Informal learning

About: Informal learning is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6828 publications have been published within this topic receiving 176375 citations.

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Abstract: In this important theoretical treatist, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning - that learning is fundamentally a social process. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation (LPP). Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. LPP provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and old-timers and about their activities, identities, artefacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalised to other social groups.

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

Abstract: International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning (ITDL), January 2005

The Process of Education

Abstract: Geoffrey Vickers advocated and illustrated the efficacy of informal education. Children and older students can and do learn within the contexts of tasks and questions that are meaningful to them. This article is about surprisingly successful learning in informal settings. Informal learning has often been encouraged because of the failure of more traditional approaches. Mathematics has been assumed to be certain and the model of describing truth. The certainty of mathematics and the formal mode of discussing mathematics are being reconsidered. Connections between mathematics and humanistic disciplines are the bases of a worldwide movement of mathematically minded scholars.

Informal learning in the workplace

Abstract: This paper focuses mainly on theoretical frameworks for understanding and investigating informal learning in the workplace, which have been developed through a series of large‐ and small‐scale projects. The main conclusions are included but readers are referred to other publications for more detailed accounts of individual projects. Two types of framework are discussed. The first group seeks to deconstruct the ‘key concepts’ of informal learning, learning from experience, tacit knowledge, transfer of learning and> intuitive practice to disclose the range of different phenomena that are embraced by these popular terms. The second group comprises frameworks for addressing the three central questions that pervaded the research programme: what is being learned, how is it being learned and what are the factors that influence the level and directions of the learning effort?

Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning

Abstract: A Personal Learning Environment or PLE is a potentially promising pedagogical approach for both integrating formal and informal learning using social media and supporting student self-regulated learning in higher education contexts. The purpose of this paper is to (a) review research that support this claim, (b) conceptualize the connection between PLE, social media, and self-regulated learning, and (c) provide a three-level pedagogical framework for using social media to create PLEs that support student self-regulated learning. Implications for future research in this area are provided.