Informal Learning and the Whole Person
Informal Learning and the Whole Person
Beckett and Hager (2002)
Informal learning is organic and holistic: it engages intellect, emotions, values, and practical activity together, not just the mind.
Where values come from
Emotions and moral examples are mostly picked up informally, by watching others, starting with the family.
Six marks of practice-based informal learning
- Organic and holistic: engages the whole person.
- Contextual: learned inside the real situation.
- Activity and experience based: the learner does the thing.
- Learning is not the main aim: it comes with some other task.
- Learner started: the individual begins it, not a teacher.
- Often collaborative: happens alongside others.
Their claim
Informal learning is more common and, they argue, often more effective, because what is learned this way tends to stay.
Some of what a person knows was never taught in a lesson. Beckett and Hager (2002) use the term informal learning for this: the learning that happens through living, working, and watching others, rather than through a planned course. They argue it reaches parts of a person that formal schooling often misses.
Learning That Engages the Whole Person
Beckett and Hager describe informal learning as organic and holistic. It works on the whole person at once: intellect, emotions, values, and practical activity are blended, instead of the mind being treated on its own. That view brings feelings and moral development into the picture, not only thinking skills.
Values and emotional habits are hard to deliver through a graded lesson. A child learns honesty, patience, or respect mostly by watching how the people around them behave, beginning at home. “Everyone is doing it” is not the same as a considered choice, and learning to act on your own principles is itself something picked up informally over time.
This is why the family and the wider community matter so much: they are where a young person absorbs the values that no timetable schedules.
It engages the whole person, not just the mind.
Intellect, emotions, values, and practical activity are blended together, so feelings and moral examples are learned alongside facts and skills.
Six Marks of Practice-Based Informal Learning
Beckett and Hager set out several features that most practice-based informal learning shares. Together they describe learning that grows out of doing real work rather than sitting through instruction.
| Mark | What it means |
|---|---|
| Organic and holistic | Engages intellect, emotions, values, and practical activity together |
| Contextual | Learned inside the real situation it applies to, not from a description |
| Activity and experience based | The learner does the thing and builds experience, not only hears about it |
| Learning is not the main aim | It happens while the person is busy with some other goal |
| Learner started | The individual begins it, without a teacher or trainer directing |
| Collaborative and collegial | Often happens with others, through working alongside colleagues or peers |
The contextual point is easy to test against daily life. You learn to operate a new device by using it, not by reading a description of it, and each new model teaches you a little more as you go.
The workplace marks matter for anyone leaving school. On the job, people tend to notice which skills they lack and pick them up themselves, often by working next to more experienced colleagues rather than waiting for a trainer.
The individual learner, not a teacher or trainer.
On the job, a person notices which skills they need and picks them up on their own, often by working alongside colleagues who already have them.
Why Informal Learning Tends to Stick
Beckett and Hager go further and claim that informal learning is more common than formal learning and, in their view, often more effective. Their reasoning is about what lasts. Values, emotions, and practical know-how picked up informally tend to stay, while a good deal of what is memorised for an exam fades soon after the test is over.
A related mark explains part of this staying power: much informal learning happens when learning is not even the main aim. The person is focused on a task, and the learning arrives with the activity.
It happens as a by-product of doing something else.
The person is focused on a task or goal, and the learning comes along with the activity rather than being the point of it.
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