From Frontier Learning to Blended Community Learning: A Phenomenography of Informal Learning in Rural Community Informatics

Abstract

“The skills and knowledge required to take an active part in a society characterised by digital technology are embedded, learned, and practiced in people’s daily lives” (EDEN17, Conference Scope). However, disparities in relation to both the quality and intensity of use of digital information and communications technologies between those with higher levels of education and the less well educated (European Commission, 2008) in addition to reports that “privileged social groups enjoy a seamless integration of different types of learning that is denied to the disadvantaged” and marginalised in society (Colley, Hodkinson & Malcolm, 2003; p.109) point to the existence of a learning divide – a term used to refer to inequalities in education related to the existence of a digital divide (European Commission, 2008; Sargant, 2000; White, 2011). Like Australia, therefore, many countries and communities are working on strategies to build the capacity of their citizens for active participation “in an information society that includes a concept of civil society as a target for skills development, engagement, decision-making, and societal cohesion” (Taylor, Schauder, & Johanson, 2005; p.4). Such strategies include the Learning Communities movement, in which towns, cities, and communities adopt a “learning-based approach to community development…with a framework in which lifelong learning is the organising principle and social goal” (Faris, 2005; p.31) and grass-roots community technology (Community Informatics) initiatives that seek to leverage digital Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) and the Internet in the interests of supporting the achievement of community development (Gurstein, 2001) and digital inclusion (Alamelu, 2013) goals. This paper draws on the author’s doctoral study into community volunteers’ informal learning experiences in the context of their involvement in a hybrid Learning Community-Community Informatics project called GraniteNet situated in the rural town of Stanthorpe in South-East Queensland, Australia, to generate new insights about the diverse forms of learning in which people engage as they use digital technologies to learn with and from each other in the context of Australian rural community and associational life in the digital era.