A Case Study of Radical Education: Gaining Vocational Clarity through the Collective

Abstract

This interpretive case study explores how adults within an intentional learning community make meaning of vocational calling (Dewey, 1966), collective learning (Kilgore, 1999), and a sense of place (Low & Altman, 1992) and the interactive and interrelated connections between these constructs. The context for this study was set at a retreat center in southern Minnesota that had been constructed with architectural intention to house and facilitate events designed for co-created learning and fostering community. The participants that took part in this study were part of a course that had been offered annually at the University of Minnesota for the past 17 years. This reoccurring intentional learning community looked to question or trouble what it meant to ‘live a good life’. Using situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 19991) as the main theoretical framework, I examine how both the physical and social context in which learning occurs, matters deeply. I document how the landscape and the geographic positioning of the study had profound influence over and mediated processes of learning and development. My analyses focus the stories and life narratives as offered by the community members engaged in this study. Stories, narratives, interviews, observations, and dialogue served as the primary sources of data. The implications of this study demonstrate the necessity to create, with intention, spaces of learning and development that acknowledge and find meaning in the stories that make up our lives. Further, this study acknowledges the connection between processes of learning and development and the place or physical geographic location in which they occur.