Session Information
06 SES 11, At the Interface – Building New Relations Between Formal and Informal Learning (Part 2)
Symposium, Continued from 06 SES 10
Contribution
The twentieth century was characterised by a global explosion in mass formal education in which a schooled society has come to be accepted as a universal common good with equivalences to human rights and social justice (Baker, forthcoming; UN 2009). Over the last decade, however, both the relevance of mass formal education to a changed socio-technical and socio-economic environment, and its moral purpose as instrument of social justice, have been subject to increasing critique (Egan, 2009; Claxton, 2008; Hargreaves, 2009). In order to remedy the perceived deficiencies of mass ‘industrial’ education, there have been calls to look to models of informal learning, whether in the ‘learning communities’ of workplaces and families or the new socio-technical spaces of the internet, as a source of alternative educational strategies (Gee, 2003; Leadbeater, 2008). At its most extreme, such arguments see a resurgence of debates over the future of the school and a renewal of calls for a technologically-mediated de-schooling movement (see, for example, Miller et al, 2008).
This double symposia avoids the more spectacular debates over the future of the educational institution that tend to dominate and obscure these discussions and which often lead to false oppositions being established between formal and informal learning (Colley et al, 2003). Instead the symposium explores the diverse strategies that are currently emerging in countries from the US, to Norway, the UK, Sweden and Denmark, to create new educational approaches at the interface between formal and informal learning. All contributors draw broadly from a range of socio-cultural perspectives providing a common thread whilst the nature of the international contributions creates opportunities for generating new insights, applicable in many national contexts. It addresses the tensions that emerge at this interface in terms of power and knowledge; it explores how early enthusiasm for some informal learning practices is giving way to considered appropriation of distinct elements; it examines how the highly diverse theoretical frameworks that are required to examine learning across multiple settings are beginning to be reconciled in new over-arching concepts such as ‘learning lives’.
In particular, the second symposium provides two examples of creative production in non-formal settings, and an innovative approach to supporting learning in a museum setting. Peppler and Manchester/Facer consider two similar projects on participatory media production and learning, with socially excluded communities. The implications for teachers, individuals and communities are explored. In contrast, Kahr-Hojland considers the use of mobile phones in a science centre to scaffold the learner’s experience of the interactive exhibits. She highlights the issues arising from attempting to adopt informal practices (games playing) in the formal context of an educational visit. All three consider the need for reconfigurations of power, and the implications of their work for formalised educational settings. This second part of the symposium concludes with a contribution from our discussant, Pat Thomson from the University of Nottingham.
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