Abstract

Periodically, scholars have grappled with the idea of informal and incidental learning, concepts that are typically defined in contrast with formal, structured education and that center around learning from and through experience. Over the past 16 years, Marsick and Watkins (1990, 1999) have evolved a theory of informal and incidental learning that has been used in a number of dissertations and published studies. Growing out of thinking about learning from experience and self-directed learning, their model focused on the learning phases of an individual and added stages of reflective learning that usually occur incidentally but that, with coaching, can deepen this learning.