Dear Terry Anderson,
Coming from a European research communitee at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, I just obtained my PhD with a dissertation on Experienced teachers' informal learning in the workplace. In my study I found that informal learning is 'how we usually learn'. I believe that educational institutions should focus more on 'how we usually learn' and accomodate this learning, rather than focussing on instruction.
In out future society it will be more important to know how to learn than to know a lot. Especially since today's knowledge is not sufficient to solve tomorrow's problems. Teaching our students what we know is not enough. They need to know how to learn, how to be resourceful, what to do if nobody knows the answer....
Despite formal education, people in today's society develop all sorts of strategies to learn how to cope with situations that formal education does not prepare them for. Let's find out what these strategies are. We need to know how people 'usually' learn online, on facebook, through gaming, so that we can learn which strategies are successful and which are not. We also need to know which factors enhance or inhibit such 'informal' learning.
So I don't think its presumptuous to create an agenda for the study of informal learning, I think it is a necessity.
In March I presentedat the American Educational Research Association conference in New York. Our symposium was on the methodology of research into informal learning. If anyone is interested in our papers, please let me know.
Annemarieke Hoekstra; research consultant at Nait, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada