The apparent decline of informal learning

This paper begins by questioning the narrow definition of learning used in much present writing concerning lifelong learning, which tends to focus on the purported economic and societal benefits of prolonging and widening par ticipation in formal education and training programmes. In contrast, much v aluable and non-trivial learning already goes on, and has always gone on, o utside formal programmes of instruction. This is true both at work and at l eisure. Using evidence from a study of patterns of participation in adult l earning in South Wales from 1900, the paper argues that if such informal le arning continues to be ignored by proponents of a learning society, as it h as been by the authors of the recent green papers, for example, then the re sult may be an unnecessary exclusiveness in definitions of a learning socie ty, and an unjustifiable reliance on certification as a measure of learning .