The Wales-Wide Web

Part 3 of my mini series on e-Learning in Small and Medium Enterprises
Perhaps the most significant finding is the use of ICT for non formal learning. In order to discuss this finding it is necessary to look more closely at the nature of informal learning. Definitions of informal or non formal learning are problematic and contested. Helen Colley, Phil Hodkinson and Janice Malcom have undertaken an extensive review of literature on this subject. In the review they identified eight different theoretical models of informal or non formal learning. These are summarised below in some detail as they are critical to understanding the use of ICT for informal learning in the workplace.

Technorati Tags: describing knowledge, knowledge development, non formal learning, Small and Medium Enterprises, work based learning

Extended text for this entry:

The first position they examined was Michael Eraut’s. Eraut “sets out a schema for identifying different types of non-formal learning, based on, for example, the timing of the stimulus (past, current, future) and the extent to which such learning is tacit (tacit, reactive or deliberative). This latter dimension is later set against another, identifying different types of thought or action (reading of the situation, decision making, overt activity, meta-cognitive processes). Finally, he also classifies non-formal learning as either individual or social, and either implicit or explicit. One of many interesting facets of Eraut’s work is that he effectively classifies non-formal learning by what it is not (formal)..” (Colley, Hodkinson and Malcom, 2002).

The European Commission (2001) Communication on Lifelong Learning: formal, non-formal and informal learning defines the three types thus:

“Formal learning: learning typically provided by an education or training institution, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and leading to certification. Formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective.

Non-formal learning: learning that is not provided by an education or training institution and typically does not lead to certification. It is, however, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support). Non-formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective.

Informal learning: learning resulting from daily life activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and typically does not lead to certification. Informal learning may be intentional but in most cases it is non-intentional (or “incidental”/ random).”

Livingstone says that formal education occurs “when a teacher has the authority to determine that people designated as requiring knowledge effectively learn a curriculum taken from a pre-established body of knowledge…whether in the form of age-graded and bureaucratic modern school systems or elders initiating youths into traditional bodies of knowledge” (Colley, Hodkinson and Malcom, 2002).

Non-formal education or further education occurs “when learners opt to acquire further knowledge or skill by studying voluntarily with a teacher who assists their self-determined interests, by using an organised curriculum, as is the case in many adult education courses and workshops” (ibid).

Informal education or training occurs “when teachers or mentors take responsibility for instructing others without sustained reference to an intentionally-organised body of knowledge in more incidental and spontaneous learning situations, such as guiding them in acquiring job skills or in community development activities” (ibid).

Informal learning is “any activity involving the pursuit of understanding knowledge or skill which occurs without the presence of externally imposed curricular criteria…in any context outside the pre-established curricula of educative institutions” (ibid).

Hodkinson and Hodkinson argue that focussing on the extent to which learning is planned and intentional may be a way of by-passing the distinction between formal, non-formal and informal altogether.” (Colley, Hodkinson and Malcom, 2002).
Hunt has a different approach in looking at formal and informal mentoring in the workplace. Hunt suggests a series of factors that distinguish formal from informal mentoring:

• “the degree of external control
• the degree of planning and institutionalisation
• the level of intentionality
• the nature (organisational or individual) of its goals
• the locus of decisions about goals (internal or external to dyad)
• the depth of the dyadic relationship
• the degree to which participation is voluntary (by both partners)
• the time frame
• the nature of its evaluation
• the ‘ecology’ of its setting”

Colley, Hodkinson and Malcom (2002) argue that all of these examples are strongly influenced by:

• “the context within which and/or for which the definitions or typology were developed, even if some author(s) saw their versions as having wider significance and applicability;
• the purpose the author had in mind, either implicitly or explicitly in developing the definitions or typology;
• the deeper theoretical and values orientation of the writer when developing the definitions or typology, to the extent that this is discernible in their writing.
• They comment that “this part of our analysis raised serious doubts about the possibility of establishing an objective way of defining formal, non-formal and informal learning, that would be relevant in most if not all purposes.”

They suggest the following factors as being common in many if not all of the definitions:

• “Process. This includes learner activity, pedagogical styles and issues of assessment: that is, the learning practices, and the relationships between learner and others (tutors, teachers, trainers, mentors, guides).
• Location and setting. Is the location of the learning within a setting that is primarily education, community or workplace? Does the learning take place in the context of: fixed or open time frames; is there specified curriculum, objectives, certification; etc.
• Purposes. Is the learning secondary to other prime purposes, or the main purpose of itself? Whose purposes are dominant – the learner’s, or others’?
• Content. This covers issues about the nature of what is being learned. Is this the acquisition of established expert knowledge/understanding/practices, or the development of something new? Is the focus on propositional knowledge or situated practice? Is the focus on high status knowledge or not?”

It is interesting that there appears to be more discussion of these issues in the English language literature than in continental Europe. Especially in those countries where qualifications and qualification structures are closely aligned to the labour market, informal or non formal learning appears to be rather unproblematically regarded as competences acquired outside the formal education system.

My own view is that many of the definitions are over influenced by systemic factors and by the motivations and activities of teachers. Our case studies found little or no intervention or support form teachers or trainers.

Some researchers have sought to define between information seeking and learning. I believe that learning is taking place in the workplaces we studied. The activitivities being undertaken are:

1. Purposeful
2. Heavily influenced by context
3. Often result in changes in behaviour
4. Are sequenced in terms of developing a personal knowledge base
5. Problem driven or driven by personal interest
6. Social – in that they often involve recourse to shared community knowledge bases through the internet and / or are shared with others in the workplace

The issue of structuring of learning experiences is a major issue. However, in much of the literature, structure is seen as externally defined in the form of curricula or teaching programme. In the case studies we undertook, the leaner was structuring their own learning.

There is a question as to how learners are able to incorporate learning within personal knowledge frameworks or structures. Because learning is motivated by problem solving or personal interest it is far more closely related to practice than the education acquired through formal courses. The immediate context of applying the learning may be an aid to incorporating and scaffolding new learning within a personal knowledge schema. On the other hand the learning acquired is not sequenced in the same way as learning acquired from formal education and training.

Much of the most interesting research in this area has been in the field of organizational learning, in attempts to explain how personal knowledge and skills become shared in communities of practice or within organisations and how new knowledge is developed. But even this work is not without its limitations. There has been widespread acceptance of the division between tacit and explicit knowledge with tacit knowledge defined as “knowledge we do not know we have” (Polyani, 1957). Nonaku and Konno have described a knowledge development cycle, showing how tacit or implicit knowledge is made explicit as part of a process of organizational learning. These ideas have been further developed by John Seely Brown, Per Erik Ellstrom and others. Other researchers have pointed to how work process knowledge is developed in communities of practice through application in the workplace (Fischer, Boreham). This work is useful in that it moves away from formally acquired and sequenced learning and towards understanding that there are different types of knowledge and that knowledge can be developed in different contexts. However to fully understand the uses of ICT for non formal learning in SMEs we need more detailed understandings of the different type of knowledge being acquired and developed.

The next post will look at different ways of defining knowledge drawn from the Welsh language.

References

• EC (2001) Communication on Lifelong Learning: formal, non-formal and informal learning
• Eraut, M. (2000) Non-formal learning, implicit learning and tacit knowledge, in F. Coffield (Ed) The Necessity of Informal Learning, Bristol: Policy Press
• Fischer M (1998) Work process knowledge and its impact on vocational education and training. In Mulder, Martin (ed.). European vocational education and training research. Proceedings of the VETNET program at the ECER conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 17-20 September 1998, pp. 175-184.
• Helen Colley, Phil Hodkinson & Janice Malcolm (2002) Non-formal learning: mapping the conceptual terrain. A Consultation Report, Leeds: University of Leeds Lifelong Learning Institute. Also available in the informal education archives: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/colley_informal_learning.htm.
• Hodkinson, P. and Hodkinson, H. (2001) Problems of measuring learning and attainment in the workplace: complexity, reflexivity and the localised nature of understanding. Paper presented in the conference Context, Power and Perspective: Confronting the Challenges to Improving Attainment in Learning at Work, University College Northampton, 8th-10th November.
• Livingstone, D.W. (2001) Adults' Informal Learning: Definitions, Findings, Gaps and Future Research, Toronto: OISE/UT (NALL Working Paper No.21) at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/csew/nall/res/21adultsifnormallearning.htm, accessed 1 March 2002.
• Nonaka, I. and Konno, N. (1998) The Concept of "Ba": Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation, California Management Review, 40, 3, 40-54.
• Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post- Critical Philosophy. Chicago, University of Chicago Press