LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

CV Kai Hakkarainen

My own learning history has significantly affected the direction of my academic career. I did not do very well at elementary school, having difficulties especially in learning foreign languages (Swedish and English). As a consequence, I repeated grades, but it did not improve my achievement. I was sure that I would never survive high school and ended up going to a vocational school. Toward the end of the upper elementary school, however, I participated very actively in students' social activities to extent that I was elected to be the president of our students’ union of my school. At that time, school children were protesting against old-fashioned contents and methods of teaching and requested, among other things, collaborative learning and school democracy. These collaborative efforts somehow engaged me with extra-curricular academic activities, such as solving problems and explaining issues important to us, working together with other students and continuously writing articles to school papers. It suddenly appeared to me, when I started the vocational school, that I could apply these collaboratively formed competencies to my schoolwork. It did not take a long time to realize that if one works hard enough, one can learn practically anything. Further, it turned out that the extremely high standards of understanding (validated every day in terms of being able to solve problems and explain things) that had emerged through my social activities were much beyond anything that was formally required at school. I have been excelling in my studies later on because something that had been a minimal level of understanding for me came to be considered as exceptional in the learning environment in question, whether it was high school, college or graduate school. It should be emphasized, further, that these criteria emerged from those student communities in which I participated; they were not created by me alone. My late discovery of learning and knowledge building gave so such strong self-confidence that when I was at the vocational school, I told my teachers that I would pursue my studies until I got a doctoral degree. It was a long journey. After the vocationaI school, I worked for several years as a milling-machine operator and finished my secondary studies (high school) at evening school. I entered the University of Helsinki and originally majored in theoretical philosophy. After the international breakthrough in cognitive science in the beginning of 80s, I decided to start studying psychology. In my graduate studies, I specialized in the psychology of learning in which I had become interested partially because of my own challenging experiences. Why does an individual whose school achievements were below any standards and appeared to be unable to learn, in some other context, start excelling or surpassing him- or herself? Why may learning, that sometimes appears to be so difficult and boring, suddenly become the most exciting and enjoyable thing to do? In order to understand these issues more deeply, I undertook doctoral studies in the Ph.D. program at the Centre for Applied Cognitive Science, University of Toronto (1991-1998). In my efforts to develop the progressive inquiry model, I have partially relied on my experience and tried to highlight aspects that fundamentally changed my own learning career, such as collaborative problem solving and explanation. After finishing my doctoral studies, I have been working to create a basis for cognitive research on collaborative technology in Finland and corresponding research networks in Europe. I believe that, if appropriately used, this kind of technology may help students to collaboratively engage in meaningful learning and build knowledge together. Together with my colleagues, I am still trying to understand and explain why and how in-depth learning takes place and how it can be facilitated.