Listen to children talk about informal learning
17th June, 2008Most people who talk about informal learning are adults. But if we really want to understand informal learning, we need to listen to those who are actually doing it. My colleague Pam Greenhough and I have recently been talking with children and young people about their informal learning.
The children often talked about the importance of practice. If you want to get good at something, you have to keep doing it. But practice doesn’t have to be boring or a chore. Tommy, a drummer in a teenage rock band, said:
‘I don’t go and “practice drums”. When I want to play, I just play’
The children also talked about how learning to do something outside school gave you confidence. Katie, who had taken part in an after-school drama performance, described how she and her friends felt when they came to perform the play:
‘Because we knew what we was doing…like we were just strong at it and we weren’t like “oh what do we do next?” we were really doing it, giving it our all’
Katie described how this confidence spilled over into other areas of life, such as feeling confident to go into a shop and ask how much something cost.
Another key idea for the children was that of challenge. Too much challenge and you might give up, but too little challenge might mean you don’t get any better. Computer and video games which allow you to set the level of challenge can be very supportive of informal learning.
Listening to children talking about their informal learning can help us think about how informal learning can best be supported. But it can also help us think about how formal learning might be made more productive.
What do you think about the children’s comments? We’d very much like to hear from you
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Bob Harrison
Ben Williamson
Dan Sutch
Richard Sandford
Leon Cych
Martin Owen
Sarah Grier
Tim Reader
June 17th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Informal learning is an interesting conceptual label! We learn from all experience, good or bad! Learning by experience is of course lifelong and an important feature of economic (and frequently physical) prosperity and/or survival in the adult world.
I’m not sure though whether informal learning is a useful term, as it sounds as if we may be considering every experience outside of a formal setting as informal learning; that is a very wide definition.
Your point about challenge is well made. The level of challenge has to be correlated to an individuals willingness and motivation to take risks and pursue personal or social goals. It is likely to be very individual and personalised.
Creating or linking real life experiences and activities to formal learning should of course be at the core of teaching practice.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Kia ora Martin
I think we need to look at the quality of ‘informal learning’ and not just its occurrence before we can have grounds for productive discussion.
I’m not denying that it happens – far from it. But simply saying that activities that challenge or appear to engender confidence constitute useful learning seems a bit less than useful.
There are many examples of children and young adults who have benefited informal learning to a very high degree, and this learning continued throughout their lives in many cases. Thomas Edison is such an example – a boy who had much ‘informal learning’ and became legendary as one of the world’s greatest inventors. Norman Kirk, who became Prime Minister of New Zealand late in the 20th century likewise was an example of one who succeeded through informal learning he received as a child and I’ve no doubt his informal learning continued until his untimely death in 1974.
Clearly these examples among others indicate that informal learning can be gained and from an early age in ways that show its power and potential to be beneficial to its recipients.
My candid feeling is that what the individual makes of informal learning is as much to do with its success as does what the individual makes of formal learning. I guess it comes down to what the individual can make of life experience in terms of learning from it.
If we examine the evidence closely, I posit that there would be much evidence to show that success and usefulness of an individual’s learning lay with the individual and what they took out of it, no matter how they acquired the learning, formal or informal.
Ka kite
July 25th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Permit me to suggest that all learning is part formal and part informal. Students in a formal class learn from one another afterward. Informal learners use formal conventions such as language. Hence, the issue is one of balance.
I really enjoy listening to children talk about learning. Their simple, enthusiastic descriptions indict the academic dross we professionals have layered onto a natural process.