Everyday Scholars: Framing Informal Learning in Terms of Academic Disciplines and Skills

Abstract

This article discusses shopping, especially critical shopping, as a process of informal and incidental adult learning about the intersecting politics of globalization and consumption. The author uses academic skills and disciplines as a metaphor to respond to an emerging conceptual question: To what extent can formality, informality, and incidentalism be seen as aspects of adult learning? The author conceptualizes learning as a holistic process, with emotional, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions, and identifies five themes that illustrate how the multidimensional learning in an everyday process such as shopping incorporates all three aspects. These themes are referred to as learning to learn, learning to do research, learning to develop a philosophy of shopping, learning to build a shopping-related literacy, and learning to construct a shopper’s geography. This metaphor helps convey the depth and breadth of everyday learning and blur the conceptual distinction between formal and informal or incidental learning.