The paper:

• Reviews vocabulary used to make sense of learning across contexts and over time.
• Argues representing learning depend on narration, the filmic gaze and visual frame.
• Argues reconceptualising mapping learning has implications for educational research.

‘Learning lives’, a double articulation both describing lifelong and life wide learning and the role learning plays in developing identity, relies on a process of portrayal. The vocabulary used to make sense of learning across contexts and over time is spatial in origin and metaphorical in application. Key terms include: mapping, connecting, navigating, tracing, pathways, vectors and networks. I suggest that we are now developing ways of representing learning that depend significantly on forms of narration, the filmic gaze and a visual frame making the concept of a “learning journey” more visible. Yet as we appear to capture and represent complicated forms of learning in “non-educational” contexts so the paradigm of studying such learning as movement is thrown into question.