Abstract
Current educational discourse is often dominated by technocratic approaches – focusing on the acquisition of skills, the processing of information, or the delivery of measurable outcomes. Such perspectives tend to overlook the essence of learning. This article presents an understanding of learning as a responsive event – situational, dialogical, and world-related, which is experienced and enacted, often beyond what was planned or intended. This is centred on a genuinely pedagogical perspective, namely that learning is an experience, formative in nature, and focuses on the understanding of self, world, and the Other.
Taking the example of a board game – a structured yet open space of learning and experience – this article uses phenomenological vignettes to demonstrate how learning is relational, emotional, and grounded in meaning-making. The implications for teaching are then drawn out, starting with learners’ experiences and aiming to achieve a deeper understanding of the relationship between teachers, learners, and the world.