Reading Lifelong Learning Through a Postmodern Lens

Abstract

In this chapter I examine what has elsewhere been referred to as a ‘society of signs’, a term that was used to denote one of the most significant characteristics of the contemporary social order (Edwards and Usher 1999). It was argued there that in a society of signs social relations and the materiality of the world become so intensely mediated through semiotic exchanges, through the production, circulation and reception of signifying practices, that signs are no longer simply representational but acquire value and meaning in their own right. This process has been hastened by the impact of electronic communication and information technologies (ICTs) where the world is increasingly signified as one of infinitely extended flows of information and images, a world of all inclusive interconnectivity. All this has important implications for how learning and lifelong learning is signified in the ‘texts’1 of the social order. I am arguing that learning is embedded and distributed in everyday social practices,2 and so what learning ‘means’ will be shaped and signified by and through those practices. However in saying this I am not referring specifically to the conceptualisation of learning as socially situated (e.g. in Chaiklin and Lave 1996). Whilst learning is there understood as embedded in everyday practices, it is taken to denote only certain things, such as a change in understanding. In other words, learning is given a particular and univalent meaning. I am going to argue on the contrary that learning is not invariant in its significations but since it is embedded in the space-time of social practices and the social order which co-emerge through these practices, it therefore has many connotations.