29/10/2009 by lizit.

I’m aware that informal learning has been an issue for me for quite a long time and it seems appropriate to do another of those memory lane trips and think about my own informal learning - or at least some snapshots.

As I keep saying I must get back to lace making, my experience of learning to make lace seems a reasonable place to start. I have wanted to know how to make bobbin lace since I was a teenager.  I was always quite proficient with my hands - bodged needlework in sense of making garments, but enjoyed fine counted thread cross-stitch and tapestry, lots of different knitting (used to make Aran sweaters for friends because they were so quick to do), taught myself to crochet from a book and taught myself to tat having had the principles explained to me by a shop keeper. But teaching myself lace-making defeated me - I couldn’t make head or tail of the instructions in the various craft books given me as a girl - it might have helped if I had realised a lace pillow was not the same as the one I put my head on at night - but it was something I wanted to know how to do. About 6 years ago, I saw my first ever demonstration of bobbin lace being made at a exhibition and bought the kit that the demonstrator was selling.  I managed to follow the patterns in the kit, but the strips of fabric I produced looked more like badly woven cloth than lace. Then I got given a lace making weekend as a Christmas present. I suspect I would never have progressed without that formal instruction. I was taught how to set up a lace pillow and work a simple pattern - and I acquired a book on how to do it.  A passing comment had been made about the patterns being based on a grid and that there were computer programs available to aid lace design.  When I got home, I looked at the book and quickly saw how the patterns for that type of lace were indeed based on a grid.  I also started doing some web searches and found some lace software and plotted the first pattern in the book onto the grid, printed it and worked out how to work the pattern.  I quickly acquired some other books and realised that although there were different styles of lace, they all used the same basic stitches worked in different ways.  I then started using the program to design my own patterns by adapting patterns in the books, rather than just working them as printed. In the process, I learned a lot about types of threads, types of bobbins, history of lace (making and wearing), modern textile arts. The learning came from a mix of reading, talking to other lace makers, web searches and attending occasional weekend workshops. There was formal instruction, but most of what I learned was self-taught, and all was unaccredited.

Another skill area acquired a number of years ago was bicycle mechanics. I learned to strip down and rebuild a bicycle from a mixture of observation, reading and trial and error. Although self-taught, I got a number of free holidays in return for my mechanical skills, even if I rarely did more than mend the occasional puncture and replace the occasional cable.

Currently, I am learning a lot about using herbs and spices in cooking.  My teacher is my son who has developed an interest in cooking. He goes out and buys herbs and spices and experiments with them. From his experiments, I am beginning to recognise the flavour and effect of different herbs and spices and to experiment myself. This is not a case of following recipes but learning by observation and doing - and teaching each other by the comments we make on the results.

I could go on, but much of what I do, including what I am doing in my studies, is a mix of observation, reading and application. Some of my learning is assessed and accredited, but much/most of what I do is purely out of interest and may not even be known to others.

Would the things I have learned informally be any better or any different if I learned them formally, or if the skills acquired informally were formally assessed in some way? Would I gain more satisfaction from making lace if I knew I was getting a certificate for my efforts than from the pleasure of friends who have received a piece of lace I have made?

When and why are informal skills insufficient and formal recognition and accreditation needed?

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16/10/2009 by lizit.

Trying to catch some of the ideas from this morning’s supervision.

Discussion about whether my DPhil is actually social policy or whether it does rightly belong in informatics.  My last blog had given the impression of moving away from technology, and we examined whether or not this is actually the case or not.

Some key areas I identified a week or two ago are:

• informal learning in virtual communities
• motivation for learning in virtual communities
• understanding motivation for informal learning
• what motivates informal learning

One of my concerns is the real world relevance of what I want to do. I am dis-satisfied for various reasons with the material I have read about informal learning. Much of this dis-satisfaction is related to the problem of what informal learning is and and the way it is measured. All too often, it seems to be more about informal adult education than informal learning - the consultation document produced by the UK government in 2008 is a good example of this. It starts by saying it is about “structured and unstructured adult learning for enjoyment, personal fulfillment and intellectual, creative and physical stimulation” but the focus is more on reducing inequalities and opening new pathways into learning and much of the discussion is about adult learning in general. It is recognised much informal learning is self-directed, but asks, expecting an affirmative, whether the government has a key role in maximising and sustaining current arrangements (arrangements which the government has had no part in establishing or nurturing).

Virtual environments have been used as a petri dish for much research over the past 25 years. Although none of what I have read is specifically about informal learning (and apart from the specifically education based research, little is about learning), informal learning is implicit in most of the accounts of virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds are also interesting in the role they cast the user in when they first enter a virtual world.  Although an analogy can be made with a speeded up version of human development, it doesn’t hold together well, but entering a virtual world, as opposed to an interactive game, does present a rapid learning curve. It is necessary to learn how to walk and talk, how to move to new locations, how to alter appearance and a myriad other things before being able to function in the virtual world. Many of these actions are not intuitive. Inadequate technology, eg a low spec graphics card, can compound the difficulties. What is is that keeps the newcomer to the virtual world continuing to learn to use the environment when they have stuck a box on their head 3 times and still don’t know how to extract the hair?

So where does this leave me? I am still wanting to focus on what and how people learn in virtual worlds.  I think this will tell us something about how people learn in real life and about what motivates such learning. It is possible it will assist in refining the definition of informal learning and differentiating this from informal education.

The question remains whether virtual world experiences are transferable to virtual worlds and vice versa.

Technology provides the virtual environment, whether it is one of the early MUD or USENET based communities or the 3-D worlds we are more familiar with now. But virtual communities do not exist in a vacuum - behind  every avatar or nickname is a person who is living in a physical world environment.

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15/10/2009 by lizit.

This feels like a good time to do a bit of taking stock and forward planning.

I’ve been looking at some of the DR2 modules and what comes through most clearly is the need for focus. This  came across particularly clearly in the lit review module which emphasised not getting sidetracked by interesting ideas, but was also very clear in the research methods module. This made sense to me as one of my main concerns is scoping my work so that it is actually both meaningful and doable in the allotted time.

Although I haven’t got a neat and tidy lit review, I do feel I have a good understanding of the informal learning area and some of the problematics of working in that area. I am also clear about the problems of language, especially the use of ‘informal learning’ in corporate training contexts and the changing use of ’social learning’. Looking at the informal learning literature has clarified the connections with adult education, lifelong learning, etc, and has also shown the paucity of material on children and informal learning - just one futurelab report as far as I can see. I am keeping up-to-date with Second Life and virtual worlds more generally through both literature and involvement in a number of mailing lists and attendance at various workshops and conferences. I have also explored the literature around virtual communities, including that focusing on 2D communities. Although I have revisited community development material, I have not done so as thoroughly as I originally intended to and there may be a need to look at more of this.

Other blogs and entries in my wiki focus on the reading I have been doing on motivation - Csikszentmihalyi and Deci and Ryan - and on social learning theory as propounded by Bandura. These are potentially useful theories for analysing data in the studies I am proposing.

So what am I actually proposing to do and why? I am increasingly coming to the view that my work needs to be located in relation to the recent government white paper on informal learning. The white paper makes a number of assumptions about informal learning, including about its potential role in adult education and about the need for it to be recognised in some way or other. Apart from the potential elements of cost-cutting or of formalising the informal, I feel the white paper raises a number of issues which are not properly addressed.

So where do I go from here?

Firstly, I think I need to re-read the white paper and the earlier consultative document and responses. I will be looking particularly at how informal learning is understood in those documents and how it is seen to relate to the lifelong learning and widening participation agendas.

Secondly, I need to frame my research question(s) in the context of the white paper. (Given the forthcoming general election, it would be useful to check what the position of other major political parties is on informal learning, but given there is also an EU dimension, I suspect the changes are more likely to be in relation to priorities rather than direction.)

Thirdly, I need to revisit the work I have been doing in outlining potential studies and ensuring these actually address my research question.

That sounds like enough for the moment.

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07/09/2009 by lizit.

One of my declared interests is social change. Been musing a bit on informal learning and social change.

In a sense all learning/education is about change. There is a sense in which knowledge is power. I reckon this has particular resonance when related to informal learning and within the context of community development, community action and ’self-help’.  I’ve seen the effect of informal learning in the parent support group I am involved in; parents of children with SENs are frequently at a loss over how to best help their children. Within a parent support group, parents share their experiences of schools and discussions with education officials, learn how to complete forms, etc. Increasingly, parents find out how much they know and have learned through assisting other parents. No longer is it down to somebody like me to act as the fount of wisdom, as I know and others know that they know.

The story, as narrated by Lovett, of Liverpool EPA (a 1970s education initiative) is one of people engaging in learning from a position of being labelled as education failures - people who had left school at 15 with no qualifications and few, if any, aspirations. Through learning, or rather through discussion and gleaning information and taking new levels of responsibility, people were empowered and enabled to make choices and contribute to processes which made decisions about their lives. The same change process is evident in the community development projects of the 1970s and other community initiatives and in the various case studies described by Foley. Reading these accounts reminds me of my own work in the early 70s working with parents to set up holiday play schemes. In one, I recruited members of the neighbourhood social work team as volunteers, and in the post-project review, I recall their amazement at seeing parents they had viewed as inadequate and unable to cope with raising their own children organising large groups of children and volunteers for trips to the swimming pool or to the beach - perhaps wouldn’t be possible now in an age when risk assessment precedes just about any activity.

Although there are other  aspects of informal learning which are beneficial to the individual, the community or society more generally, the social change agenda cannot be ignored. It was that agenda which lay behind the Sunday schools, both christian and socialist, of the early 19th century. It was that which fuelled the development of trades unions and the establishment of Ruskin College. It was that which led to the establishment of the WEA. Even today, education is presented as an agent of social change in creating greater equity of opportunity by admitting more young people to universities where they are the first member of their family to enter higher education. Years ago Michael Young wrote of the rise of the meritocracy. We still haven’t seen it, but perhaps there is hope for those formerly considered failures.

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25/08/2009 by lizit.

Is it really a month since my last posting?

The question which is on my mind today is where does informal learning happen. Looking at the literature around informal learning - and I feel at the moment that the more I read, the more confused I get - there appears to be a lot of focus on relating informal learning to work contexts. I am in no doubt that much informal learning does happen in relation to work, afterall, most adults spend most of their working hours at work. But although informal learning might be related to work, that does not necessarily also mean that it happens at work, but it might be that information acquired in other contexts can be applied in a work setting.

I can remember in the past having the concept of a rucksack that I carry with me at all times and which contains the various skills, knowledge, information, ideas which I have acquired on life’s journey.  Some of the contents have been acquired through formal education, some through various courses, conferences and workshops and hearing and observing how other people do things, some have been acquired in one context to be applied in another, some are a jumble of facts which I’m not sure how I will ever use. Sometimes I can see how skills learned in one setting have been directly and usefully used in other settings; groupwork skills learned in social and community work settings have been used in teaching, writing skills gained as a local authority officer have been used in presenting the case for appropriate educational provision for my son, presentation skills learned in working with committees have been used in teaching and presenting at conferences, cooking skills learned at guide camp have been used at bbqs and in home entertaining… I could go on. Some knowledge sits there waiting for an appropriate airing - I know linen thread is more brittle than cotton but until such time as I engage again in lace making that, together with other facts about threads, pins, etc,  is of little practical use to me.

So the question I am interested in exploring is where have you learned stuff - and what kind of stuff have you learned?

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21/07/2009 by lizit.

In supervision yesterday, Judith suggested I write an abstract of my thesis as though I had already undertaken the research.  I could see the practical value of this as I have been mulling over what I might actually do, rather than think about doing. Although I am working on a draft abstract, there are a couple of issues that are concerning me, both of which I now think I can see a way round or through.

The first is the so what question - and here again yesterday was helpful.  I can now see that what I want to show is very much related to why people engage in informal learning.  Although the government white paper is suggesting that informal learning should be recognised and supported, my position is that this is unnecessary and possibly counter-productive - and not just for the reasons propounded elsewhere in this blog of possibly repeating the errors of the 80s in relation to voluntary action and community care.

The second concern relates to justifying the use of Second Life for my studies.  One clear argument is that there are no inbuilt extrinsic rewards in SL.  Today it struck me that there are elements of SL learning which are not dissimilar to that happening in some of the physical world communities I am part of. For example, if I am monitoring SL mailing lists for evidence of informal learning (probably SLED and one other), I could also monitor arachne.  At about this point my imagination takes off and I have to remind myself that I haven’t got unlimited time and resources…. But if the SL can be shown to be not dissimilar from other communities which engage in informal learning…

Time for a cuppa.

Posted in informal learning, lace, research ideas, community, motivation, reflections | Print | 1 Comment »

17/07/2009 by lizit.

Came across an interesting article yesterday on social learning theory and Second Life (Smith, M., & Berge, Z. L. (2009). Social learning theory in Second Life. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 439-445).

Bandura had reached my peripheral vision a couple of times before, but I hadn’t followed up, but this article made interesting reading.  It takes what the authors see as the 3 key components of Bandura’s social learning theory - observational learning, imitation and behaviour modelling - and considers how these might apply in a virtual world context.

What struck me first about the article - though I haven’t yet looked at any of the originals - was that social learning theory appears to be based on the idea that we learn from others through our interactions in a social context. This clearly has relevance for a virtual social world - it is Boellstorff’s observation that most SL users are there for social reasons. Although Smith and Berge apply the model to formal learning situations within SL, it looks as though it is probably equally applicable in informal learning. Taking it together with SDT, suggests a way of looking both at how people learn and why people learn.

Yesterday, I registered a new avatar, principally because I wanted to check the current registration arrangements and in particular registering into a different orientation space. I was surprised just how many orientation experiences are now on offer - probably 40 plus - including several using languages other than English. Unlike the Linden Labs orientation, these are all based in PG areas which are accessible to existing SL residents as well as new.  It might be possible to either do observational stuff in one of these spaces with appropriate permissions or to become a mentor.  I’m beginning to see some possibilities…

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05/07/2009 by lizit.

I’m playing around with ideas about what motivates informal learning and wanting to move beyond the idea that it is somehow innate and something human beings do all the time.  I’m outlining some of my thoughts below, but would really appreciate comments and other ideas on this.

• People engage in informal learning because we have an inbuilt drive to learn.  This probably applies to babies and children, but is not so obvious once we have acquired basic life skills - or is it?
• People engage in informal learning out of interest in something.  This could be things like researching a holiday destination, route planning, language learning - other examples?
• People engage in informal learning do develop a hobby or skill.  This may be similar to becoming part of a community of practice - start by learning the basics, look to improve by practising/reading/etc, extend understanding by experimenting, become expert and help others (expertise might be in one part of hobby - not overall).  Had lace making in mind here and the process I went through becoming competent but there may well be hobbies it doesn’t fit.
• People engage in informal learning by accident. The sort of serendipitous learning that comes from watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers, browsing the web, etc. Not setting out to learn or expecting to learn but picking up interesting facts on the way.
• People engage in informal learning intentionally - perhaps to enable social relationships or to pursue an existing interest (is this any different from hobby/skill?). Examples might be learning to play a game, learning how to build/script/use gestures in SL, etc.
• People engage in informal learning out of necessity. This might be around house and family. Undertaking household chores, maintaining and repairing property, looking after baby, etc.
• People engage in informal learning to look after their health. Reading or using web to explore diet or to understand a medical condition.  Taking up exercise and learning how to do it probably to avoid injury.
• People engage in informal learning because they are bored.

Why else do people engage in informal learning?  Other examples/idea?

Posted in informal learning, motivation, questions, learning | Print | 5 Comments »

28/06/2009 by lizit.

I’ve been watching an interesting recording from ASTD 2009 - a conference aimed at Learning and Development people in large corporates. The subject matter was informal learning, but the focus of the address was social learning (meaning use of Web 2.0 technologies) and the NetGens (otherwise known as digital natives or Generation Y and in this case referring to those born between 1977 and 1997).

As with most stuff on digital natives, there was a tendency to assume all of that ‘group’ are tech savvy, use Web 2.0, etc.  They were described as looking for freedom, fun and collaboration and having no clear differential between work and personal life. Some of this may be true - and some applies to those born pre 1977 too, especially with changing work patterns and demands of workplace leading to more use of home offices etc.

What interested me most was how informal learning was being equated to social learning, with a momentary allusion to other forms of informal learning like information gathering through internet searches. The focus seemed to be very much on how to manage social learning within companies by the creation of social networking possibilities, both physical and virtual. Delegates were being encouraged to divert formal learning budgets into the creation of social learning environments and were being given advice on how to use them.  For example, the appointment of wiki gardeners to read the blogs and wikis and find the tacit knowledge elements contained within them for incorporation in easily accessible databases.

I wasn’t at all sure whether the proposal had much to do with learning, except perhaps for the employing organisations.  It seemed to have more to do with knowledge management and formalisation of informal processes. The commercial aspects of social leaning were heavily endorsed in terms of serving the customer better, which actually means selling additional products.

The tie up between informal (serendipitous) learning and social learning is an interesting one, but the incorporation of this in knowledge management appears to me to be another attempt to formalise those interactions.

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15/06/2009 by lizit.

Was chatting about the White Paper on informal learning (DIUS. (2009). The Learning Revolution. Cm7555) over supper and mentioned how easy it is to be suspicious if not even cynical about the government’s motivation in suddenly deciding to support informal education after years of decreasing the funding given to adult education, except for those classes which led to formally recognised qualifications. The white paper itself recognises this: “The Government has taken the decision to re-prioritise LSC funding on longer, more valuable accredited courses that provide real help for people to get on in work” (para 24, p. 9) and goes on to acknowledge this has led to to an ‘expected reduction in shorter courses: “Many were in areas like health and safety at work or food hygiene which are properly the responsibility of employers. Some have been in areas which, while popular, would not attract the highest priority, or where learners are willing to pay full fees. Recreational language classes used to be one of the short courses most heavily-subsidised by the LSC and many still take place, but in a different form” (para 25, p.9). So thriving adult education classes have been closed or passed to other providers and people have found other learning opportunities which are not funded by Government leading to a flourishing informal learning sector which often goes unnoticed and unrecognised.

Now if we turn the clock back 25 years or so, we find huge changes in social care provision under the Conservative government of the day. Promises of support for the voluntary sector turned to support for volunteers (when it was realised how much voluntary organisations cost) and then to informal and family carers (when it was realised volunteers do not come completely free of overheads). During those years we saw the beginning of the contracting out of social care to voluntary and private organisations,  the closure of the large mental hospitals in favour of care in the community, and the move from public sector funding of care to the lottery. OK, not all that has happened in the social care field is bad, and some people may have slightly more say in the care they receive now, but there are also many casusalties of the caring revolution.

So where will the learning revolution lead.  It is driven by economic and demographic factors - the credit crunch and the increasing number of older, economically inactive people and younger people with few employment prospects. One can almost hear the thinking, now if we can formally recognise all the work these non-funded bodies and informal groups are doing and label it learning and perhaps even accredit some of it, we can reduce the amount we spend on formal education while claiming to increase the total amount of learning happening within the UK.  We can even disguise what we are doing with our digital agenda pointing to the need to ensure everybody is upskilled for the digital age.

Call me an old cynic, but these are worrying times we live in.

Posted in informal learning, Government policy, funding, education, learning | Print | 1 Comment »