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?Fragile Learning 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, the book builds a picture of pedagogic fragility in Higher Education. Through a psychoanalytic lens, Fragile Learning asks what interactions with horses might teach us about our students; it examines authorial illness and the process of slow recovery as a tool for reflective learning; and it explores ethical issues in problem-based learning. Part One concludes with a psychoanalytic examination of the non-appearance of expected visitors to the maximum security prison. Part Two deals specifically with the problem of online anxiety. From cyberbullying to Internet boredom, the book asks the implications for educational design in our contemporary world might be. It compares education programmes that insist on the Internet and complete ban it, while exploring conflict, virtual weapons and the role of the online personal tutor. Fragile Learning examines time as a barrier to learning and its links to unconscious thinking, as well as defining fragility in a summative essay. Using real-life examples, originality and wit, Fragile Learning is an important contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and pedagogy.