4.2 Core Category – Linking Learning

The images captured by the participants and their subsequent responses made it clear very early that they found it very difficult to describe learning in isolation. They don't see learning in the way an educator might and couch it in terms like "Learning is the lifelong process of transforming information and experience into knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes" (Cobb, 2009) or even see it in its most simple form as a change in behaviour. Instead they tended to view learning as being bound within or associated with specific situations and activities. They find a hook onto which they can hang the coat of learning. They 'Link Learning' with more tangible processes, seeing it manifest through different experiences. Contributing towards this central theme, the five categories described in Table 1 were constructed.

Each category is linked (literally) with its properties, so these two columns are kept together, even though it might make more sense conceptually to follow a category with its definition. Properties or conditions have been ascribed to each category where it was meaningful to do so and codes illustrative of the category are provided in the final column (in vivo codes are shown in red).

Core category – ‘Linking my Learning’ (projecting learning onto other events/experiences)

Table 1 - Core and sub-categories defined

These five categories are described in greater detail in the following sections, which represent a summary and synthesis of the six and a half thousand words I generated whilst writing memos.

Figure 10 - Compendium (memos)

Some of these were methodological memos which informed subsequent interviews, though the majority reflected upon, fleshed out and focused the emerging themes.