Mathison, c.,Wachowiak, S., Feldman, L. (2007). School in the Park: Bridging Formal and Informal Learning Environments. Childhood Education, 83(4), 206-210.
This article discusses a unique program in San Diego called School in the Park (SITP) which blends rigorous academic standards (formal learning) with experiential curricula (informal learning). Student in this program studied at the park’s museums (and the San Diego Zoo) with museum educators. This learning context fosters students’ active engagement in authentic, multi-sensory, purposeful exploration and study (Mathison et al., 2007). The authors explains that the SITP learning environment reflects several key interrelated principle of brain-based learning which focuses on our understanding of how human beings construct knowledge.
1) Where there is meaning, there is learning
2) There is no learning without emotion
3) Movement facilitates learning
4) Making multiple connections between new information and prior knowledge enhances memory.
(Caine & Caine, 1994)
The authors argues that teachers are responsible for teaching students what they need to know, but more focused attention on the processes of learning might open new avenues of pedagogical possibilities and these avenues may be paved with Web-based technologies that bring museum exhibits from around the world to the classroom. It signifies this blending of formal and informal learning environments, whether actual or virtual, presents students with the most fertile of fields in which to learn.