Comments on: Non-formal anxiety

By: Andreas Karsten

Andreas Karsten — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:57:06 +0000

Bastian, a while ago I spent a couple of days at the first Innsbruck education days. One of the most interesting interventions was a presentation by Frank Coffield entitled

“Learning Styles: A Systematic and Critical Review of the Research”

I always wanted to write something about his findings, and it seems our discussion is encouraging me to do so.

Speaking of encouragement: If you have some answers to these questions – and I feel certain you do :) – you are most warmly welcome to write them down.

A few more words on that here.

By: Bastian

Bastian — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:46:51 +0000

Andreas, I totall agree with you in posing these questions. I ask myself very often: can I assume that I know better than the learner what is ‘best’ for him or her and who entitles me to do so? You read my comment right that my biggest concern currently is NEED. How can I find out what the learner really needs? Is asking enough? Can a learner express what s/he needs if s/he doesn’t yet know what s/he doesn’t yet know? The model of the comfort zone, stretch zone and panic zone always helps me in that. It is the educators task, I feel, to see the potential in a person and guide a process that makes the stretch zone more comfortable to be in. This means challening, this means taking a person to places where s/he might not have gone voluntarily, but where s/he can learn a great deal. Yet, the question stays – who am I to know what is the right learning environment for a person? How can I find out what a person really needs? How can I answer a need that is merely unconciously there and not expressable?

By: Andreas Karsten

Andreas Karsten — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:02:26 +0000

Bastian, I agree with you but want to pick up on a word you have dropped in the conversation: Need.

Often enough I experience educational situations in which educators challenge learners because they believe that through that challenge the persons concerned can learn most or best or both.

Certainly, when asked, learners would not invite others to challenge them, would they?

So from there it throws up questions like: Where does self-determination stop? And under which conditions should challenge be allowed?

Which brings my thinking to important questions in relation to power between learner and educator — and connected to that, responsibility.

I’m drifting off.

Back to your comment: You argue, it seems to me, from the assumption that every learner knows enough about him- or herself and about learning to be able to determin contents, context, path and aim, method and approach of educational processes by themselves.

I doubt that, and this doubt connects to my thoughts above: Under which conditions am I allowed to initiate an educational process with which, given the chance, a learner would only agree with afterwards — if at all?

May be worth a separate article… But that’s what we are here for.

By: Bastian

Bastian — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:34:39 +0000

I think when discussing about the setting where learning can take place (informal, non-formal or formal settings) one quickly can drift away from what’s really important: the individual and unique learner him/herself. I belief that learning is a continous process, happening all the time and everywhere. The task of the educator is to provide a forum in which these individuals can learn in a way and to an extend as they have the need to. This does not imply neutrality from the educator or a ‘letting alone’ of the learner. It is merely, as Andreas put it, a complementary process of taking the learners hand guiding, facilitating and supporting, while on the other hand leaving space, freedom and individual solutions. This is for me nonformality – a mixture of guiding and letting go, an offering of possibilities and the trust in the learner to go his/her way.

By: Andreas Karsten

Andreas Karsten — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 21:10:28 +0000

Helen has moved on and joined the thriving and innovative research community at the Education and Social Research Institute of the Manchester Metropolitan University. Profile Helen Colley @ MMU

By: mark

mark — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:34:58 +0000

the train now standing on platform three will leave from platform seven – that’s what my grandma told me, and she was never wrong!

By: mark

mark — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 08:23:19 +0000

Please note that this article was originally published in Coyote magazine, n°9. You can find it here: The marker column in pdf-format.
I wish you happy thoughts and exciting discussions about all these issues!

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 20:01:09 +0000

The key in this development is complementarity, not contradiction.

The way the Youth Forum and Pasi Sahlberg and others look at what we do is mainly by institutional factors such as the location of the learning (in school, outside school in a training setting, at home), in consequence referring to formal, non-formal and informal education.

What Helen refers to is learning though. And formal or informal learning can take place in formal, non-formal and informal education.

I believe though that their model is missing non-formal attributes – there is something in between formality and informality which they miss out on – nonformality (and this, my friends, is really an unintended correlation to the name of this blog….)