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Exploring Informal Learning |
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Written by Harriet Pattison
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 07:41 |
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Our purpose in "How Children Learn at Home" was to explicitly explore informal learning within the context of home education and in particular to ask how informal learning, based on day to day experiences and living, could allow children to achieve an education on par with that offered by schools. In this research 26 families who based their chidlren's education on informal learning were interviewed in detail on both the content and nature of their informal learning. We discuss the concept of the informal learning curriculum - the commonly held ideas, knowledge and skills that help people operate within their environment and which children at home experience all around them all day long. Of course this informal learning will also encompass some of the skills seen as central to education within schools - numeracy and literacy for example. We then investigate just how informal learning allows children to engage with this curriculum and to acquire such skills for themselves. Such informal learning takes place without the usual processes employed in schools of breaking down information and grading it into building blocks of increasing difficulty or sophistication. The ways in which children engage with the informal learning curriculum are found to be very ordinary childhood activities so ordinary in fact their their importance in informal learning can easily be overlooked, leaving the impression that children are simply absorbing information form their surroundings by some kind of osmosis. This impression is not limited to adult observers but also seems to hold true for children themselves who are often apparently unaware of their own informal learning. Thus children watch, play and practice without any explicit learning intention but simply in order to engage with the life and people around them. On other occasions informal learning may be more focused as children explore, question and actively wonder about subjects that have attracted their attention. Using detailed examples we are able to track how such activites lead to all manner of informal learning including that of the "intellectual" school subjects of reading, writing and maths. We also discuss the role of parents in their children's informal learning beyond the conventional image of teacher. Once again this research helps to highlight a significant gap in current theoretical understandings of informal learning and provides an opportunity to question old assumptions and devleop new theoretical perspectives. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 27 April 2009 15:19 )
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