When reality surpasses concepts

More than half a century ago, UNESCO popularised the terms formal, non-formal and informal to define, organise and characterise the macrocosm of educational actions. In this article I question the current relevance of these categories, and the characteristics of education and learning that act and i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Úcar, Xavier|||0000-0003-3678-8277
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:304977
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/304977
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2024.v13.x.018
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Social pedagogy
Informal education
Informal learning
Formal education
Non-formal education
Formal learning
Non-formal learning
Descripción
Sumario:More than half a century ago, UNESCO popularised the terms formal, non-formal and informal to define, organise and characterise the macrocosm of educational actions. In this article I question the current relevance of these categories, and the characteristics of education and learning that act and intervene within the framework of social pedagogy. I focus mainly on informal learning, not only because it is the least well-known type of educational action, but because it is one of the central pillars on which the socio-educational relationships developed by social educators are built. I follow an orientated, though not systematic, procedure of documentary analysis. The analysis is conceptually orientated because I analyse two types of documents: (a) the documents that refer to informal education or learning, regardless of the territorial context or academic environment in which they are produced; and (b) those that relate such education or learning to social pedagogy. I organise the results obtained from these analyses into four sections. In the first section, I relate what different studies have proposed on formal, non-formal and informal education/learning, the ways of understanding them and the contents and procedures that respectively distinguish them. On the basis of this research, in the second section, I then propose a means of mapping to distinguish between the three types of education/learning. In the third section, I relate these forms of education/learning to social pedagogy. And finally, in the fourth section, by way of conclusion, I present some of the overlaps and hybridisations that demonstrate the current complexity of the universe entailing educational actions.