“In all the fighting over education we are simply saying that we are not yet satisfied- after about a million years of struggling to become human- that we have mastered the fundamental human task, learning. It must also be clear that we will never quite learn how to learn, for since Home sapiens is self-changing, and since the more culture changes the faster it changes, man’ methods and rate of learning will never quite keep pace with his need to learn (Henry, 2000).
Most of us are familiar with formal educational settings. Schools, colleges, large brick buildings, desks in rows, content to be memorized and skills to be learned. These are the images conjured in my mind’s eye when education is discussed. Formal education is the learning that happens within formally constituted educational institutions such as public schools, colleges or universities. Formal education generally follows a prescribed curriculum that dictates very specific outcomes (Hager & Halliday, 2008). The material to be learned may or may not be relevant to the learner and often is not authentic. Dewey (1966) recognized the tension that current society is sufficiently complicated that without formal learning far too many people would miss out on what might be regarded as key societal practices for harmonious and productive living. On the other hand, formal learning within institutions brings with it the danger with such teaching that it becomes disconnected from the day to day practicalities of everyday life (Dewey, 1966; Hager & Halliday, 2008).
In contrast, informal education is the teaching and learning that happens in daily life. Long before systems of public education, every day people were teachers in a variety of settings and roles, such as a family member, as a community member and in social life (Jeffs & Smith, 1999). Many view informal education as the learning that flows from the conversations and activities involved in being members of youth and community groups and the like. In other instances parents teach their children how to throw a ball, read words or tie their shoes and later how to drive and manage a checking account. Informal learning is often authentic and relevant to the time and place in which the learning happens and can happen as individual learning, or as a group of individuals learning together and from each other. The family system a learning setting in which the family encounters significant challenges that they must overcome through rapid, targeted, informal learning. While some of the learning may be independent, much of the learning is inter-related and inter-dependent. Often barriers to learning are present as a result of race, power differentials or social class.
I am most interested in the learning and education that happens through informal and nonformal settings and pathways.
Families as learners
What is a Family? Craft and Willadsen (Craft & Willadsen, 1992) define family as a social context consisting of at least two persons characterized by caring, mutual attachment, long-term commitment and responsibility with family member responsibilities that include supportive relationships and attending to the health of members and the family unit. This definition assumes that the family is more than the sum of its individuals and is characterized by caring, mutual attachment and long-term commitment. Alternative definitions of family place different emphasis on the roles of families, importance of certain structures and the functions that families play. Seligman and Darling identify eight functions: economic; daily care/ health care; recreation; socialization; self-identity; affection; educational/vocational; and spiritual.
Families are so diverse that there are many types of families as there are families in this word. Families are often multigenerational with various educational backgrounds, experiences, and personal interests, even within a single family group. They are found in all geographic locations and speak different languages and live by different cultural norms. They differ by structure, roles, functions, religious affiliation and income. They also differ in the ways in which they learn both as individuals and as a family system. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is an important theory to understand because he theorizes that all individuals have different sets of strengths, intelligences and preferred modes of learning (Gardner, 1993). Family members, and thereby families, are diverse in their strengths and abilities, and that the ways in which they learn is diverse as well, with intelligences including interpersonal, intra-persona, kinesthetic, spatial, logical and linguistic. Given this diversity, the use of the Family Systems Theory and Socio-ecological model help find commonalities between the ways families interact with each other and with the world, providing a framework with which to think about families as learning systems.
Barriers to Informal Learning
At this point it may be evident that family members and family systems must do a great deal of informal learning and self-education. The need is authentic and intense and usually the amount of time they have with which to learn is quite small. If one assumes that the formal education system in the United States is often not prepared to teach the types of skills necessary for self-directed learning, family members are likely at a loss. When you layer this against possible disadvantages due to race, ethnicity, geographic location or social class, the situation can seem overwhelming.
I am white and educated. I have certain privilege that come along with these attributes. But because of life changes I have made as a result of my son’s rare disease I also made below the poverty line last year, my children are on Medicaid and I’m a single mom. These are attribute that put me squarely in the “have- not” category in the world of privilege and power transactions. I think about this a lot in health care. Every ‘strike’ against you makes it that much harder for you to get your child the best care, to learn what you need to learn. There is no easy path. Anything that makes the fight harder, anything that put barriers in your way, is not only unfortunate but there can be dire consequences. The following quote is written by an anthropologist who accompanies families to doctor visits and videotapes the interactions.
Not surprisingly, a key issue for families concerns whether or not they can trust their clinicians. The most minute nuances and gestures of health professionals (esp. doctors) are routinely scrutinized, becoming a subject of storytelling and puzzling. What are they trying to tell me? parents wonder. What are they hiding? Do they treat me this way because I’m black? A man without a job? A single mother? Do they think I’m a “ghetto mom”? Do they think I’m abusing my child? Are they experimenting on my child? Are they ignoring me because I’m on Medicaid? Do they think I’m not strong enough, bright enough, educated enough, to hear the truth? These are the sorts of questions asked by families in our research, and they are asked again and again. (Mattingly, 2006)
The call for disruptive changes
During the 1980s, the development of a vigorous family movement in wraparound approaches began to stimulate changes in service delivery and agency culture that were more family friends. But many of the changes stopped at ‘family focused’, short of ‘family driven’. Family-driven describes service delivery that is grounded in the experiences, expertise, strengths, hopes, dreams, desires, and needs of the individual children, youth, and families that are being served. Osher states that during this transition:
“The failure to recognize the distinction between being family-focused and family-driven in the system of care literature has led to ambiguous policy, as well as to unfulfilled expectations on the part of families and service providers alike due to confusion of distinct approaches at a rhetorical and a conceptual level (Osher & Osher, 2002).”
But, as Friedman (2007) stated, “this platform enables individuals, groups, companies, and universities anywhere in the world to collaborate—for the purposes of innovation,
production, education, research, entertainment, and alas, war-making—like no creative platform ever before (p. 205)”. In this flattening world, the opportunity exists for patients to have more access to learning materials and informal education opportunities, and more opportunities to find the information that they need to be able to advocate for a family-driven health care experience.
In order for this shift to move beyond the experience of individual families and begin to change what happens at the societal level, families will need to work together towards a shared vision. Social innovation is a process of collaboration and joint discovery and is not based on a sole individual’s epiphany (Berkun, 2007). Innovation is a cultural process (Robinson, 2007) and research evidence suggests a need for a balanced role between individuals and groups during the creative process.
The shift will likely be messy as families learn to self-education and advocate, as community members and organizations learn to become better members of an informal learning process, and as health care professionals learn to value the needs, wishes and individual experiences of families. Clayton Christianson calls this messy phase a time of disruption. Disruption is “a powerful body of theory that describes how people interact and react, how behavior is shaped, how organizational culture form and influence decision (Christensen, Johnson, & Horn, 2008).
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