Connected Learning: How Adults with Limited Formal Education Learn (American Society of Missiology Monograph Book 44)

by L. Lynn Thigpen

Paradise and Rogoff called this process “a panhuman phenomenon,” “an integrated learning tradition,” and “a cultural tradition of humanity.”633 They commented on the process as follows: What is called informal learning is often taken to be learning that everyone engages in “naturally,” by virtue of being human; its grounding in sociocultural practices and their social institutions goes unnoticed. Although it is not simply prefabricated in “human nature,” we believe that is it so compatible with everyday cultural life in a wide array of family and community settings that it tends to become “second nature.” The tendency to conceive of informal learning as natural or simple also reflects a cultural school-centric bias that has impeded understanding of its social and cultural organization. Among highly schooled people, informal ways of learning outside of school through observation and participation are often considered inherently less conceptual or cognitive than formalized school learning.634