THE LINKAGE BETWEEN DIFFERENT LEARNING CONTEXTS

THE LINKAGE BETWEEN DIFFERENT LEARNING CONTEXTS

LA VINCULACIÓN ENTRE LOS DISTINTOS CONTEXTOS DE APRENDIZAJE

Abimael Díaz-Lozano¹

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3743-0209

¹ Universidad Pablo Latapí Sarre. México.

ABSTRACT

The article analyzes the importance of the linkage in the pedagogical process of the different learning contexts. The role of the teacher is highlighted when conceiving and designing a classroom environment. Among the aspects that are addressed are the different contexts from a comprehensive perspective, which allow understanding the whole environment that surrounds and influences the student learning.

Keywords:

Education, skills, learning contexts.

RESUMEN

En el artículo se analiza la importancia de la vinculación en el proceso pedagógico de los distintos contextos de aprendizaje. Se destaca el papel del docente en el momento de concebir y diseñar un ambiente en el aula. Entre los aspectos que se abordan se encuentran los diferentes contextos desde una mirada integral, que permitan conocer todo el ambiente que rodea e influye en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes.

Palabras clave:

Educación, habilidades, contextos de aprendizaje.

INTRODUCTION

The history of education and all its fields dates back to the 60's, where there was a great change in the concept of education, since it was considered as a learning process no matter where or when it was taught. Later, well into the 19th century, pedagogy was based on education, forgetting that it is something more important than what takes place at school.

In present times the concept has been modified due to the need for change, because now all areas of knowledge are promoted with the same importance. Learning outside the traditional educational institution and lifelong learning have been recognized, have been valued and are promoted and developed by different institutions.

Therefore, educational opportunities could be framed in the following terms: Formal, informal and non-formal education. But what do them each mean? and, above all, how do they differ?

Formal learning is the one that results from an institutionalized, intentional and planned education by accredited public and private organizations that, as a whole, are part of the country's educational system. It essentially refers to the training acquired prior to the individual's incorporation into the labor market (Pastor Homs, 1999, 2011).

Non-formal learning is also the result of an institutionalized, intentional and planned process by the providers of education. It represents an alternative or complementary training to that acquired within the formal system. It provides to all age groups and it is generally provided in the form of short courses, seminars or workshops.

Informal learning is the learning that it´s not institutionalized, programmed or intentionally acquired, although it may be oriented. It refers to experience gained in daily life, in the family circle, at work or in the local environment. This is how we learn to speak, walk, and interact.

Building a teaching and learning scenario becomes a permanent challenge for teachers, as long as the interest of it, which becomes to achieve the transforming action that it is present in some cases expressly indicated in the learning objectives, all this means a challenge because it has the duty to build an architecture that accounts for the process that is experienced to achieve (Trilla Bernet, 2013).

What elements should the teacher take into account when conceiving and designing a classroom environment that serves the teaching pretensions and the achievement of the students' learning objectives? Among the aspects that are considered valuable are the context from an integral point of view, in such a way that it enables the teacher to have a critical perspective not only from the student, but also from the institution, the curriculum, and others, derived from the need to know the entire environment that surrounds the student.

This article is presented with the intention that this critical and analytical exercise can be a reference on how this aspect can be considered basic when building a teaching environment for a subject. The first part presents theoretical positions that refer to the context as an element to be taken into account when teaching. The methodology that was followed is addressed and finally the conclusions are presented.

METHODOLOGY

The methodological approach is qualitative and is based on the method of bibliographic search, therefore, the meaning in the stories of innovative people and authors and the way in which they perceive the development and learning process in educational spaces (formal, non-formal and informal) is recorded and interpreted.

Having as a framework the bibliographic research process and after analyzing informative material such as books, magazines, Web sites and other necessary information, the following results were obtained.

DEVELOPMENT

From a methodological criterion, the formal would be the scholastic and the non-formal would be the non-scholastic. The form of school would refer to styles that structure the school experience. Therefore, the form of the school would be characterized by certain determinations such as: the face-to-face form of teaching; the system of distribution and grouping of subjects; the own space; organization of time and space; asymmetrical roles defined by the positions of knowing and not knowing, forms of organization of knowledge for the purposes of teaching, and a set of practices that obey highly stable rules; that is, non-formal contexts would be developed through procedures or instances that deviate to a greater or lesser extent from the canonical or conventional forms of school (Castillo-Cárdenas & Gastaldi, 2005; Marúm & Reynoso, 2014; Pegurer-Caprino & Martínez-Cerdá, 2016).

Thus, according to the structural criterion, the formal context is understood as a highly institutionalized, chronologically graded and hierarchically structured educational system that extends from Early Education to Higher Education. Meanwhile non-formal learning contexts are defined as organized, systematic educational activities carried out outside the framework of the formal system.

These contexts are considered important to facilitate learning in particular groups of the population. Likewise, non-formal contexts are distinguished by their final character, in the sense that they do not lead to educational levels or grades like the formal system but rather to the social and productive environment; by their potential flexibility and functionality with respect to programs and methods. In other words, it can be said that the structural criterion considers the school, with its levels, grades, teachers, and activities as a formal learning context; these schools continue with their forms and some have varied.

In relation to formal learning, there are not so many doubts, since it includes school education, more precisely the learning that takes place in the school system. However, it is important to note that schooling also includes secondary and higher education. Formal learning takes place in an institutionalized, chronologically qualified and hierarchically structured educational system.

With non-formal learning there are more problems. The boundaries and differences between formal and non-formal learning are often not clear. In both there is teaching, there is a timetable and there may even be evaluations and certificates in non-formal education. The difference is that the latter is less structured and more flexible, and can be provided by a multiplicity of governmental and non-governmental agents, to serve all ages and to all educational levels.

Non-formal learning is intentional, the person who attends these forms of education does so for his or her own reasons, and the programs are organized for learning that is intended to complement, support or as a source of learning valorization of formally acquired experiences.

As examples of non-formal learning are training programs provided by institutions of the social community, such as libraries, music schools, foreign language schools, community centers or other centers that organize training courses for various skills: musical instruments, dance, theater, sports, painting and mime.

With informal learning there are often major confusions. To begin with, as mentioned above, it cannot be called informal education but informal learning. It is an autonomous learning; the important thing is that it is learning that is not mediated by a teaching activity. This is a learning process that occurs subordinate and undifferentiated to other social processes, that is, it is intertwined with other cultural realities, being, therefore, a lifelong process, from which people acquire knowledge, skills or attitudes through everyday experiences and their relationship with the environment.

For example, learning a foreign language while living in the country where that language is spoken, through conversations with a friend or relative, movies, songs or using the Internet, reading books, magazines or newspapers, learning new things incidentally or learning more ways to use computers by completing an activity with its help.

There are criteria that allow the analysis of learning (formal, non-formal, informal), since each learning environment has characteristics that allow them to be differentiated or equated with each other; in this sense, several authors contributed to their characterization. One of them proposes four characteristics: structuring - linked to the organization of educational practices, universality - referring to the recipients of educational actions -, duration - taking into consideration the permanence of the person in the context - and institution - institutionalization of learning in context, that is, the existence of an establishment with educational purposes.

We must consider that the expression 'non-formal education' was coined to satisfy the need for extracurricular responses to new and different demands to be met by the educational system. Precisely in the 1970s, this type of context increased importance as a training strategy aimed at social groups that did not receive a complete basic education.

The school system is no longer the only resource for meeting social expectations of training and learning. It has long been difficult to imagine the daily life of children and adolescents without the presence of the school institution, but nowadays, and increasingly so, it is also difficult to imagine it without extracurricular activities and assistance services or other non-formal educational environments.

Formal and non-formal educations have a common attribute that they do not share with informal education: that of organization and systematization, therefore, it must be recognized that there is a different logical relationship between the three.

Formal and non-formal education share the same educational intentionality and the differences between the forms that both assume can be thought of, rather than as radically opposed, as a continuum in which at one extreme would be placed a type of formal education and at the other extreme flexible forms of non-formal education. Informal education is represented by the product of spontaneous and daily experiences in the social environment and provokes learning of various types in the individual.

In this context, non-formal education adopts various categories covering different activities that can be carried out within this educational field: activities aimed at developing the skills and knowledge of members of the labor force who are already employed, activities that prepare for employment, which can be considered as alternatives or as complementary to formal education, activities aimed at developing skills and knowledge that are not specifically related to participation in the labor force (literacy programs, nutrition and health clinics, home economics classes, family planning), training activities for individuals and community groups, activities for updating professionals, among others.

This breadth in the coverage of non-formal education has the advantage of being flexible and compatible with other ways of approaching education, as well as proposing other ways of learning beyond school limitations. On the other hand, non-formal education, due to its flexible nature, can be useful to face the demands that originate from changes in thinking, scientific discoveries, new technologies, since it allows rapid and relevant adaptation to innovations.

When we speak of the task of educating, we refer, in addition to its teleological or finalistic character, to the practice of an activity that requires the performance of a more or less ample quantity of actions in accordance with the intended purpose. The term that synthesizes these actions is teaching or, the actions aimed at facilitating the learner's learning.

This teaching necessarily implies the intention that someone learns as a result of what one does. Teaching requires knowledge of both the teacher and the student and there is a special relationship between them.

This dual requirement of intention and recognition of a special responsibility between the two is what distinguishes a genuine teaching situation from that one in which only one part provides information to the other (the transmitting function of education).

The intention to teach, moreover, must be translated into forms of organization and transmission of knowledge to facilitate learning and the recognition that implies not only the acceptance of goals and tasks but also the agreement to play the corresponding role.

It is a commitment to correspondence, although in this regard commitment necessarily has the tone of gravity that it suggests, rather it refers to a minimum acceptance, sometimes even conditioned, that allows the deployment of teaching and learning.

In short, the educational relationship is the set of relationships that are established between the educator and the learners, in order to achieve educational objectives, in a given structure and context. Relationships that have identifiable cognitive, affective and emotional characteristics, an experiential development, living a history of responsibility and mutual recognition.

Undoubtedly, relationships are absolutely necessary in the task of educating. They can manifest themselves and take on a very diverse character. However, according to some authors, there is a type of relationship that is totally harmful to the educational act itself; this is the relationship of dependence in the teaching-learning process.

Thus, from this perspective, the learner is considered a constructor of his own knowledge and learning (constructivist learning). However, generating of an environment of freedom and autonomy is encouraged in order to foster active and continuous participation in the teaching and learning process.

From another perspective, the teacher, on the other hand, is conceived as an educational professional who intervenes in this process in a conscious and responsible manner; endowed with an specific training, who chooses the appropriate and right moment to relax and yield, in some cases, but who also regulates his pedagogical intervention.

CONCLUSIONS

From all the above, it is clear that the educational relationship possesses some inalienable values that characterize it; a cordial attitude, with a series of consequences related to the new way of contemplating personal relationships in education: autonomy and freedom, care for the other, intimacy, loneliness, historicity, joy, happiness, pain, sadness. And with an orientation towards separation. Separation in that the cordial relationship should be provisional and should only be maintained until separation is the culmination of any educational relationship because it implies the deepest recognition of the other as an autonomous and independent being.

We can conclude that all three learning environments contribute to the personality development of young people and can lead to a sustainable development of society through a process of interdependence. Thus, formal learning can have benefits if it can creatively integrate the multiple influences of non-formal and informal learning. At the same time, the accumulations registered in formal learning can contribute to the development and efficiency of the other two: non-formal and informal.

These interactions often make it difficult to establish clear limits between one and the other, which is called mutual intrusions, establishing different relationships as a result of this close link, such as relationships of complementarity, substitution, substitution or reinforcement and collaboration.

Thus, some non-formal education programs can reinforce and cooperate with formal institutions through visits to museums, activities in environmental clubs, libraries, plenary conferences, workshops, among others.

These interrelationships give the learning practice a holistic, collaborative and synergistic character.

Likewise, they refer to hybrid learning contexts, coming from and converging with the fusion of different learning contexts: formal, non-formal and informal. In this sense, and in view of the variety of learning environments, it is important to emphasize that learning cannot be limited only to formal educational situations. Moreover, the boundaries between different learning environments are intertwined, which leads to the understanding that the acquisition of knowledge is a permanent process, and therefore requires strategies that frame self-learning as part of a continuum.

Formal learning have a relatively short period in a person's life, usually in childhood, adolescence and youth, although it can also take place in adulthood; for example, those who venture into the study of a postgraduate career (specializations, masters or doctorates) may spend 25 years or even longer in the classroom. It is important to adapt political and social actions to allow a large part of society to have access to formal educational spaces.

Non-formal learning often accompanies the learning process that takes place in formal contexts, or takes place separately from these (singing courses, language classes, tennis lessons, conferences, seminars, internships, etc.). Many people come to have more educational experience through non-formal than formal channels. The Internet, for example, has broadened and diversified the scope of non-formal learning.

Learning is not unique, since it is built throughout people's lives in different environments, family, friends, school, high school, university, extracurricular activities and many more that we may not be able to measure or experience, since each learning is specific to each person and the needs that awaken the experience.

REFERENCES

Castillo-Cárdenas, P., & Gastaldi, L. (2005). Estado de la educación en medios en el currículum escolar en Iberoamérica. Comunicar, 24, 13-20.

Marúm Espinosa, E., & Reynoso Cantú, E. L. (2014). La importancia de la educación no formal para el desarrollo humano sustentable en México. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación Superior, 5(12), 137-155.

Pastor Homs, M. I. (1999). Ámbitos de intervención en Educación no formal. Una propuesta taxonómica. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Pastor Homs, M. I. (2011). Orígenes y evolución del concepto de educación no formal. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 220.

Pegurer-Caprino, M., & Martínez-Cerdá, J. (2016). Alfabetización mediática en Brasil: Experiencias y modelos en educación no formal. Comunicar, 49, 39-48.

Trilla Bernet, J. (2013). La educación no formal. https://uni3.uy/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/1-La-educacion-no-formal-Jaume-Trilla.pdf