Principles and Practice of Informal Education

Learning Through Life

Linda Deer Richardson, Mary Wolfe, Linda Deer Richardson, Mary Wolfe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134605187
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This new and exciting text is aimed at informal educators involved in youth work, community work and adult education and health promotion. The contributors explore the principles and practice of informal education and focus, in particular, on the notion of 'working with' which is central to practice, in this sector. The book argues for an approach which is relevant to a number of professional fields and which focuses on a way of working rather than upon a specific target group.
The book looks at the role of an educator in informal education and youth work settings. Comprehensive and analytical, it looks at social, cultural and political contexts of education. The authors discuss the practical side of teaching from the setting, programme planning and communication to activity-based work, one-to-one case work, formal group work and managing the work load. Finally the book analyses developing professional practice, the use of line management and supervision, and evaluation of work.

Part I
Exploring education

Introduction

Linda Deer Richardson

Part I begins our exploration of the methods and values of informal education with an attempt to define what we mean by the term, and with some basic questions. What does it mean to say that you are an educator? What are the characteristics, in general, of informal education? What are the origins of informal education theory and practice?

In ‘On being an educator’, Michele Erina Doyle seeks to identify the attitudes and values, rather than simply the activities, that make someone an educator. The task of educators is to work so that people learn; to foster learning. To do this effectively, they first need an understanding of what learning is and an ability to relate theory to practice in order to choose the best ways of working. They need other qualities as well, Doyle argues: qualities which together make up the ‘heart’ of the educator. These qualities include spirit or passion; a moral sense; and a way of being and acting that reflects educational values. Put these qualities together with the intent to foster learning, and you have a true educator.

John Mahoney’s ‘What is informal education?’ offers an introduction to some of the characteristics of informal education practice, together with examples of current key areas of work with young people. Rather than seeking to define informal education by what it is not—not schooling, not social work—he explores what it is, using case studies to reveal an approach based upon informal learning relationships. However, informal and formal education are not opposites. Just as education in the classroom has informal elements, so informal education may use formal methods and styles. This means that informal educators need to be aware of, and able to evaluate, both product and process elements of their work.

‘First lessons: historical perspectives on informal education’ is an attempt to set current education practice in an historical context. Tony Jeffs introduces today’s informal educators to the tradition which they have inherited, helping them to see the similarities and differences between earlier practice and their own and to identify important consistencies running through the work. The chapter encourages a critical reading of history in order to help readers develop a questioning approach to contemporary practice. Jeffs is highly critical of current policies for formal education, but rejects heroic accounts that see informal education as inherently radical and liberatory. However, informal education has the capacity to act as a counterbalance to schooling, especially when formal education is centralised and controlled as it is today.

Taken together, these three chapters provide a theoretical, practical and historical overview on which the rest of the book will build. Discussion of the values introduced here will be expanded in Part II, while the varied methods which informal educators may use are highlighted in Part III. Part IV explores ways in which educators can reflect on and improve their practice: a theme which brings us back to the beginning and our definition of the true educator.

1
On being an educator

Michele Erina Doyle

Less and less is it presumed that [schoolteachers] should know anything beyond what the students are tested upon. Indeed knowing ‘too much’ can make them a less efficient delivery person. It can tempt them to stray from the curriculum. Also, as others select the methods, it becomes unnecessary for schoolteachers to understand theories of learning or education.

(Jeffs and Smith 1999:109)

Many of those we may label as informal educators such as youth workers and community workers do not fully understand themselves as educators. Few professional training programmes pay proper attention to educational theory and practice, and there is only a rudimentary understanding of it in the field.

(Doyle and Smith 1999:79)

It may seem odd to entertain the idea that educators are not expected, nor required, to know much about learning and education. But it is a natural result of the way in which education, formal and informal, is managed in the UK today.

Schoolteachers in state schools in the UK must abide by the national curriculum, which tells them what, when and increasingly how to teach. They implement predesigned tests to measure the performance of their pupils against pre-determined standards. This, along with the introduction of league tables for schools, encourages a focus on the outcomes of education. It is not surprising that much of the literature of the field is taking on the look of the cookbook, with recipes for success and ‘how to’ approaches. The serious and sustained study of the philosophy and sociology of education has all but disappeared from teacher training courses. There is increasing pressure for schools, teachers and pupils to perform well, and less time for them to work out for themselves how this might happen.

Informal education tells a similar story. Although informal educators, for instance youth workers and community educators, are not yet required to follow a national curriculum, the pressure for curricula is building. Both youth work and adult education are moving toward a focus on outcomes and accreditation of learning. Many practitioners do not have enough understanding of their role or the nature of their work to critically analyse such approaches or argue against them. Some practitioners tend to reject formal education, defining themselves as ‘not teachers’. This undervalues the educative qualities of their own work and dismisses the extent to which their aims and their practice are similar to those of teachers working in formal settings (Doyle and Smith 1999:79–80). Programmes of qualification in the UK are inclined to focus on training rather than education, and tend to have an anti-academic quality as a result. They seem designed to produce doers rather than thinkers. This is reflected in the lack of recent practice-based texts. For club work we have to go back to the 1970s, for example Leighton (1972), and for detached work to the early 1980s, for example Rogers (1981), Masterson (1982) and Wild (1982). Much of the responsibility for generating ideas and theories of informal education in the UK in recent years has been left to a handful of writers, in particular Jeffs and Smith (e.g. 1999).

Educators do need to understand and work with theories of learning and education if they are to do a decent job. Yet governments, employers, colleges and universities are sending schoolteachers, youth and community workers, and the like into the field without the means to practice their craft properly. If such guardians of education are not encouraging the understanding and development of theories of education, it is little wonder that educators themselves do not see this as central to their practice. The purpose of this chapter is to bring ideas about learning and education to the forefront of our discussions about being educators. But what do we mean by these terms?

Thinking about learning

Q1: What do you mean by ‘learning’? Before you read on, jot down your own definition (or definitions) of learning. Keep your notes handy to compare with the ideas about learning you will meet in this section.

People think and talk about learning often during their daily lives. Phrases that use the idea pepper our conversations. We may hear people say, ‘You learn something new every day’ or ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’. We talk of the ‘University of life’. Often these sayings are contradictory: ‘You’re never too old to learn’ and ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’.

However, not only do people know of and talk about learning, we encounter it on a daily basis. It is part and parcel of our lives (Tight 1996:21). We might not plan our day so that we will learn, but things happen and we do. We learn simply by being around each other. For example, suppose you have a disagreement with a colleague at work and end up shouting at her. At home later that night, you replay the events of the day and think about what happened. You might come to the conclusion that you acted unfairly. On meeting your colleague the next day, you discuss what happened with her and apologise for your bad behaviour. As a result, you might decide to act differently if faced with similar situations in the future. What is described here involves learning: the processes of experiencing something, thinking about it, coming to new understandings and moving on, or changing. At times we may be more, or less conscious, of this happening, but the same processes occur. We ‘live and learn’.

Learning can also be seen as a product or outcome. For example, we might say we have learnt something new. Psychologists, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, looked for changes in behaviour as evidence that learning had happened. Learning was thus seen as the outcome of the process rather than the process itself (Merriam and Caffarella 1991:124). As argued above, current formal education relies heavily on this product approach to learning. It is concerned with specifying what is to be learnt, via the curriculum, and what is actually learnt, via performance indicators. The way in which learning happens—the process—is given less emphasis. Traditionally, informal education has focused on relationships and thus on the process by which learning happens, rather than on what is learnt. The current drive for a ‘youth work curriculum’ can be seen as a backlash against the uncertainty, or ignorance, of informal educators faced with questions about what the aims and purposes of their work are. The split between formal and informal education is part of the problem. We would all do better if we concentrated on being in the same field—education—rather than trying to convince ourselves and others of our differences. Learning involves process and product, not process or product.

Understanding learning as process and product is developed in the work of Erich Fromm (1978:8). He talks of ‘having’ and ‘being’ as contrasting ways of living. People who view learning in a ‘having’ way are interested in owning and keeping knowledge, in product. Those who see it in a ‘being’ way are interested in experiencing and developing knowledge, or in process. Fromm describes them like this:

Students in the having mode must have but one aim: to hold onto what they have learned, either by entrusting it firmly to their memories or by carefully guarding their notes. They do not have to produce or create something new… The process of learning has an entirely different quality for students in the being mode… Instead of being passive receptacles of words and ideas, they listen, they hear, and most important, they receive and respond in an active, productive way.

(1978:37–8)

There are other ways of thinking about learning which extend these opposites into a continuum. In an interview-based study, students were asked what they understood by learning. Saljo (1979), who conducted the study, grouped their responses into five categories:

1. Knowing a lot—a quantitative increase of knowledge; getting information.
2. Memorising—storing information that can be reproduced.
3. Gaining facts, skills and methods—these can be registered and used when needed.
4. Making sense or finding meaning—relating bits of knowledge with one another and to the real world.
5. Understanding the world in a different way—comprehending reality by reinterpreting knowledge.

(Quoted in Ramsden 1992:26)

Here we are introduced to five ways of thinking about learning. Saljo said that not all people would understand learning as all these things. Some might recognise one or more, others might recognise all. He argued that the first three categories put forward a simpler understanding of learning than the last two. Those that view it as knowing a lot (1) or memorisation (2), see knowledge as something that exists outside of its relationship with the learner. It is a commodity that we can get, keep and own. Learning here can become something that is done to people by teachers or that happens by chance, with learners as the passive receivers (Ramsden 1992:26–7). Following our previous explorations, we can see this as ‘having’ learning, with a focus on product.

Saljo holds that seeing learning as the latter two categories displays a more complex understanding. Here, people undertake learning activities in order to understand the world. Learning is not something that happens to them or that is imposed by others. Learners are active participants (Ramsden 1992:26–7). We can understand this as people ‘being’ learners, with a focus on process.

He also argues that taken as a group, this list of five categories is hierarchical and in ascending order of complexity. If we conceive learning as understanding the world in a different way (5), we would also understand it as the previous four categories. However, if we understand it as knowing a lot (1) we may not understand it as the following four categories. So our understanding of learning builds.

Q2: Compare your definitions of learning with the ones in this study. Can you fit your ideas into one or more of Saljo’s categories?

Thankfully, the world cannot be divided up into people that think of learning in either one way or another. Human understanding is a lot more complex than that. There are people that think learning can be described in all the ways explored so far and many more besides. Though there are many ways of viewing learning, each involves gaining knowledge of some kind and in some way.

The ideas we have about learning influence the way we think it comes about. Thinking of learning as something that we can ‘have’ means that we are more likely to want to be told things, to be given facts and information by others. We will also be more inclined to try to give knowledge to others, by making statements and telling them what we think they should know, or need to know. Seeing ourselves and others as ‘being’ learners means we are more likely to want to share and develop knowledge, to ask questions and encourage critical enquiry.

What does all this mean for us as educators? Our job is to work so that people learn. We need to know about learning and how it comes about if we are to be able to work so that it happens. It is fairly obvious that if someone has no knowledge of learning, they cannot be an educator. But all people know something of learning—we experience it daily. What special knowledge would we expect from an educator? An example may be useful. Each day we may wash or take a bath. We might make ourselves a cup of tea. These activities involve getting water from taps. So we experience plumbing in our daily lives. Are we plumbers? No. Why not? Because we do not have the special knowledge required to do that job. We might know that water runs to earth rather than skyward or that radiators in a central heating system need to be ‘bled’ if they are to get hot. But this is not enough to call ourselves plumbers. Educators, like plumbers, need a thorough understanding of their subject. We should expect them to understand simple and complex theories of learning and education and be able to relate them to practice. Educators also need to make some judgements about how they will work so that learning happens. This involves weighing up alternatives and critically analysing their worth, which in turn means developing a knowledge of learning theories through study. Being educators also involves developing knowledge in practice—for themselves and with others. People that educators work with will have their own understandings of learning. Educators need to take this into consideration when they are with people and work to further the understanding of each and all. Despite recent government action and trends in the field, it stands to reason that educators need sophisticated understandings of learning and education if they are to do a good job.

An intent to foster learning

What else is involved in being an educator? Learning can be either incidental or undertaken with intent. Much of our everyday learning, such as the earlier example about a disagreement at work, takes place by chance; it is incidental. But at one time or another, all people undertake activities with the object of fostering learning for themselves or with others. This learning is intentional. It may involve us working with someone else with the intent of helping him or her to learn: for instance, a father teaching his child to cross the road safely. It can also be something we do for ourselves, like searching out information on the Inter...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Exploring education
• Part II: Working with
• Part III: Elements of practice
• Part IV: Developing professional practice