How is it that a group of young people, encountered in a program designed to remedy behaviour issues and disengagement from schooling, can be found to be engaged (and engaging) learners? What does it mean for these young people when the ‘regular’ classroom becomes a site within which they cannot effectively engage in learning? More intrinsically, what might it mean for these young people, and the communities within which they live, when the prospects for those who leave formal education early will likely include extended periods of unemployment, increased probability of reliance on government assistance and a greater likelihood of social exclusion (The Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth, 2000; Flint, 2011; Deloitte Access Economics, 2012)?
Informal Learning in the Secondary School: Behaviour Remediation Programs and the Informal Learning Environment as a Space for Re-engagement (hereon Informal Learning in the Secondary School), sought to respond to these questions. Drawn from empirical evidence gathered as part of a long-term ethnography of an alternative learning program delivered in a secondary school setting, this project outlined how informality functioned as a central component of a ‘relational pedagogy’ within the alternative learning space.
As a defining feature of the alternative learning program investigated here, informality was expressed as an ‘irreverence’ for the structures and modes of conduct otherwise enacted within the school. A ‘looseness’ pervaded the interactions and practice of the program and it was with this that a range of inter-relationships different to those typically experienced elsewhere in the school emerged. The case site became a ‘disorienting’ space because of this looseness and accordingly provoked new possibilities for learning.
The findings offered in this report suggest that informality, expressed as a core aspect of a ‘relational pedagogy’ and witnessed variously within the modes of instruction, sites of learning and practices of interpersonal interaction that were foundational to the alternative learning space provided a powerful means for extending student learning, enhancing positive inter-relationality and furthering engagement. From this, the conceptual tripartite ‘relationships-behaviour-pathways’ was used to position understandings of the ways students came to, and experienced, the alternative learning program. In particular, this report highlights that the informality of the program enabled different forms of relationality to prosper. By emphasising this connection between informality and the relationality between students and students and teachers, this report outlines how meaningful re-engagement in school might be made more fully possible through a relational pedagogy of informality
