PRINCIPALES TEORÍAS

In their edited collection on ‘Youth Work Practice’, Jeffs and Smith (2010) define informal education as:

a process – a way of helping people to learn. For us, informal education works through, and is driven by, conversation; involves exploring and enlarging experience; and can take place in any setting. (Jeffs & Smith, 2010:xii-xiii)

This is a rich definition, referencing elements of the practice that are key to their conception of informal education.

Firstly, informal education involves a purposeful intention to foster learning, rather than learning happening accidentally or incidentally (ibid:7-9, 18). Smith argues:

Learning is a process that is happening all the time; education involves intention and commitment. Education is a moral enterprise that needs to be judged as to whether it elevates and furthers well-being. (Smith, 1999, 2008).

The description of the practice as educational makes clear that practitioners seek to foster change. This requires workers to recognise, understand and be explicit about the values that determine the ‘direction’ of this change and that guide the actions and intentions of the educator (Jeffs and Smith, 2005:20-21). Smith (1988:xii) proposes the aim of informal education is ‘the good life’ – eudaimonia – after Aristotle, ‘to enable individuals to pursue

autonomously their own well-being’. Informal education then is not about teaching facts, but

about equipping young people with wisdom for living – Aristotle’s phronesis – so they can navigate life wisely and virtuously (Young, 2006).

Secondly, this learning activity is a process, negotiated ‘in-situ’ as it is happening, rather than having a predetermined curriculum focussed on achieving certain outcomes (Jeffs & Smith, 2005:72-83). Smith (1994) goes further by framing informal education as a ‘praxis’: the continual interaction of ‘theory’ and ‘committed action’ (informed by values) through a process of ‘reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it’ (Freire, 1972:28).

Thirdly, conversation is central to this spontaneous process of learning: it both mediates the process and is supported by the idea of process. Learning is negotiated and fostered through the conversation itself. In Jeffs’ and Smith’s conception, conversation infers dispositions towards: a democratic practice, through fellowship, negotiation and association (2005:41- 57); a respect for people and a commitment to certain values (ibid:94-109); and an understanding of personhood (Smith, 1994:36-38), based on the notion that our selves are formed in interaction with others (Mead, 1934) – there can be no separate self apart from others (Gadamer, 1979; see also Smith, 1996b, 2001). This in turn draws attention to the need to critically examine how broader forces operate to structure our life chances and experiences. For Smith (1994:40), conversation is an everyday activity, yet it can be profoundly humanising, after Buber (1958, in Smith, 2000, 2009), and also ‘deeply political’ (Smith, 1994:43) after Freire (1972:61):

To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. […] Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. [italics original].

Jeffs and Smith (2005:23) draw a distinction between informal education, based around conversation and formal education, based around curriculum, exploring different approaches to curriculum and their consonance or not with informal education (ibid:72-82).

As a process, Smith (1994:78) suggests the way ‘direction’ is conceptualised in informal education ‘is some distance’ from curriculum models that focus on behavioural objectives or ones that seek to transmit a body of knowledge-content. Traditional product-oriented formulations of curriculum are problematic within the schema of a learning process led by conversation. If subject matter or learning outcomes are pre-defined, the opportunity for dialogue in the educational encounter is limited; and pre-defined outcomes undermine conversation’s democratic values, as the ‘learners’ are frequently not involved in setting the learning outcomes or subject matter (Jeffs & Smith, 2005:73-76). They argue that ‘it is the

very absence of curriculum that is a key defining feature’ of informal education (ibid:81).

Fourthly, informal education involves learning in, about and through life, through exploring and enlarging people’s experiences (Dewey, 1933). This infers a particular philosophy of education and learning: a disposition toward knowledge and knowledge generation, drawn from Aristotle’s (2004:146) thinking around the practical disciplines, which posits knowledge not as a static body, but as a dynamic force created by humans in interaction with each other and the world (Seal & Frost, 2014:91 & 154); and the appreciation that the root and focus of learning is located in life experiences (Rousseau, 1993; Dewey, 1968, 1986; Freire, 1972; Rogers & Freiberg, 1993).

Dewey (1968, 1986) believed that ‘[t]he only true education comes through the stimulation of

the child’s power by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself’ arguing

therefore that all learning ‘subject matter’ should arise from everyday life. He suggested: ‘Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a ‘forked road’ situation, a situation that is

ambiguous, that presents a dilemma that proposes alternatives. […] The origin of thinking is some perplexity confusion or doubt’ (1986:122-123). Learning is then cultivated through

reflection on these ‘perplexing’ or problematised lived experiences (Freire, 1972) – ‘It is not

sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost’ (Gibbs 1988:14).

Jeffs and Smith (2005:59-60) draw on the work of Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) to delineate three aspects of reflective learning:

• Returning to experience – recalling or detailing salient events;

• Attending to (or connecting with) feelings) – using helpful feelings and removing or containing obstructive ones;

• Evaluating Experience – re-examining experience in the light of one’s aims and knowledge. It also entails integrating this new knowledge into one’s conceptual framework.

It is from this reflection that learners actively construct their own experiences, making sense of them and attaching their own meaning to events (Boud, Cohen & Walker (eds), 1993). Informal education then is not about learning facts and information as ends in themselves, but about equipping people with wisdom for living – Aristotle’s phronesis – so they can navigate life wisely and virtuously (Young 2006). This often requires us to struggle to make explicit what we have previously only known ‘tacitly’ (Polanyi, 1967), so that we might uncover what we know and how we have come to know it, in order to learn from it or to ‘unlearn’ it. This is particularly true of our learning about ourselves, uncovering those attitudes, behaviours and motives that lie in our ‘blind spots’ using tools such as the ‘Johari window’ as a starting point for this work (Luft & Ingham, 1955; Batsleer, 2008:38-44).

Fifthly, Jeffs’ and Smith’s contention that informal education can take place in any setting reminds us that the praxis of informal education is located within the practitioner, or more accurately, the relationships an informal educator is able to establish with others, rather than being bound by or located within an institution or profession. Dewey (1916:16) reminds us of the importance of paying attention to the environment in which we are working:

We never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit chance to do the work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a great difference.

Jeffs and Smith (1990a) argue elsewhere that the principles and practices of informal education transcend the standard professional boundaries of various welfare practices and traditions, such as teaching, youth work and social work, and can be practised within many professions. However, it is worth noting that although they argue informal education can take place in any setting, I would like to qualify this by saying ‘any setting where free-flowing

conversation can be nurtured’. Key to informal education is the freedom of the participants to

negotiate and ‘go with the flow’ of conversations without undue external influence (Jeffs & Smith, 2005:33-34). Jeffs and Smith encourage educators to be willing to be led by the unpredictable twists and turns of conversation, rather than trying to inappropriately influence its direction. However, the setting in which conversations happen can often have an unrecognised influence on the conversations themselves, whether this be on the streets,

in school or in prison. There may be both institutional or cultural factors which constrain conversation or limit participants’ expectations of what is possible or appropriate, or the extent to which they are willing to engage unguardedly; and there may be other actors, external to the conversation that seek to directly influence the content of it or curtail it. In each of these situations, it takes the skill of the worker to carefully and patiently nurture a ‘relational’ environment where these factors can be recognised, acknowledged and overcome and where participants and workers can engage in unfettered conversation. It would be hard to imagine informal education flourishing in a setting where conversation was monitored and deliberately restricted.

Finally, Jeffs’ and Smith’s assertion that informal education is ‘a’ way of helping people to learn affirms their valuing of other, more formal educative endeavours alongside the informal (2005:22-24).