Interview with Etienne Wenger

Dur­ing an eport­fo­lio con­fer­ence in Den­mark in May 2005, Wenger argues against the indus­trial model of learn­ing in which knowl­edge is seen as some­thing tan­gi­ble that can be trans­mit­ted to a will­ing recip­i­ent dur­ing spe­cial times (like in train­ing ses­sions). Rather, he views know­ing or being com­pe­tent in some­thing as build­ing on our expe­ri­ence of being in the world. Each of us deals and engages in many dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties where we nego­ti­ate com­pe­tence and knowl­edge. Learn­ing is a con­stant trans­for­ma­tion or jour­ney of the self (and soci­ety). I par­tic­u­larly liked his com­ments about iden­tity. In a world where access to infor­ma­tion is less prob­lem­atic, and where what you learn in school may not be rel­e­vant once you grad­u­ate and in fact where the canon does not not exists, diver­sity is what sus­tains com­mu­nity. It is at the bound­aries where con­flicts are inter­nal­ized. The key to a learn­ing planet, Wenger says, is the kind of iden­tify that we develop as these bound­aries become part of the expe­ri­ence. It’s too bad they didn’t keep the tape rolling after the lec­ture; it would have been inter­est­ing to see the nego­ti­a­tion in action.