Limitations of informal education for sustainable development, or: the necessity of linking formal and informal learning in the global context

In the field of education, globalization processes and corresponding global challenges such as climate change and social disparities are described with regard to the related learning challenges. Non-governmental organizations... [ view full abstract ]

In the field of education, globalization processes and corresponding global challenges such as climate change and social disparities are described with regard to the related learning challenges. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important actors in international development cooperation and offer people in the Global North opportunities to support global developmental efforts and participate in humanitarian activities, for example through donations. In doing so their aim is twofold: to gather money for their causes and to educate people about global problems and initiatives to address these. Many activities of NGOs in countries of the North can therefore be understood as opportunities for incidental or informal learning: they implicitly convey concepts of development and development cooperation and influence people‘s orientations in the world society.

Against this background, the presentation deals with the potentials and limitations of informal learning opportunities regarding global issues. For this purpose, it draws on empirical results on learning processes of young people in Germany engaged in child sponsorship programmes for children in the Global South. Child sponsorships are concrete options to support development cooperation and at the same time a form of North-South encounter. For those involved – here students at German schools – they represent an informal learning opportunity in the global context (Scheunpflug 2005). In a qualitative study learning experiences of young sponsors were reconstructed through the analysis of 29 group discussions (theoretical sampling) by means of the documentary method (Bohnsack 2010). The comparative analysis resulted in the identification of three types of learning experiences in child sponsoring. With regard to the question of informal learning regarding the world society, the presentation will focus on the question as to whether these types indicate processes of global learning and, on a more general level, discuss the thereby revealed necessity of linking formal and informal learning regarding complex global issues.