Merja Bauters discusses informal learning in the workplace. She argues that informal learning emerges from feelings of doubt or uncertainty that arise during work activities. These moments encourage reflection and openness to new perspectives or habits. Sharing experiences with others can help develop a common understanding and redirect attention to learn from each other. Changing habits through informal learning is a social process that involves communicating experiences to build common ground and point out new insights.

1. Merja Bauters (Aalto University)
Applying Peirce
The Second International Conference on Peirce's Thought and Its Applications
Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia
21-23 April 2014
Worth of Experience
in Informal Learning

2. Merja Bauters
Post doctoral researcher
Learning Environments
research group (LeGroup)
Media Lab Helsinki
Aalto University
School of Arts, Design and
Architecture

3. Informallearningandworkplaces

4. Background
• Learning Layers Scaling up Technologies for Informal
Learning in SME Clusters
• technologies that support informal learning in the
workplace, focus (SMEs) and Scaling informal
• Physical/practical work, where informal learning should be
supported (scaffolded)
• Hypothesis emerging form the field: (informal) learning
requires sharing of experiences / physical practices and
materials in situ
• Investigating conceptual and abstract issues will not suffice
• The need to learn should emerge while working, from the
work
4/23/2014
http://learning-layers.eu/
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5. Informallearningandworkplaces
It is said to be:
multi episodic,
Problem oriented
takes place on a just in time basis,
involves sharing of experiences and knowledge
4/23/2014
(Kooken et al., 2007, Kerosuo and Toiviainen, 2011,
Mørch and Skaanes 2010)
, )
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6. 4/23/2014
Laitoksen nimi
6
Harsh conditions
Lack of time and space
Difficult to predict the moments where
the need to learn of new tools, practices,
and materials arrises

7. Whattodotosupportthis?
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Laitoksen nimi
7
Provide tools to support
sharing/collaboration
Make learning possible as part of the
work.

8. Whatisitthatfeeling thatcreatestheneed
tolearnwhileworking?
Wish to ask help
Feeling uncertain
Being in doubt – halt in the work
Feeling that all went perfectly
Wanting to remember
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8

9. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
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9

10. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• Pragmatism gave habit a new meaning = Habit is not only
mindless routines, rather, it is a process that is open for
reflection and control
• “ […] that multiple reiterated behavior of the same kind, under
similar combinations of percepts and fancies, produces a
tendency, - the habit, - actually to behave in a similar way under
similar circumstances in the future” (EP 2:413, “Pragmatism”
1907)
• “Intelligent habit upon which we shall act when occasion presents
itself” (EP 2:19 [1895]).
• = might NOT be in the focus of our awareness but can be
easily brought up into reflection to distinguish them from tacit
knowledge
4/23/2014
Kilpinen 2008:3 and 2009: 102, Bergman 2009: 10).
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11. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• Focus on the halt – doubt
• The feeling of doubt (uncertainty), this creates a feeling of the
uniqueness of the situation, it is worth minding, it is worth of
meaning creation
• “Yet, when we consider that logic depends on a mere struggle to
escape doubt, which, as it terminates in action, must begin in
emotion, and that, furthermore, the only cause of our planting
ourselves on reason is that other methods of escaping doubt fail
on account of the social impulse, why should we wonder to find
social sentiment presupposed in reasoning?”
• This moment of doubt is the core for learning at work to
emerge – this should be supported and captured
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(CP 2.655 [1878]; cf. CP 5.357 [1868]), in Bergman 2009.
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12. 4/23/2014
Bergman 2009: 10 - 11
12
Habits
• Doubt/irritation,
need to question –
potential for habit
change
• Only self-controlled
habits can be
ultimate logical
Interpretants.
• Requires agency
and effort

13. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• Experience (Dewey):
• Is an active & passive process (its trying but also
undergoing)
• as meaning making
• is embodied and embedded in the context
• is holistic – all sense are involved – conscious thinking
• “Experiencing is the active interaction that the being has
with environment, its the constant interaction that
changes the being and the being changes the
environment”.
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Dewey John, (LW 12 [LTI]: 73-74 LW 1 [EN]: 13-14
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14. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• Dewey’s concept of qualitative immediacy:
• The qualitative immediacy belongs to experiencing within
time and place - it is the something that belongs to the
particular experience – doubt prone
• Something that we about to be aware off
• “In discovery of the detailed connections of our activities and
what happens in consequence, the thought implied in cut and
try experience is made explicit. […] Hence the quality of the
experience changes. The change is so significant that we may
call this type of experience reflective – that is, reflective par
excellence”.
4/23/2014
Dewey John, MW 9 [DE]: 153 LW 1 [EN]: 13-14 in Alhanen K 2013]
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15. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• Set of experiences we have guide us, in good and bad, to
direct our attention, being aware of this may allow to
have broad attention that picks also "unusual"
aspects providing new insights and more flexibility -
easier changes in habits.
• When in doubt, seeing the environment with more
“clarity”
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Dewey John MW 14 [HNC]: 16-33. LW 2 [PP]: 334-338. LW 7
[E]:169-174, 185 and Alhanen K (2013).
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16. HabitChangeisNOT
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17. Habits,experiences–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• "It is that reconstruction or reorganisation
of experience which adds to the meaning of
experience, and which increases ability to direct
the course of subsequent experience.
• Is social – in practice it means – sharing
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MW 9 [DE]: 83
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18. Experiences,habits–changinghabits=
(informal)learning
• For Dewey the intellectuality – the so called
logical/rational/reflective thinking – is fully
experience dependent
• Done by sharing experiences – needs
communication
• It needs: common ground and pointing to shared
items that direct attention to the some shared
experiences
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19. Sharingexperiences
• Common ground: “The universe must be well
known and mutually known to be known and
agreed to exist, in some sense, between speaker
and hearer, between the mind as appealing to its
own further consideration and the mind as so
appealed to, or there can be no communication,
or 'common ground,' at all.”
4/23/2014
(Peirce 1931-1958, 3.621; see also ibid., 6.338; 8.179) In Bergman
2002: 10)
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20. Commonground(Collateralexperience)
• Common ground is needed to make communication, or
sign-processes (semiosis) understandable
• Collateral experience "serves a kind of double function,
on the one hand showing us some limits of the semiotic
domain, while on the other reminding us of the relevance
of situational and contextual factors. In fact, the crucial
recognition of reality is achieved through indexical and
experiential means. According to Peirce, we cannot
distinguish fact from fiction by any description”
• Sharing experiences requires indices, signs which
indicate ,call, pinpoint, direct the attention to
their objects through which experiences could be shared
4/23/2014
(see Clark & Brennan 1991; Peirce 1931-1958, 3.621, See also
Bergman 2002
(CP 2.337 [c. 1895]). Bergman 2002: 9).
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21. Sharingexperience–habitchange
4/23/2014
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22. Ach so! in the field
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23. Ach so! in the field
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24. Thank you!
Merja Bauters
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and
Architecture
Helsinki – Finland
firstname.surname@aalto.fi
The Learning Layers project is supported by the European Commission
within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Agreement
#318209, under the DG Information society and Media (E3), unit of
Cultural heritage and technology-enhanced learning. http://learning-
layers.eu