Biography

Beyond Knowledge to Experience

Professor Hansen’s research explores the relation between institutionalized forms of learning and life/work experience. His recent field work involved a case study of a folk school in Norway. A completely non-academic curriculum allowed students to expand their own interests, develop social skills with others, and construct meaning without the trappings of academic competition. Students learned, first-hand, from experience with boat building, sailing, farming, animal care, textile manufacture, and self-accomplishment. In a report "A Year to Be Free" an ethnographic account of life without academic stressors begins to expose the fallacies associated with the knowledge classification and dissemination that characterizes institutional learning.