Learning from everyday life: reflection over experiences

Kajsa Ellegård

Open Conference Systems, Subjectivity and Learning in Everyday Life

Kajsa Ellegård

Last modified: 2010-04-28

Abstract

What is done every day and repeated over longer periods become self evident; therefore many everyday activities are performed without reflection and seldom put into question. Living everyday life, consequently, is an effective and un-reflected way of learning – it is learning without conscious efforts to learn. Sometimes, however, what is done in everyday life does not favor a healthy and good life. For example, stress and being exploited by others are feelings or states that are unfavorable for most individuals. I will present how time-geographic concepts and a diary-based method can be utilized to describe activity routines, i.e. to make what is self evident in everyday life obvious, and I will discuss how such descriptions can serve as a base to explore what is behind un-favorable feelings and states experienced by an individual. An individual’s inner world is to some extent related to what goes on in the outer world and her experiences from the past build a base for present action and future plans. Taken together these dimensions (inner and outer worlds, past and present) help to explain how stress and exploitation emerge in everyday life – and if the individual reflects over the illustrations of her diary notes, showing the activity sequence performed in a social and geographical context, she can reveal activities that were performed without being put into question and also find out how to avoid unfavorable situations. Solutions, then, may emanate from the individual’s own reflections. Then unfavorable results of learning in everyday life are approached by detecting and reflecting over routines in order to make changes in everyday life. Thereby, even though this kind of everyday learning emanates from what is done each and every day, its outcomes might be revealed by time-geographic illustrations and help to encourage individual’s reflection over it. Thereby opportunities for change are created.

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