Informal Learning: Beyond the Formal Educational Setting

• In Event: Working Learners: Challenges and Opportunities for Theory, Research, and Practice

Abstract

Learning is foundational to economic and life success in today’s society. While learning is often conceived of as classroom-based in a school setting leading to an educational credential, it occurs every day in a multitude of ways across a range of settings—much of it in the workplace. This learning—referred to as “informal learning”—impacts the lives of working learners, employers, and the broader economy in many ways that can significantly promote economic success and a robust economy. Based on a review of existing works, we offer a framework for examining informal learning. The framework seeks to provide a basis for understanding the experiences of working learners and the potential impacts of learn and earn models. We synthesize key reviews on informal learning in the past 25 years both within and outside of the US to identify how informal learning occurs, and its benefits, drawbacks, and implications for equity. In particular, we examine the recent research on work-based learning and on workplace learning to provide an understanding of the learning that occurs within a formal work and learn model.

Among the numerous ways of defining informal learning, we build on (Colley, Hodkinson, & Malcom, 2003)’s concept that learning exists on a continuum and that all learning contains attributes of formality and informality. These attributes of learning formality help to organize and make sense of the varieties of learning that exist. These include: location or where the learning occurs; process or how the learning is facilitated; content or the degree of organization of the material to be learned; and purpose or the degree of intentionality about learning in the experience. In addition, across this continuum of learning we identify several cross-cutting ways of learning commonly observed in the literature, including classroom-based learning, experiential learning, and relational learning.

Our framework builds on these conceptions and organizes the review of specific types of learning within this continuum. In particular, we examine what is known about work-based learning in the past 15 years since the height of US school-to-work reform efforts of the 1990s (Bailey, Hughes, & Moore, 2004; Chisholm, Harris, Northwood, & Johrendt, 2009; Lerman, Eyster, & Chambers, 2009). Lessons from this literature help to inform our current understanding of work and learn approaches. Furthermore, we draw from the workplace learning literature to frame our understanding of the working learner’s experience with work and learn approaches. Workplace learning can include formal classroom-based learning as well as experience-based learning, incidental and informal learning, and self-directed learning (Jacobs & Park, 2009; Le Clus, 2011), and involves balancing multiple goals for both the organization and individual learner. Many factors in the employer organization affect how workplace learning occurs including culture, managerial support, job structure and human resources policy (Eraut, 2007; Noe, Clarke, & Klein, 2014; Sambrook, 2005). Based on this review of the literature, we provide observations on how work and learn models can affect the learning process of working learners and recommendations on ways that learning process can be enhanced.

Author

• Michelle Van Noy, Rutgers University - New Brunswick/Piscataway