NALL Working Paper # 21-2001
ADULTS’ INFORMAL LEARNING:
DEFINITIONS, FINDINGS, GAPS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
D.W. Livingstone
Head, Centre for the Study of Education and Work,
OISE/UT
Table of Contents
Introduction
Conceptions of Informal Learning
Empirical Research on Informal Learning
Critical Assessment and Knowledge Gaps
Future Research
Concluding Remarks
Appendix 1 NALL 2000 Questions
References
Endnotes
ADULTS’ INFORMAL LEARNING:
DEFINITIONS, FINDINGS, GAPS
AND FUTURE RESEARCH*
D.W. Livingstone
Head, Centre for the Study of Education and Work, OISE/UT
*A version of the revised position paper for the Advisory Panel of Experts
on Adult Learning (APEAL), Applied Research Branch, Human Resources
Development Canada (HRDC), January 31, 2001. The views expressed in this
paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of
HRDC.
Introduction
This paper will address the following topics:
(1) examination of different conceptions of informal learning and the issues
and limitations associated with alternative definitions of informal learning;
(2) review of relevant empirical research on the estimated extent, role and
outcomes of informal learning, and posited linkages between informal and formal
methods of learning;
(3) critical assessment of current research approaches to studying informal
learning and identification of policy-relevant knowledge gaps concerning the
general level and nature of informal learning, the distribution of informal
learning across the adult population, the impact of informal learning on
individual and firm performance, and the relationship of informal learning to
formal skills development; and
(4) recommendation of optimal approaches to future research on informal
learning practices with a particular focus on survey research in Canada.
(1) Conceptions of Informal Learning
The continuing acquisition of knowledge and skills is probably the most
distinctive feature of the human species. As Figure 1 suggests, several basic
types of learning may be identified in terms of the organization of the body of
knowledge to be learned and the primacy of teachers.
While no form of human learning is devoid of the influence of other people,
the distinctions drawn from the adult education literature that are proposed in
this paper focus on the degree of directive control of learning; they
range from dominant teacher control, through other forms that involve
teachers/trainers/mentors, to dominant learner control. Education, which
derives from the Latin verb (educere) meaning “to lead forth”, encompasses
three forms of learning characterized by the presence of a teacher, someone
presumed to have greater knowledge, and a learner or learners presumed to have
lesser knowledge and expected to be instructed or led by said teacher. When a
teacher has the authority to determine that people designated as requiring
knowledge effectively learn a curriculum taken from a pre-established body of
knowledge, the form of learning is formal education, whether in the form
of age-graded and bureaucratic modern school systems or elders initiating
youths into traditional bodies of knowledge. When learners opt to acquire
further knowledge or skill by studying voluntarily with a teacher who assists
their self-determined interests by using an organized curriculum, as is the case
in many adult education courses and workshops, the form of learning is non-formal
education or further education. When teachers or mentors take
responsibility for instructing others without sustained reference to an
intentionally-organized body of knowledge in more incidental and spontaneous
learning situations, such as guiding them in acquiring job skills or in
community development activities, the form of learning is informal education or
informal training. Finally, all other forms of intentional or tacit
learning in which we engage either individually or collectively without direct
reliance on a teacher or an externally-organized curriculum can be termed self-directed
or collective informal learning.1
Figure 1 Basic Types of Learning
| |
|
Primary Agency |
| |
|
Learner(s) |
Teacher(s) |
| Knowledge Structure |
Pre-Established |
Non-formal education
Further education |
Formal Schooling
Elders' teachings |
| Situational |
Self-directed learning
Collective learning |
Informal Education
Informal Training |
There has been considerable conceptual confusion among adult learning
researchers over types of learning. Both earlier typologies and much of the
research to date on adult learning have tended to conflate some of these
different types of learning (see Mocker and Spear, 1982; Padberg, 1991).
Drawing boundaries between these four types of learning can be very difficult.
As Figure 1 suggests, there are at least two different knowledge traditions: a
rational or scientific cognitive knowledge which emphasizes recordable theories
and articulated descriptions as cumulative bases for increased understanding,
and a practical knowledge tradition which stresses direct experience in various
situated spheres (Molander 1992). Practical knowledge frequently remains tacit,
unable to be described symbolically. But in reality, our theories and practice
constantly interact. Distinguishing teachers from learners is also often
complicated in educational settings in which extensive interaction or
independent inquiry are encouraged. More specifically, the non-formal or further
education of adults typically occurs in courses or workshops with a
pre-established curriculum and an externally-designated instructor; adults may
also decide to resume formal schooling in the same settings as compulsory age
initial cycle students. But since adult participation is more discretionary, the
curriculum of further education processes is likely to become quite learner-centred
and situational in response to specific adults’ interests, and therefore
similar to an informal education process. The informal education of adults which
occurs through contact with institutionally-authorized guides in situations
without a pre-established curriculum may be very comparable to and difficult to
distinguish from a self-directed informal learning process if the guide is
freely-chosen in an ongoing informal relationship. Formal education which
occurs outside state-approved educational institutions may be ignored or
regarded as informal education by state officials, whereas such pre-established
bodies of knowledge as the traditional wisdom shared by elders can remain
central to the reproduction of aboriginal culture, for example. Conversely,
self-directed informal learners may decide to follow a pre-established
curriculum on their own, and therefore engage in a learning process much like
formal education. But self-directed informal learning per se is most simply
understood as learning that is undertaken on the learner or learners’ own
terms without either prescribed curricular requirements or a designated
instructor.
If we apply these general distinctions to employment-related learning,
we can readily identify many formal education programs devoted to vocational
training, as well as many non-formal education courses for job retraining and
upgrading. Employment-related informal training may be provided to new job
entrants by lead hands and other accomplished workmates designated as mentors by
employers and/or employee organizations. Self-directed informal learning
includes intentional job-specific and general employment-related learning done
on your own, collective learning with colleagues of other employment-related
knowledge and skills, and tacit learning by doing. Again drawing boundaries
between types of learning is difficult. Apprenticeships, for example, often
combine pre-established bodies of knowledge and practical experiential learning
in complex interactions between teachers and learners as well as individual
learning initiatives, and therefore contain elements of all four basic types of
learning.
Most adults probably engage in multiple types of learning on an
ongoing basis, with varying emphases and tendencies. Only the state-sanctioned
forms of schooling and further education are very fully identified or widely
documented. Other adult learning activities have tended to be ignored or
devalued by dominant authorities and researchers either because they are more
difficult to measure and certify or because they are grounded in experiential
knowledge which is more relevant to subordinate social groups (see Gereluk,
Briton and Spencer, 1999; Burns, 1999). In any case, it is clear that both
adults’ informal education/training and their self-directed informal learning
have been relatively little explored to date and warrant much fuller attention
from those interested in comprehending the nature and extent of adult learning.
Some of the most influential contemporary theories of adult learning focus on
the learning capacities of adults outside standard teacher-directed classroom
settings, such as Malcolm Knowles' (1970) work on individual self-directed
learning and Paolo Freire's (1970, 1994) reflections on his initiatives in
collective learning through dialogue. Both theorists stress the active practical
engagement of adult learners in the pursuit of knowledge or cultural change.
Theories of cognitive development which take more intentional account of
subordinate groups' actual conditions and their socio-historical context, and
which recognize the importance of diverse social relations beyond the realm of
established educational institutions to the shaping of adult social
consciousness (Vygotsky 1978; Moll 1990) have encouraged some researchers to
begin to more fully conceptualize and conduct grounded studies of the dimensions
of adult self-directed informal learning and informal education practices
situated in the everyday lives of ordinary people (Lave and Wenger, 1991;
Engestrom and Middleton, 1996).
Given this context, I can suggest a generic nominal definition of informal
learning. Informal learning is any activity involving the
pursuit of understanding, knowledge or skill which occurs without the presence
of externally imposed curricular criteria. Informal learning may occur in
any context outside the pre-established curricula of educative institutions. The
basic terms of informal learning (e.g. objectives, content, means and processes
of acquisition, duration, evaluation of outcomes, applications) are determined
by the individuals and groups that choose to engage in it. Self-directed or
collective informal learning is undertaken on our own. Informal education or
training is distinguished from such self-directed informal learning only by the
presence of some form of institutionally-recognized instructor. Unless
otherwise specified, the term “informal learning” will refer to both
self-directed/collective informal learning and informal education/training
in the remainder of this paper.
Conceptions of both self-directed informal learning and informal education to
date have been quite insensitive to distinctions between intentional and more
diffuse forms of learning. Intentional informal learning and intentional
informal training can be distinguished from everyday perceptions, general
socialization and more tacit informal learning or training by peoples' own
conscious identification of the activity as significant learning or training . The
important criteria that distinguish intentional informal learning and training
are the retrospective recognition of both (1) a new significant form of
knowledge, understanding or skill acquired outside a prescribed curricular
setting and (2) the process of acquisition, either on your own initiative in the
case of self-directed informal learning, or with aid of a mentor in the case of
informal training, respectively. This is the guideline for distinguishing
between intentional informal learning and training and all of the other tacit
forms of learning and other everyday activities that we go through.
For example, there are the basic forms of socialization that we
experience as young people, when older family members engage with us in many
forms of anticipatory socialization that neither we nor they recognize as
informal training because they are so incorporated in other activities,
such as the various ad hoc day-to-day interrelationships between parents and
children through which youths are inducted into the cultural life of their
society. In basic socialization, tacit informal learning and acting constitute a
seamless web in which it is impossible for most of us to distinguish many
learning activities . Did I actually learn this in some discrete way or was it
something that emerged in a much more diffuse experiential way that became part
of my consciousness? Can I retrospectively identify deliberate and sustained
efforts to gain a new form of understanding, knowledge or skill, and attribute
these efforts a recognizable amount of time? It is important to stress here that
self-reported estimates of informal learning and training very likely
substantially underestimate the total amount of informal learning that people do
because of the embedded and taken-for-granted character of this tacit learning.
As Michael Eraut (1999, pp. 36, 40) concludes after an extensive review of
research on workplace learning:
"Thick" tacit versions of personal knowledge co-exist with
"thin" intentional versions: the thick version is used in practice,
the thin version for describing and justifying that practice.... [T]he
limitations to making tacit knowledge intentional are formidable, and much of
the discussion about it in the literature is ill-informed if not naive.
More inclusive approaches to informal learning that attempt to identify
tacit knowledge through such means as direct observation in situ or in-depth
interviewing may serve to sensitize both learners and researchers to previously
taken-for-granted learning processes. Case studies using these methods can
identify numerous dimensions of previously obscured but vitally important
learning in social contexts that underpins more evident learning practices,
ranging from the hidden curriculum in elementary school classrooms to the
implicit organizational learning that occurs among marginalized workers (e.g.
Anyon, 1980; Church, Fontan, Ng and Shragge, 2000). But all such approaches to
date have only scratched the surface of tacit learning and remain prone to
researcher presumptions whenever they go beyond respondents’ self-reports.
The actual time that we allocate informally to gain intentional
knowledge, skill or understanding may vary in terms of our circumstances, the
amount of concentration we can place on it, our actual learning capacities, and
a number of other factors. To study self-directed informal learning using the
sample survey techniques normally required for representative readings of human
behaviour, we have to strike a resolve to focus on those things that people can
identify for themselves as intentional learning projects or deliberate learning
activities beyond prescribed curricula and without externally-authorized
instructors. Documenting informal training requires a similar reliance on
respondents’ self-reports. More sensitive ethnographic case study research
should continue to be encouraged. But “thin” versions of adults’
intentional informal learning and training generated through survey research can
at least provide more complete profiles of their actual array of
learning practices.
(2) Empirical Research on Informal Learning
One of the first empirical studies to attempt to estimate the extent of
informal learning activities among adults was the 1961-62 U.S. national survey
(N=2845) of voluntary learning( Johnstone and Rivera, 1965). After a detailed
set of questions about further education course participation, the survey then
asked whether respondents had ever tried to teach themselves some subject by
means of independent study strictly on their own, followed by asking them
if they were currently engaged in any studies of this sort. Nearly 40 percent of
U.S. adults indicated that they had engaged in such learning activities at some
time and nearly 10 percent said they were currently involved; respondents were
also almost twice as likely to indicate participation in independent studies as
in further education courses, and most of those engaged in further education
were also involved in independent studies (pp. 33,38, 129). As Johnstone and
Rivera (1965, p. 37) concluded:
To the authors’ knowledge, this type of measure has never before been
extracted from a national sample of the population–which in itself
suggests that self-instruction is probably the most overlooked avenue of
activity in the whole field of adult education. Even in the present study,
these activities were from the beginning regarded as a residual category of
adult studies, and for this reason no additional information was collected
concerning the learning materials and methods employed....About the only
comment that can be made at this point is that the incidence of self-education
throughout the adult population is much greater than we had anticipated.
The most substantial subsequent body of empirical research dealing with
adult learning activities beyond organized schooling and further education
courses is the work on adults' self-directed learning projects which was
inspired by Knowles and pioneered by my colleague, Allen Tough (1971, 1979).
Tough's early case studies, since corroborated by many others, found that well
over two-thirds of most adults' intentional learning efforts occurred completely
outside institutionalized adult education programs or courses, hence the image
of the adult learning iceberg (Brookfield 1981; Brockett and Hiemstra 1991). The
empirical studies initiated by Tough in the late 1960s document that virtually
all adults are regularly involved in deliberate, self-directed learning projects
beyond school and training programs. As Tough (1978, 252) summarized the central
finding from a wide array of studies in the 1970s:
The typical learner conducts five quite distinct learning projects in one
year. He or she learns five distinct areas of knowledge and skill. The person
spends an average of 100 hours per learning effort-- a total of 500 hours per
year.
Most of the sample surveys conducted in North America and Europe
since the early 1970s on the general frequency of informal learning are
summarized in Table 1. The first large-scale national survey focussed on
informal learning was conducted by Patrick Penland (1977) in the U.S. in late
1976, inspired by Johnstone and Rivera’s incidental findings and guided by
Tough’s case study interview format. The interview began with the following
framing question on informal learning:
I’m interested in listing the things you have tried to learn during
the past year on your own initiative. When I say “learn”, I don’t mean
learning the sorts of things that people learn in schools and colleges. I mean
any sort of deliberate effort at all to learn something, or how to do
something. Perhaps you tried to get some information or knowledge–or to gain
new skills or improve your old ones–or to increase your sensitivity or
understanding or appreciation. Just as long as you spent some number of hours
at these efforts to learn something. Can you think of any efforts like this
that you have made during the past 12 months? Did you actually complete some
learning project on your own–that is, not in a formal teaching setting for
credit? Have you, in other words, gone as far as you wanted to and felt that
you had finished the particular projects? What were the projects or things
that you learned?
Just as in Tough’s research, the initial questions were followed by some
probes to provide further opportunities for respondents to recall their relevant
intentional informal learning activities during the past year. Penland found
that over three-quarters of U.S. adults were involved in self-planned learning
activities and that, as in the prior case studies, they were spending an average
of about 500 hours per year in such informal learning.
Very few further large-scale general surveys of informal learning were
conducted until the mid-1990s. But some national surveys have now begun to ask
about aspects of informal learning in the context of inquiries focussed on adult
education course participation. A 1995 Finnish survey (Blomqvist, Niemi and
Ruuskanen, 1998, pp. 34, 91) using much more restrictive questions than Penland
and excluding registered students found that 22 percent of Finnish adults
between 18 and 64 had been involved in self-directed learning for at least 20
hours in the past year. The basic question was:
New knowledge and skills can be obtained at work or on leisure time by
other means than courses and training too. Have you in the past 12 months
studied some new subject independently or together with friends or
acquaintances or co-workers for a total of at least 20 hours?
A U.K. survey covering the 1994-97 period and focussed primarily on taught
learning has found that 57 percent of all adults indicated involvement in some
form of non-taught learning during this period (Beinart and Smith, 1998, pp.
200-217, 309, 315). This included 51 percent of those who were employed
indicating that they had spent time keeping up to date with developments in the
type of work they do without taking part in a taught course (for example, by
reading books, manuals or journals or attending seminars); it also included 29
percent of all non-students deliberately trying to improve their knowledge about
anything or teaching themselves a skill without taking part in a taught course,
and 1 percent of all adults studying for any qualifications without taking part
in a taught course. A follow-up survey 18 months later found that the
participation rate in non-taught learning over the entire 4.5 year period
increased to 65 percent (LaValle and Finch, 1999, p. 11). No estimates of the
duration of informal learning were attempted in these surveys; in the U.K. case
this was because pilot surveys found that respondents were unable to give
start and end dates for these more informal non-taught types of learning (Beinhart
and Smith, 1999, p. 269).
TABLE 1 Estimated Incidence of Informal Learning Activities,
Selected Countries, 1975-1998
| Survey* |
total
hours/yr |
% informal
learners |
Hiemstra (1975)
[N=256; Nebraskans over 55] |
325 |
84 |
Penland (1976)
[N=1501; U.S. national adult population] |
514 |
76 |
| Tough (1971-78) [estimate based on 1970s case studies] |
500 |
98 |
| Leean and Sisco (1981) [N=93; rural Vermont school dropouts] |
425 |
98 |
| Blomqvist/Niemi/Ruuskanen (1995) [N=4107; Finnish adult population] |
20+ |
22 |
Livingstone/Hart/Davie (1996)
[N=1000; Ontario adult population] |
600 |
86 |
| Beinart and Smith (1994-97) [N=5653; United Kingdom adult population] |
N/A |
57 |
| Statistics Canada (1998) [N=10,749; Canadian national adult
population] |
230 |
30 |
| NALL (1998) [N=1562; Canadian national adult population] |
750 |
95 |
| Livingstone/Hart/Davie (1998) [N=1007; Ontario adult population] |
750 |
88 |
| Livingstone/Hart/Davie (2000) [N=1002; Ontario adult population] |
650 |
86 |
*years cited refer to period of learning surveyed rather than time of
publication
The 1998 General Social Survey in Canada (Statistics Canada, 1999) also
contained a few questions on informal learning. The questions were as follows:
(1) Many people improve their knowledge of a subject or upgrade their skills
on their own instead of taking a course. They read books, watch television
programs, use a computer or talk to someone with the necessary expertise. Have
you undertaken any of these activities during the past month?
(2) What were you learning?
(3) Which of the following media did you use?
(4) How many hours did you devote to these learning activities last month?
About 30 percent of respondents gave an initial positive response. After
responding to the other two general questions, the remaining respondents then
estimated that they were spending an average of about 19 hours per month
on these learning activities, which translates into nearly 5 hours per week or
about 230 hours per year. Averaged over the entire sample, this would reduce to
about 1.5 hours per week.
All of these recent surveys of informal learning (i.e. the Finnish,
U.K. and 1998 GSS surveys) very likely produce serious underestimates of the
actual current extent of intentional informal learning. The questions on
informal learning are typically posed immediately after a series of questions
about initial schooling, adult credit courses and non-credit courses which serve
to predispose respondents to think of learning in terms of organized education,
provide only cryptic definitions of informal learning, and offer no opportunity
to consider informal learning activities in relation to any other specific
learning context besides educational institutions. These survey questions also
tend to dichotomize courses and learning on your own, suggesting –explicitly
in the case of the GSS survey’s use of the phrase “instead of taking a
course”-- that you normally only do one or the other. Virtually all the
earlier surveys, informed by Tough’s case study research, demonstrated this is
clearly false, that most course participants also engage in substantial informal
learning activities. It is likely that these recent surveys have merely
rediscovered the iceberg of intentional informal learning rather than plumbing
its depth.
Surveys conducted in Ontario in 1996,1998 and 2000 on public attitudes
to educational policies have included a few questions which used a similar
format to the original Tough studies and the Penland survey. These surveys have
found that the vast majority of adults indicate involvement in some form of
informal learning during the past year. Estimated time commitments have
fluctuated between averages of about 12 and 15 hours per week during this four
year period (Livingstone, Hart and Davie, 1999, p. 69; forthcoming). The
question wordings were as follows:
Please think of any learning you do on your own or
with others that in not part of organized schooling or continuing education
courses. This includes any activities in which your main purpose is to gain
specific knowledge or skills. Not counting course work, about how many hours
in a typical week do you spend trying to learn anything related to your paid
work or household work or work you do as a volunteer. Just give your best
guess.
Not counting course work, about how many hours in a
typical week do you spend trying to learn anything else of general interest to
you. Just give your best guess.
Finally, in 1998, the research network on New Approaches to Lifelong
Learning (NALL) conducted the first national survey in Canada focussed on
adults’ informal learning practices (NALL, 1998; Livingstone, 1999).
NALL is centred at OISE/UT. It has been funded by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to identify the extent of adult
learning, the existence of social barriers to learning and more effective means
of linking learning with work. The NALL survey of adults' current learning was
planned to attend to the full array of adults' learning activities, including
not only schooling and continuing education courses but also informal learning
that occurs outside organized education. We reviewed and borrowed from virtually
all prior studies of informal learning that have previously been conducted (see
Adams et al, 1999). We did extensive pilot testing with dozens of individuals
and groups. The final interview schedule addresses schooling, non-formal
education courses and workshops, as well as informal education and various
aspects of self-directed informal learning, but the primary focus is on the
diverse aspects of intentional informal learning; a variety of social background
factors are also addressed. (Those interested in reviewing the full interview
schedule can find it at the NALL website: www.nall.ca). A representative
telephone survey of 1562 Canadian adults was conducted for NALL between June 6
and November 8, 1998 by the Institute for Social Research at York University.
This survey asked respondents to talk about informal learning from their own
standpoints. The NALL survey sample includes adults 18 and over, who speak
English or French, reside in a private home (not old age/group homes/penal or
educational institutions) with a telephone. All provinces and households and
individuals within households were given an equal chance of selection using
random digit dialling. The average telephone interview time was 32 minutes,
which is about half of the administration time of the earlier U.S. national
survey (Penland, 1977, p. 23).An in-depth follow-up interview was also conducted
with a sub-sample of the original respondents in the summer of 2000 (see
Appendix 1).
The NALL survey respondents were first given a definition of informal
learning as including anything people do to gain knowledge, skill or
understanding from learning about their health or hobbies, unpaid or paid work,
or anything else that interests them outside of organized courses. They were
then asked to indicate their participation in four aspects of informal learning:
employment-related; community volunteer work-related; household work-related;
and other general interest-related. In each aspect, respondents were asked about
informal learning activities on several specific themes. The most relevant NALL
findings are summarized briefly in the remainder of this section.
Employment-related Informal Learning
Those Canadian adults in the active labour force (including over 60 percent
employed and about 8 percent designated as unemployed) were first asked to
identify any informal learning they had done during the past year related to
their employment. The basic question was as follows:
First, let’s talk about any informal learning activities outside of
courses that have some connection with your current or possible future paid
employment. This could have been any learning you did on your own or in groups
with co-workers, that is any informal learning you consider to be related to
your employment. I’m going to read you a list of some types of
informal learning related to employment that people sometimes do outside of
formal or organized courses.
These employment-related learning activities and the proportion of
employed respondents who indicated participating in them were as follows:
Figure 2 Employment-related Learning Activity %
| keeping up with new general knowledge in job/career |
71 |
| new job tasks |
63 |
| problem solving/communication skills |
63 |
| employment-related computer learning |
61 |
| occupational health and safety |
55 |
| other new technologies or equipment |
52 |
| employee rights and benefits |
43 |
| supervisory or management skills |
38 |
| job-related literacy and numeracy skills |
29 |
| job-related second language skills |
13 |
| other employment-related informal learning |
17 |
After indicating whether or not they participated in each of these topical
areas of learning, respondents were then asked to estimate they time they spent
on employment-related informal learning:
Thinking about all the informal learning you have been doing in the last year
that is related to your employment, about how many hours did this amount to in
a typical week?
A similar question was asked in each of the other three spheres of informal
learning. On average, currently employed respondents estimated that they
spent about 6 hours per week in all of these informal learning activities
related to their current or future employment during the past year. Around 10
percent estimated that they spent less than an hour per week in
employment-related informal learning activities. Very few employed people stated
that they did no job-related informal learning but some found it too difficult
to provide a specific estimate; all of these less than an hour responses were
treated as zeros, thereby contributing to a conservative estimate of average
hours. The remainder were about equally divided into those who spent 1 to 2
hours, 3 to 5 hours and 6 or more hours per week in job-related informal
learning. Less than 10 percent estimated that they spent more than 20 hours per
week, which suggests that even when respondents are given fairly extensive
opportunities to identify job-related informal learning they are generally able
to distinguish intentional informal learning from other activities and to
recognize both the time constraints of multiple other activities in the 168 hour
week , and are very unlikely to regard informal learning as a seamless web
occupying most of their paid work time.
Household Work-related Informal Learning
Those involved in household work over the past year (over 80%) have averaged
about 5 hours per week in informal learning related to their household work. The
household work-related learning activities and the proportions who indicated
participating in them were as follows:
Figure 3 Household Work-related Learning Activities %
| home renovations and gardening |
66 |
| home cooking |
58 |
| home maintenance |
56 |
| shopping |
51 |
| home budgeting |
45 |
| child or elder care |
44 |
| cleaning |
41 |
| other household tasks |
14 |
Again there are small numbers at the extremes, with around 10 percent
indicating they devote less than an hour per week to housework-related informal
learning and about 5 percent saying they spend more than 20 hours per week in
such learning. Moreover, given the greater proportion of Canadians involved in
housework than in paid employment and the only slightly higher average hours
devoted to informal learning related to employment, it appears that we are now
devoting about as much aggregate time to informal learning related to housework
as to paid employment.
Community Volunteer Work-related Informal Learning
Those who have been involved in organized community work over past year (over
40%) devote about 4 hours a week on average to community-related informal
learning. The community-related informal learning activities and the proportions
of community participants involved in them were as follows:
Figure 4 Community Work-related Learning Activities %
| interpersonal skills |
62 |
| communication skills |
58 |
| social issues |
51 |
| organizational/managerial skills |
43 |
| fund raising |
38 |
| other technical skills |
28 |
| other skills |
24 |
The majority of community work participants indicate that they devote no more
than 2 hours per week to related informal learning activities, while less than
10 percent devote more than 10 hours per week. The relatively low levels of
participation in community volunteer work and related informal learning are
consistent with the fact that this is the most discretionary type of work in
advanced industrial societies and many people simply choose to opt out.
Other General Interest Informal Learning
Most people engage in some other types of informal learning related to their
general interests and not directly connected with any of the three forms of
work. Those who do so (around 90%) spend on average about 6 hours a week
on these learning activities. The basic sorts of general interest learning and
the proportions engaging in these respective activities are as follows:
Figure 5 General Interest Learning Activities %
| health and well being |
74 |
| finances |
58 |
| leisure/hobby skills |
58 |
| environmental issues |
57 |
| social skills/personal development |
55 |
| public and political issues |
51 |
| computers/computing skills |
50 |
| sports and recreation |
49 |
| cultural tradition/customs |
42 |
| intimate relationships |
41 |
| pet care |
41 |
| religion/spirituality |
41 |
| practical skills |
37 |
| science and technology |
35 |
| other general interests |
12 |
Around a third of respondents spend an hour or less per week in informal
learning related to all of these general interests. The majority spend no more
than three hours while less than 10 percent devote more than 10 hours a week to
such general interest learning. While there is evidently very wide participation
in informal learning related to many diverse interests, the incidence of
work-related informal learning appears to be considerably greater if we include
learning related to both paid and unpaid work.
Total Involvement in Informal Learning
According to the NALL survey, nearly all Canadian adults (over 95%) are
involved in some form of informal learning activities that they can identify as
significant. This survey provides estimates of the amount of time that all
Canadians, including those who say they do no informal learning at all, are
spending in all four areas (employment, community, household, and general
interest). The estimated average number of hours devoted to informal learning
activities by all Canadian adults during 1998 was around 15 hours per week. The
NALL survey estimate for the amount of time that Canadian adults are spending in
organized courses (including time in class and doing homework and class
assignments) is about 3 hours per week averaged over the entire adult
population, or about 12 hours per week among those who actually participated in
courses. The most recent AETS survey, which focussed in more detail on different
types of non-formal course participation but only asked about hours participants
took the course rather than explicitly asking them to consider homework time,
generates an average of about 1 hour a week averaged over the entire adult
population or 4 hours a week per participant. Even if the focus is
restricted to those who participated in courses, they are found to devote more
time to intentional informal learning activities than to course-based learning.
If we consider the entire adult population, Canadian adults are clearly spending
vastly more time in informal learning activities than in non-formal education
courses, a ratio of at least five to one. The use of the metaphor of the
submerged part of an iceberg to describe the informal portion of adult learning
may not be exact, but it is fairly close. While hours of learning per course
participant is relevant for some general research purposes, the remainder of
this paper will focus on the more inclusive comparative measures of hours of
informal and course-based learning per capita.
It is important to recognize here that the NALL time estimates have
been generated through a survey which was primarily devoted to identifying the
multiple possible sites and topics of informal learning. Virtually all prior
empirical studies of informal learning have found considerable initial
reluctance among respondents to identify their learning outside educational
institutions as legitimate learning (see Tough, 1979). It is only when people
are given an opportunity to reflect on actual learning practices in relation to
their daily lives that much informal learning is recognized as such by the
learners. In addition, informal learning activities often occur in combination
with other social activities. While this makes time estimates more difficult and
less exact, it is not a sufficient basis to either devalue or ignore informal
learning processes. In any event, when Canadian adults are given even brief
opportunity to reflect on their informal learning practices along the topical
lines summarized above, the average estimated time devoted to informal learning
is now around 15 hours per week, which is both much more time than they devote
to organized educational activities and a significant portion of their waking
time. Of course, future surveys will need to both confirm and track trends in
the NALL benchmark estimate.
As Table 2 illustrates, the average figure masks considerable variation in
the total amount of informal learning that Canadian adults say they are now
doing. Less than 5 percent insist that they are either doing no informal
learning, doing less than an hour per week or are unable to offer a specific
estimate. About equal proportions all over 20 percent indicate that they are
engaged respectively in 1 to 5 hours, 6 to 10 hours, 11 to 20 hours and over 20
hours per week of total informal learning activity. Put another way, about
three-quarters of Canadian adults are now spending 6 hours or more each week in
some kind of informal learning activities, most of this related to paid or
unpaid work.
Table 2 Distribution of Total Weekly Hours of
Informal Learning, Canadian Adults, 1998
| Hours/week |
% |
0
1-5
6-10
11-20
21+ |
4
21
25
25
25 |
Total average = 15 hrs/wk
(N=1562) |
|
Three other major findings regarding differential effects in the
research to date on adults’ informal learning should be mentioned here: the
non-correspondence between participation in organized education and informal
learning; the discrepant effects of institutional recognition of prior learning
on different social groups; and the lack of a strong aging effect on incidence
of informal learning.
Table 2 Canadian Adults' Participation in Further Education and Informal
Learning by School Attainment, 1998
| School Completion |
Taken course or workshop
% |
Plan to take course
% |
Informal learning
% |
Informal learning time
(hrs/week) |
| no diploma |
18 |
28 |
89 |
16 |
| high school diploma |
52 |
46 |
98 |
15 |
| community college |
58 |
62 |
98 |
15 |
| university degree |
67 |
70 |
98 |
14 |
| Total (N=1562) |
44 |
50 |
95 |
15 |
As Table 2 shows, those with higher levels of formal schooling are much
more likely to have participated in further education courses or workshops and
also to plan to participate in courses in the future. University graduates are
over three times as likely to have participated in the past year as those who
have not finished high school. However, no such relationship is evident between
level of schooling completed and the incidence of informal learning. Those
without high school diplomas are only slightly less likely to be engaged in
informal learning activities and those with all levels of schooling report
virtually the same average hours of informal learning. Similar rates of
participation in informal learning have been found consistently between nearly
all socio-demographic groups (e.g. sex, age, class and income, ethnicity,
region, nation), with greater variations within particular subgroups than
between them. There appear to be no discernible demographic pre-requisites to
general involvement in informal learning nor are there major institutional
barriers since virtually everyone can participate on their own terms if they are
interested. Most people apparently are interested.
Several surveys have also found that there is very strong support
across all socio-demographic groups for the principle of recognizing prior
informal learning for purposes of granting course credit for placement in formal
education programs, certifying technical skills for professional/trade licencing,
or job recruitment (Thomas and Collins, 1999). The NALL survey found strong
majority interest in increased participation in organized educational programs
with the aid of prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR). There is
little evidence for the notion that lower level employees are content with
relatively fewer opportunities for formal employment-related education because
of their current reliance on informal learning. As Table 3 indicates, the NALL
survey finds that industrial workers and the unemployed do have lower
expectations than managers and professional employees of participating in adult
education courses in the near future. But this difference would largely
disappear if the former were given recognition for their prior related informal
learning. Widespread implementation of (PLAR) in post-secondary institutions
could narrow the gap between participation in organized education and informal
learning, and could lead to reduced inequalities in education because the less
affluent would be relatively more likely to increase their participation in
post-secondary institutions (Livingstone, 1999; forthcoming). But recent
research on actual use of PLAR to date indicates that it has primarily benefited
already successful college entrants to complete their programs faster rather
than to encourage greater accessibility (Aarts et al, 1999).
Table 3 Planned Future Participation and Interest in Participation
with Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) by Occupational Class,
Canada, 1998
| Occupational Class |
(1)
Plan course
(%) |
(2)
Interest in PLAR
(%) |
(3)
Difference
(2)-(1) |
| Manager |
73 |
71 |
-2 |
| Professional |
74 |
74 |
0 |
| Service worker |
59 |
73 |
14 |
| Industrial worker |
43 |
71 |
28 |
| Unemployed |
40 |
79 |
39 |
| Totals (N=1562) |
50 |
61 |
11 |
Source: NALL(1998).
As Table 4 shows, aging does not appear to represent a major obstacle to
continuing informal learning. The 1998 NALL survey confirms the finding of many
prior studies that aging is closely related to declining rates of participation
in adult education courses, with participation falling from about two-thirds of
the youngest adults to around 10 percent of those over 65 years of age. The NALL
survey finds that the youngest adults also tend to spend significantly more time
in both course-based learning and informal learning activities. This probably
reflects the exceptional amounts of new knowledge and experiential learning
involved in making the transition from adolescence to independent adult careers,
familial relationships and community life styles. However, there are only
marginal declines at most in the participation rates and average time
devoted to informal learning activities between the mid-20s and the retirement
years. Older people continue to be very active informal learners. What does
decline markedly through the adult life course is any preference for relying
primarily on courses to acquire new knowledge, with a growing inclination to
rely instead on one’s own accumulated experience when learning new things. In
fact, there appears to be close to an inverse relationship between course
participation and preference for learning on one’s own through the adult life
course.
Table 4 Adult Education Course Participation, Preferred Form of
Learning and participation in Informal Learning by Age Group, Canadian Adults,
1998
| Age group |
Course
participation
(%) |
Prefer learning
on own
(%) |
Informal participation
(%) |
Course
hrs/week
(ave.) |
Informal hrs/week
(ave.) |
| 18-24 |
67 |
22 |
99 |
8 |
23 |
| 25-34 |
63 |
37 |
97 |
4 |
16 |
| 35-44 |
63 |
40 |
96 |
3 |
15 |
| 45-54 |
47 |
50 |
96 |
3 |
15 |
| 55-64 |
32 |
63 |
88 |
1 |
12 |
| 65+ |
10 |
64 |
89 |
0.5 |
12 |
| Total (N=1562) |
44 |
44 |
44 |
95 |
15 |
A Further Note on Employment-related Informal Learning
One of the most extensive international studies of skill formation at
paid work concludes that:
Learning-by-doing, while the most prevalent kind of work learning, is
also the most invisible and the least documented. Visibility increases where
skill formation is the product of a mixture of on-the-job and off-the-job
training or of off-the-job training alone. There has been a relative paucity
of empirical work on skill formation which is work-led rather than
training-led. (OECD 1993, 30)
Several U.S. and Canadian national surveys have found that over 70 percent of
the job training received by employees is informal (U.S. Department of Labor
1996; Ekos Research Associates 1993). The most recent in-depth U.S. study of
over 1,000 workers in seven companies across seven states (Center for Workforce
Development 1998, p. 1) again finds this 70 percent figure and concludes that:
Informal learning was widespread and served to fulfill most learning
needs. In general, we noted that informal learning was highly relevant to
employee needs and involved knowledge and skills that were attainable and
immediately applicable....Workers constantly learn and develop while executing
their day-to-day job responsibilities, acquiring a broad range of knowledge
and skills.
One of the most inclusive prior national-level assessment is probably a
1989 Australian survey, which addressed both formal structured training programs
and unstructured training activities (such as asking questions of coworkers,
self-learning and watching others do the work). This survey found that
participation in organized company training programs differed along the
hierarchical lines previously discussed, with university graduates much more
involved than those with less schooling. But participation in informal training
was more equitable. Over two-thirds of those at all levels of formal educational
attainment indicated that they had engaged in such informal job-related learning
within the last year (OECD 1991, pp.142, 149). A subsequent Australian survey in
1997 found that 54 percent of wage and salary earners participated in schooling
and formal training during the prior year while 72 percent participated in
informal training (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997).
One of the most extensive prior comparative studies of the formal and
informal training of employees is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey for
the May-October, 1995 period, which found an average of 44.5 hours per worker,
including 13.4 hours of formal training and 31.1 hours of informal training
(U.S. Department of Labor 1996).These findings would translate into slightly
over an hour per week of informal training for each U.S. worker. This survey
provides a very detailed list of employment-related areas of learning which are
comparable to those in the NALL survey and should be considered in any future
survey of employment-related informal learning. The BLS survey has the added
merit of clearly distinguishing and delimiting its inquiry to informal training
aided by mentors, rather than conflating such training with self-directed
learning as most other studies of employment-related informal learning have
done. However, the BLS survey offers no estimates for self-directed informal
learning.
The few ethnographic studies that have looked more closely at the workplace
as a site of learning have found extensive informal social learning among manual
workers about their work practices, styles and local knowledge beyond individual
skills (Kusterer 1978; Darrah 1992; Darrah 1995). Much of this informal learning
is unrecognized and taken for granted by workers themselves most of the time,
almost invariably beyond the comprehension of management, and very often
collective rather than individual learning. Working class autobiographies offer
graphic testimony that, since the inception of industrial capitalism, manual
workers with little schooling have been keenly interested in informal
employment-related learning when their time and energy allowed.
The aforementioned finding in the 1998 NALL survey that Canadians in the
active labour force report spending an average of about six hours a week, or
over 300 hours a year, in informal learning activities related to their
employment provides a useful benchmark for further studies. While such estimates
remain very approximate, it is almost certainly the case that a much greater
proportion of currently employed Canadians are involved in job-related informal
learning –including both self-directed learning and informal training by
mentors--than in job-related training courses and that even course participants
may spend as much time in job-related informal learning as in course-based
learning activities. The main points here are that the vast majority of people
of all occupational and formal education levels are now engaged in substantial
ongoing informal learning activities, and that much of this learning is related
in some way to their paid work, if we construe this work in its broadest terms.
The "knowledge economy" appears to be much wider and deeper than
current popular accounts which focus on the continuing job and product-specific
training of managers and professional employees in the "learning
enterprise" typically suggest.
************************
In summary, the most inclusive and directly comparable surveys on adult
informal learning suggest that North Americans were spending around 10 hours per
week in intentional informal learning activities in the 1970s, and that the
incidence may have increased by the 1990s (see also Candy 1993). Clearly, the
overwhelming majority of Canadian adults are now spending a substantial amount
of time regularly in these pursuits and are able to recognize this intentional
informal learning as a significant aspect of their daily lives. The
proliferation of information technologies and exponential increases in the
production of information have created greater opportunities for informal
learning beyond their own direct experience for people in all walks of
life in recent years. Whatever the actual extent and trends over time are found
to be through further, more refined studies, virtually all empirical studies to
date that have estimated the extent of adults’ intentional informal learning
have confirmed that it is a very substantial activity.
(3) Critical Assessment and Knowledge Gaps
In light of conceptual confusion, varied measures and the very limited amount
of comparative data, researchers’ knowledge of the extent, processes, content,
outcomes and trends of adults’ informal learning and training remains very
crude. The extensive empirical work on self-directed learning in the 1970s has
led to very little cumulative development of understanding of the
phenomenon of informal learning to date. Researchers keep rediscovering portions
of informal learning anew with little effort to date to replicate earlier
discoveries. For example, while self-directed learning researchers developed
protocols to probe the topical foci and duration of informal learning projects,
the recent U.K and Finnish survey researchers were apparently unaware of this
work and abandoned any attempt to either identify topical foci or estimate
actual duration of adults’ informal learning activities. The Statistics Canada
(1999) questions in the General Social Survey of 1998 generate estimates of
duration and topical foci but mainly for those who have learned informally
“instead of taking a course”, ignoring the well-established fact that most
adults who take courses also engage in other informal learning. All of these
surveys also present the notion of informal, independent or non-taught learning
cryptically after extensive questioning on participation in organized education,
ignoring the earlier finding that most people tend to deny that they do any
significant learning outside educational settings until they are given an
opportunity to reflect on their experiential learning at least briefly. Our
replications of the 1976 U.S. survey in Canada in the late 1990s (i.e. the NALL
and OISE/UT surveys) represent a beginning in this regard, but further survey
research is needed to reach much confidence in these estimates of the extent,
topical foci and trends in adults’ informal learning.
None of the empirical research to date on informal learning has
distinguished very clearly between informal self-directed learning and informal
education or training, as defined in section 1 above. For example, it may be
the case that a great deal of job training occurs in the form of informal
education of newer entrants by more experienced workers, but the relative
importance of informal learning without such teachers by workers individually
and collectively learning on their own has not been well documented. A single
item in the 1998 NALL survey indicates that the most important general sources
of employment-related knowledge from the standpoints of those in the current
Canadian labour force are workers’ own independent learning efforts (44
percent), followed by informal education by their co-workers (28 percent);
non-formal education in the form of employers’ training programs is regarded
as most important by a small minority (15 percent). Whether particular informal
learning activities are done with the aid of a teacher/mentor and therefore
qualify as informal education and training, or whether they are done by
individuals or groups on their own and constitute self-directed informal
learning should be addressed more carefully in subsequent research.
The boundary between intentional and tacit informal learning has
only begun to be explored and most studies of intentional informal learning
continue to ignore or underestimate the depths and complexity of tacit learning,
as Eraut (1999) suggests. However, the now well established tradition of
conceptual and empirical research on implicit learning is beginning to provide
clearer insights into the interplay of implicit and intentional learning and
memory generally (see Reber, 1993; Stadler and Frensch, 1998). Further progress
in probing the depth of intentional informal learning will probably require
similar intensive interviewing and experimental research designs.
Another reason for highly variable results in surveys of informal
learning and training has been a failure to contextuate such learning in the activity
structure of respondents’ daily lives. If people are merely asked to
identify and estimate informal learning activities without reference to the
other activities and time commitments that they are involved in, both the time
constraints and the learning incentives associated with everyday life are more
likely to be ignored. The mid-2000 followup with a subsample (N=328) from the
1998 NALL survey incorporated a series of related questions on general time use
prior to items on informal learning time (Livingstone, Hart and Stowe, 2000).
The average estimated total informal learning time was reduced by about 20
percent. We hypothesize that this reduction may be related to the introduction
of general activity structure time constraints into the second interview
schedule, as well as to other contextual changes between 1998 and 2000. Future
surveys will need to include similar items on other activities in order to
generate reliable estimates of informal learning.
A closely related problem which has hardly been hinted to date at in
empirical research estimating the extent of informal learning and training is
the matter of simultaneity. We learn while we act continuously. To
distinguish learning components from other aspects of our everyday practices can
be extraordinarily difficult. Time use research has attempted to deal with the
general problem of simultaneous activities by asking respondents to record
primary and secondary activities in a given time period. Further research on
informal learning and training will probably have to resort to some similar
strategy of identifying informal learning as either a primary or secondary
activity within a more clearly identified time and space structure of
activities.
Only with more reliable estimates of informal learning over time and in
different jurisdictions will it be possible to evaluate the relationships
between organized schooling and non-formal education on the one hand and
informal learning and training on the other. The possibility of recent substitution
effects in Canada, and Ontario in particular, is supported by survey
evidence which suggests that the levels of participation in adult education
courses declined during the mid-1990s (Baran, Berube, Roy and Salmon, 2000;
Livingstone, Hart and Davie, 1999), while perceived material barriers to
participation and the incidence of informal learning both appeared to increase;
at least in Ontario (Livingstone, forthcoming; Livingstone, Hart and
Davie, 1999). The most recent Ontario evidence for 2000 suggests that adult
course participation may have again increased and that the incidence of informal
learning may have declined somewhat (Livingstone, Hart and Davie, forthcoming).
The possibility of such an inverse relationship, with increased incidence of
informal learning substituting for diminished access to further education
courses and vice versa, should be examined by additional longitudinal surveys.
But any examination of such an inverse relationship should not lose sight of the
facts that there has been a dominant trend of increasing formal/non-formal
course participation in the post WWII era, that informal self-directed learning
and informal training remain far more pervasive than course participation, and
that all four types of learning practically complement each other throughout the
life course.
There is also virtually no prior systematic research beyond scattered
ethnographic studies on the relations between informal learning and training
and different types of work. Correlation analysis of the association between
the time devoted to different types of work (employment, housework and community
volunteer work) and informal learning specifically-related to these three types
of work in the 1998 NALL survey finds that correlations are highest between
community volunteer work and community-based informal learning and lowest
between paid employment and job-related informal learning (Livingstone, 2001).
This suggests that the greater discretion one has to engage in the work, the
stronger the association between the hours of such work and the related
incidence of informal learning. Prior research on relations between degrees of
autonomy in paid employment and personality characteristics is of some relevance
(e.g. Kohn and Schooler, 1983), but no other empirical studies have addressed
these relations between types of learning and work inclusively to date. Further
studies on these relations may be very useful guides for the redesign of paid
work, particularly if they include the more discretionary forms of (informal)
learning and (unpaid) work.
With regard to social group differences in informal learning, the most
provocative findings involve aging. Prior research on aging and learning has
focussed on declining speed and efficiency of skill acquisition. No comparable
decline has been found to date in the incidence of informal learning. Case
studies and experimental research examining the actual informal learning
practices, topical foci and skill outcomes of older adults are much needed to
overcome stereotypes of decline and to understand the interaction of cumulative
experience and new skill acquisition. Similarly, more attention needs to be paid
to the distinctively high incidence of both organized education activities and
informal learning among those making the transition to adulthood. The general
finding of no significant differences in incidence of informal learning activity
between most other socio-demographic groups (e.g. class and income, gender,
ethnicity, region, disability-based) also needs to be tested much more
thoroughly against more reliable measures of informal learning over time.
The early body of empirical research on self-directed informal learning
was subjected to numerous serious criticisms that any further studies of
informal learning should remain sensitive to, including tendencies to
individualistic, dominant class, and leading question biases, as well as the
profound difficulty in validly identifying intentional informal learning that
may be initiated incidentally, occur irregularly and have diffuse outcomes (see
Brookfield, 1981; Livingstone, 1999).
The individualistic bias is the implicit assumption that you
learn most of what you learn individually rather than in collective or
relational context. Early empirical research focussed on individual respondents
and documenting their self-directed learning projects. But the collective
aspects of our informal learning, the social engagements with others, are an
integral part of any actual knowledge acquisition process, as some leading
general theories of learning now clearly acknowledge (see Engstrom, Miettinen
and Punamaki, 1999). Collectively-conducted learning processes continue to
constitute the least well documented part of adults' informal learning. But the
individualistic bias can be partially overcome by research methods that either
engage with people in the social contexts of their lives (such as participant
observation), or by questioning them collectively (as in discussion groups of
various kinds). Even the individual interview methods required for a large-scale
survey can more intentionally address the social relational aspects of
respondents' specific learning activities.
The dominant class bias charge emerged because the vast majority
of the early research was conduced with white, middle-aged,
professional-managerial people and university students. But further research
done with cross-sections of less affluent classes, visible minority groups and
seniors do support the general conclusions that Tough (1978) made about
self-directed learning being fairly common in its incidence across most social
groups (see Adams et al., 1999). The dominant group bias surely can be more
fully addressed with greater sensitivity and respect for other standpoints by
further in-depth studies that document the informal learning of working class
and underclass people, women and people of various sexual orientations, visible
minorities, disabled people, and older and younger generations. This requires
extensive pilot testing of instruments with representatives of subordinate
social groups to try to ensure their general accessibility.
In the enthusiasm of the early empirical research in the self-directed
learning tradition, there was often a tendency toward leading questions,
in the sense of "of course you do informal learning, don't you" and
"what is it?", as opposed to asking people whether or not they do it,
and taking what they tell you as valid. The basic procedure in early studies was
for the interviewer to react skeptically to responses that denied any
significant informal learning, and then proceed to a series of probes to ferret
out actual informal learning projects (Tough, 1979). The genuine difficulty here
is that researchers do have to engage in an initial orienting process precisely
because most people do not recognize much of the informal learning they do until
they have a chance to reflect on it. Later research studies have been less
leading, including a growing tradition of situated learning case studies that
have confirmed the extensiveness of intentional informal learning activities
through direct observation (e.g. Lave and Wenger, 1991). Future surveys and
other studies should give respondents numerous thematic cues based on
prior empirical studies but accept all responses as given without further
probing which could encourage respondents to overestimate their informal
learning activities.
If we recognize the general importance of informal learning for the
reproduction and development of social life, and if we agree that it is feasible
to get past the early critiques to engage in empirical research that may validly
identify people's intentional informal learning, there are still other major
challenges. These include recognizing incidentally-initiated learning,
irregularly timed intentional learning, and the distinction between learning
processes and learning outcomes. The predominance of planned learning may be
clear enough when we are talking about schooling decisions. But you can do
informal learning any time, any where, with anyone. It can be planned in a very
deliberate way or it can be stimulated with no prior intent. Many informal
learning activities that result in the accomplishment of new knowledge,
understanding or skill begin in an ad hoc, incidental manner and are only
consciously recognized after the fact (see Eraut, 1999). Retrospective views of
the amount of time spent in incidentally-initiated informal learning
processes are likely to remain very approximate underestimates. But
approximations of the significance of important phenomena should be preferred to
either continuing to ignore them or to imposing false precision in measurement
efforts.
Informal learning never ends. But much of it occurs in irregular
time and space patterns. You can learn life-course shaping or influencing
knowledge at any place and within a very short period of time, in a moment of
"perspective transformation" (Mezirow, 1991) or an "organizing
circumstance" (Spear, 1988). Much of the most important learning that we do
occurs in these moments of transition, whether it happens to be a birth, a
death, a marriage, divorce, a transition between careers or locations, or some
other major influential event that provokes us into a concentrated period of
informal learning. Survey respondents' estimates of the amount of time they
devote to informal learning activities are helpful to compare the perceived
amounts of time available for such activities in different social groups. But
such estimates of learning patterns should not obscure the fact that the most
significant informal learning continues to occur in these irregular, intense
moments of our lives (see Merriam and Clark, 1995)
It is also important to observe that the amount of time that people
spend in learning processes is not necessarily positively correlated with
successful learning outcomes. A less capable learner may have to spend
considerably more time to achieve a successful outcome. Much of the research to
date on adult learning focuses on documenting the types of learning processes
that people are involved in, the amount of time that they engage in these
processes and their particular substantive areas of learning. Very little of
this research addresses the question of the actual competencies that people have
gained from their informal learning activities. This is at least partially
because many of the criteria of successful informal learning are themselves
informally determined. No external authority can pose an inclusive set of
criteria about either the curriculum that should be learned or satisfactory
levels of achievement, let alone ensure inter-subjectively meaningful
comparisons between informal learning outcomes. So, the initial recourse
here again is to self-recognition: what have learners accomplished through
informal learning activities that they perceive as significant?
Much further grounded research is needed to document actual processes
of informal learning and training, prevalent thematic foci and quality of
outcomes in order to generate clearer profiles of intentional informal learning.
Only then will we be able to begin to carefully assess the impact of informal
learning and training on specific skill development as well as the aggregate
effects of informal learning and training on such central social policy areas as
workplace productivity, community development and effective citizenship.
(4) Future Research
It is should now be clear that informal self-directed learning and informal
training constitute the most elusive and shifting domains of adult learning but
also the most extensive. It is imperative to establish benchmarks of the
general incidence, basic contents and modes, and any differential patterns of
intentional informal learning and training, and to continue to track trends in
relation to other dimensions of adult learning. Further large-scale sample
survey research on informal learning and training is necessary to obtain
reliable, representative estimates of the extent and content of informal
learning in the adult population. We should be under no illusion that a survey
questionnaire is capable of uncovering the deeper tacit levels of either
individual or collective knowledge gained in informal learning and training
practices. But by building on prior research and critiques, we should now be
able to generate useful profiles of the basic patterns of the incidence of
intentional informal learning and training and examine their association with
organized forms of education more fully than most prior studies.
In sum, future research on adults’ informal learning should adhere to
the following basic guidelines:
• focus on intentional informal learning that respondents can identify as
significant for themselves;
• distinguish informal learning occurring outside established curricula from
non-formal education occurring in organized courses and workshops;
• distinguish between self-directed informal learning that most people do on
their own individually and collectively, and informal education and training
that involves a mentor;
• assess informal learning activities in relation to other activities of
everyday life including different types of paid and unpaid work, and allow for
simultaneity with some of these other activities;
• provide sufficient contextual and thematic referents in any empirical study
for respondents effectively to identify their major intentional informal
learning activities, without leading them into gratuitous overestimates;
• insist on directly examining the informal learning practices of all adults
without any presumption that specific socio-demographic groups (e.g. older
people) have greater or lesser learning predispositions.
Canadian researchers are exceptionally well positioned to lead the
world in future cumulative research on adult informal learning and training. The
NALL survey of informal learning practices, as the most inclusive recent
large-scale survey on informal learning, should provide a useful benchmark for
further studies of many aspects of informal learning and training. The NALL
followup survey in mid-2000 with a sub-sample (N=328) of the original
respondents has begun to explore questions of informal learning pattern
consistency over time and more in-depth content analysis (Livingstone, Hart and
Stowe, forthcoming). Periodic replication of major components of the NALL survey
should be carefully considered by relevant government agencies (see Appendix 1
for suggested questions for replication). It should be noted again that, as most
prior surveys, the NALL 2000 survey gives little attention to the
important distinction between self-directed informal learning and informal
training by mentors.
While longitudinal studies tracing the organized and informal learning
and training practices of specific age cohorts would provide the most
accurate adult learning profiles, time and cost factors probably will make it
very difficult to mount such studies. Canadian researchers especially can
immediately build on and expand terms of existing cross-sectional studies to aid
policy decision-making on pressing social and economic issues. The insertion of
modules on informal learning and training in regularly scheduled Statistics
Canada surveys could be most cost effective, provide the first reliable trend
estimates on patterns of adult informal learning and allow ongoing analysis of
relations of informal learning and training with non-formal education and
schooling, and with employment conditions.
The Adult Education and Training Survey (AETS) is the most
evident candidate, providing regular opportunities to link informal learning
activities with formal and non-formal education as well as labour force status
and most other relevant socio-demographic factors. The AETS provides a very
large sample which would allow complex multivariate analyses of the factors
related to informal learning. Prior AETS surveys have not addressed informal
learning. It is imperative that pilot work begin immediately to ensure that a
suitable module on informal learning is integrated into the next scheduled
survey.
The General Social Survey (GSS) also offers regular
opportunities to link informal learning questions to educational participation,
other time uses and most other relevant socio-demographic variables. In
particular, integration of organized and informal learning as both primary and
secondary activities into more inclusive time budget surveys should be pursued
to obtain more fully contextualized estimates of adult learning time in relation
to other constrained and “free time” activities (see Robinson and Godbey,
1997). Such measures are central to more accurate documentation of the actual
extent of lifelong learning and could also be a valuable component of a wider
audit of social participation. The GSS provides a well-established survey
instrument for this purpose. But the previously noted limitations of the few
informal learning items in the 1998 GSS must be addressed.
Although only available on a five-year interval, the Canada Census
should also be considered for inclusion of a basic module on informal learning,
if preliminary AETS and GSS applications prove fruitful.
Both the Workplace and Employer Survey (WES) and the Survey
of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) could be especially valuable in
providing opportunities to document the incidence of informal training by
mentors and non-taught or self-directed informal learning among workers, and to
relate these learning activities systematically to patterns of participation in
organized formal and non-formal education programs and courses, income levels,
occupational patterns and firm productivity levels. While some items on prior
WES surveys refer to informal training or self-learning, they typically conflate
informal and formal training in the context of a series of questions focussed on
organized training programs (for example, items 23d and j on the 1999 WES ask
“Did you receive any informal or formal training related to that change in
technology?”). Further analyses of the relative perceived importance of
on-the-job-training by mentors and self-learning of job tasks by respondents to
the 1999 WES in relation to other aspects of employment training may provide
useful insights for development of future surveys. The SLID does not appear to
have addressed informal training at all to date, but it offers further
possibilities for tracing changes in participation in individual workers’
informal self-learning and training in relation to changing employment
conditions.
Canada's leading role in the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS)
and the current Adult Learning and Lifeskills Survey (ALLS) also provide
an exceptional opportunity to initiate comparative international surveys of
adult informal learning and training patterns. The July 2000 draft contains one
multi-item question on informal learning (i.e. F33 a-h):
We are interested in the many ways that people acquire skills and
knowledge. Now I will ask you some questions about your involvement in
learning activities that were NOT part of a formal learning activity such as a
course or a program of study.
During the last 12 months...did you do any of the following learning
activities?
a) visit trade fairs...
b) attend short lectures...
c) read manuals...
d) go on guided tours...
e) use computers,,,to learn...
f) learn by watching, getting help or advice from others but NOT from course
instructors
g) learn by yourself by trying things out, doing things for practice, trying
different approaches to doing things
h) learn by being sent around an organization to learn different aspects of
that organization
This question is superior to the recent Finnish, U.K. and 1998 GSS attempts to
estimate informal learning because it provides some specific activity contexts
and themes to aid response; as distinct from the 1998 GSS, it does not
erroneously pose such informal learning only as an alternative pursued instead
of formal/non-formal education courses. In addition, in items f) and h), it
provides some opportunity to estimate the relative incidence of informal
education by mentors and self-directed informal learning. However, the ALLS
effort remains a single question posed after a large number of questions about
initial schooling, adult credit courses and non-credit courses, their duration,
content and purposes, which serve to predispose respondents to think of learning
in terms of organized education. The question provides no definition of informal
learning except as a negative residual of formal learning activity. The specific
items in the ALLS question display no awareness of the cumulative tradition of
self-directed learning research; virtually none of the items from the “Tough
repertoire” appear to be replicated. The ALLS format does not allow one to
relate the learning activities identified with spheres of paid and unpaid work
and general interests as the NALL/OISE surveys do. The items listed are not
discrete from each other. For example, “c) reading manuals” and “e) using
computers to learn” can be part of “g) learning by yourself”; “d) going
on guided tours” and “h) being sent around organizations” may cover the
same learning activity. In addition, item b) on attending workshops may be
confounded with the standard item on adult educational participation (F1 in the
ALLS interview schedule) which also refers to workshops. In prior Statistics
Canada surveys and in the definitions of types of adult learning suggested in
this paper, attendance at workshops has been regarded as part of non-formal
education. In short, the current ALLS effort to estimate informal learning
activities merely scratches the surface of an already ploughed field.
Nevertheless, Statistics Canada should continue to pursue future initiatives in
collaborative research on informal learning and training through this unique
international network.
Further case study research addressing the issues identified in
the prior section is imperative to increase comprehension of the dimensions and
dynamics of adult informal learning. The growing international body of case
study research on learning at work guided by critical learning theories provides
many suggestive conceptual leads (e.g. Lave and Wenger, 1991; Engestrom and
Middleton, 1996; Garrick, 1998). The numerous case studies conducted under the
auspices of NALL during the past four years offer valuable sensitizing
information on Canadian conditions (see, for example, Church, Fontan, Ng and
Shragge, 2000, and other case studies cited in the NALL Year 4 Productivity
Report on the website: www.nall.ca). The most thorough international assessment
of informal vocational training to date suggests that further household surveys
should add supplementary in-depth sections using contextuating lists of
self-learning and informal training activities and that these measures should be
complemented by time diaries of short duration (e.g. two weeks) in order to
estimate the volume of learning-by-doing activities (OECD, 1997).These
recommendations are applicable to other spheres of informal learning beyond
employment as well, both because of our limited current knowledge and the
likelihood of spillover effects of learning from the spheres of unpaid work and
general interests. Such instruments, drawing on lists from the NALL surveys and
case studies, could be used in conjunction with any of the previously cited
Statistics Canada surveys, particularly GSS time use surveys. In any event,
given the demonstrated large extent of informal learning activity, and the
current rudimentary state of knowledge about its dimensions and dynamics, more
in-depth research on informal learning remains warranted and should be supported
in addition to survey research by agencies funding studies of education and
learning.
In the longer term, the more comprehensive documentation of organized
and informal learning activities in relation to the existing job structure
should provide a more adequate basis for developing employment policies that are
more responsive to the actual employability of the current and prospective
labour force. For example, the issues of whether there are skill surpluses or
shortages in specific sectors and whether training or economic policy
initiatives are most appropriate really requires such intelligence to aid
effective, sustained government decision-making. There is mounting evidence,
based on organized education and training measures, that there is now no general
skill shortage in Canada (Lavoie and Roy, 1998). There is also a large body of
empirical evidence indicating that aggregate educational attainments have
increased much quicker than aggregate educational requirements to perform
existing jobs in both Canada and the U.S. (see Livingstone, 1998). Taking
systematic account of the informal self-learning and training relevant to actual
job performance would provide a fuller understanding of the complex relations
between learning and employment. Aside from the small but important proportion
of Canadian adults with low literacy and increasing marginalization from the
credential-based labour market, the most basic problem now may not be skill
supply shortages but underemployment of people’s available skills and
knowledge in our current job structure. In any event, neither researchers nor
public policy makers can afford to ignore the growing problem of
training-employment gaps, and more comprehensive ongoing surveys of adult
learning are clearly needed to inform employment and training policies. As the
OECD (1997) Manual for Better Training Statistics suggest, the temptation to
focus narrowly on the most easily identifiable and immediately applicable
aspects of informal vocational learning in such research should be resisted.
Efforts to measure returns to informal learning and training should
proceed very cautiously given their elusive character, and the differential
interests of employers and employees in controlling access to working knowledge.
Further case studies and comparative sectoral studies should address the
relative and complementary effectiveness of informal learning and training and
organized education programs/courses in relation to a wide range of indicators
of social benefit, including productivity and sustainable employment. But future
rate of return estimates should beware of the “most immediately tangible
measures bias”. A pragmatic fixation on monetary rates of return for the
employed excludes consideration of benefits of education and training for the
unemployed and non-employed (about 40% of adult population), non-monetary
benefits for many employed (consumption effectiveness, informed citizenship,
familial health), and macro-societal benefits (besides GDP these include Quality
of Life measures). While both the extent and rates of return to informal
learning and training are much less well documented than either schooling or
non-formal training, informal learning and training could well turn out to be
the most productive investments in terms of an inclusive cost-benefit analysis.
Concluding Remarks
While there are conceptual difficulties in distinguishing informal
self-directed learning, informal training, non-formal education and formal
education, as well as methodological challenges in generating reliable readings
of informal learning and training, the empirical research to date has at least
established that adults’ intentional informal learning activities are both
very extensive and warrant continuing documentation and assessment in relation
to other economic and social activities. The insights generated by the adult
education research on self-directed learning should be taken into fuller account
in future large-scale surveys of informal learning activities. The consistent
finding of virtually all prior studies that the incidence of adult informal
learning is not closely related to either prior formal educational participation
or most socio-demographic differences suggests that the more effective
recognition of prior informal learning in both work settings and educational
institutions--through further research and fuller use of PLAR mechanisms-- could
stimulate both greater educational accessibility and enhanced workplace
utilization of knowledge. All of those committed to the principles of lifelong
learning and the democratic development of the emergent information age (see
OECD, 1998) should be interested in further exploration of the still largely
hidden informal dimensions of the iceberg of adult learning. Canadian
researchers and government agencies are now in an exceptionally good position to
lead this exploration.
ENDNOTES
1.The relevant definitions currently used by Statistics Canada, as presented
in the 1998 AETS report, are as follows:
"Formal education or training-- Education or training which
is formally structured and sequentially organized, in which learners follow a
program of study or a series of experiences planned and directed by a teacher
or trainer and generally leading to some formal recognition of educational
performance;
Informal education –The lifelong process whereby an individual
acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience,
educative influences and other resources in his/her environment. These
learning experiences are not structured in the form of a class under the
direction of a teacher nor are they organized in a progressive sequence. They
are not intended to be recognized by a formal award.
Informal training --Training that is generally acquired while
performing regular tasks (learning-by-doing) at work or observing somebody
else performing them and that is by nature not planned nor structured."
The definitions proposed in this paper distinguish non-formal education from
formal education along lines well established in the adult education literature;
that is, non-formal education or further education refers to a curriculum that
is organized on formal lines but involves adults beyond compulsory school age
and the initial cycle of schooling. Such non-formal or further education is, in
fact, the primary focus of the previous published Statistics Canada (1997,
p. 10) report on adult learning. The current Statistics Canada definition of
informal training appears to be essentially a work-centred variant of the
definition of informal education or training proposed in this paper. That is,
informal training refers to forms of learning occurring outside a structured
curriculum but typically involving some form of mentoring by more experienced
workers. "Learning-by-doing" at work is also cited in the Statistics
Canada definition of informal training; while this could be a self-directed
activity, it is more likely in a work context to be overseen by more experienced
worker/trainers; informal job training always involves a more experienced mentor
of some sort. The current Statistics Canada definition of informal education
conflates self-directed learning which people undertake on their own with
informal learning guided by more experienced mentors or "educative
influences". Learning-by-doing based on the daily experience of an
individual or group is self-directed learning; learning from more experienced
others is typically an educative process. The distinctions proposed in this
paper focus on the degree of directive control of learning; they range
from dominant teacher control in formal schooling, through other forms of
education and training that involve teachers/trainers/mentors (non-formal
education and informal education), to dominant learner control in self-directed
informal learning.
Appendix 1 Questions from the NALL 2000 Survey Suggested for
Selective Replication on Future Statistics Canada Surveys
(Follow-up Interview to NALL National Survey: ISR Project 889 Main Study
Questionnaire)
In our first interview, you told us about any informal learning you were
doing on your own or with others outside of courses or workshops in 1998, as
well as any organized education programs or courses or workshops, and paid and
unpaid work you were doing.
Work and Education Status
1 Which of the following best describes your current employment
status: are you working for pay, unemployed, a homemaker, retired, on a
disability pension, or something else?
1 working for pay (includes on holiday, strike, temporary leave,
etc. goto 4)
2 unemployed (goto 2)
3 homemaker (goto 2)
4 retired (goto 2)
5 student (only if volunteered by R, goto 3)
6 on a disability pension (goto 6)
7 something else (specify & then goto 6)
_____________________________
2
(currently unemployed only)
Are you looking for work?
1 yes (goto 6)
5 no (goto 6)
8 dk 9 ref (goto 6)
3
(currently student only)
Are you currently working for pay in a full or part time job?
1 yes
5 no (goto 6) 8
dk 9 ref (goto 6)
4
(currently working for pay only)
How many hours do you work for pay in a in typical week?
__ __ hours __ __minutes 98
dk 99 ref
5
(currently working for pay only)
Do you usually work the same hours each week or do the hours you work vary
from week to week?.
1 same
2 varies
3 other (please describe) ____________________
8 dk 9 ref
Only Formal Education Here
6 (ask all)
Are you currently a full-time or part-time student in a program at an
educational institution leading to a diploma, degree, certificate or licence?
1 yes
5 no (goto 8) 8 dk
9 ref (goto 8)
7 Is that as a part time or full time student?
1 full time (goto 10)
5 part time (goto 10) 8 dk
9 ref (goto 10)
8 Have you been a full-time or part-time student in such a program (at an
educational institution leading to a diploma, degree, certificate or licence)
during
the past year?
1 yes (goto 9)
5 no (goto 11) 8 dk
9 ref (goto 11)
9 Is that as a part time or full time student?
1 full time (goto 10)
5 part time (goto 10) 8 dk
9 ref (goto 11)
10 What type of diploma, degree, certificate or licence is this?
(If R has taken a course towards more than one,
indicate yes for each, do not read list)
yes no
a 1 2 high school
diploma
b 1 2 community or
private college certificate
c 1 2 private arts
school, business college or technical school
d 1 2 university
degree
e 1 2 trades
certificate or licence
f 1 2
professional licence
g 1 2 other
(specify)______________________
Formal Courses--But not Towards a Diploma, Degree, Certificate or Licence
11 Other than courses towards a diploma, degree, certificate or licence, have
you taken any other formal courses, workshops or organized lessons in the last
year, no matter how long or short, or who offered it, on any subject?
1 yes
5 no (goto 13) 8 dk
9 ref (goto 13)
12 What type of courses, workshops, or organized lessons were they?
Interviewer: If appropriate, remind R that we are only
referring to organized courses/workshops/ lessons that do not lead to
diploma, etc. Check of all that R mentions, do not read list.
yes no
a 1 2 job or
career upgrading
b 1 2
computer training
c 1 2
English as a second language
d 1 2 basic
reading, writing and number skills
e 1 2 French
as a second language
f 1 2 other
job-related
g 1 2 other (specify)___________________
13 Are you planning to take any course, workshops, or organized lessons in the
next few years?
1 yes
3 maybe
5 no 8 dk
9 ref
Single Informal Education Question Here
14 Many people improve their knowledge of a subject or upgrade their skills
on their own or with others outside of organized courses. They read books, watch
television programs, use a computer or talk to someone with the necessary
expertise. Have you undertaken any of these activities during the past MONTH?
1 yes
5 no 8 dk
9 ref
General Reading Skills Rating
15 Would you say your READING skills in (English/French) are excellent, good,
moderate, or poor?
1 excellent 2 good
3 moderate 4 poor 8 dk
9 ref
Time Use Questions
We want to understand better how things you learn are related to your other
activities. Please think about all your activities in a TYPICAL week. Some
activities may occur at the same time. Please estimate how much time you spend
in each of the following activities.
16 How much time do you spend in any community activities with civic or
political organizations, service clubs, fraternal or cultural organizations,
sports or recreational teams, religious, neighbourhood, or school associations,
or other community groups in a typical week?
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk 99
ref
17 What about time helping out friends and neighbours in your community in a
typical week?
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk 99
ref
18 Attending education and training programs or courses and doing related
studying in a typical week
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk 99
ref
For the following activities we would like to know how much time you spend at
them on BOTH typical WEEKdays and typical WEEKEND days.
Interviewer: If R mentions that he/she does not work a “typical”
Monday to Friday week, tell R to think of typical work days (code as week
days) and typical non-work days (code as weekend days).
19 First, on a typical week day, how much time do you spend looking after one or
more of your own children or the children of others, without pay?
If clarification required: respondent should include: time when
respondent was doing another activity while looking after the children, time
when looking after the children was shared with someone else; time when the
child was having a nap, but exclude time the child spent sleeping during the
night; time the child spent at school, or at a friend’s or in organized
activities. (if no time enter 0 hours and 0 minutes)
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a typical week (work) day)
98 dk
99 ref
b And what about on a typical weekend (non-work) day?
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk 99
ref
20 In a typical week day how much time do you spend doing unpaid housework
activities including cooking, cleaning, caring for an elderly or disabled family
member, shopping, home budgeting, yard work or home maintenance for members of
your household, or others?
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk
99 ref
b And what about on a typical weekend day?
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk 99
ref
21 How about time spent sleeping and napping? (How much time
do you spend doing this on a typical week day and on a typical weekend day?)
(if no time enter 0 hours and 0 minutes)
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a week day)
98 dk 99
ref
b __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a weekend day)
98 dk 99
ref
22 Watching TV? (How much time do you spend doing this on a typical week
day and on a typical weekend day?)
(if no time enter 0 hours and 0
minutes)
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a week day)
98 dk
99 ref
b __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a weekend day)
98 dk 99
ref
23 Reading newspapers/magazines/books? (How much time do you spend doing
this on a typical week day and on a typical weekend day?)
(if no time
enter 0 hours and 0 minutes)
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a week day)
98 dk
99 ref
b __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a weekend day)
98 dk
99 ref
24 How much time in a typical week day do you spend TRAVELING for all of these
activities, including commuting to and from employment, trips for household
needs or recreation, in community volunteer activities, to and from education
programs, and travel for any other purposes?
(Interviewer:
if appropriate, tell R their best guess is ok.)
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a week day)
98 dk 99 ref
b And traveling for all these activities in a typical week end day?
__ __ hours __ __minutes (for a weekend day)
98 dk 99 ref
25 And how much free time do you have to use as you wish for your own recreation
and relaxation on a typical week day? (if no time enter 0 hours and 0
minutes)
a __ __ hours __ __minutes (for a week day)
98 dk 99
ref
b And how much time on a typical weekend day? (if no time enter 0 hours and
0 minutes)
__ __ hours __ __minutes (for a weekend day)
98 dk 99 ref
Now we understand how you spent most of your time in a typical week. Next
we would like to know about the INFORMAL learning activities you did OUTSIDE OF
formal classes, workshops or organized education programs. Please think
about anything you did through which you acquired some new knowledge, skill or
understanding. This could be learning with others or by yourself, and as a
separate activity or combined with your other activities. I’ll ask you about
ANY INFORMAL LEARNING in a typical week related to employment, household
activities, voluntary community activities, and other general interests.
26 First, tell me if, in a typical week, if you learn anything informally
outside of courses, workshops, or organized lessons in each of the following
areas related to past, present or possible future paid employment. This includes
any knowledge, skills or understanding you have gained that has to do with
employment. Please answer “yes” or “no” to each of the following.
Interviewer, if when you are reading these questions to the
respondent he/she volunteers that they have never worked, been retired for
years, etc. and, as a result, the questions are not appropriate to their
circumstances, circle not appropriate and go to 29
1 not appropriate
yes no
a 1 5
What about keeping up with general knowledge in your employment field?
b 1 5
Informal learning of new job tasks?
c 1 5
Learning about computers?
d 1 5
Learning other new technologies or equipment
e 1 5
Supervisory or management skills?
f 1 5
Team work, problem-solving, communication skills?
g 1 5
Employee rights and benefits?
h 1 5
Workplace politics?
i 1 5
Learning informally about occupational health and safety?
j 1 5
Literacy and numeracy skills?
k 1 5
Learning another language?
l 1 5
Any other knowledge or skill related to employmen
(if no informal learning related to employment, past present or possible
future goto 29)
27 Can you please tell me more about your recent informal learning related to
employment?
(Interviewer: if required, probe to obtain a detailed explanation:
use the following:
- can you provide a more specific description of these learning activities
related to employment
- when it comes to employment activities what do you most enjoy learning
about?
- remind R of the things they have said yes to above and ask for more
details?
- tell R they can provide more information about informal learning related
to employment activities that they have not already mentioned.)
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
28 Thinking about all the informal learning outside of courses you do related to
employment, about how much time is involved in a typical week? Just
give me your best guess.
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0
minutes)
98 dk 99 ref
29 Please tell me if, in a typical week you learn anything informally outside of
courses in each of the following areas related to your household activities.
This includes any knowledge, skills or understanding you have gained that had to
do with any household activities. Please answer “yes” or
“no” to each of the following. In a typical week do you spend any
time. . .
yes no
a 1 5
Learning about home maintenance?
b 1 5
Learning about home cooking?
c 1 5
About cleaning?
d 1 5
Learning about child care?
e 1 5
About elder care?
f 1 5
Learning about shopping for clothes, groceries, and so on?
g 1 5
Learning about home renovations?
h 1 5
About gardening?
i 1 5
About home budgeting?
j 1 5
Any other knowledge or skill related to household duties?
(if no informal learning related to household activities goto 32)
30 Can you please tell me more about your recent informal learning related to
household activities?
(Interviewer: if required, probe to obtain a detailed explanation: use the
following:
- can you provide a more specific description of these informal learning
household activities?
- when it comes to household activities what do you most enjoy
learning about?
- remind R of the things they have said yes to above and ask for more
details?
- tell R they can provide more information about informal learning related
to household activities that they have not already mentioned.)
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
31 Thinking about all the learning you do in a typical week outside of courses
related to household activities, about how much time is involved?
Just give me your best guess.
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hours and 0 minutes)
98 dk 99 ref
32 Please tell me if, in a typical week, you learn anything informally outside
of courses in each of the following areas related to community activities. This
includes any knowledge, skills or understanding you have gained that had to do
with any community activities.
Yes No
a 1 5
Did you do any learning about fund-raising?
b 1 5
What about learning organizational or management skills?
c 1 5
Learning about social issues?
d 1 5
About political decision making?
e 1 5
About communication skills?
f 1 5
About interpersonal skills?
g 1 5
Learning about other technical skills?
h 1 5
Any other skills or knowledge related to community activities?
(if no informal learning related to
community activities goto 35)
33 Can you please tell me more about your recent informal learning related to
community activities?
(Interviewer: if required, probe to obtain a detailed explanation:
use the following:
- can you provide a more specific description of these informal learning
community activities?
- when it comes to community activities what do you most enjoy learning
about?
- remind R of the things they have said yes to above and ask for more
details?
- tell R they can provide more information about informal learning
related to communities they have not
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
34 Thinking about all the informal learning you do in a typical week outside of
courses related to community activities, about how much time is involved?
Just give me your best guess.
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0 minutes)
98 dk 99
ref
35 Please tell me if, in a typical week, you learn anything informally outside
of courses in each of the following areas of general interest. This includes any
knowledge, skills or understanding you have gained that had to do with any
general interest. Please answer “yes” or “no” to
each of the following. . .
yes no
a 1 5 Did you do
any learning about sports or recreation?
b 1 5 What about
learning practical skills?
c 1 5 Learning
about cultural traditions or customs?
d 1 5 Learning
leisure or hobby skills?
e 1 5 Social
skills or personal development?
f 1 5
Learning about health and well-being?
g 1 5 Learning
about finances?
h 1 5 About
computers or computing skills?
i 1 5
Language skills?
j 1 5 About
science and technology?
k 1 5 Learning
about intimate relationships?
l 1 5
Religion or spirituality?
m 1 5 Environmental
issues?
n 1 5 Pet care?
o 1 5 About public
and political issues?
p 1 5 Any other
skills or knowledge related to your general interests?
(if no informal learning related to other activities goto
39)
36 Can you please tell me more about your recent informal learning related to
general interest activities?
(Interviewer: if required, probe to obtain a detailed explanation:
use the following:
- can you provide a more specific description of this informal
learning?
- when it comes to other activities what do you most enjoy learning
about?
- remind R of the things they have said yes to above and ask for more
details?
- tell R they can provide more information about informal learning
related to other activities that they have not already mentioned.)
_____________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
37 Thinking about all the informal learning outside of courses you do in a
typical week related to these general interests, about how much time does this
involve? Just give me your best guess.
__ __ hours __ __minutes (if no time enter 0 hrs & 0 minutes)
98 dk 99 ref
38 Please think about ALL of your informal learning activities outside of
courses in a typical week, this can be informal learning related to employment,
household activities, community activities, or general interest. Which of
the following did you use, did you . . . (read list)
yes no
a 1 5 read books, manuals or other written materials?
b 1 5 talk to others with knowledge
c 1 5 use computers
d 1 5 the Internet
e 1 5 videos, cassettes, DVDs, and so on
f 1 5 T.V.
g 1 5 any other way (specify)
39 What do you most enjoy learning about informally?
(Interviewer fill
in either part a or part b)
Part A: R provides an answer (if required probe with what
specifically do you enjoy about this type of informal learning?
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Part B: R says they have not completed any informal learning (recently)
ask:
Can you tell me why you think you have not done any informal learning
recently?
40 Still thinking more generally, do you think that you are now doing much
more, somewhat more, about the same, somewhat less, or much less informal
learning outside of courses than the last time we interviewed you in fall, 1998?
1 much more 2 somewhat more
3 about the same 4 somewhat less
5 much less 8 dk 9 ref
41 Why do you think you are doing (more/less/ about the same) amount of
informal learning?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
42 How would you generally rate the importance of what you have learned through
informal learning activities compared to what you have learned in formal
courses: is informal learning more important, about the same, or less important
than learning in formal courses
1 more important
3 about the same
5 less important 8 dk 9 ref
43 Please tell me why you rate the informal learning you do this way?
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
44 How related is most of your informal learning outside of courses to the
education programs and courses you have taken: would you say very closely
related, somewhat related, somewhat unrelated, or completely unrelated?
1 very closely related
2 somewhat related
3 somewhat unrelated
4 completely unrelated 8 dk 9 ref
45 Please tell me more about why you say this?
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
46 Just to finish up we have a couple more questions about time.
First, how often do you feel rushed? Would you say: every day, a few times a
week, about once a week, about once a month, less than once a month, or never?
1 every day 2 a few times a week
3 about once a week 4 about once a month
5 less than once a month 6 never 8 dk 9 ref
7 On which main activity would you choose to spend more time if you could?
(Interviewer; do not read list, code only one, if r gives two or more
ask them if they had to choose . . . , if response is not on the list write in
under other.)
1 time with family (spouse, children, boyfriend, girlfriend)
2 relaxation - personal time
3 practising sports
4 crafts of hobbies
5 outdoor activities
6 reading - writing
7 courses, workshops, organized lessons
8 informal learning activities
9 paid work
10 housework
11 community volunteer work
12 other(specify)___________________
98
dk 99 ref
48 We would like to get a more specific idea of your reading level in
(English/French). For each of the following three sorts of reading
activities, please tell me whether you can do it easily, with some help, with a
lot of help, or can you not do it.
a First what about finding the correct dosage information on a medicine
bottle: can you do this easily, with some help, with a lot of help, or can you
not do it?
1 easily 3 with some help
5 with a lot of help 7 can not do it
8 dk 9 ref
.
b What about reading a bicycle owner’s manual to determine how to check the
recommended position for the bike seat?
1 easily 3 with some help
5 with a lot of help 7 can not do it
8 dk 9 ref
c Reading complex reports about clock radios to identify important differences
between types, models and brands
1 easily 3 with some help
5 with a lot of help 7 can not do it 8 dk 9 ref
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