A fascinating insight into how informal learning works and the true potential it has in education.
In his earlier research into home education, Alan Thomas found that many families chose or gravitated towards an informal style of education, radically different to that found in schools. Such learning, also described as "unschooling", natural or autonomous, lacks much that is considered essential for learning in schools. At home there is no curriculum or sequential teaching, nor are there any lessons, text books, requirement for written work, mathematical exercises, marking and testing. But how do children who learn in this way actually achieve an education on a par with what schools offer?
In this new research, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison seek to explain the efficacy of this alternative pedagogy through the experiences of 26 families who have chosen to educate their children informally. Based on interviews and extended examples of learning at home the authors explore:
- the effectiveness and limits of informal learning
- the part children take in forming and pursuing their own learning agendas
- the informal acquisition of literacy and numeracy
- the role of parents and others in informal learning.
Their investigation into these questions provides not only an insight into the powerful and effective nature of informal learning but also presents some fundamental challenges to many of the assumptions which underlie educational theory.
This book will be of interest to education practitioners, researchers and all parents, whether their children are in or out of school, offering as it does new food for thought on that most basic of educational questions - how do children learn?
