Informal Learning and Literacy
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INFORMAL LEARNING AND LITERACY
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INFORMAL LEARNING AND LITERACY
INTRODUCTION
Interest in informal learning has been strong for many years, but it has rarely been applied to the learning of literacy by adults which is usually seen as a formal learning process. This paper first reviews some of the developments in our understanding of informal learning, discusses some new findings from research into adult literacy learning in developing societies and suggests some applications of this to literacy learning programmes in the future. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S A N D M A J O R CONTRIBUTIONS IN INFORMAL LEARNING
Although there has been discussion of informal learning for many years (e.g. Archambault, 1974; Dewey, 1933; see also Lucas, 1983), it has played a minor role compared with studies of formal learning (see e.g. Davies, 1971). However, there has been a significant rise in interest in informal learning in the last few years (Bjornavold, 2000; Carter, 1997; Colardyn and Bjornavold, 2004; Livingstone, 2001; Marsick and Watkins, 1990; Richardson and Wolfe, 2001). The recent discourse of lifelong learning/education has encouraged wider recognition that learning goes on ‘outside formal educational establishments’ (Straka, 2004, p. 3)—that it is lifewide as well as lifelong. Many writers, especially those concerned with workplace learning and self-directed learning through new technologies (Rose, 2004), are exploring ‘notions of learning in everyday life and how everyday strategies of learning can be taken into educational settings’ (see Papen, 2005, p. 140; Hager, 2001; Imel, 2003; Visser, 2001). It is however an area with many different definitions, often contested, and there is no space here to explore the many dimensions of this debate (Coffield, 2000; Colley, Hodgkinson and Malcolm, 2003; Eraut, 2000; McGivney, 1999). Most however would agree that learning is a natural activity which continues at all times. Learning is the way in which the experience of the external is internalised and utilised for growth, a way of drawing from the natural and human environment the sustenance for living. Much of it is making sense (meaning) of experience and using that B. Street and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 2: Literacy, 133–144. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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ALAN ROGERS
for dealing with new experiences. Part of it is the building up of funds of cultural knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff and Gonzalez, 1992). A good deal of learning is intentional, planned and directed, but most learning from infancy until the end of life is unplanned, unintended and often unconscious, learning through tasks or play/imagination or social engagement; and this kind of learning results in tacit or implicit (unrecognised and unacknowledged) knowledge, understandings, skills and attitudes (Polyani, 1966; see Reber, 1993). As with literacy, there are learning events and learning practices; and there are throughout life ‘learning episodes’(Rogers, 2002, pp. 120–125)—incidents w
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