Learning to live. The pattern which connects education and dis/orientation

This chapter addresses the issue of "formative orientation", addressed to the way people learn ‘to live’, to have a meaningful life, and the role of education in that. A ‘formative’ view of orientation is proposed, where the use of life-based and art-based research methods can make a difference. "Formative orientation" focuses the learners' ‘frames of mind’, i.e. their ways to organize inner and outer worlds.The most important choices of life entail a review of frames of mind. This asks to learners to be able to reflect. It involves individuals and their proximal systems, aesthetic experience and intelligent understanding, via the mediation of abductive thinking (metaphors, stories, imagination) and conversations to build meaning. The process of orientation is collective, embodied, unconscious. Hence, it needs practices of orientation that are co-operative, peer-to-peer, life-based, art-based, as unique spaces for active learning. Their aim is to produce knowledge and wisdom, bringing reflection and reflexivity in places where these are not common.