Informal learning as a paradigm for classroom learning suggests that learning is holistic, and is steeped in inclusiveness and connectedness.  As I suggested yesterday, John Dewey wrote about the importance of an “experiential education” more than 100 years ago, and his words are just as relevant today, as they were then.

For many years I co-taught a university course on environmental science and geology.  However, the course was a three-week “field” trip from Atlanta, Georgia to the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  In addition to fossil hunting in Kansas along our bus route, visiting museums in Denver, exploring the rocks and strata in the Rockies, observing wildlife at 10,000 feet, we spent several days in the backcountry backpacking and camping.  We couldn’t have provided a more informal science experience than three weeks in the Rocky Mountains.  During those trips, incidental learning was in greater supply than formal lessons—in fact, I am hard put to recall any formal lessons during these explorations of the West.  But I do remember returning and teaching courses in the Fall semester at Georgia State University and longing for the informality of learning that ignited the students (all teachers) in their quest for understanding environmental science and geology.

A hummingbird in the Colorado Rockies

Although a month away, I want to bring to the attention of readers of this blog that Earthday is an important aspect of informal learning.  Here is how.  Earthday is the result of a grassroots environmental movement that began in 1970, and has grown to become a world event.  Yes, there is the formality of way in which the media “covers” each Earthday, but at its heart is the paradigm of informal learning.  Individuals join with others to create a sense of community to try and solve serious environmental problems.  At first, the movement was to bring environmental awareness to the general population, and bring to the fore the need for government and industry to do something about the environment.  A lot has changed since the first Earthday.  Take a look at who heads the Office of Science & Technology.  His name is John Holdren. I wrote about his work last year on this blog. To get an idea of his thinking, here is one of his talks that you can view: Holdren’s Powerpoint presentation.

Earthday is an informal way that humans have invented to focus on the natural environment.  Some years ago, Fritjof Capra wrote a groundbreaking book entitled The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism.  In Capra’s view, the natural world is one of “infinite varieties and complexities; a multidimensional world which contains no straight lines or completely regular shapes, where things do not happen in sequences, but all together.”  Capra viewed the Eastern philosophy as a new paradigm, one that was holistic and integrated, rather than a dissociated collection of parts.  This paradigm is in essence what environmental educators have based their work on, and is indeed, what informal science learning fosters in the classroom.

Earthday: a metaphor for a paradigm of informal learning.  As the media begin to report on events related to Earthday, reflect on how these impinge on our understanding of learning in informal settings.

Dusk looking west in the Colorado Rockies