References
Selwyn, N., Gorard, S., & Furlong, J. (2006). Adults' use of computers and the Internet for self-education. Studies in the Education of Adults, 38(2), 141-159. Retrieved Wednesday, February 07, 2007 from the Academic Search Premier database.
Adults' use of computers and the Internet for self-education
This paper explores the varied use of information technologies (ITs) such as the computer and Internet for self-education, highlighting how these technologies can facilitate and suppress such learning opportunities throughout the adult population. Based on data drawn from a large-scale study of adults in the West of England and South Wales, the paper addresses three areas of inquiry: (i) how computers and the Internet are used in adults' engagement with self-education; (ii) why adults engage (or do not engage) in IT-based self-education; and (iii) the social stratification of adults' engagement in IT-based self-education. The paper concludes that although computers and the Internet are, indeed, being used by some adults for self-education (often in extensive and elaborate ways), they appear to be reinforcing rather than activating processes of self-education, allowing people to continue with pre-existing and pre-set patterns of informal learning which generally replicate and reinforce patterns of 'offline' self-education.
Keywords computers; Internet; self-education; adults; informal learning
Introduction
Encouraging adult participation in education is a key current concern for educationalists and policy makers alike, embodied over the past 15 years in an apparent 'reawakening' and reassessment of post-compulsory education and training. This educational renaissance is perhaps most evident in the overt emphasis placed from the 1990s onwards on 'lifelong learning' and establishing developed countries as bona fide knowledge-based 'learning societies' where learning takes place from 'the cradle to the grave'. In particular information technologies (ITs) are seen to play an integral role within the learning society and lifelong learning discourses mainly in the form of the computer and Internet. For example, the UK government's lifelong education drive was quickly enshrined in a series of computer and Internet-based initiatives introduced since 1997. Initiatives such as the University for Industry, learndirect, People's Network and National Grid for Learning have all been implemented as part of a coherent education policy agenda fundamentally based upon the use of computers and the Internet. In terms of adult education, computer and Internet skills are now seen as 'nothing less than the grammar of modern life' (Wills, 1999, p. 10).
Whereas much attention has been directed towards the role of these information technologies in augmenting and extending the formal education of adults, little consideration has been given to how computers and the Internet are used for informal self-education. As we now go on to discuss, informal education garnered through leisure activities, hobbies, work and day-to-day life events is at least as important as formal educational provision. At best, it is presumed by educators, politicians and technologists that ITs such as computers and the Internet are inherently educational, capable through their very use of stimulating learning and auto-didactism throughout the adult population. Commentators eagerly talk, for example, about computers (re)establishing the home as 'the place where people do most of their learning' (Tiffin and Rajasingham, 1995, p. 52). The present paper seeks to explore these assumptions by examining the differing levels and types of use of computers and the Internet for self-education that actually take place throughout the adult population, thus empirically testing the notion of an IT-driven, non-institutionalised learning 'revolution'.
The importance of self-education in the learning society
Learning outside formal, institutionally based education remains a fledgling area of the adult education research literature. Work within the field of educational studies has tended to concentrate, if at all, on generic notions of 'informal learning' (Cullen, 2000; McGivney, 2001; Percy et al., 1995). The majority of academic commentators and government reports, for example, have traditionally been content to refer to informal learning as any type of 'non-formal' education encompassing a wide range of non-credentialised but institutionally structured forms of teaching and learning. Other authors are content to make the assumption that informal learning can be adequately captured by notions of 'know-how', 'tacit learning' or 'practical knowledge' (Hager, 2000).
This traditional view of informal learning aside, there is a growing body of work which is attempting to define informal learning more specifically than simply being anything outside of formal adult education. Thus, at one level, informal learning can be defined as learning 'which we undertake individually or collectively, on our own without externally imposed criteria of the presence of an institutionally authorised instructor' (Livingstone, 2000, p. 493; see also European Commission, 2001). Whilst these definitions are helpful they are still open to misinterpretation — especially with regards to the occasional use of the term 'informal' in a pejorative sense as well as the semantic similarity between 'non-formal' and 'informal'. A more refined means of conceptualising such learning can be found in the recent literature from Russian and German scholars which is concerned with the issue of 'self-education'. Hans-Georg Gadamer, for example, defines self-education as a process of making oneself at home in the world above and beyond merely adapting to one's environment. Self-education is therefore the regulation of knowledge within the individual's world-view; with the individual forming 'its own "picture of the world", its own sphere of knowledge that ensures the self-preservation and self-development of its earner' (Shuklina, 2001, p. 59). In this way self-education is an activity whose chief function is the self-realisation of the individual:
Self-education involves the development of the individual,
accomplished on the basis of the free choice of kinds
of activity in the process of self-realisation. It is
possible only under conditions in which a diverse
socio-cultural and educational environment is created.
One of its components is an orientation towards the
aggregate of the needs of different social groups.
(Zborovskii and Shuklina, 1998, p. 66)
From this perspective, self-education is a more personalised form of 'informal learning' concerned primarily with the individual's ongoing and burgeoning relationship with knowledge. Of course, as work by Phil Hodkinson and colleagues has recently reminded us, much of the learning that occurs in institutional settings such as the workplace or classroom can be informal rather than formal (see Colley et al., 2003; Malcolm et al., 2003). Yet above all, self-education is an emerging capability which is nurtured (or ignored) both by the individual and others. Gadamer (2001) talks about self-cultivation and practices of learning which become increasingly refined, nuanced and self-sustaining, leading us thus to the key question of social agency (Zborovskii and Shuklina, 1998).
It can be argued, quite convincingly, that the majority of most adults' actual learning comes under the aegis of self-education — even though the majority of research on teaching and learning has been 'captured' by the accounts of the teaching providers. The potential significance of self-education is compounded by the widespread shunning of formal educational opportunities by many adults once having left compulsory education. For some commentators, therefore, self-education offers a more 'democratic' form of education — unhampered by many of the institutional and situational barriers seen to beset formal education. Crucially, 'self-education has greater opportunities for individualisation than [formal] education, lacks repressive features (penalties for failure to apply accepted norms, failure to comply with models of behaviour, and so forth), and is more dynamic' (Zborovskii and Shuklina, 1998, p. 68). Thus it could be reasoned, as Douglas (1992) does, that self-education provides a 'freedom of education' and unrestrained 'non-system' of education which is actually at the heart of the 'learning society' model — reinforcing Tough's (1978) earlier observation that such learning is the 'submerged bulk of the iceberg' of adult learning.
IT as a means of facilitating self-education?
The socially inclusive and democratic nature of self-education is currently being expedited, in the eyes of interested commentators, by the emergence of 'new' ITs such as the computer and the Internet. These digital technologies are seen to continue the lineage of 'old' mass media and communication technologies (such as newspapers, printed books, public libraries, radio and television) acknowledged to be key contributory factors in the massification of self-education since the industrial revolution. Now computers and Internet are seen as transforming this process further by providing individuals with intensified access to self-educational opportunities, supplementing and often superseding the spoken word and written page with a 'screen-based' context for self-education (Cook and Light, 2006). Central to this argument is the role that ITs can play in the reorganisation of sell-education, providing individuals with an increased accessibility and diversity of information and therefore freeing up the barriers and 'activat[ing] processes of self education' (Shuklina, 2001, p. 73).
This self-educative application of ITs is presented not only in terms of an improved efficiency of learning at the level of the individual but also in more profound societal terms of a knowledge-based, post-industrial society. For Shuklina (2001,p. 71) and others, the successful emergence of a knowledge-based society is fundamentally predicated upon self-education: 'post-industrial society is a society of self-education'. Referring back to Gadamer's original notion, if self-education is concerned with 'finding a place in the world' then IT-based self-education is at the heart of an individual finding a place in the post-industrial world. Although persuasive, such rhetoric ignores the current lack of empirical understanding about self-education and ITs in contemporary society. The few existing empirical accounts of adults' self-educative uses of ITs have tended to concentrate on specific instances; for example, how people use the Internet to develop expertise and learn about medical conditions or personal health issues (for example Fogel et al., 2002; Pautler et al., 2001).
Given the current paucity of general evidence there are three sets of questions which still need to be addressed. First, we know little about bow people engage in IT-based self-education. There is little evidence of how technologies like computers and the Internet are used instead of, or alongside, established means of learning such as books, newspapers, radio, and terrestrial television. We also know little of the content of IT-based self-education; what people use ITs for remains implicit throughout most accounts. Moreover, how computers and the Internet feed into and support these different forms of self-education also remains unexamined. Secondly, we know little about why people engage (or do not engage) in IT-based self-education, in particular the ways in which computers and the Internet are used to fulfil the 'intrinsic-value' aspects of self-education (functioning as an end in itself) and the 'instrumental-value' aspects (functioning in terms of a means for the self-realisation of goals). Finally, in terms of its perceived democratic potential, we also know little about the social stratification of people's engagement in IT-based self-education — especially in terms of the social groups already acknowledged to be under-represented in more formal types of education and learning.
Research methods
In order to address such questions the present paper draws upon survey and interview data collected as part of a multi-phase research project examining overall patterns of adult learning and computer/Internet use by adults. Data are first drawn from a large-scale door-to-door survey of householders carried out in 2002 within four regions in the West of England and South Wales chosen in terms of representativeness for population density, economic activity and levels of educational attainment. A systematic stratified sample (in terms of age and gender) of 1001 adults over the age of 21 living in three electoral wards in each of four different regions was selected for structured home-based interviews. Questionnaire items covered educational and employment life histories as well as details of current and past computer/Internet use at home, work and in community sites. Questions were asked about respondents' use of computers for a range of educational activities, allowing for an initial identification of the prevalence and types of self-education that existed within the population.
These survey data are invaluable in mapping the basic patterns of IT use and associated learning amongst the adult population, thus providing a wider context and generalisability for research findings often missing from studies of education technology use. However, as Zborovskii and Shuklina (1998,p. 80) reason, survey data alone cannot provide an adequate understanding of self-education: 'self-education is, by its very nature, a deeply personal and individual type of activity. In order to investigate it, therefore, subtler methods are needed that require involvement in the individual's life'. With this in mind, a second stage of the data collection involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 100 respondents covered by the initial survey. This sub-sample was selected to include equivalent numbers of individuals with a high/low educational background and high/low levels of technology use, with additional criteria of selection including age, class, geography (urban/rural) and ethnicity. This resulted in an interview sample which (in terms of classifications derived from the survey data) could be categorised as 59 'frequent users', 15 'moderate users' and 26 current 'non-users' of computers. The demographic composition of the interview sample can be seen in Table 1. These interviews focused on individuals' educational and employment life histories as well as their current and recent computer/Internet use, thus providing a more detailed investigation of the factors influencing interviewees' use (and non-use) of computers and the Internet for self-education.
Finally, these interview data were supplemented by further interview data collected from a third phase of the research project which involved year-long case studies of individuals from the interview sub-sample. To gain an in-depth, longitudinal insight into how people made use of computers and the Internet and how these technologies fitted into their day-to-day lives, 25 individuals and their associated households were selected from the interview sub-sample for year-long case studies between January 2003 and January 2004. The case study sub-sample were 'moderate' or 'high' users of computers with other selection criteria including educational background, age, class, geography and household composition with a view to forcing variation to encourage a range of accounts (see Table 2 for a summary of the case study characteristics). Each case study involved three home visits over the course of the year: a series of semi-structured interviews with the respondent, a group interview with other family members and observation of computer and Internet use by the respondent.