6. BELIEFS ABOUT A LEARNING CULTURE: FROM A

LEARNERS’ POINT OF VIEW

Beliefs about a learning culture is the topic of the following two chapters. In them
I will analyse the data I gathered in Oaxaca/97 project carried out in Mexico. In Chapter
6 I will deal with the information students gave to me, what I learned from them and
about them. Chapter 7 will be the counterpart of this one, that is to say, I will discuss
what I gave to students. From a general point of view, I will analyse the project as a
whole, and in a more specific perspective, the beliefs that underlie it. The content of the
two chapters will be organised in three different areas: person, task, and strategy. The
reader will remember that I mentioned this classification on page 56, when I introduced
the concept of metacognitive knowledge. For the sake of clarity and coherence I will use
the same terms to analyse the learners' beliefs, although I realise that not all the things
that I am reporting are elements the learners are consciously aware of.

Even though both chapters deal with the interpretation of data, I physically
separated this interpretation in two parts. I do not want this to seem a modular analysis of
two isolated phenomena that occurred parallel and separated from each other. Actually,
during the project things happened the other way around; events usually occurred in a
chain reaction, where causes and consequences were profoundly linked. However, I
decided that by writing two different chapters, I will make clear that there were things
happening in two directions. In other words, I did not just receive information from
learners, but I also gave information to them. That is to say, the project was ON learning
about learning in a bi-directional way: they learned and I learned about learning.

In this chapter I particularly will deal with learners' belief systems and learning
processes. It will be based on the recorded data from group and individual discussion
sessions and written data in the form of diaries, biographies, and questionnaires.

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