Do I learn outside the classroom? Validation of non-formal learning by Dr. Manuel Souto
Discussions about policy evaluation should come with a warning, because under the rubric ‘evaluation’ many different kinds of studies are included. Although one of the central purposes of evaluation is to improve policy and practice, evaluations may be more or less independent, rigorous, useful, or used. Evaluation is different, but related to, monitoring. While monitoring refers to the systematic collection of information regarding particular aspects, an evaluation provides an assessment of the situation, and hopefully a way to improve things! While evaluation and monitoring are often useful, they can also be harmful, when they are ‘ritualized’ and get in the way of other important tasks, for instance taking up too much time from teachers, or when they dictate too narrowly what students should learn. Evaluations and monitoring both also face the risk of focusing on what can be easily ‘seen’ and counted. Paraphrasing a well-known adage that some attribute to Bruce Cameron: not everything that counts can be ‘seen’ and not everything that can be ‘seen’ counts.
This brings me right to the area that I would like to discuss today: validation of non-formal learning. Have you ever asked yourself: did people learn before we had schools? (schools and universities are not eternal!) Do I learn valuable things outside the classroom? The answer is, obviously, yes to these questions.
The European Commission defines non-formal learning as learning that is not provided by an education and training institution and typically does not lead to certification. However, it is intentional on the part of the learner, and has structured objectives, times and support. Non-formal learning is difficult to ‘see’ (unlike formal qualifications acquired in educational institutions there may not be a structured curriculum and there may not be a certificate or grade by the end of the learning process that the learner could show to others). The challenge that Europe set out for itself, around a decade ago, was to ‘make that learning visible’.
An example of non-formal learning can be the learning that often takes place in youth organizations. A recent study undertaken by the University of Bath and ICF-GHK for the European Youth Forum suggests that this kind of learning can have important benefits for individuals, in terms of their skills development and their employability as well as personal development. Valuing non-formal learning does not imply that formal learning is not important (in this respect O. Wilde’s assertion that ‘Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught’ should be considered a slight exaggeration!, so don’t forget about your textbooks just yet). It simply states that individual learning is much wider than what we learn in the classroom, and people should be able to use the results of all their learning in their job applications, for career progression or during their applications for further studies. Learning occurs in different settings, but learning is learning.
With this view in mind, the European Commission has been monitoring closely developments in the area of non-formal learning for over the last decade in its European Inventory project (where we have consulted a large number of stakeholders, from policy-makers, to teachers, students and human resources managers, for example, in over 30 European countries) and other activities, such as peer-learning activities, where policy-makers from different European countries share good practices in this area to learn from each others’ experiences. This work has informed the 2004 Common European Principles for the validation of non-formal and informal learning, the 2009 European Guidelines for validating non-formal and informal learning and the very recent Council Recommendation on the validation of non-formal and informal learning of 20 December 2012. This is thus an area where policy monitoring has supported policy development and tangible policy outcomes. While you may think this is the case in many other policy areas, sustained monitoring and evaluation tend to be much more commonly used in relation to specific programmes than in relation to wider policy areas. In this respect, validation of non-formal learning is somewhat unique.
There are many things that we have learnt as a result of this monitoring process which we were not expecting, and you can find more information about them in the European Inventory website. A fundamental finding is just how difficult validation is: technically, validation requires a lot of expertise; socially, qualifications present information not only about what we know, but also about who we are and this presents a challenge; economically, the necessary incentives are not always in place to stimulate the take-up of validation by individuals or institutions. Second, we have also found plenty of evidence that validation can be useful not only as an outcome, but also as a process and a ‘space’ for individual reflection –sometimes, again, what cannot be seen so tangibly should not be thought of as important. You may be asking yourself: If non-formal learning is important, why do people not value those more often when recruiting other people for a job or selecting individuals for a course? Our finding in this respect is that they do. Only that this learning needs to be presented in the right way, and for this applicants need to see the value of their own non-formal learning before they can effectively present it. You need to value yourself, before others value you!
Written by Dr. Manuel Souto – Senior Lecturer in Education Policy at the University of Bath
Dr. Manuel Souto has been a consultant on education issues for the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Youth Forum, the Spanish Ministry of Labour and the UK Department of Education, amongst other bodies.
For more information: http://www.bath.ac.uk/education/staff/manuel-souto-otero/
