Researching ‘learning lives’ – a new agenda for learning, media and technology

In this article, we revisit the history of our interest in the term, ‘learning lives ’in order to explicate the meaning(s) of the phrase and to set up a series of challenges for research into young people’s learning. We suggest that a learning lives perspective depends on three areas for investigation.

First of all is the challenge of how to capture, theorise and describe the travel and trajectories if researchers are truly to ‘follow’ learners through, around and in their learning across everyday life.

Secondly, it means refusing what seems to be the most apparent levers of change, namely media and technology.

And thirdly, learning lives approaches need to address the pedagogicisation of everyday life and the schooled society.

Learning lives approaches help us see the changing place of the meaning of education and institutional pedagogies across all the nooks and crannies of everyday life.