Reflection on the Benefits and Weaknesses of Formal and Informal Learning

Following my last blog post I had some further thoughts about the benefits and weaknesses of formal and informal learning. Please feel free to add your thoughts as I am sure these lists are complete.

Qualification/Certification Routes

• Specialist/Expert Thinking = Rewarded
• Reward = Certificate which is recognised across organisations and sometimes comes with a pay rise or career progression

Weaknesses:

- Expensive and time consuming

- Topic-specific (staff cannot specialise in everything!)

- Is there such a thing as a Specialist or Expert?

- May not change a person’s behaviour

- Leaves staff wanting more formal courses

- Usually provided by external organisations

- May stop other less qualified staff from learning and acting

- Often directive in its approach

- Suggest ‘right & wrong’ thinking

- Mostly based on hypothetical scenarios

- Difficult to measure impact on the business

- Based on ‘one size fits all’ thinking

- Paper certificate offers false re-assurance of passion for the subject, skills and/or knowledge

- Encourages rigorous risk practices and risk averse thinking (see Blog pages)

Benefits:

- Structured

- Easy to measure quantitatively

- Useful when the skill does not exist in-house

- Statutory requirement for some service areas

- Makes partnership working easy

Informal Learning

• Generic/Flexible/Transferable Thinking = Not Rewarded formally
• Celebrates transferable skills and passion-driven

Weaknesses:

- Difficult to measure quantitatively

- Less structured

- Does not cover all skills, particularly technical skills

- Cannot replace statutory required qualification routes, such as Social Work, Teaching etc.

Benefits:

- Often free or low cost – offer more for less (Personalised Pick & Mix Approach)

- Encourages flexible and innovative working practices

- Encourages staff to stay curious and passionate

- Encourages reflective and critical thinking

- Encourages humility and willingness to learn from others

- Encourages the sharing of information and interdependency

- Learning is motivated by current service-specific dilemmas and challenges and is relevant in the moment

- Recognised as a more powerful way to learn

- Work is learning and learning is work

- Celebrating the skills and knowledge in-house through coaching and mentoring

- Encourages personal accountability over learning needs

- Is often autonomous or social

RELATED BLOGS:

What you (think you) know can hurt you - http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthaettus/2012/12/12/9-ways-you-should-be-using-twitter/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social