that many others have noted as well, the definition of “learn-ing” is always dialectically bound to its contexts of use and by the research lenses through which it is interpreted (e.g.. Green & Luke, 2006; Vadeboncoeur, 2006).