In my previous blog I mentioned invisible learning. This is learning that occurs at University that is unrecognised and hence invisible. Let me explain. Recognised learning that occurs  in University often involves students acquiring knowledge or actively constructing knowledge. This acquisition, considers knowledge as an entity that can be bought or transferred. Learners are referred to as ‘grasping ideas’. Students are guided in self-construction of knowledge by tutors who act as facilitators. Learning in lectures, seminars and group work occur in this way. The learning is often recognised as it is assessed. 

However, there is another type of learning that occurs at university. For example, when students sit and discuss some aspect of university work in a café, they often generate new meanings, new understanding of that piece of work. New insights may be gained that enables the learner to think differently about the subject, about the discipline. Students through such discussions may make use of the new knowledge or insights in a piece of assessed work, BUT, they also learn something about themselves and others. Perhaps about how others explain something, and they may think ‘I might change how I go about doing something’. They may observe how another student explained a topic and think ‘ I might experiment at explaining things in that way’. This sort of learning – participatory learning – is not assessed, but it does bring about change in how the student participates in future practice. That is, the student changes as a result of the learning experience.  A similar thing can happen in university laboratories where biology students watch each other and talk about the practical work they are doing. A tutor may intervene in the discussion. The tutor is interested in what the students say. The tutor recognises student contributions as legitimate, the students are on biology awards. The tutor also recognises the students as participants in the practice of biology. The students are interested in what the tutor says because she or he is in full participation within the community of biologists, whereas, they the students, are on the periphery of biology, but hoping that by the end of their degree they will have moved nearer to full participation. The student learners can make use of the shared knowledge with the tutor, perhaps in their practical write up. BUT, students learn other things. They watch tutors doing things, make judgements, assemble good practice, perhaps they say ‘I think I’ll try an imitate or mimic that action of the tutor’ Again, this learning is not assessed, but this – participatory learning – will change the practice of the student.  Thus participatory learning, unlike acquired learning, is not something you buy or possess, but it is recognised in what a person does. Here the student is ‘becoming’ a different person, their identity is changing. Here the role of the tutor is not a facilitator, but someone who fosters through a process of socialisation the student into a community of practice – into full participation.  

Thus, students are legitimate peripheral participants in a community of practice, where their participatory learning is inivisible from the associated identity change. This participatory learning is the invisible learning that occurs in higher education. It is unrecognised because it is so different to how learning is understood in schools and because people believe that only bought knowledge exists. But participatory knowledge is being demonstrated all the time, it is part of that becoming process. The reason students feel and are different at the end of level 5 study is not simple because they have acquired more knowledge it is because they are different – they have a different identity. Employers recognise this identity change. The laboratory manager recognise the ‘student biologists’ identity. At graduation students do not say my time at Staffordshire University was life changing because of the assessments I did. They say ‘my experience at Staffordshire University was life changing because I became a biologist or historian or lawyer. At graduation the invisible learning is recognised, but perhaps not understood.