Unit 7: Learning In School and Out Reflection

Direction : Tell us what you have learned, discovered, connected, realized, re-learned throughout Unit 7.

In Unit 7, we compare and contrast learning in school compared to other settings. After reading Eshach’s(2007), I have distinguished the definition of Formal, Non-Formal, and Informal Education :

⭐Formal : in school learning

⭐ Non-formal : Learning Occurs at institutions out of school

⭐ Informal : situation in life that come about spontaneously.

The thing I find most interesting was non-formal learning. It was very convincing to distinguish non-formal and informal learning because even though both types of learning happen out of school, there are huge differences in learning. For example, non-formal learning is usually guided and teacher-led, but informal learning is usually learner led. In my personal theory of learning, I classified types of learning as academic and non- academic learning. However, it is meaningful to take non-formal learning into account.

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For example, on non-formal learning experiences, such as field trip was a typical one in setting. According to Eshach(2007), non-formal learning shares the characteristics of being mediated with formal education, but the motivation for learning may be wholly instrictic to the learner. It reminds me how my students were motivated when they did the Chinese Language field trip. They were at a Chinese restaurant when they just learned how to order food in Chinese. Every student was so motivated, and everybody was trying to order something in Chinese, even the unproductive students.

According to Fallik(2013), students who are not interested in school science often choose to participate in science activities outside school. Therefore, it is suggested that the integration of out-of-school science learning activities with science classroom activities will increase student motivation. It reminds me, a learner who is not good at Science at school, but I personally love to participate in a Science and Tech Museum in my personal life. It increased my motivation to do trip-related work in school, and that will make my learning more interactive. Esach (2007) also mentioned how students are benefit from field trip in students’ perspective . Esach mentioned that researchers are usually interested in and focus on children’s attitudes and altitude changes toward science as a result of the field trip. fieldtrips. Students are aware that they are expected to learn from the trip, and that it should not only be a “fun day”, but rather a day where they enjoyably learn science.

Thinking about math department, we have never did any field trips, but the typical non-formal learning was Mathematic Club. Students who are highly interested in math are volunteered to stay after school to do math work. It was also great experience for them to do extra math after school, but with teacher’s(which is me : ) ) guide.

As a result, I actually did a lot of non-formal learning as teacher’s role, but I did not aware the importance before I learn this unit. We are trying to make our students more eye-opening and successful not only on formal learning, but we teachers have a lot of room to improve teaching quality in out-of-school learning. We should keep trying to make our students be an interactive, well-rounded learners.

Work Cited  

Eshach, H. (2007). Bridging in-school and out-of-school learning: Formal, non-formal, and informal education. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 16(2), 171-190.

Fallik, O., Rosenfeld, S., & Eylon, B. (2013). School and out-of-school science: A model for bridging the gap. Studies in Science Education, 49:1, 69-91.