The past week I have been to the EARLI conference (European Association for
Research on Learning and Instruction), a biennial occurrence, which this
time took place conveniently on my home turf here in G=F6teborg. They say
there were 1000+ participants (to give you an idea of size). Conference
theme this year was *Advancing Learning Communities in the New Millennium*.
So we did our best...
The keynote speakers (well, at least two of the ones I happened to attend)
had a certain flair for building their argument on Meno's paradox: how can
we learn anything that we do not already know -- we would not recognize the
answer even if we knew how to ask the question, etc. I must admit I cannot
recount their solutions, as I get too struck by intellectual claustrophobia
to be able to listen properly whenever Meno enters the rhetoric.
=46ortunately there were also people who open the windows for the winds of
the future: Yrjo surfing the waves of expansive learning, my friend Piotr
Szybek using the philosophy of Levinas to conclude that the starting point
is that "you never know what you are going to know". You NEVER know what
you are going to encounter, be touched by, made responsible to, and what
you must consequently learn to learn... until next time...
Eva