Formal learning is learning that takes place within a teacher-student intentional relationship, such as in a school system. Nonformal learning is organized learning outside the formal learning system, such as clubs, youth organizations, workshops (extra/out-school). Nevertheless, in the educational field, the main theoretical perspective promotes the idea of an “integrated educational system” (school system, family, extra-school educational and not-educational agency, mass-media, Web, etc.).
Published in Chapter:
Learning Processes and ITC
Manuela Gallerani (University of Bologna, Italy)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-845-1.ch068
Abstract
Confronting with the educational emergences defined— in the white paper presented in 1995 by the European commission with the title “Teaching and Learning. Towards a Society of Knowledge”—the Commission identifies three main factors of upheaval: information society, internationalization and the world market, scientific and technological knowledge. These factors involve a modification of the systems of knowledge and work, and, as a consequence, also of educational politics which must promote a personal development of citizens through the development of the necessary competences in dealing with these factors. The consequences that emerge are the reported in the next section. First of all, the society of knowledge is linked with a condition of uncertainty and risk of social exclusion, which determines a great disorientation for the individual. The individua is exposed to infinite cognitive potentialities on one side, but also to a cognitive weakening on the other side. Among these risks, the first is a disorganized and confused fruition of the knowledge resources offered by the symbolic world in which the individual is plunged in. He/she is irreparably depressed when plunged in an infinite net of knowledge which the individual can not reach in a critical way, being also bombarded by pervasive—usually persuasive—information of mass-media pushing him/her toward homologation.