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Exploring the 'Black Box' ofProcess: A comparison oftheoretical notions of the'adult learner' with accountsof postgraduate learningexperienceTamsin HaggisPublished online: 25 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Tamsin Haggis (2002) Exploring the 'Black Box' of Process:A comparison of theoretical notions of the 'adult learner' with accounts ofpostgraduate learning experience, Studies in Higher Education, 27:2, 207-220, DOI:10.1080/03075070220119986

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Studies in Higher Education Volume 27, No. 2, 2002

Exploring the ‘Black Box’ ofProcess: a comparison oftheoretical notions of the ‘adultlearner’ with accounts ofpostgraduate learning experienceTAMSIN HAGGISUniversity of Stirling, UK

ABSTRACT The literature concerning student learning in higher education is now wide ranging anddiverse. This article suggests that whilst one strand of this literature appears to be describing learningas increasingly complex and dif� cult to understand, there is another strand that is using ideas about‘adult learning’ in a simplistic and uncritical way. This appears to be particularly the case in someliteratures connected with staff development. In response to a lack of research-based information aboutthe relationship between ideas about ‘adult’ learning and the process of learning as described by adultlearners themselves, particularly in higher education, a small research project was carried out. Thisaimed to explore individual accounts of the experience of learning to see whether or not suchdescriptions of process re� ected the assumptions about ‘adults’ that appear to underpin this strand ofwriting. The experiences of these particular postgraduates revealed a diversity of approach andexperience which did not � t with the idea of a distinctively ‘adult’ way of learning, and described amultiplicity of elements which did not appear in the dominant models.

Introduction

Interest in student learning has emerged in recent years as a central concern for anincreasingly challenged and diverse UK higher education system. The literature on studentlearning as an area of research is growing, as new forms of instruction emerge (such ascomputer-assisted and online learning) and new levels of complexity in teaching and learningare explored. Despite the increasing quantity of research in this area, it has been suggestedthat ‘we have [not] gone very far in understanding how it is that individual learners actuallycome to construct their own unique material’ (Salmon, 1989, p. 231), and that the processesinvolved in teaching and learning remain a ‘black box’ which is still largely unexplored(Brockbank & McGill, 1998, p. 65). In contrast to this increasing recognition of complexity,however, a strand of the literature appears to be using ideas about the characteristics andlearning processes of ‘adult’ learners in a simplistic and uncritical way. This literature refersto ‘research in adult learning’ (Universities’ and Colleges’ Staff Development Agency[UCoSDA], 1995, p. 15) as if such research has yielded unambiguous results, and appearsto use models of ‘adult’ learning as if they re� ect uncontested descriptions of how adults learn(e.g. Knox, 2000; Wisker, 2000).

ISSN 0307-5079 print; ISSN 1470-174X online/02/020207-14 Ó 2002 Society for Research into Higher EducationDOI: 10.1080/03075070220119986

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There have been few investigations into the relationship between theoretical ideas about‘adult’ learning and the process of learning as described by adult learners themselves,particularly in the context of higher education. This article reports on a small-scale researchproject which aimed to explore individual accounts of the experience of learning, tosee whether or not such descriptions of process re� ected the assumptions underpinningdiscussions about ‘adults’ in this strand of writing.

Competing Views of Learning: complexity and simplicity

In recent decades, learning seems to have been ‘discovered’ as a response to a wide varietyof different challenges. It is seen by those concerned with participation and social justice ascrucial to widening opportunity, by those concerned with personal development as a meansto increased awareness and personal ful� lment, and by government as a strategic response tothe social and economic problems of a changing world economy. These agendas, and others,are now part of a UK higher education which is increasingly funded in line with policyinitiatives surrounding the idea of lifelong learning, which stresses learning for work, andlearning to take personal responsibility for employability (Department for Education andEmployment, 1998).

In this context, there is now a policy-driven imperative to understand more aboutstudent learning, motivated by the need to monitor the development of skills and theachievement of quali� cations and ‘participation’ targets set by the Government. This impera-tive has combined with a demand for ‘evidence-based research’ in education in a wider sense(Hargreaves, 1996, 1997; Malcolm & Zukas, 2001), resulting in an increasingly expresseddesire to � nd ‘well-researched evidence for what works best’ in higher education teaching andlearning situations (Hannan, 2001, p. 14). The newly created professional body for universitylecturers, the Institute for Learning and Teaching, for example, recently listed researching‘the effectiveness of new and traditional approaches to learning and teaching in highereducation’ as one of its key aims (Institute for Learning and Teaching, 2000).

This search for ‘what works’ seems to imply that ‘successful methods’ can be foundwhich exist independently of the speci� c, contextual features of actual teaching and learningsituations. Such a view, however, is arguably in con� ict with research into student learningin higher education, which suggests increasingly that learning is in reality hard to measure,control and understand. Models relating to ‘approaches to learning’ (Marton & Saljo, 1984;Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Biggs, 1999) and ‘conceptions of learning’ (Perry, 1970; Belenkyet al., 1986; Baxter Magolda, 1992), for example, are constantly being modi� ed andexpanded (Severiens et al., 1998; Carnwell, 2000), in an attempt to accommodate what isgradually being understood about learning in this context. Perspectives from beyond highereducation studies, in particular, those of social constructivism (Williams & Burden, 1997),symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969) and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991),suggest that learning is a multifactorial, situated activity that does not lend itself easily to clearconceptualisations. Brockbank & McGill (1998, p. 65), approaching higher education learn-ing from this vantage point, suggest that the complexity of teaching and learning as a situatedprocess is as yet hardly described at all. They talk about a ‘black box … hidden in teachingand learning’ processes, which they suggest needs to be ‘opened up and made more explicit’if we want to promote learning more effectively.

Not all of the literature, however, portrays this picture of complexity. There is a strandof writing which, rather than seeing learning processes as little understood and in need offurther exploration, appears to use certain models and ideas about learning as if they arestraightforward ‘applications’ of theory to practice. Ideas about ‘adult’ learning, for

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example, appear to be being used by some authors as if uncontested descriptions of howadults learn not only exist, but do so in a form robust enough to form the basis of curriculumplanning and programme design in higher education. These discussions tend to focus on thecharacteristics of adults as learners (mostly linked to the ideas of Knowles, 1990), ideasconnected with adult learning processes (particularly ‘self-directed learning’ and ‘experientiallearning’), and teaching methods implied by these conceptualisations of adult characteristicsand process.

This literature discusses speci� c learning characteristics attributable to ‘adults’ (seeGibbs, 1992). It appeals to research into or ‘principles’ of ‘adult learning’, and to speci� cadult educational theorists (see Entwistle, 1992; Nightingale & O’Neil, 1994; UCoSDA,1995) as a justi� cation for certain types of innovation in teaching and assessment:

a menu based on continuous assessment may be ideal for adult learners. Knowlesidenti� es a set of criteria which apply to this programme. For example, adults aremotivated to learn what will satisfy their needs … Adults have a need to beself-directing and experience is their greatest resource. (Knox, 2000, p. 92)

In these examples, references to ‘how adults learn’ are discussed as if they are unproblematic.No reference is made to the long-running debate about the validity of Knowles’s (1990)‘andragogical’ ideas: the problems of de� ning adults (Squires, 1987); the implication that‘adult’, used in this way, implies homogeneity (Hanson, 1996; Richardson, 1987); thequestions that have been raised about the use of power in institutional contexts (Brook� eld,1993; Collins, 1996); or the doubts that have been expressed about the original evidenceupon which claims about ‘the adult learner’ were made (Davenport, 1987).

In these writings, assumptions about ‘the way that adults learn’ also underpin apparentlyuncritical discussions of learning processes and methods (the two are often con� ated). Ideassuch as ‘self-directed learning’ are often cited as the basis for a particular teaching approach:

The student assumes an active role in the learning process and is expected tobecome a self-directed learner who initiates and directs his/her own efforts toconstruct personal understanding. (Birenbaum & Amdur, 1999, p. 203)

In slightly more general references to ‘autonomy’, students are expected ‘to become moreresponsible for their own learning’ (Houston & Lazenblatt, 1999; p. 71; Spiller & Fraser,1999, p. 139) and to ‘take control’ (Baker & Dillon, 1999, p. 68). There is no discussion inthese articles of the contested nature of self-directed learning as either a descriptive or aprescriptive process (Brook� eld, 1986; Caffarella & O’Donnell, 1987; Robertson, 1987).

Similarly, Kolb’s (1984) model of experiential learning is frequently used as the under-lying rationale for a variety of different methods and forms of assessment:

Each module is independently assessed by means of a work-related assignment,following Kolb’s de� nition of experiential learning. (Knox, 2000; p. 89).

The portfolio-based model of development and assessment … builds extensively ona pedagogical view that emphasises the crucial link between experience and theory.As a concept this follows Kolb et al.’s notion that learning can be acquired in anexperiential context. (Bond & Wilson, 2000; p. 141).

In other examples, students are ‘encouraged to consider their preferred learning styles inconjunction with the learning cycle as developed by Kolb’ so that ‘they can begin to identifyhow stages in the cycle of experiential learning might be easier or more dif� cult for them’(Sangster et al., 2000; p. 53). There is no reference in these discussions to the potentially

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problematic nature of accepting this cycle as a description of ‘how adults learn’ (see Henry,1989; Bullough, 1989; Fraser, 1995).

That these theoretical ideas can be powerful frameworks within which to plan teaching,and that their use can contribute to positive and productive learning experiences, is not beingdoubted. What is being questioned is the way that such ideas appear to be being used in thisstrand of literature as if they were ‘universal truths’ about student learning. This may not bewhat the authors of these articles intended, but the lack of critical discussion of thecomplexities at work in speci� c learning and teaching interactions raises questions about theuse of theoretical models and ideas in this way. This is the case particularly in the context of‘staff development’ in higher education, where much of the literature discussed above issituated. If crucial factors of difference, complexity and speci� city in learning interactions arenot investigated or reported, then the ideas that are described as underpinning certainapproaches and methods may be adopted or rejected by inexperienced lecturers as the ‘cause’of success and failure of particular learning situations, when the realities of situated practiceare much more complex.

One of reasons for this apparently oversimpli� ed use of ideas may be that the manydifferent interests in ‘student learning’ are all served by a common language when it comesto discussing contemporary notions of how people learn. Ideas such as ‘responsibility forlearning’, for example, can cross from one group of educational practitioners to another,without taking with them the shared understandings of their limitations that have developedin a speci� c context. In addition, individual teachers and researchers can be working withina framework of assumptions about the meaning of these terms, unaware of how they differfrom each other.

Such simplistic descriptions of ‘adult’ learning are perhaps partly also being generatedbecause of the dif� culty of separating out and ‘understanding’ the multiple factors involvedin teaching and learning interactions. By necessity, research activity attempts to isolategeneric principles, or at least patterns that are potentially generalisable to some degree, fromthe complexity of real life. It could be argued that if different elements of learning ‘interactin complex ways which are not possible to predict’ (Boud, et al., 1993, p. 13), then workingwith abstractions must be the only way to proceed. However, the idea of ‘applying’ theabstractions of ‘theory’ to the ‘practice’ of actual teaching and learning situations (which isthe model suggested by the literature reviewed above) is no longer seen to be a realisticconceptualisation of how teachers actually learn to manage the complexity of teaching andlearning interactions (Schon, 1991; Eraut, 1994). Current views of ‘private’, ‘hidden’ and‘practitioner’ theory suggest that the ‘real’ source of teacher action and understanding is acomplex mix of ideas, values and experience that are only selectively in� uenced by formaltheory (Usher & Bryant, 1987; Eraut, 1994).

Arguably, this view of theory has implications not only for how the processes of teachingare understood, but also the way that processes of learning are conceptualised. Such ideasoperate from a similar position to social constructivist and symbolic interactionist perspec-tives about the way that people function as learners. All of these perspectives suggest that‘individuals act according to the meanings which they attribute to their experiences’(Bloomer & Hodkinson, 2000, p. 589); that such meanings are continually created andrecreated through interaction with the social context, and that ‘meaning’, at any moment intime, is unique to each individual.

A focus on the uniqueness of learning experience, rather than on ‘adults’ as a generalcategory, has wide-reaching implications. It suggests a need to � nd out more about thecomplexity of real, situated learning experiences, and to create new ways of thinking aboutfactors and in� uences which may be crucial in determining ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ in formal

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learning situations. One of the major obstructions to moving forward in this area, apart fromthe dif� culties of overcoming a desire for � ndings that seem to promise general applicability,is that many of these factors and in� uences operate at a level that is hidden from almost anykind of view.

Brockbank & McGill (1998, p. 65) recognise this when they discuss the process ofteaching and learning as ‘a repository of the often unexplained, unnamed and invisible’.Attempting to open up discussion of the unseen in� uences and factors involved, they discuss‘inadvertent’ elements of the teaching-learning process, suggesting that things are ‘implicitlyhappening’ in a lecture or seminar, for example, that are ‘concealed’ and ‘unintentional’. Anexample of this is what they call the ‘unintentional modelling’ of ‘the absence of struggle’involved in learning a complex theory:

an example of the unintentional being modelled by me was my explanation of thetheory of perfect competition as if the thing was, by simply explaining it, obvious orapparently obvious … the teacher conveys no sense of the struggle he may have hadin acquiring the knowledge himself when trying to come to understand and learn thematerial. (Brockbank & McGill, 1998; pp. 63, 68)

Other ‘invisible’ aspects of the formal learning process include the unconscious holding andmodelling of particular values, the feelings of learners and teachers, the implicit powerrelations in the situation and the ways in which power is used, and the different ‘stance’ thatteachers and learners take up in the teaching-learning situation.

Exploring the ‘Black Box’ of Adult Learning Processes

Illumination of such hidden aspects of learning is clearly problematic. One possibility for atleast exploring what is unseen, and yet still powerfully experienced, is to talk to people abouttheir perceptions of learning. Whilst a ‘phenomenological’ approach can be criticised forignoring other perspectives on the complexity of interview constructions of experience, itcould be argued that asking questions at least creates a space for the voices of learners toenter the discussion.

The research project described below was conceived in response to the observation thatthere has been relatively little research that attempts to explore adult learners’ own descrip-tions of their processes of formal learning (Brook� eld, 1994), particularly in relation to thedominant conceptions of learning prevalent in the literature. A study that did do this wascarried out by Taylor (1987). She reported a number of dimensions of learning which she feltwere ‘absent’ or ‘under-represented’ in the literature on adult learning. As well as perceivinga pattern in student descriptions which involved ‘disorientation’, ‘exploration’, ‘re-orientation’ and ‘equilibrium’, she identi� ed ‘emotionality’, ‘intuition’, ‘relational quality’and ‘politics’ as dimensions of learning that were present in the learners’ experience, but‘invisible’ in dominant discussions of adult learning.

Taylor’s (1987) categories were used as the basis of the small research project reportedhere. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with postgraduate learners in highereducation, in order to try to � nd out whether student descriptions of the experience oflearning supported the ideas about ‘how adults learn’ that are prevalent in the articlesdiscussed above. The research set out to explore three questions. Firstly, do adults naturallywork autonomously, i.e. alone, or in interaction with others only as a resource for learning?Secondly, do adults experience the process of learning as either a step-by-step, linear andlogical process, or as a cycle that incorporates successive stages of experience, re� ection and

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theorising (Kolb, 1984)? Lastly, is ‘adult’ a meaningful category, in the sense that adults canbe said to learn in ways that are similar to each other?

The study was carried out with postgraduates, partly because they were, arguably, themost ‘adult’ type of formal learner in higher education, and partly because it was felt that adeeper level of re� ection and description would be possible through the participants’perception of the interviewer as a ‘co-participant’ in the learning environment of highereducation. The eight participants were all studying full-time for master’s degrees and PhDsin the humanities and social sciences, and self-selected themselves on the basis of an interestin exploring their own learning processes. They were of mixed age (25–44), gender (threemen, � ve women), class and educational background. All were white; one was Italian, oneGerman, one American, one Scottish, and the rest English. Four of the participants werestudying for PhDs; three of these had previously completed master’s degrees. One of theparticipants, a master’s student, had previously done a PhD. Four participants had beencontinuous students from undergraduate level; three of these were ‘mature’ students. Four ofthe participants had had breaks of up to 20 years between their current period of study andtheir initial BA. Each participant was interviewed once, in a semi-structured interview whichtook about 11

2hours, and which was then transcribed verbatim. All of the participants’ names

have been changed, although their gender remains the same.The main focus for discussion in each of the interviews was the process of working

towards the creation of a piece of academic writing. The questions encouraged participantsto re� ect not only on the act of writing itself, but also the journey towards this end point, theprocess from the moment they received an essay title or began to think about a paper. Thisapproach re� ects Lea’s (1997) view of writing as evidence of the ‘socially situated processes’through which meaning is created in learning, rather than seeing it as an outcome of thecognitive processes of a decontextualised individual.

Student Voices

The participants were asked questions that aimed to be as neutral as possible, whilst probingfor particular aspects of experience. In probing the area of ‘disorientation’, for example,participants were not asked if they felt disoriented, but if they were ‘clear about what wasexpected’ at certain points of their courses, and whether or not they felt they had a sense ofdirection throughout the process. Other questions aimed to explore non-linear, non-rationaland half-perceived aspects of process in the same way. Participants were asked if they felt theywere analytical and logical throughout the process; how they got and related to ideas; whetherthey got blocked and how they responded to this. They were also asked about differentfeelings and about the nature of relationships with others throughout the process. Analysis ofthe data supported the continuing use of categories such as ‘disorientation’ and ‘relationship’,but these categories were almost always described in multiple relation to each other (forexample, issues connected to power, self-perception and emotion were described as anintegral part of relationships with others in learning). In addition, new categories such as‘chance’ and ‘creativity’ emerged.

Disorientation

Descriptions of uncertainty and disorientation took a number of different forms. They werealso interpreted in different ways. Some students felt that disorientation was positive inlearning, some were not particularly disturbed by it, whilst others experienced disorientationas extremely dif� cult and accompanied by strong emotions:

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I went to a philosophy lecture and this woman said, ‘Is my hand raised, or is it a� gment of your imagination?’ I went home and burst into tears. I was eighteen, andthat kind of general conceptual, as well as procedural, confusion stayed with me the� rst three or four months in the � rst year. (Ruth)

Such experiences of disorientation had a variety of causes. Sometimes they were caused bynot getting enough feedback; by lecturers saying such things as, ‘you can’t teach someone towrite an essay, they either know or not’; or by ‘boredom with academia and academicpeople’. These feelings were particularly strong for the PhD students:

At the beginning I was thrilled because it had been a big struggle for me to getstarted, to get accepted, to get a topic, to get money … but after the � rst couple ofmonths I found it a bit weird … I was working and working … but nobody everasked what I was doing, no one wanted to listen to it because I was just in the � rstyear … and I didn’t produce anything except notes, which grew and grew, and therewas nothing coming out of it, and sometimes I didn’t know where I was going or ifit was any good … there were very few people to talk to. (Anna)

PhD students often talked about being confused and frustrated, and ‘not knowing what aPhD was supposed to be about’. This sense was not necessarily something that only occurredat the beginning of learning, but, as in the example above, also at different points throughoutthe process.

Emotion

Strong emotions were mentioned throughout the interviews, tied to different kinds ofexperiences and stages in the process of learning. Some of these were wholly positive, withstudents referring to ‘intellectual autonomy’, excitement and passion. Others were mixed;interviewees discussed ‘enjoyable’ moments, interspersed with having to ‘force yourself to sitdown and work’, and ‘extreme highs and lows’. One student felt that negative emotion couldhave positive results in learning. Another talked of ‘rhythms’ in emotional experience, whilstothers talked about frustration, anger, fear, resentment and revenge:

We all had a terrible time of it, whatever our background. Everyone moaned likehell, went crazy, argued, cried. Some of my best essays were written out of revenge… one time I was so angry and outraged and furious … I belted out this vicious highgrade thing that got me an A 1 ! And it was revenge, I knew as I was writing it, Iwas saying ‘you bastard ’: (Jo)

Whilst many of these emotions were to do with interaction with supervisors and lecturers,others were to do with things such as using computers, and having to write in an ‘academic’style.

Relational Quality

Despite the implication that the ‘autonomous’ adult learner works in a independent andself-suf� cient manner, research suggests that ‘independent learners’ in fact interact withothers constantly as part of their learning (Brook� eld, 1986; Caffarella & O’Donnell, 1987).The students in this study seemed to con� rm this. Interviewees talked about how helpful itwas to be able to talk to partners or family members, and talked about the importance of

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‘discussion’ and ‘human input’ in learning. Two people saw relationships with others ascrucial to their learning:

I’ve been having such problems, I think, because I’m a social learner and I learnthrough interaction, whether it’s writing something and getting feedback on it, orthrashing out an idea or asking a question, or listening to someone talking aboutsomething … and that is not happening, either on a peer level or with tutors. (Ruth)

I learn through personal relationships, people I’m studying with. There was thisPhD student when I was on my BA who took an interest in me … it was really good,I felt like I was working for him. If he said something was good, it was good. Itmotivated me. I’d sit there till 2 am and I’d think, would he go to sleep now? Sameduring my exams, I’d have a picture of X [a renowned scholar] above my desk, andI’d think would he go to sleep now? He’d have done another two hours. (Robert)

Most comments related to tutors and supervisors. Interviewees talked about a good tutor‘mirroring your mental patterns’, or being ‘energised’ by wanting to emulate someone whosework was admired. In more negative relationships, there was a recognition of complex effects.One student felt that it was the people who were least helpful who had taught her the most,whilst another, though she felt ‘low’ for a few days after a meeting, said that ultimately shethen worked better. A number of students felt that at times their supervisor had actuallyblocked their ability to learn:

It’s like a slap in the face. The way I work is, I work for people … yes, it affects mywork. I’ve been so unproductive. I like to think I’m beyond that kind of crap, butI’m not. (Robert)

The relationship with tutors has been the single most negative contribution to mylearning experience here. I would say that 80% of the time it’s been an obstacle tomy learning. (Ruth)

Two students referred to supervisors ‘projecting’ their ‘hangups’ and ‘lack of con� dence’onto them, and one felt that supervisors ‘can be very undermining and damaging’. Anotherstudent felt that at postgraduate level, supervisors were not very in� uential, as she was‘working for herself’.

Logic and Intuition

Taylor (1987) describes ‘intuition’ as ‘apprehension without logical reason’. For her, it isconstitutive of learning, rather than ‘an alternative way of learning’. In these interviews, thearea of linearity/logic and non-linearity/intuition was probed through questions about beinganalytical and logical, and being guided by hunches or feelings.

Most of the students did not feel that they knew where they were going from thebeginning of the process of working on a piece of writing:

I think I have a very vague idea, but I was often surprised where I ended up,somewhere entirely different from where I thought I was going. And looking backI often can’t see any more where I thought I was going, because it seems all veryblurred, which it didn’t seem at the time … I think I start off with an interest, anda feeling, that there might be something interesting coming out of it, but it’s actuallyquite vague … only after studying a lot of material … and sorting that through, do

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I get the feeling that I know where I’m going, and know what I’m working on. Itcomes quite late, actually. (Anna)

The idea of being analytical and logical was interpreted in different ways. One student sawthis as the opposite of having personal interest in an area, whilst two others commented onhow the analytical/logical end product came out of a process that was quite different:

I think I’m very analytical … but logical … I think it gives the impression of logicuntil you interrogate it … and then when you interrogate it, no, I’m not at all,because I have blinding � ashes of inspiration on the bus … I can get so high off itall sometimes, and start making connections between things that don’t appearlogical. But I think my � nished pieces of work end up looking incredibly analyticaland logical. (Jo)

As was often the case, though, there was at least one view that contradicted any general trendin the answers:

Analytical and logical? Yes. Clear, dry steps, stages … for and against … I’mbuilding up my structure. I have an idea of what it might be before I start, and thenI try and see how the material � ts into that. (Jonathan)

Insight, Imagery and Chance

A question about the role of ‘hunches and feelings’ led into some complex and nebulousareas. Interviewees discussed ‘funny realisations’ and ideas ‘not arising out of systematicprocesses’; ‘imagination’ and ‘analysis by serendipity’; creative thinking being done ‘whenI’m nowhere near a book’; ideas ‘clicking into place’, and the process of getting insights intoproblems by ‘letting loose’ (by switching off from the problem).

Interviewees also discussed the nature of blocks, and strategies for dealing with these,and different reactions to feeling lost and confused. Another area that emerged was individualways of creating and managing abstract ideas. Some students felt they worked with ideasthrough speaking, others by writing. Some mentioned relating to ideas visually:

I can have visual representations in my head, which will help me make connections… I woke up the other day and I suddenly realised what the three areas of what Iwas writing about would be … I saw it as a visual representation in my head … Isaw the key concept, and … around it there were these three other circles, and onewas labelled [second concept], one was labelled [third concept] … they were all inkind of bubbles, but the main concept wasn’t in a bubble, it was in the middle …The sensation I got was that it was like a pool of liquid that ran out and aroundthose three bubbles. (Jo)

Other descriptions were very individual:

I like to arrange key words, I build around them. I don’t visualise ideas, and I onlyvery occasionally use diagrams. I tend to work with key words, or key quotations,that are kind of around the place … then … use them as seeds, try and grow thingsfrom them. (Matthew)

Another area mentioned was the importance of chance. There were no questions in theinterview schedule about this, but a number of people mentioned chance quite speci� cally,in relation to choosing topics, � nding resources, and managing ideas:

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I’d pick out some bits and they’d lead me on to areas that I didn’t even knowexisted, and then I’d be on to the next bit … a lot of it linked quite by chance. I’d� nd something that would lead me directly on to where I wanted to go, althoughspeci� cally that particular book wasn’t about it … � nding information that wasabsolutely just what I needed at that time but apparently by chance. [It was] almostmystical really, just going to a book, not even having a reference … I felt it wasalmost intuition rather than anything else … that got it onto the next level, that tookme forward. I could have been struggling around in certain areas for quite a longtime, except for these chance encounters … I think it only happens after you’ve beenworking on the subject for some time. (Claire)

A number of students also mentioned creativity. For some, this was linked in various waysto academic work, while for others, academic work was seen to be the antithesis of creativity.

Discussion

The picture of learning experience that begins to emerge from these interviews is much morecomplex than that created by many dominant ideas about adult learning. Within thiscomplexity, there is considerable diversity. There are also tantalising glimpses of still morecomplex elements and processes that were only partly available for interrogation. Many of theaspects of learning that were discussed were partially obscured even from the personexperiencing them. Attempts in discussion to explore or to rationally interrogate (thememories of) such experiences sometimes led to powerful insights that were highly signi� cantfor the person involved. At other times, descriptions and re� ections were more like pieces ofa jigsaw; they seemed to contain their own internal logic, but they were hard to piece togetherin a way that would seem patterned or coherent to an outside observer (the idea of an ‘outsideobserver’ at times including the person themselves trying to � nd and articulate their ownperceptions). Where it was possible to identify common elements across the differentaccounts, the individuality of the experience of this theoretically shared area was striking.Frustration, for example, blocked some, irritated others, and boosted still others. Relation-ships were central in some cases, but incidental in others. Even if two people related to ideas‘visually’, they appeared to do so in quite different ways.

The more technical aspects of study also revealed extreme diversity. Writing, forexample, was begun by some students only after completing all reading, by others whenreading was nearly complete, and by still others early on as a means of generating andexploring ideas. Note-taking could mean producing very detailed notes in the early stages ofthe process, taking no notes at all ‘for ages’, or taking notes only if things were ‘going well’.Notes themselves consisted of typed quotation chopped up in paper form, grouped piles ofparaphrases, lists of key ideas annotated with coloured pens, bibliographic databases cross-referenced to photocopies, and single word prompts. In terms of study ‘practicalities’, no twostudents seemed to work in the same way.

Although the participants were all very successfully ‘autonomous’, in terms of being ableto work independently, their experiences of working alone were far from linear and methodi-cal. Individual versions of confusion and disorientation were common, bringing with themstrong emotions of all kinds. A sense of direction was often absent, with only ‘an interest’, ‘afeeling’ or ‘a sense’ guiding what was seen more as an exploration than the execution of apredetermined plan. Intuition, chance and hunches were often cited as being what moved apiece of work forward, and a sense of being lost or blocked was quite common. Theseaccounts of learning were characterised, if anything, by irregularity rather than consistency;by starting and stopping in unexpected and unpredictable ways, and by periods of active

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engagement and periods of withdrawal that appeared to follow no speci� c pattern. In addition,the experience of being ‘autonomous’ generally did not seem to be one of isolation, in termsof relating to other people. Interactions with supervisors, partners, family members and peerswere cited, in numerous different ways, as being crucial to many different aspects of learningexperience.

Higher education ‘learning’, as described in these interviews, was diverse, felt, half-obscured, and multidimensional. There were patterns to the experience of learning, but thesepatterns seemed to be largely individual, and ultimately only really meaningful at an individuallevel. Such meaning was often not even fully available for rational interrogation by the personthemselves (though this does not suggest that meaning was absent). In terms of the questionsthat were being investigated, the experiences of learning described in these accounts do notappear to support the idea that people ‘prefer’ to learn ‘independently’, without signi� cantinteractions with other people. Interaction, in fact, seems at times to have profound effectsupon a person’s ability to learn. These accounts also do not seem to support the idea thatformal learning occurs as a systematic linear or cyclical process. Finally, the unique and diversepatterns of learning described in these particular instances do not support the idea that it ismeaningful to talk about an ‘adult’ way of learning.

Complexity and unpredictability, however, are not the full story. Despite the manydifferent, dif� cult and nebulous aspects of emotional and mental experience, the participantsin this study all ultimately achieved their goal of producing a structured, logically argued andcoherent piece of academic work. These students were ‘in control’ of their learning, in thesense that they did not give up, they found strategies to enable them to cope with dif� culty,and they were able to use dif� culty, ‘intuition’ and emotion to enable themselves to continuelearning in a way that was often also experienced as extremely positive. This compares toelements of Taylor’s ‘equilibrium’ phase in ‘learning for self-direction’, which was character-ised by ‘purposiveness, conceptual clarity and analytical and logical thinking’ (1987, p. 194).These accounts do not, therefore, suggest that learning was experienced as only disorienting,dif� cult, relational and emotional, or that such elements of learning were necessarily negativeor unhelpful. The picture is more that rational planning, clarity of intention and success inthe logical structuring of ideas are crucially intertwined with a variety of complex factors thatinteract in unique and unpredictable ways.

It is this intertwining of complexity and logical clarity, however, that appears to be sodif� cult to acknowledge and take account of in discussions of learning. Taylor suggests thatan understanding of learning as having ‘an inside-out structure (order and pattern evidentfrom within) and as a relation between person and environment (an act of communication)’(1987, p. 194) is at odds with a tendency in educational literature ‘to assimilate everythinginto a frame of reference of individual, logical and externally observable behaviour’ (1987,p. 194). She suggests that characteristics of the ‘equilibrium phase’ are those valued by ourculture, a culture ‘which re� ects primarily a male gender perspective’. This perspective renders‘invisible’ elements of transitional phases towards equilibrium that include ‘confusion,emotionality, intuitively-guided search, integral involvement of others, and re� ection onexperience’ (1987, p. 194). It is precisely the ‘invisible’ aspects of process, however, thatBrockbank & McGill (1998) have suggested need to be explored and named if learning is tobe promoted more effectively.

Conclusion

There are clearly questions about whether or not the patterns that emerge from this small studyare in any way generalisable to a wider group of higher education learners. However,

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if the models of adult learning that have been discussed here are themselves generalisable(and the way that they are used in the literature discussed here implies that they are), thenit should be possible to generalise from those ideas to the eight adults who took part in thisstudy. It does not seem that this can be done.

The suggestion that individual learning experiences may be unique, rather than charac-terised by shared elements, is consistent with the implications of constructivist, socialconstructivist and symbolic interactionist views of learning:

The meaning of experience is not a given, it is subject to interpretation … whendifferent learners are involved in the same event, their experience of it will vary andthey will construct (and reconstruct) it differently. One person’s stimulating expla-nation will be another’s dreary lecture. (Boud et al., 1993, p. 11)

These perspectives suggest that learning is characterised by individual and unique processesof meaning-making that are created by, and situated within, speci� c social and culturalcontexts. Such ideas are gradually beginning to have an effect on areas of adult educationalpsychology that have previously tended towards categorisation and generalisation. Currentthinking in the area of ‘learning styles’, for example, has developed from simplistic ideas ofcategorising learners into opposed categories towards observations that ‘everyone has alearning style, but each person’s is as unique as a signature’ (Reid, 1995, p. 171). Williams& Burden (1997, p. 96) suggest that ‘learning is essentially personal and individual’ andsuggest that, rather than asking, ‘how are learners different from each other and can wemeasure these differences?’, it would be more helpful to ask, ‘how do individuals go aboutmaking sense of their learning?’ and ‘how can we as teachers assist learners in making senseof their learning in ways that are personal to them?’

Answering these questions is a much greater challenge than seeking to � nd ‘research-based evidence’ of what ‘works’ in formal learning situations. It is a challenge likely to beignored by practitioners and policy-makers in search of ‘technical’ answers to the ‘technical’problem of how to help students gain learning outcomes more effectively. Not acknowledgingthe existence of unpredictability and uniqueness in learning, however, could have far-reaching consequences in the new ‘mass’ higher education system.

This might particularly be the case in the context of attempts to ‘widen access’ to highereducation for students whose past experience does not necessarily predispose them to thiskind of learning. Students new to higher education are likely to be attempting to manageindividual versions of disorientation, half-understood mental processes and ‘process-inducedemotion’ whilst they are working part-time, managing debt, and trying to � t in with a familywho may not be supportive of their aims. For these students, courses structured aroundassumptions that ‘adults’ will bene� t from the opportunity to structure their own learning, orthat they can always respond to demands to meet predetermined learning outcomes inpredetermined ways, could have quite serious implications. Failure to ‘make room for’ theindividuality of the learning process experienced by these students could impact not only onthe quality of the student experience but also on levels of achievement and ultimately onretention.

More research into the nature of the situated uniqueness of adult learning experiencesin higher education is needed to complement the more strategic and generalising approachesto the study of student learning that are dominant in this context. Whilst the dominantapproaches may yield results at the level of broad principles and overall strategy, morein-depth exploration of the details of situated complexity could provide much-neededinformation about how these broad principles may work out in the speci� city of actuallearning and teaching situations.

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Correspondence: Tamsin Haggis, Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling FK94LA, UK.

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