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Working
Definitions
Let me start by
trying some working definitions for formal schooling,
further education, and informal learning.
Formal
schooling:
(1) is an
age-graded, hierarchically organized, formally constituted
system;
(2) requires
compulsory attendance until at least mid-adolescence; and
(3) provides
the major credentialling of our knowledge competencies to
start out our adult lives.
Formal
schooling is consuming more and more of our lives, with
about half of the 20 to 24 age cohort now enrolled in
post-secondary educational institutions in North America
which have the world's highest participation rates.
Further
education refers to continuing adult participation in the
course offerings of various educational institutions,
including workshops and conferences, short or long courses,
or longer programs. In Canada, the participation rate in
adult education courses circa 1960 was about 4% annually of
the entire adult population. By the early 1990s, it was
about 30%. So within a period of thirty years or so there
was an increase of something in the order of six or seven
time of the participation rates. This is still much lower
than the participation rates in many European countries;
about half of the population of Sweden participates on an
annual basis in adult education courses of one sort or
another.
The
certification of our knowledge by formal schooling has
profound influence on the further organized institutional
learning we are likely to engage in for the rest of our
lives.
The level of
schooling one has attained when leaving this system for the
first time has historically been very closely associated
with subsequent levels of participation in adult further
education courses. Indeed, this is one of the strongest and
most consistent relationships that has ever been found in
social science research.
So, in the
sphere of organized education, we have the formal school
system, which people have tended to stay in longer and
longer and to go through in lock-step until they leave
(although now we have the phenomena of more stop-outs and
people going back and forth between schooling on the one
hand and paid work on the other). And we have adult
education courses, which have massively increased in recent
generations. Both of these forms of organized education are
easily recognized and have been extensively documented and
analyzed. Together they constitute the educational pyramid
in all advanced industrial societies. Those who have more
schooling continue to get more adult education.
Beneath this
educational pyramid, and usually ignored, unrecognized or
taken for granted as simply day-to-day getting by, there are
various other activities that can be recognized by us as
significant informal learning. This is learning that we
undertake on our own, either individually or collectively,
without externally imposed criteria. The important features
here are that we make some deliberate and sustained effort
to gain a new form of understanding, knowledge or skill, and
that this effort takes a recognizable amount of time. The
actual number of hours that we allocate to gain the
knowledge, skill or understanding may vary in terms of our
circumstances, the amount of concentration we can place on
it, our actual learning capacities, and a number of other
factors. To impose an abstract cut-off point-- so that if
you haven't spent two hours on it, six hours, seven hours,
ten hours or a hundred hours, it doesn't count-- would be
entirely arbitrary.
The important
thing that distinguishes informal learning is having gained
a new significant form of knowledge, understanding or skill
on your own initiative that you retain long enough to
recognize it retrospectively. This is the key criterion or
guideline for distinguishing between informal learning and
all of the other everyday activities that we go through. For
example, there are the basic forms of socialization that we
experience as young people, when our elders may engage with
us in many forms of anticipatory socialization that we do
not recognize as such because they're so incorporated in
other activities, such as ceremonial activities or the
various more ad hoc day-to-day interrelationships between
elders and youths through which youths are inducted into the
cultural life of their society. In basic socialization,
learning and acting constitute a seamless web in which it is
impossible for most of us to distinguish informallearning
activities in any discrete way. That's where the difficult
boundary is on this side of the continuum of learning. Did I
actually learn this in some discrete way or was it something
that emerged in a much more diffuse kind of experiential way
that became part of my consciousness?
Studying
Informal Learning: Early Limits
So, in terms of
studying of informal learning, we have to strike a resolve
to identify those things that people can identify for
themselves as actual learning projects or deliberate
learning activities beyond educational institutions. The
research on this subject in post-WWII era depends heavily on
the work of Malcolm Knolwes, who developed the concept of
androgogy. Knowles basically argues that every individual is
involved in continual learning activities and that these
activities or projects, which are beyond the realm of
institutional control are integral to the constituting of
society. This perspective inspired the empirical research
initiated by Allen Tough on self-directed learning projects.
This research began in the late 1960s and carried fairly
intensively through the 1970s with a number of studies. Many
of the early studies were done in the Toronto area, starting
with graduate students at OISE, and then the work spread
out. Many of the graduate students did their own case
studies with various small groups. The concept of self-
directed learning project, and later intentional learning
activity, became very popular notions for adult education
researchers to discuss and to document.
As the
preliminary NALL bibliography indicates, large numbers of
studies were done, primarily in the 1970s, to document the
actual self-directed learning activities in which people
generally engage. The cumulative findings in Canada and
internationally were that in the vast majority of social
groups whether distinguished by gender, age, class, race,
ableism or nationality--the basic pattern was that people
were doing, on average, something of the order of five major
learning projects per year and each of those would average
about 100 hours. So the average number of hours devoted to
informal learning of this delineated, recognized sort was
around 500 hours a year.
This corpus of
work was subjected to a number of fairly scathing criticisms
and I'll summarize three of those just briefly. The first
critique is the individualistic bias, the notion that you
learn most of what you learn individually as opposed to in
collective or relational context. The second was a social
class bias, in that the vast majority of the work was
conduced with professional-managerial people and university
students. There was, however, some research that was done
with cross-sections of other class groups which supported
the conclusions that Tough made about self-directed learning
being fairly common in its incidence across most groups.
There was thirdly, a tendency for the questions to be
leading in the sense of "of course you do informal
learning, don't you" and "what is it?," as
opposed to asking people whether or not they do it, and
taking what they tell you as valid. If this were a normal
kind of an interview, and if respondents said they don't do
informal learning, you would leave it at that. But the Tough
folks didn't leave well enough alone. The basic procedure
was "oh, really" and then a series of probes to
ferret out actual informal learning projects.
The class bias
can be addressed by studies that document the informal
learning of working class and underclass people with
sensitivity to their own standpoints. Our Working Class
Learning Strategies Project has engaged in this type of
research in cooperation with several trade unions, and so
have a growing number of other studies, using life
histories, semi-structured interviewing, participant
observation and focus group methods of inquiry.
Similarly, the
individualistic bias can be overcome by research methods
that either engage with people in the social contexts of
their lives, such as participant observation, or by
questioning them collectively, as in discussion groups of
various kinds. Even individual interview methods can more
explicitly address the social relational aspects of
respondents learning activities.
Perhaps the
biggest limitation is the leading question bias, suggesting
to people that they must have done informal learning, so
"you've got to tell me, please, come on. Let's get at
it." The genuine difficulty here is that you have to do
a probing process precisely because most people don't
recognize much of the informal learning they do until they
have a chance to reflect on it. So how do you get them to
reflect on it in a discreet time frame within a research
process? There have been later research studies that have
been less leading and more indirect, relying on
participatory observation and other means. For example, in
the last few years at the University of Chicago where Tough
began, researchers have provided volunteers with
wristwatches with alarms on them and asked them to report on
informal learning they're doing when the alarm sounds off! I
don't recommend this method, but the basic point is that all
of these early limitations of empirical research on informal
learning are correctable. (I have tried to address these
issues in more detail with specific references in my
recently published The Education-Jobs Gap Boulder: Westview
Press, 1998, chapters one and three).
Current
Studies of Informal Learning: Key Dimensions
If we recognize
the general centrality of informal learning for the
reproduction and development of social life, and if we agree
that it is feasible to get past the early critiques to
engage in empirical research that may validly identify
informal learning, there are still other major challenges.
The first of
these is the relationship of incidental and planned
learning. I use this distinction primarily in terms of the
initiation of a learning practice. The predominance of
planned learning may be clear enough when we are talking
about schooling decisions past compulsory levels. One
deliberately chooses to apply to and to enrol in specific
and discrete programs, such as committing to a doctoral
degree program for anywhere between three and ten or more
years of your life. On the other hand, if you do informal
learning, you can do it any time, any where, with anyone.
Whether or not you initiated it in some deliberate a priori
planned way or it just happened is a more relevant
distinction here. You can engage in informal learning in
either incidental or very deliberately planned ways. But,
ultimately at the end of the day, it doesn't matter a whole
lot from the point of view of outcomes; and it's outcomes
that are most important. Have you engaged in some informal
learning project that has resulted in the accomplishment of
some new knowledge, understanding or skill? The distinction
here in terms of incidental, spontaneous
information-gathering and knowledge development can be
looked at in terms of, as I said, not so much the time of
acquisition process but the relationship of any particular
bit of information to accomplishing a competency in an area.
We all do ad
hoc learning all of the time. I read the sports pages
virtually everyday and pick up a tremendous amount of
information. But unless I have some intentionality to apply
that information to some project, it really isn't clearly
distinguishable from the normal everyday course of affairs
and information processing. As another example, you may pick
up a great deal of information from the people you are
engaged with any particular political activity. If you don't
establish a project to apply that to some working up of
knowledge, skill or understanding, then it still remains
within the realm of everyday socialization in my view. The
notion of intentionality in relation to a project, however
diffusely originated that might be, is the important
distinction. But it's a distinction which is continually
shifting because we're continually renegotiating our
understandings with those around us and trying to acquire
new forms of knowledge.
I think any
kind of categorical distinction about intentionality would
be misleading. We are talking about a continuum. Informal
learning is on the learning continuum. It is not a discrete
package or category. It is possible for you to say I went to
OISE at U of T. I took an M.A. degree. I finished in 1998
and I lived happily ever after. It is not possible to say
that with informal learning. Informal learning never ends.
It is continually ongoing and it can be related to other
forms of organized education at various times. If school
students reflect on their own informal learning activities,
they will probably find overlaps between some of the things
that they have engaged with in informal learning and some of
the ongoing responsibilities that they have within their
organized education programs. If it were otherwise, one
would be living a remarkably bizarre life.
Some of the
most valuable knowledge comes from insights achieved in
incidental informal learning. The incidental versus planned
distinction is very important for understanding the origins
of any learning process. But there are diverse processes
through which you can acquire the knowledges that are
ultimately personally significant and socially valued
outcomes. In asking people to reflectively and
retrospectively identify their significant informal
learning, there will likely be a tendency for respondents to
focus on learning projects that ultimately took on a
deliberate character. But many will not have begun
deliberately.
The second key
dimension is the importance of more fully recognizing the
collective aspects of our informal learning, the social
engagement with others that is an integral part of any
actual knowledge acquisition process. This is clearly the
case when less experienced people learn from more
experienced people in everyday life. As I mentioned in the
earlier illustration, there is a lot of basic socialization
that goes on in that way--elders diffusing cultural
knowledge to younger people. But again the key distinction
is around a recognized learning project. Many informal
learning projects are conducted through group activities.
The delineation of a single discrete project may not even be
possible in some instances because different members take up
and leave the collective learning at different times,
through different modes. But collectively conducted learning
projects continue to constitute the least well documented
part of the iceberg of informal learning.
The third key
dimension is the non-linear time duration of much informal
learning. As I mentioned, time limits are necessarily
somewhat arbitrary. It is conceivable that you can learn
life-course shaping or influencing information within a very
short of time in an "organizing circumstance", to
use Spear and Mocker's term. Much of the most important
learning that we do occurs in these moments of transition,
whether it happens to be a birth, a death, a marriage,
divorce, a transition between careers or locations, or some
other major influential event that provokes us into a
concentrated period of informal learning. While I believe
that researchers should continue to ask respondents to
estimate the amount of time they devote to informal learning
activities and to compare the perceived amounts of time
available for such activities in different social groups,
such estimates remain fraught with difficulty because of the
diffuse character of significant informal learning and the
likelihood that some of the most significant learning will
continue to occur in such intense moments of our lives.
The other key
distinction that one needs to be aware of in studying
informal learning is the process versus the outcomes. Much
of the prior research on informal learning focuses on
documenting the processes that people are involved in, the
amount of time that they engage in the projects and the
particular kinds of contents that they have been exposed to
or worked with. Very little of it, in terms of the
self-directed learning tradition, addresses the question of
the results or the actual achievements, the competencies,
the capacities that people have gained from their informal
learning projects. Consider the dominant ways in which we
have done testing in schools. It is very difficult for
standardized to tests to reflect all of the learning that
students do in schools. It is much more difficult for any
kind of a test to even name the different kinds of learning
projects that people are engaged in, let alone to make any
kind of intersubjectively meaningful comparison between
them. So, I think the only recourse here again is to
self-recognition: what has been important to you, what have
you accomplished through informal learning projects that you
can recognize. Nobody else can pose a set of criteria about
the things that you should have learned, how well you should
have learned them and what your level of performance or
competency is on those activities in ways that can
adequately and authentically reflect your learning
capacities and your learning objectives.
That's what
informal learning is. It's a process that's determined
either by an individual or an informally constituted group
of people in their own terms. It's not imposed from
somewhere else. It's indigenous, internal to that individual
or group itself. They set the terms of reference. They
determine what they're going to do, how long they're going
to do it, and what the ultimate objectives are going to be.
Next Steps in
Informal Learning Research
So these are
some of the limitations and key dimensions of informal
learning that we need to face and find more effective ways
to study and give back to the people we are doing this
research with for their own practical benefits.
It's clear that
one of the major challenges is what I would call the
boundary problem. This is why I have spent much of my time
here discussing the distinction between organized education
on the one hand and everyday socialization on the other
hand. What's in between those two realms is informal
learning. But the dual challenge for us is:
(1) to
identify informal learning in its own terms, that is to
say the self-recognition of our respondents; and
(2) to see
the linkages and significance of that informal learning
for, on the one hand, the organized learning activities
that we are involved in, and on the other, for informing
our everyday lives, including our political practices and
our other engagements.
These are the
main distinctions that I want to start with in trying to
engage in a project about understanding informal learning
more profoundly and more extensively. From the research that
we've done in the last few years, we've found, in the
Working Class Learning Strategies Project in particular,
that there is a great amount of learning that people are
doing collectively. Much of the collective learning that
occurs, for example, in union worksites, has previously been
unrecognized by the people themselves. The collective
recognition of such learning can lead to people making
precisely these connections that I just mentioned. By
recognizing the amount of informal learning that workers are
doing in terms of computer-based learning networks among
co-workers, for example, and registering that amongst
themselves, workers can begin to identify connections with
the other learning activities they're involved with their
families and community members and, on the other side, they
can be more articulate with trade union leadership, with
employers, with government policy and program makers about
what kinds of learning programs should be developed, should
be offered to link to the competencies and interests that
are already there, rather than continuing to just accept
established training provisions. From the vantage points of
governments, trade unions and employers, such research can
enable them to become more informed about what the interests
and receptivities are of the workforce to different forms of
educational programs. In short, educational needs can be
more fully and effectively problematized and strategized in
terms of needs for whom, for what and from what standpoint.
If you look at
the development of new education programs from the vantage
point of the actual informal learning accomplishments of
working people you may come up with a different set of
answers than if you look at it from the vantage point of a
government bureaucrat who is working from the perspective of
established education and training programs. The basic
purposes of progressive contemporary research on informal
learning are:
(1) to begin
to more adequately and richly recognize the informal
learning experiences and accomplishments of the citizenry
and workforce of our society so, the extensive learning
capacities of so many people who have been excluded from
advanced forms of organized education in the past, often
on systemic discriminatory grounds that are unfair and
unjustifiable; and
(2) to enable
the provision of new organized programs that resonate with
the learning the capacities and the continuing interests
of those people who have been excluded from organized
education.
The first
Canadian national research survey of informal learning
practices is a major part of the NALL network's efforts to
address these objectives. The first part of that study will
be conducted with individuals. We've reviewed and borrowed
from virtually all prior studies of informal learning that
have previously been conducted. We are doing more extensive
pilot testing with both individuals and groups than I know
of in any other large-scale survey. Then we are selecting a
random sample. When we are dealing with the possibility of
over 30 million people, you have to find some way to select
and our criterion is the individual human being. So we'll
give every Canadian adult an equal chance to be selected.
We'll pick a representative random sample of 1500
individuals. We'll primarily ask people to tell us about
their individual learning. But we'll also ask them to
reflect on their collective learning. We'll ask them who
they learned with and whether they've learned mostly
collectively or individually. But then we'll have to
supplement that by engaging with groups of people to talk
about their informal learning and to document that process
as well. The interview schedule has been in development for
well over a year. The final version will be administered
during the summer of 1998 and the findings will disseminated
widely before the end of the year.
We are under no
illusion that this survey will be capable of uncovering the
deeper levels of either individual or collective knowledge
gained in informal learning practices. But we do aim to
generate useful profiles of the surface levels of informal
learning and link them with organized forms of education
more fully than most prior studies, and thereby to
contribute to more nuanced appreciation of the multiple
dimensions and relationships of the learning continuum.
(Notes
from a lecture in course 1951S Learning and Work, February
18, 1998)
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