Children's personal learning agendas at home

Abstract

Ethnographic case studies of nine British working class children were conducted in order to investigate learning from the perspectives of the families. The research aim was to study children learning outside school in situations that were not specifically set up with learning in mind; in social contexts where learning was not an obligation or purpose and was therefore incidental and non‐self‐conscious; and to study children learning in the company of adults who were not professionals. This article does not offer a universal portrait of these children's learning, but a particular way of seeing and interpreting it. The children's home learning is fuelled by social and emotional dimensions. There are multiple competitors for children's attention in any given learning opportunity, and children are not necessarily learning what adults think they are. The children in the study transform the outcomes of their opportunities for learning into learning about their experiences of the human condition.