Becoming A More Critical, Autonomous, Reflective Learner

PRILHE Project - Lecturer’s Toolkit
1.2 Literature Review Summary (for full literature review, see Project Web-site)
The project literature review was developed by all partners in the Grundtvig PRILHE project. At the first meeting of the international
project team, it was agreed to construct the project literature review both as a collaborative and a developmental process. It was
intended that this process would inform the development of the project questionnaire and its overall approach to biographical
research.
Preliminary discussions identified the centrality of reflective biographical learning to the whole idea of reflective independent
learning. Arising from this, three formative thematic strands were agreed where project partners would make initial explorations of
the available literature. The figure below represents these three strands and the involvement of the different partners in exploring
the relevant literature.
Reflective Biographical Learning
Figure 1.
Reflective Biographical Learning
Experiential learning Constructivist learning paradigm Critical learning
APEL
(Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning)
Expansive learning
(Engeström)
Critical theory
(Habermas)
Pragmatist tradition (Dewey, Mead)
Co-configuration Biographical construction Social learning Collective learning Dialogical
(Biographicity)
learning
SWEDEN / PORTUGAL GERMANY / FINLAND SPAIN / UK
At a later stage, the Swedish and Polish teams added a further review of Transformative Learning which complemented and, to
some extent, bridged the three strands above. After all these sections had been drafted and discussed, it was agreed that the
term, ‘Critical Autonomous Reflective Learning, was a more appropriate key concept than the original idea of ‘Reflective
Independent Learning’ (see 1.3).
Becoming A More Critical, Autonomous, Reflective Learner