Chapter 1: Introduction

According to Illeris, in the first instance, most people recall a learning situation quite specifically as archetypal classroom teaching, a scripted lesson in which the teacher and the students each take on their expected, conventional roles. Over time, as they progress through the stages or levels of the formal curriculum and its associated assessment or examination requirements, the students come to know that they are relatively good, or not so good, at school learning. This hegemonic view of learning as the outcome of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment practices combined is extraordinarily powerful and enduring. But it is also partial and misleading because, as Illeris notes, ‘we all learn something throughout our whole lives’ (p. 2). And in this sense, ‘learning can appear positive or negative in nature, but for the individual it always has some purpose or other that has to do with managing life and its challenges’ (p. 2). Through the arguments and evidence we present in this book, we encourage a more capacious understanding of children’s informal learning, and consequently a greater appreciation of children as everyday learners. For the most part, we do this based on children’s own conceptions of their learning when they are not at school. Ours is an inherently optimistic view of children’s learning, one that is not reliant on normative achievement outcome measures, or judgements about whose knowledge is important. It is a view that permits children’s learning to be seen as the continuous, agentic navigation of the many opportunities and challenges encountered in routine household, social group, local environment, and local community relations, amid the broader socioeconomic structural arrangements that materially shape these for better or worse.