A back to school reminder that the best learning often happens out of the classroom
The case for cultivating informal learning experiences
What does learning look like? You might picture a teacher standing at the front of a classroom explaining a new idea. Students raise their hands, take notes, solve problems, or discuss a prompt with a partner. It’s a familiar image. This kind of learning, often called formal learning, is an incredibly important part of childhood. It is structured, intentional, and guided by someone with expertise.
It’s also the kind of learning our society tends to value most, in part because we can see it and measure it.
As an educator and former classroom teacher, I’ve always been just as fascinated by another type of learning: informal learning. In fact, I think some of the deepest, most enduring learning happens when nobody is trying to teach.
Researchers Coombs and Ahmed (1974) define informal learning as “the lifelong process by which every person acquires and accumulates knowledge, skills, attitudes and insights from daily experiences and exposure to the environment.” Unlike formal learning, informal learning isn’t organized into lessons or guided by a curriculum. It happens while we’re living our lives.
Learning in Context
Informal learning is powerful because it happens within a context where that knowledge is relevant.
Instead of learning a skill because someone says, “You’ll need this someday,” you learn because you actually need it for whatever you’re trying to do.
This type of learning can also transfer better. You’re not just memorizing an idea, you’re gaining usable knowledge that you can apply later on and in new situations.
Think back to math class. Many of us remember asking, When am I ever going to use this? The math itself wasn’t the problem—it was that it existed outside the situations where it mattered.
Cooking, on the other hand, is learning in context. Maybe a recipe needs to be doubled, or you’re missing a key tool or ingredient. Fractions, multiplication, estimation, and problem-solving aren’t abstract concepts in the kitchen. The goal isn’t to learn fractions, it’s to make a dessert, but all of that other learning happens along the way.
Why I Care So Much About Cooking
This is one of the reasons I care so deeply about getting kids into the kitchen.
Cooking creates a reason to read carefully, manage time, solve problems, and make decisions. Home cooks (kids included) aren’t practicing these skills because they’ve been assigned a worksheet. They’re using them because they have a job to do.
For kids, learning in the kitchen should feel really different from learning in school. In the kitchen, we are asked to make countless small decisions without anyone telling us the “right” answer. Does this batter look mixed enough? Should I scrape the bowl one more time? What should I do if I spilled some flour? Can I make this work with what we have?
This is really at the heart of Nibblings. I want kids to learn to cook, of course, but I also want them to have more opportunities to learn in this way. Cooking gives kids something real to do, and all sorts of other learning happens while they’re doing it.
If we want children to become lifelong learners, we have to let them experience learning as something bigger than school. We want them to discover that learning isn’t something adults make them do, it’s something that helps them accomplish missions they care about.
Making Room for Informal Learning
Summer often brings longer stretches of uninterrupted time, mixed-age play, family projects, vacations, real responsibilities, boredom, and the freedom to pursue interests that don’t fit neatly into a curriculum.
Those are exactly the kinds of conditions where informal learning flourishes.
As the summer comes to an end and kids start returning to their formal learning environments, take a second to honor all of the informal learning and growth your kid got to experience out of the classroom these past few months. There is a lot of fear out there about the summer slide and entering new grades with new expectations. I encourage parents instead to consider how they can continue to cultivate the rich learning that happened over the summer and how that can support the necessary but often less enjoyable formal learning that comes with the school year.
Learn to Cook. Cook to Learn.
