Informal Learning in Context
Robert L. Russell
Our views of learning and development have changed dramatically over the past several decades. Our perspective has changed from viewing learning as an individual and passive experience to learning as an active, dynamic and developmental process. We now see learning and development as occurring within a broader context of people, places, and natural environments. These perspectives are consistent with the views of Jean Piaget, the “father” of constructivism, who saw learning as an adaptive process, a dynamic interaction between the learner and his or her environment and experiences. They are also compatible with Lev Vygotsky, the Russian psychologist who emphasized the importance of social interaction and group dynamics in learning and development.
Despite these changes in perspectives on learning and development, we in the field of informal education or free choice learning may still think of learning as an individual experience when we design exhibits or programs. Thus, the implicit “theories of learning” that underlie exhibit and program designs may reflect this limited perspective. The result may be looking at exhibits or afterschool programs as curriculum and designing relatively narrow “educational objectives” (e.g., after going through the exhibit, students will understand x, y, and z concepts) or outcomes that are supposed to result from the experiences. My colleague Ted Ansbacher and I have written a number of articles for this and other journals that emphasize the central importance of the experience itself, rather than ignoring the experience in favor of outcomes. In this article, however, I review some theories and an evaluation model that look at experiences within the broader context where they occur, with a discussion of how these perspectives can inform program design and evaluation.
Urie Bronfenbrenner and Bioecological Systems
The late Urie Bronfenbrenner was one of
the most influential developmental social scientists in the last century.
He had an important role in the design of the Head Start program and from
the 1970’s until his death a few years ago; he developed the most comprehensive
theoretical framework for understanding human development within the broader
context of the social environment.
Bronfenbrenner’s “bioecological systems” theory combines sociology and developmental psychology, with individuals and environments shaping each other. Children develop within several interlocking systems:
- The micro-system: The family and others as children develop and increase the number of enduring reciprocal relationships.
- The meso-system: Interrelationships among settings, such as the home, school, and church. Parents play an important role in mediating these interrelationships, which determine the richness and quality of the children’s experiences with these settings.
- The exo-system: Forces that affect children indirectly via parents and other adults who relate directly with children (e.g., workplace, social agencies, government).
- The macro-system: Culture, economy, and other “blueprints” for interlocking social forces at the macro-level that shape human development.
While this analysis may seem abstract, Bronfenbrenner looks at some straightforward examples of how the “ecology” of the family can be stressed or break down: Families continue to struggle to balance work and family (micro-system and exosystem).
Laws stress or even challenge the very existence of some families, for example, undocumented residents who cannot live together with their families (micro-system and macro-system)
Unsafe neighborhoods or schools that create pathological and dangerous environments for families and children (micro-system and macro-system).
Bronfenbrenner’s model, abstract as it may seem, provides a useful and researchable framework for analyzing the ecology of human development. It is also a reminder that the complexity of human ecology can be compared with various ecological systems and the complex web of relationships and interactions required to explain the interactions of these systems.
John Falk and Lynn Dierking have provided educators in the informal or free choice learning field with an excellent framework for looking at learning in context. Their framework (presented in their several books, listed on their website: www.ilinet.org) looks at how informal learning is influenced by the personal context (what the learner brings to a situation, such as prior knowledge, interests, and expectations), the sociocultural context (the influence of people, including peers, family, teachers, and culture), and the physical context (setting, design). Bronfenbrenner ’s model shows how the individual (personal context) develops within, is influenced and also influences the systems he outlines (sociocultural context).
Complementary Learning
Informal learning projects often exist in isolation – programs are designed
without considering the “big picture” – how the various factors considered
in Bronfenbrenner’s or Falk and Dierking’s model affect a learner’s experiences.
The Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) has proposed a new approach,
“complementary learning,” that provides a practical way of putting these
broader theoretical perspectives into practice. As Heather Weiss, Director
of HFRP explains, complementary learning “refers to the idea that school
and life success requires an array of learning supports. To be most effective,
these supports should complement one another, moving out of their silos
and working together to create an integrated, accessible set of community-wide
resources that support learning and development. While nonschool resources
should be aligned with public schools, they should not be limited by them.”
We have waves of educational reform, often with few results. But we know that complementary learning works. A long history of research shows that early intervention programs have powerful and lasting impacts on children. (Urie Bronfenbrenner was a principal designer of Head Start.) Effective parent involvement programs have positive impacts on student learning. Likewise, out-of-school programs provided by schools, museums, Boys and Girls Clubs, and other community/ youth organizations, not only have positive academic impacts, but can also reduce juvenile crime, drug use, and other risky behaviors. We can see that children need the whole community and not just schools for learning and success in school, out of school, and in adult life after finishing school.
Community-wide educational programs and resources still exist largely in their own “silos,” in isolation from one another. Why don’t we make greater efforts to integrate these resources in a strategic fashion so that together these resources can have a greater impact? Informal learning institutions are increasingly embracing this approach, aligning their exhibits with curriculum standards and providing afterschool programs that support the curriculum while using a more hands-on or experiential approach appropriate for that environment. We now recognize how important informal learning resources are, but we need to mobilize these resources in more strategic fashion.
HFRP recommends that “….from birth through high school, children would benefit from a coherent continuum of learning opportunities in various contexts. The continuum should begin during the early years with quality parenting, child care, and pre-kindergarten programs, continue through childhood and adolescence to include after school and summer programs, and extend all the way through college preparation.”
The obvious recommendation is that we connect learning contexts – schools and museums, libraries and museums, etc. through “deliberate and targeted strategies that focus programmatic energy, resources, and time on shared functions or common goals.”
HFRP has published an entire issue of its electronic newsletter, The Evaluation Exchange (Vol. X, No. 1, Spring 2005), on complementary learning. In this issue (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/eval/issue29/theory.html), HFRP outline several general principles that can guide planning of complementary learning approaches:
- Both school and nonschool contexts are critical to children’s learning and achievement, including families, youth and community organizations, churches, and informal learning opportunities provided by museums, libraries, arts organizations, sports, and elsewhere.
- Learning opportunities and contexts should support one another. As Bronfenbrenner’s theory demonstrates, many factors in children’s lives have reciprocal and positive influences. For example, parents have a powerful impact on school achievement, which can be magnified through explicit parental involvement strategies.
The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ, www.hcz.org) provides one interesting example of complementary learning. HCZ is an effort for improving educational and life outcomes for low-income children by mobilizing the entire community to support the healthy development of children. In a 60-square block area, HCZ has designed an interconnected “web of services” for children and families. Two broad principles underlie HCZ: children will be health and successful when surrounded by adults who “parent effectively and engage with children educationally, socially, and culturally.” Of course, this presents many opportunities for informal learning institutions like museums and libraries to serve children (and their parents). The second principle is that early intervention is “critical for successful development.” Children need health care, intellectual and social stimulation, and constant and caring relationships with adults who guide them to and participate with them in informal learning. Early evaluation results show high levels of participation in various services as well as positive outcomes.
HFRP recommends some concrete steps to take complementary learning from a conceptual framework to an action plan:
- Recognize the importance of investments in nonschool learning. There is now a large body of research that amply demonstrates the importance of early stimulation on brain development, the critical impacts of parental involvement in education, and the positive impacts of afterschool and informal learning programs.
- Increase complementary connections between learning contexts. There are more and more examples of collaborative programs that connect informal learning resources, explicitly supported by private funders and federal agencies such as the Institute for Museum and Library Services (www.imls.gov) Partnership for a National of Learners projects and a variety of projects supported by the National Science Foundation’s Informal Science Education program (www.nsf.gov).
- Develop and support a knowledge base to support complementary learning principles. More research documentation is needed to build support the need for significant investment in informal learning and for understanding how to most effectively mobilize nonschool learning resources to complement one another.
- It is time that our society invests in nonschool learning and provides underserved children and families with full access to these resources. Our society’s investment in nonschool learning resources is inadequate, sporadic, and nonstrategic. We know nonschool resources are critical. These resources – museums, libraries, summer programs – are also unavailable to many low-income children and families.
Evaluating Complementary Learning
Any educational intervention has an implicit theory of change.
You design the program to change participants and you propose a strategy,
a “theory” of how your program will do that. A logic model provides
an explicit framework; a chain of connections that shows how you believe
your program will achieve the intended impacts.
Logic models provide a useful approach for conceptualizing a complementary learning project. Since complementary learning projects may involve multiple organizations and multiple components, a logic model can help plan a project, since the components, their relationships, and the results of these linkages are explicitly drawn within the model. Once the logic model is developed, it also provides a convenient method for explaining the project to others.
The typical model includes Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes/Impacts:
- Inputs: Human, financial, organizational, and community resources a project can use for its work.
- Outputs: The program activities a project delivers and the levels of participation in those activities.
- Outcomes: Changes in participants’ behavior, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and/or levels of functioning. Short-term outcomes are relatively immediate changes that occur within a few days or weeks or participation (e.g., students learn specific science skills in a summer science workshop). Medium-term impacts are outcomes that occur within a few months of participation (e.g., summer science workshop participants sign up for more AP science and math courses than they might have without participation). Long-term impacts are outcomes that may occur months or years after participation. Projects that use this approach develop a summary chart or table that illustrates the causal linkages between the inputs, outputs, and outcomes.
Logic models are typically presented as diagrams, flow sheets, or some other type of visual schematic that conveys relationships between contextual factors and programmatic inputs, processes, and outcomes. The value of a logic model for complementary learning projects it that the linkages of the complementary resources to one another and to intended outputs and outcomes can be explicitly designed and then summarized in a diagram.
The Kellogg Foundation has developed a very useful guide, the Logic Model Development Guide, to designing logic models in program evaluation (http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/Tools/Evaluati on/Pub3669.pdf). Another useful set of resources on logic models is provided by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (http://nnlm.gov/libinfo/community/logicmodel.php).
Robert L. Russell is Principal, Learning Experience Design, an informal education consulting firm. He can be reached at: hanarus@aol.com or 202-997-5539.