| Chapter 1: | Background and Significance of the Study |
Definition of Significant Terms
The following terms are used throughout the book, and the definitions given here are used to clarify those terms.
Homelessness: People with “no fixed abode or nighttime shelter other than that provided by a private or public agency” (Caton, 1990, p. 20).
Informal education: The lifelong process by which every person acquires and accumulates knowledge, skills, attitudes and insight from daily experiences and exposure to the environment – at home; at work; at play; from the example and attitude of family and friends; from travel, reading newspapers and books; or by listening to radio or viewing films or television. Generally, informal education is unorganized and often unsystematic; yet it accounts for the great bulk of any person’s total lifetime learning, including the education of even a highly “schooled” person (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974, p. 8).
Non-formal education: “Any organized activity with educational purposes carried on outside the highly structured framework of formal education systems as they exist today” (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974, p. 233). Non-formal education has also been described as: “Any organized, systematic, educational activity carried on outside the framework of the formal system to provide selected types of learning to particular subgroups in the population, adults as well as children” (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974, p. 8).
Formal education: “The highly institutionalized, chronologically graded and hierarchically structured ‘education system’ spanning lower primary school and the upper reaches of the university” (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974, p. 8).