Learning Environments Research , Lifeworld Analysis , and Solidarity in Practice

Learning environments research is generally premised on an assumption that something like an environment independent of the individual can be identified. However, research in many disciplines questions this assumption. I outline here a phenomenological perspective of theorizing the environments in which we act and to which we react, our individual lifeworlds. Lifeworld analysis requires a sense of solidarity. Because it allows an understanding of the world of the Other, it constitutes a lens particularly important and useful in teaching as praxis. Once one drops the traditional opposition between context and thing contextualized, there is no way to divide things up into those which are what they are independent of context and those which are context-dependent. (Rorty, 1991, p. 98) Learning environments research in schools is most often premised on the assumption that individual and environment can be separated analytically so that particular behavioral and structural attributions can be made to each. A problem with this approach is that responsibilities to enhance the learning environments are sometimes attributed to some agent (e.g. the teacher). However, this approach in behavioral science has not helped us to understand the regulation of human behavior, its purposefulness, adaptivity, or even the generation of the most simple perceptual phenomena (Jarvilehto, 1998a, 1998b). There is no well-grounded psychological or neurophysiological theory about the connection between stimuli coming from the environment and the associated subjective experiences in the individual. On the other hand, there is increasing empirical evidence and theoretical work on using the organism-environment whole as the analytic unit. With respect to learning environments research in schools, if different students perceive the learning environment to be different, they will act (differently) to adapt to or change this environment to provide a better fit. Therefore, it makes sense to theorize learning environments as an integral part of the learner.