The Wales-Wide Web

Regular readers of this web log will know that I am somewhat obsessed with informal learning and have been wrestling in my mind once more over definitions and meanings.

Definitions of informal and 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. 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?”

In reality the debate seems overly academic and driven by dominant discourses in education and training policy. The distinctions between formal and non formal learning seem more often driven by finding regime requirements than by the nature of the learning itself. However there is a very big political interest in informal learning. If informal learning could be systematised it could be a cost effective route to increasing training. However in order to do this it is felt necessary to be able to measure the learning taken place - in other words to formalise that learning. Much of the political thrust is not - as it claims to be about recognised learning - but to controlling learning through a system of accreditation. In other words the concern is to develop an exchange value to learning which at present is seen only as having use value. That is not to say that exchange values are only in the interests of employers and policy makers. In an insecure labour market exchange values are important for workers. However present proposals and mechanisms to establishing exchange value are based on identifying equivalents within frameworks linking informal learning to formally acquired qualifications seem more likely to constrain rather than advantage the use and status of informal learning. A better approach might be to recognise the use value of informal learning through profiling learning in non-constrained (e)-portfolios. Such an approach would provide a major move to leaner driven learning where all learning is valid rather than only recognising that learning supported by qualification frameworks.
There is a major issue in distinguishing between information seeking and learning. Assessment or testing has traditionally been seen as a means of assuring that learning has taken place. How effective assessment is as a measurement of learning may be contested. It may be more fruitful to examine the nature of activities resulting from informal learning as a means of validation. Activities identified in a series of recent case studies of the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises were:

a)Purposeful
b)Heavily influenced by context
c) Often resulted in changes in behaviour
d) Were sequenced in terms of developing a personal knowledge base
e) Problem driven or driven by personal interest
f) Social – in that they often involved recourse to shared community knowledge bases through the internet and / or shared with others in the workplace.

To me this proves that learning was taking place, even if there was no teacher or trainer, no tests and no certificates!

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