108 Marie-Cécile Bertau and John L. Roberts
the same access to learning tools such as language skills, books,
computers, and all the practice needed to use them effectively for learning;
differences in social and economic status, in gender and race do not matter
because it is all about the context-free individual. In contrast, we view
learning as happening in a context and towards a context, which is shaped
by power structures specific to cultures and to historical and social settings.
So the critical point of view we offer aims at specifying learning as an
inter-individual process in the first place, where the individuals are
specifically positioned towards each other. An important element to our
critical take is illuminating how learning is conceptualized in psychology,
that is: learning is not simply a certain process. Rather, learning is
conceived as a certain process within a context of scientific and political
ideas. This results in taking into account psychology as a science, which
has both perspectives and a history of ideas about human beings—in our
case: about learning.
The next section takes a historical point of view in order to elaborate
conceptions of learning in psychology from the critical point of view just
mentioned. The chapter expands then on the alternative view of learning as
an inter-individual process by articulating its different aspects, which leads
to the notion of learning as a dialogic and socio-cultural process. A brief
summary recapitulates our main points and emphasizes the critical, de-
colonizing, and de-individualizing view we here propose.
2. HISTORY
Though learning has achieved a somewhat naturalized status within
our psychologized contemporary milieu, this was not always the case. As
Hacking (2002) argues, psychological theories simultaneously describe
and constitute the objects of their domains; however, although both gloves
and viruses enjoy a certain undeniable reality, viruses do not depend on us
for their existence, unlike gloves. Because psychological categories such as
learning, personality, or motivation are not – strictly speaking – natural
kinds, their reality is captive to the socio-historical and spoken conditions