What is it?
Extracurricular activities and simple day-to-day interactions can build important bonds between students and staff. Schools that invest time (and sometimes money) into getting to know their students outside the context of the classroom tend to have a student body at lower risk of developing health risk behaviours.
The informal curriculum encompasses the many activities that go on in the school setting—or as part of the school community—that are not related to classroom lessons. These include structured or semi-structured activities such as sports, clubs and special events.
The informal curriculum may also include completely unstructured interactions in the hallways, at lunch time or in community settings. These informal curriculum activities can have as much educational validity as any formal lesson.
Level of research support: Evidence of effectiveness
Why do it?
Many teachers see involvement in informal education as a vital extension of their teaching role. Informal education provides a way to share their interests with students, build relationships with students and colleagues, and nurture skills that complement classroom activities. But other teachers emphasize that their role is to teach and that attention to the informal curriculum can be a distraction.
The link between involvement in informal education and academic achievement is supported in the research literature, particularly for high school students (Miller, 2003). Evidence points to positive effects related to social and emotional learning, such as
There is also a growing body of evidence suggesting that students who develop strong connections with school—and positive relationships with teachers and other school staff—attend school more regularly, show less involvement with health-risk behaviours, and have better academic performance (McNeely, 2004; West, 2006; Juvonen, 2007).
One of the main benefits of informal learning is the emphasis on hands-on experiential learning (Miller, 2003). The participatory learning involved in many informal curriculum activities provides opportunities for nurturing the social and emotional competence that contributes to both academic performance and positive health behaviours.
While there is evidence linking informal education to positive educational outcomes, some observers stress the need for balance. They caution that an over-emphasis on academic performance may harm the unique, informal nature of extracurricular activities (Halpern, 2000; Miller, 2003). Schools should therefore plan a mix of co-curricular activities and become more intentional about unstructured interactions so as to ensure opportunities to build connections with all students, and maximize the potential for coordinating social, emotional and academic learning.
Who is it for?
Who can facilitate it?
How can we implement it?
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