What are the benefits of informal education? Inquiring minds want to know. Before I started Science is Elemental, I never imagined I would be an informal educator. I didn’t think I would ever stand in front of a classroom again. I have other teaching experiences. These include:

• Tutoring, with no more than four students at a time
• Teaching in a Tae Kwon Do setting, in a very limited way
• Acting as a teaching assistant in graduate school

As any teacher, of any type will tell you, teaching kids science is not the same thing.

So what is informal education, what have I been doing, and is there any evidence for its effect, good or bad?

What is informal education?

I have found several definitions for informal education, and an article which compares many of them. The authors of that article describe informal education as:

• Works through, and is driven by conversation (as opposed to curriculum)
• Involves exploring and enlarging experiencee
• Can take place in any setting

They go on to describe a continuum of education, with all educators, whether informal or formal by description, use both to varying degrees.

Other definitions are more fixed to settings. An example includes, “a general term that can occur outside of a traditional lecture or school-based learning system.”

I like the first description, because what I have been doing can occur in many different settings, including schools. However, most of my limited informal teaching experience has been with elementary school age students. The article I describe in the next section refers to informal learning for high school students.

Are there benefits to informal education?

I suspect one can find articles arguing many aspects of this question. In this blog post, I am focusing on a specific article in Humanities and Social Science Communications, about informal high school STEM experiences for students in historically marginalized communities (HMC). They set out to answer the following three questions (emphasis from the original paper):

• What progress on STEM pathways do students from HMC make as a result of participation in informal STEM learning experiences?
• What successes and challenges emerge when young people from HMC engage in authentic STEM experiences?
• What aspects of informal STEM learning experiences support young people from HMC in making progress on STEM pathways?

They found, in a mixed method approach, that students make significant gains, in the short and long term, through in-person and remote informal programs, of various time lengths. They attributed progress to authentic research experiences, students’ connections to STEM professionals, direct hands-on participation in projects, and group work.

What does this mean for the benefits from SIE programs?

I can’t say how much of these finding apply to SIE’s work with elementary school aged students, and with the particular ways I am providing informal education. However, it’s comforting to know that at least for the students involved in the study described by that paper, there is real benefit.

For me, this means encouragement to grow my programs, so they can get to the point where a similar study might even be possible.