A critical examination of informal learning spaces

被引:32
作者
Berman, Naomi [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Tokyo, Coll Arts & Sci, Ctr Global Commun Strategies, Tokyo, Japan
基金
日本学术振兴会;
关键词
Twenty-first century learning; informal learning spaces; social exclusion; HIGHER-EDUCATION; PLACE; POWER;
D O I
10.1080/07294360.2019.1670147
中图分类号
G40 [教育学];
学科分类号
040101 ; 120403 ;
摘要
Globally, the future of the higher education sector is under increasing scrutiny, and questions are being asked about the relevance of universities as traditional sites of teaching and learning. In an effort to adapt to the complexities that beset the higher education environment, universities are exploring the utility and benefits offered through informal learning spaces. However, the emergence of informal learning spaces raises important questions regarding student behaviours and 'learning', including the dichotomous positioning of the categories 'formal' and 'informal'. This article highlights a tendency in the literature to treat informal learning spaces in a romanticised and overdetermined way. It challenges some of the popular imaginaries of these spaces as free, open and democratising in terms of students' use, technological affordances, and a largely unchallenged emphasis on forms of community and collaboration as if they are unproblematic. Indeed, a persistently undefined 'social' quality attributed to informal learning settings, coupled with a focus on design and technology elements, elides the possibility of negative social practices such as exclusion and marginalisation. Moreover, empirical treatments of these spaces are dominated by quantitative methods that rely on deterministic cause and effect models, including normative understandings of academic success, as a measure of effectiveness. If universities are to proceed in better understanding these learning sites and the meanings and practices students bring to them, new perspectives incorporating more critical, interpretive qualitative approaches that give primacy to understanding the ways in which these spaces might reproduce marginalising or exclusionary social practices are required.
引用
收藏
页码:127 / 140
页数:14
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