Transcending the Walls of the Classroom

The power of informal learning has been overlooked for a long time by yester-years educators who are eager to teach and turn students into information databases. Like Winston Churchill said, “Personally, I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught.” This post outlines the importance of informal learning and bring to readers attention about the misleading term “knowledge management” instead of information management. I am a champion of informal learning, which is in line with the constructivism theorem, and the fact that knowledge can be constructed internally depending on individual experiences. Rossett and Hoffman (2007, p. 167) provide the characteristics of informal learning: authentic, happening beyond the control of facilitators, outside the limits of the classroom, or training facilities. Education has evolved over the years from being an institution that would bring a certain degree of social leveling, social justice, and social cohesion (Borg & Mayo, 2006). Today, we are dealing with schools and educational institution’s ability to empower, democratize knowledge, and create a genuinely “meritocratic” society.

Informal learning supports the notion of lifelong learning as it underlines the aspects of learning and pedagogy that occur outside the domains of formal learning institutions. Sociological interpretations refute the structural-functionalist view of schooling; this is due to the emergence of various schools of thought (Gumport, 2007). The homogenization of learning is one of the tragedies created by traditional educators over the years, which is flawed and not inline with reality. I believe informal learning is a bridge to knowledge construction and acquirement. Education goal is to empower and improve the mobility of human capital, not to build moving silos of information. For institutions to successfully empower learners should “create bridges and articulate between various learning pathways” to avoid the possibility of giving learners passes instead of empowering them with applicable skills and help them construct knowledge. The application “taylor-made” learning approach for learners in their own environment is long overdue. The rise of bureaucratic principles and values paved a way for formal education, instead of transformational and entrepreneurial type of education.

The growing of various schools of thoughts promotes “threaded discourse” which encourages reflection. I concur with Brown and Campione (1996) that discourse is central to knowledge advancement.