Educating for Environmental Citizenship in Non-formal Frameworks for Secondary Level Youth

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Conceptualizing Environmental Citizenship for 21st Century Education ; Chapter 14 (2020) , 213-235

For the purpose of this chapter, it is valuable to briefly distinguish between nonformal and informal education – terms that are often used interchangeably. Nonformal and informal learning takes place in out-of-school environments and settings (e.g. libraries, exhibits, museums, science centres, zoos, aquaria, botanical gardens and wildlife-based environments, community centres and organisations, etc.). Scholars (Eshach 2007; Falk 2006) assert that the distinction should take into account not only the physical environment in which learning takes place but other aspects, especially the underlying motivation and interest of the learner to learn, the social contexts and socially-constructed nature of learning as well as the organisation of the learning and assessment. According to Eshach, informal learning refers to learning that may happen in spontaneous situations that happen in people’s lives
and other unstructured activities. Thus, the learning is open, intrinsically motivated (i.e. individual’s choice) and is usually individually lead (control over learning). Informal learning is often referred to as ‘free-choice’ learning (NAAEE 2009; Ballantyne and Packer 2005).