Adult Learning and Technology in Working-Class Life

This explores everyday learning among working-class Canadians, exploding the myth that such learning is class-neutral.

Peter Sawchuk (Author)

9780521817561, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 March 2003

272 pages, 1 b/w illus. 5 tables
23.6 x 16 x 2.4 cm, 0.529 kg

'… Peter Sawchuk offers an engaging theoretical synthesis and empirical study of working-class computer learning … he fashions a lively and provocative analysis that reassesses adult learning theory and underscores the hidden but vital realm of informal learning across the multiple spheres of workplace, home, and community … it is a worthy addition to Cambridge University Press' Learning in Doing series.' Labour/Le Travail

To date little is known about the everyday activities that make up the majority of people's learning lives. This book presents a critical approach to learning using situated learning and activity theory, drawing on the writings of Marx, Gramsci, Marxist-feminists, as well as the sociology of Bourdieu. Though many have demonstrated that schooling and adult training are deeply affected by issues of social class, this book explodes the myth that everyday learning, despite its apparent openness and freedom, can be understood as class-neutral. Based on life-history interviews, selected ethnographic observations in homes and factories, large-scale survey materials as well as microanalysis of human computer interaction, the analysis explores learning across the various spheres of 'working-class life'. The author draws on his own experience as a factory worker, labour educator and academic to offer the most detailed examination of computer literacy and lifelong learning practice amongst working-class people currently available.

1. Understanding learning, technology and social class: concepts and claims
2. A historical materialist examination of theories of adult learning
3. 'That's technology': understanding working-class perspectives on computer technology
4. Microanalysis of worker's computer learning: two case studies of computer learning
5. Working class computer learning networks: exploring the elements of collectivity and class habitus
6. Understanding working-class standpoints in computer learning
7. Oral culture, computer learning and social class
8. Material barriers in working-class computer learning
9. Contradiction and commodification in working-class computer learning
10. Conclusions and implications.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM], Sociology & anthropology [JH]