Informal Learning: A New Model for Making Sense of Experience

Citation

Cattell, A. (2009), "Informal Learning: A New Model for Making Sense of Experience", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 216-217. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197850910962823

Now retired, Lloyd Davies was Head of HR at Yorkshire Water (later Kelda PLC). This book is based on his research on a doctoral programme at Lancaster University Business School and his continued research after completing his thesis. The text is intended for a general and wide readership including learning practitioners and students rather than an academic audience.

The author states “The purpose of this book is to assist readers in learning from their own experiences. Everyone learns from experience, but it is very rare for us to have a clear idea of how that learning takes place, of what mental processes are involved.” As such Davies presents a new model for exploring and practising experiential learning.

The text is structured so that it identifies the key elements of the model as chapter headings and points to some of the dynamics within the text of each chapter.

The first chapter introduces the structure and context of the book, while the second chapter identifies significant earlier writers and commentators, namely: Kolb, Honey and Mumford, Boud, Keogh and Walker, and Jarvis. Other significant writers are identified in each chapter in terms of their relevance to specific chapter content.

Chapter four presents an overview of the model and places comment on the infrastructure of reflection, data gathering and reflection and insight, and credibility checking in perspective as regards application of the model. This and the following chapters describe the various elements of the model and the extent to which they are involved in learning from experience.

Chapter's four to eight cover the infrastructure of reflection in terms of the features that are personal to individuals and which influence the way that each of us views an experience. These include expectations, emotions, opportunity, learning orientation (personality, ability, learned behaviours), and memory.

Chapters nine and ten look at the experience itself as regards observation of experience by self, fellow participants in the experience and informed non‐participants and also in terms of formal knowledge and our own experience.

Chapter twelve considers active sense making from the process of reflection and insight, whilst chapter twelve supports credibility checking our own experience bank to ensure that our conclusions are sustainable and credible.

The final chapter summarises the key elements, and explores possible uses of the model, for the individual, for group learning, and in mentoring and counselling.

Each chapter ends with points for exploration which aid reflection on chapter content and possible application of learning. The text has an easy flow to it and retains reader interest through the use of diagrams, anecdotes, tables and practical examples. This is an uncomplicated and honest commentary on learning. It is obvious that Davies himself practises what he preaches and learned from the experience of his thesis, research and interaction with his research population who he refers to as research colleagues. One comment within the text perhaps best summarises his approach to the model and to the book:

As I listened in my research to people describing their experiences and how they sought to learn from them, and as I read a variety of literatures, and as I drew from my own experiences, a more comprehensive picture of experiential learning gradually evolved.

While the book is firmly rooted in experiential learning and uses this phrase throughout the text, potential readers may consider Informal Learning as the main title of the book to be rather strange. Essentially apart from the title there are no other real references to informal learning within the text. While this in no way detracts from the content of the book the experiential learning message may not reach its full potential audience.