Informal Learning

Informal learning is a different way to look at education.  It reverses some long-held beliefs like the teacher as the fount of all knowledge but embraces a world-as-teacher, holistic lifestyle that engages learners in all aspects, allowing them to be in control of their learning journey.

Informal learning might be seen as anything outside of the teacher-to-student transfer of knowledge that traditionally takes place in a lecture-style classroom. This learning may be self-directed or collective, taking place outside of school or within the confines of school but outside of traditional school learning activities. Informal learning is characterized by experience and problem-solving, often occurring without the objective of learning or large degrees of structure, but while one is going about life tasks. A teacher may be involved in informal learning activities, playing facilitator and allowing the student to go down his or her own learning journey. In that situation, the teacher is not the pitcher of knowledge, pouring into the students, but a prompter, providing further stimuli for sustained learning and self-reflection. Overall, the learner is in control and everything is teacher, be it environment, life experiences, peers, other adults, social media, or formal texts chosen at the direction of the learner.

Informal learning is aerodynamic trial-and-error, playing with twirly, light-up toys with friends on the boardwalk. 

Informal learning is a friend asking a friend to help make a birthday cake, sharing a youtube tutorial,
making many alterations (out of preference and necessity), googling the recipe for a cake mix missing its instructions,
posting pictures on facebook, emailing the tutorial to friends, and sharing tips with other peers.

Assignment: Compose a 200-word statement in which you define “informal learning.”

References:
Barron, B. (2006). Interest and self-sustained learning as catalysts of development: A learning ecologies perspective. Human Development, 49, 193–224.
Jamieson, P. 2009. The Serious Matter of Informal Learning. Planning for Higher Education. 37(2): 18–25.
Zürcher, R. (2010). Teaching-learning processes between informality and formalization, the encyclopaedia of informal education.