Fragile Learning

What are the barriers and obstacles to adults learning? What makes the process of adult learning so fragile? And what exactly do we mean by Fragile Learning? This book addresses these questions in two ways. In Part One, it looks at challenges to learning, examining issues such as language invention in a maximum security prison, geography and bad technology, and pedagogic fragility in Higher Education. Through a psychoanalytic lens, Fragile Learning examines authorial illness and the process of slow recovery as a tool for reflective learning, and explores ethical issues in problem-based learning. The second part of the book deals specifically with the problem of online anxiety. From cyberbullying to Internet boredom, the book asks what the implications for educational design in our contemporary world might be. It compares education programmes that insist on the Internet and those that completely ban it, while exploring conflict, virtual weapons and the role of the online personal tutor.

David Mathew

Introduction , Challenges to Learning , Prison language , Disease and distance: an anxious diptych , The Stable group , Ethical issues in problem-based learning , On empty spaces: an afterword , Steps forward, steps back , Ghosting , Online Anxiety , Introduction to Part II , Cyberbullying: a workplace virus , From fatigue to anxiety , The absence of E , Cyber tools and virtual weapons , E-learning, time, and unconscious thinking , The role of the online learning personal tutor , Conflict in online learning , The Internet is unwell . . . and will not be at school today