This chapter adopts an enactivist framework to analyze the incidental and informal learning of a middle-school teacher.

The "alone together" paradox is a phenomenon that occurs when adults make meaning of their learning in the online environment. By way of being "alone together," the online environment manifests a context for incidental and informal learning.

In this final chapter, we identify and elaborate the connections throughout the volume. We explore the philosophical underpinnings of the original model and analyze how the different lenses in these chapters lead the authors to new understandings of informal and incidental learning that trouble some of the features of the original model. We…

Examples of informal and incidental learning, including an extended discussion of informal learning in flight instruction, are used to illustrate the model of informal and incidental learning in practice, as well as the nonlinear nature of this learning.

Studies of informal and incidental learning demonstrate that it takes place wherever people have a need, motivation, or opportunity for learning. Context is central to the process. Despite its unstructured nature, adult educators can assist learners by identifying conditions that hinder or enhance it and by fostering critical reflection. (Contains…