A Quote from Bransford

On potential and proximal development:

"This line of work has drawn attention to the roles of more capable peers, parents, and other partners in challenging and extending children’s efforts to understand. It has also contributed to an understanding of the relationship between formal and informal teaching and learning situations (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and cognition distributed across people and tools (Salomon, 1993). " (Bransford, 2000, p.81)

I found this intriguing because I never really thought of formal and informal teaching in terms of how a student learns but instead I thought of it as what a person learns. I thought that if a person learned how to add and read that would be formal teaching (book smarts) versus if a person learned not walk alone after a certain time would be more informal (street smarts). But then it seems that depending on how the person learns determines whether it is formal or informal teaching.