Informal learning, non-formal learning, etc

Well, I went to the event and it was a really good discussion, but also interesting in unexpected ways. Almost all the focus was on how informal or non-formal learning (some distinguished these; some didn't) differed from formal education, and it amounted to a blistering attack on how formal education in this country has become mechanical, risk-averse and obsessed with outcomes. There were few people there with actual current experience of secondary or primary schools and to some extent schools became the default scapegoat for educational failure. Although there were some voices pointing out that a laissez-faire approach to education has its own dangers, most seemed to argue that experiential learning in the real world, or self-directed learning on topics of personal interest was better, more effective and longer-lasting than what's on offer in schools. This got a bit unfair on schools - many are much better than this, and no-one had a ready alternative for the opportunities offered by schools to disadvantaged children.

Nevertheless, all the examples of what's good about informal learning reminded me of recent struggles I've had in persuading teachers that there's a value in listening to children, that "child-centred" doesn't mean pandering to a child's every whim but recognising where she's at now and where she might be with some nudging and encouragement.

It also reminded me of my recent discussion with George Head at Glasgow University, who suspects that media education requires a different pedagogy. I'm not convinced: I think you can teach anything badly; but I can see that the when the balance of knowledge and experience between teacher and child is different, as in media education, then a different pedagogy can emerge. But obviously this will only happen if the teacher recognises the child's baseline knowledge and knows how to build on it. This requires not only a different pedagogy - listening to the child, looking for evidence that she is already addressing issues such as genre or modality, and being able to respond to it - but also knowing media education issues well enough in order to build on the child's prior learning and take it forward. This is a big ask for non-specialist teachers. It's why teachers get anxious at the prospect that "they know more than me!" and why teachers embarking on media education with younger children can often fail to challenge them enough.

Anyway, it's clear that media education offers a particular and significant "take" on the relationship between formal and informal learning. I hope the RSA/Youth UK project will be able to explore this.

Non-formal learning - what is it and who gets it?

I've been invited to attend an RSA event about non-formal learning called "Vision not Division – Learning for all in the 21^st Century". We’ve been offered a definition of "non-formal learning" as “…a process of social learning centred on the learner that is realized through activities outside of the formal education system” (World Development Report 2007), and we've been asked to make notes beforehand on our own experiences of this sort of thing. To help us do this, we've been given these examples: "playing in a local sports team, attending a youth club, undertaking voluntary service”.

This has set me wondering. First of all, why does the World Development Report use the term ‘social’? I see no necessary link between ‘non-formal’ and ‘social’. Then the three examples we've been given seem to me to comprise a very traditional, old-fashioned view of non-formal learning as something socially/morally acceptable with an emphasis on communal values: safe, nice activities that would keep us off the streets. I've got nothing against such activities, but if we were to confine our discussions to this sort of thing we ought to narrow down the definition to read “…a process of social learning centred on the learner that is realized through organised activities outside of the formal education system”

Even so, we ought be able to acknowledge that people often make conscious and purposeful decisions to learn something when they:

• · watch a documentary on TV or at the cinema
• · buy specialist magazines
• · visit websites
• · use a library
• · visit a museum, theme park or zoo
• · use a tourist guide to go sightseeing

These activities all involve learning and are often driven by people's incessant desire to learn things or at least to acquire information and/or techniques. They may of may not be 'social', but they're certainly informal, and they are 'centred on the learner': the providers in each case probably don't use the word 'pedagogy' but that's what they're doing.

The agenda for the event looks as though it's going to ignore things like ‘the digital revolution’ and ‘the information society’, even though these dominate other kinds of discussion about 21st century society and culture. I hope we don't end up just talking about condescending, socially-controlling versions of non-formal learning and ignoring the ways in which the media and leisure industries are thriving on people’s obvious and growing interest in all kinds of non-formal learning, achieved in pleasurable, unthreatening and often entertaining ways. Watch this space!

Ironic TV

There is no shortage of patronising TV these days. I've wiped from my memory files most of the endless sequences of fussy editing, naff drama reconstructions, silly effects and hammed-up commentaries I've drowsed through before summoning up enough energy to reach for the remote control. What a pleasure then to turn to Oxford Film and TV's lovingly crafted hatchet job on English Heritage, a series that expects its audience to be at least as intelligent as the filmmakers themselves.

The company has a track record in exposing corporate complacency in the arts and the media, which makes it all the more remarkable that English Heritage were dumb enough to let them in the door. Anyone looking for a model of media illiteracy should check out EH's CEO, Simon Thurley, on their website: "Conventional wisdom says that having a TV crew following you around while you work isn’t a very good idea," he says. "But in the end I agreed to the project because I think English Heritage will benefit from revealing itself more."

At the beginning of Friday's programme (The Queen, Her Lover and His Castle) we hear Thurley's eager prattling about "...the ultimate point of anything to do with heritage is it will improve the quality of people's lives". But we hear this in voice-over as a taxi whisks Thurley away from a photo call: what we see is a measured, ironic pan revealing a Deloitte strapline, "Clear Business Direction", emblazoned on the taxi doors. Right away, you know you are going to see some posh nitwits eagerly snatching at the rope with which to hang themselves.

Those of us who have worked in the publicly funded arts sector watch with horrified recognition as Thurley's steely-eyed wife Dr Anna Keay (no conflict of interest there, then) asserts her determination to spend £1.5 million of public money on an Elizabethan garden squeezed in between the backside of Kenilworth Castle and a busy main road. "I suspect sums of money of the scale of what we'll be spending at Kenilworth are spent all over the public sector every day on things that will have far less impact on people's life and happiness than Kenilworth Garden" she snaps. You can almost hear director Patrick Forbes licking his lips here as he inserts a clip from the BBC's 1971 Elizabeth R and lets it run for three ponderously naff seconds before Samuel West's narration resumes with "The omens...are not good."

If I'd ever delivered a project a year late and 35% over budget I'd never have heard the last of it, however good my excuses (and there are plenty on EH's own website). I suppose it just goes to show what you can get away with if you own enough castles.

I suppose it's my fault then?

It's a hard life being an EastEnders fan. There are too many occasions on which one has to endure watching Charlie Brooks flick her tongue to the corner of her mouth, roll her eyes and attempt to look evil, or listening to Adam Woodyatt squeak his way through yet another completely implausible emotional switchback.

John Altman is another tongue-flicker; I daresay not many people have spotted the similarities between nasty Nick Cotton and former Education Secretary of State Kenneth Baker, but they both use exactly the same little snake-like flick of the tongue in and out, and to pretty much the same effect: "Do not trust a word I say!" I am wearily awaiting the return of yet another dastardly Nick plot to destroy Dot's faith in the powers of redemption: how much more interesting it would have been - for Altman as well as for us, I'd have thought - if Nick really had come back as a reformed character and had to struggle to convince us all.

The surest indicator of an EastEnders scriptwriter scraping the bottom of the barrel is when they resort to moving a scene on by having a character retort "I suppose it's my fault then?" - always guaranteed to generate shrieks of horror and disbelief in our house. However, I am happy to report that I haven't heard it for a while. In fact, since we finally got Danielle's risibly contrived death out of the way, the last two episodes have been on top form. What do I mean by this? Well, there are several strong but psychologically plausible stories on the go, interwoven and thematically related, but otherwise not dependent on each other and, crucially some of the best performers getting their teeth into cliche-free scripts: Tanya and Max circling warily around each other again; the Fox family and Lucas perplexed by Patrick's intransigence; Stacey sulking on the sofa; Rick and Tiffany edging towards a false revelation. None of these problems is simple or has an obvious outcome; in each case the behaviour is subtle and complex with many different possible motivations: it keeps us fascinated even when hardly anything is happening.

Monday's episode, directed by Clive Arnold, was a little gem, despite featuring the tediously gullible Dot Cotton and Charlie Slater. Instead of the grindingly obvious set-piece weddings, dinners and funerals that EastEnders seems to pride itself on, we had almost everyone slopping about aimlessly on a damp Bank Holiday Monday, wondering what to do, and it was riveting. It reminded me of Arsenal's recent apparent return to form: you remember that they really do have a lot of brilliant players after all - and we weren't even seeing Nitin Ganatra or Kara Tointon, two other endlessly watchable talents.

Of course it won't last. My nightmare EastEnders episode would feature Janine, Ian, Pat, Peggy, Billy and Mo all shrieking "I suppose it's my fault then?" at each other, interspersed with shots of Ronnie, Roxy and Jack glaring inscrutably from behind curtains at first floor windows or from behind half-open doors. There'd also be candles guttering to extinction on a guestless dinner table; a lavish bouquet, a revealing postcard and a fried breakfast all crammed into various rubbish bins, and at least one scene would take place at that ridiculous allotment. If I could just get that Diederick Santer on my sofa, we'd get it sorted out in no time, I know we would.

Is Obama Media Literate?

After a late night watching a fantastic production of the Wizard of Oz in Potter's Bar (I've been to Isafjordur, Talkeetna, Helsinki, Bergen and even Sheffield, but this felt further north than any of them) I was so late to the gym this morning I only just got there in time for the Sky News intro to the Brown-Obama press conference. The guys were sort of pottering about in a Downing St room, making like just an ordinary social call that just happened to be picked up by half a dozen news cameras, so it was an excellent opportunity to examine how they tackled the 'just act natural' challenge.

Brown sort of shuffled about and smiled (a less frightening sight than when I first saw him in the flesh, striding through the NFT shoulder to elbow with Wilf Stevenson in 1993, but still deeply unnerving) and was presumably saying things to Obama like "yes we did have to get new curtains and carpets in here; you wouldn't believe the state the last people left it in". What fascinated me though was how Obama seeemed to be silently upstaging him all the time just by body language. He constantly used an 'ushering' kind of gesture that suggested it was his house, not Brown's, and made Brown look as though he was following Obama around. The nicest touch though (used on the BBC's 10 o' clock news tonight) was as they walked past the cameras to leave the room. As they drew level with the cameras, Obama casually put his arm round Brown's shoulders, so that the last image we got was a rear view of the two of them with Obama's arm lying proprietorially across Brown's bowed, weary-looking back. It wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been done at that precise moment.

It was almost as much fun as watching my daughter play a Munchkin, a Poppy, a Winkie, a JitterBug and a resident of the Emerald City. But not quite.

Delivery

Why has this word achieved such tenacious success in education? Otherwise intelligent and sensible teachers tell me with a straight face that they have developed a scheme of work on such-and-such and plan to 'deliver it' next term, or whenever. When challenged they usually say yes, it is a bit of a silly word, but it's become such standard usage now that they don't notice it. I used to forbid the word in my department at the BFI, except when applied to milk or stationery. I suppose it's a bit like 'workshop' - an almost equally ridiculous term when you think about what usually goes on in them. I use it often myself, despite Alexei Sayle's observation that 'anyone who uses the term "workshop" for anything other than light engineering is a prat'.

I suppose both words are part of the new no-nonsense vocabulary of Eduspeak: part of a culture in which everything is planned and foreseen, learning outcomes are reduced to simple propositions that you can look up online, and kids sit in rows facing the front, once again. 'Delivery' sounds so purposeful and unproblematic. But my husband TAS points out to me that, for something to be delivered, someone has to be at home to receive it. It is actually a transaction, not the simple one-way transmission that Eduspeak seems to assume.

Maybe it's not such an appropriate word after all. How about 'teaching'? No, of course not - it'll never catch on.

Did Anybody Learn Anything?

There's a book to be written (or maybe it already has been) about the new tough language of education. Gone are the days when we could take pride in the fact that we didn't really know what we were doing: now we've got to 'deliver' the curriculum and measure the 'impacts'. Teachers don't teach poems any more, they 'use' them. I'm liaising with a teacher at the moment who's got to bring five kids to an event at the end of April: we must have exchanged at least four e-mails so far just about the risk analysis she's required to do. The kids have to travel by Tube, get out of the Tube station and cross one main road - at traffic lights - before walking another 100 yards to the venue. This will be on a Tuesday afternoon at 3 pm. I will keep my fingers tightly crossed and hope they don't encounter an escaped axe murderer or an unexpected tidal surge in the Thames. You never know.

Meanwhile, I was chuffed to receive an e-mail completely out of the blue from someone I taught in the early 70s:

"I have fond memories of the lessons you gave" he writes. "I was a scruffy little waif who attended your classes with excitement not knowing what you were going to surprise me with next.

"I remember you making a film with the class, I recall having to jump over the school gates into the playground four or more times due to your demanding directorship, the rest of the epic shooting is I am afraid vague."

No other 'impact' can compare with receiving a message like that after nearly 40 years. It's a good reminder that, whatever the targets and league tables say, we should never forget that we don't know, and most of the time will never find out, what difference we may be making to kids' lives, and we should be humble enough to admit it.

Of course, if I'd done a risk analysis before making the film, there wouldn't have been any jumping over the school gates, and if I'd put my lesson objectives on the board at the start of the lesson as everyone is supposed to do now, no one would have been excited about what I was going to surprise them with next.

I do hope that some of the poor sods whose talents and commitment are ground down by having to churn out the latest initiatives will get messages in 2046 from men and women whose names they've forgotten, saying "thank you for the everlasting impression you made upon me". It's a long wait, but you do find out in the end that it was all worth while.