Formal learning is what takes place in schools; informal learning is what takes place the rest of the time. Teachers are in charge of formal learning; parents watch over informal learning.
When you hear the concept of informal learning, you think, “So that’s obvious.” What is less obvious though, is just how much time children spend in informal learning. The pie chart below shows the percentage of time during a calendar year that students spend in school. It’s a small slice.
Even more surprising is how much informal learning time occurs over a lifetime. The graph below shows the percentage of formal and informal learning over the course of life.
Along the horizontal axis are the years of our lives, segmented in life stages. The vertical axis represents 16 waking hours.
The orange depicts formal learning time. The teal, so encompassing that it looks like the background color of the chart, shows the hours of informal learning time.
During the critical learning period of infancy through early childhood all learning is informal. From birth through high school graduation, the graph shows clearly that parents oversee most of kids learning time. Whether or not parents are aware of it, they are continuously engaged in their children’s learning out of school.
The quality of kids’ informal learning is tied to their parents' skills. How can parents improve their skills at extending this learning?
The Fun of Informal Learning
Boosting informal learning does not necessarily mean adding more “scholastic” activities at home. Fortunately, informal learning happens during down time, family time, and all other out of school time.
Where formal learning is mostly adult-led curriculum with tests to measure learning, informal learning is mostly child-directed activity with play as the purpose. During informal time kids have the chance to pursue what interests them, for its own sake. This experience lets kids cultivate curiosity and intrinsic motivation. Self-directed activity lets children develop the ability to focus their attention and engage deeply in what they are doing.
For the most part, informal learning happens on-the-fly and is relevant to the context the child is in. With formal learning teachers have the challenging job of making subject matter, which is prescribed and scheduled, relevant to students sitting in a classroom. The #1 academic complaint of students is that their learning doesn’t seem relevant. (The #1 overall complaint about school is the food.) Informal learning has the advantage of being relevant in the moment. Relevance strengthens learning.
During informal learning children often interact with a parent or adult who provide specific and immediate feedback. Research shows this adult-child interaction expedites learning. In school, a teacher’s attention must be distributed over many students and feedback is delayed. Informally, a child can access their parent’s attention, ask a question, and get a customized answer, maybe even a discussion, that addresses what’s on their mind.
Fortunately for parents, self-directed activity, on-the-fly learning, and focused and immediate adult feedback means learning is more fun, spontaneous, and potent. These informal learning conditions are hard to duplicate in formal settings.
Building Skills at Facilitating Informal Learning
Just as teachers can get more skillful at increasing student learning in school, parents can improve their skills at fostering learning out of school. You already know the basics, like reading to your kids, assuring homework gets done, and providing resources and opportunities to cultivate talents and interests. But you can develop new skills and put them to use while doing all the regular activities of raising kids, while keeping them fed, clean, clothed, and safe. If you are game, the day-to-day interactions can offer plenty natural opportunities to support learning out of school.
The remaining nine concepts listed on PCM’s Top 10 Learning Concepts present ideas that will influence what you see during the informal learning time you manage. Understanding the concepts of 10,000 Hours, Incremental Intelligence, Flow, Background Knowledge, Language Dancing, Chunking, Metacognition, Digital Learning and Persistent Misconception will sharpen your observations during informal learning time.
Parents "gaining cortical mass" about how children learn is great for children, interesting for parents, and good for all our futures.
Mind/Shift, a website and blog with the tag line "How we will learn" and part of KQED Public Television, has this article called, "Where Does Informal Learning Fit In?"
Education Week has this great article about informal science learning that says, "..an ever growing body of evidence demonstrates that most science is learned outside of school." Includes several links to other science informal learning resources.
FutureLab, a UK not-for-profit organization advancing education, teaching, and learning, has a website with interesting resources for parents. If you are looking for a summary of the research on children's informal learning with technologies outside school, this 30-page report should satisfy.