Billett's Case Against 'Informal' Learning
Billett’s Case Against ‘Informal’ Learning
The claim (Billett, 2001)
There is no such thing as informal learning.
Why
- Learning is everywhere in human activity.
- Most learning happens outside formal schools.
- All learning sits inside social groups that carry some structure, so nothing is truly “informal.”
His view of learning
Organic and whole-person: intellect, emotions, values, and practice blend together. In his view the everyday kind is more common, and often more effective, than formal schooling.
Stephen Billett, writing in 2001, took a sharper line than most on learning outside school. His position was blunt: there is no such thing as informal learning. He saw learning as built into nearly everything people do, and he argued that the word “informal” hides the structure that is always present.
The Claim: No Such Thing as Informal Learning
Billett saw learning as woven through human activity. Whether someone is at home, with friends, shopping, or on a playground, there are chances to learn. Most of that learning, he argued, happens outside formal educational settings. Tight classroom rules, sit straight, no talking, no moving, can hold back the very learning schools are meant to produce.
From this he drew a striking conclusion. If learning is everywhere and mostly happens outside school, then the everyday, lightly structured kind should be treated as the standard form of learning, not as the leftover once formal schooling is counted.
If the everyday kind is the standard, the label “informal” starts to look wrong, which is where his main objection begins.
The everyday, lightly structured kind of learning is the default, not the leftover.
Because most learning happens outside school, Billett argued it should be treated as the normal case, rather than as whatever remains once formal learning is accounted for.
Why: All Learning Sits Inside Social Structures
Billett objected strongly to the term “informal” because, in his view, all learning takes place within social organizations or communities that already have some formalized structure. Two things have to be present for learning to happen: a group, and a structure.
The first group a child learns in is the family, then the wider community, then friends at school. Isolate a person completely and, on his account, learning will not happen. Every group also carries structure. A family has set times to wake, eat, and sleep. A school has a timetable. Because that structure is always there, he held that nothing people call “informal” really is.
Because all learning happens inside social groups that already carry some structure.
Families, communities, and schools all have routines and rules. Since a person needs both a group and a structure to learn, Billett argued no learning is genuinely structure-free.
Billett did not directly discuss the term “non-formal,” but the logic of his argument runs the same way: learning cannot be non-formal either, because some structure is always present.
Learning as Organic and Whole-Person
For Billett, learning is organic or holistic. It engages the whole person, so intellect, emotions, values, and practical activity blend together rather than sitting in separate boxes. This is one reason he valued everyday learning: it draws on all of a person at once, not just the part that memorizes facts for a test.
He went further and argued that this everyday learning is more common than formal learning, and in his view often more effective. Treat the effectiveness claim as his position rather than a settled finding, since how well any kind of learning works depends on the setting and the goal.
It engages the whole person at once.
Intellect, emotions, values, and practical activity blend together rather than staying separate. Billett saw this as a strength of everyday learning, which draws on all of a person, not only memory for a test.
If learning works best when it is whole-person and lightly structured, the teacher’s job changes.
What It Means for Teaching
Billett’s argument puts weight on the adult in charge. Since some structure is always present, the real question is how much. A teacher, instructor, or trainer decides how much freedom to give, because they know their learners best, whatever an outside authority prescribes.
Two priorities follow. Learning has little value unless the learner can apply it to new situations, so application matters more than recall. And getting there means asking higher-order questions. Instead of stopping at who, what, and when, teachers can push learners on how and why, questions even young children can handle when they are asked.
The through-line is consistent: because structure and social groups are always in play, the useful debate is not formal versus informal, but how well learning is guided.
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