Lifelong, Informal and Workplace Learning

This chapter sets the scene for much of the rest of the book by outlining and reviewing main themes from the literature on three notionally distinct areas of learning. The three areas, lifelong learning, informal learning, and workplace learning, are notionally distinct in that each has an identifiable literature in its own right. Part of the argument of this book is that these three distinctive concepts of learning converge much more than has hitherto been supposed. We claim that recognition of this convergence provides new insights into the nature of learning itself. These insights are at the heart of a main theme of this book, which is the claim that there needs to be a rethink of the balance between formal and informal learning in the lives of citizens. Currently, the balance is too far towards the formal.

The first main section of this chapter outlines the origins and main understandings of lifelong learning, including the main assumptions that these understandings make about the nature of learning. Then some common criticisms of lifelong learning are discussed. These criticisms are shown to make assumptions about the nature of learning that heavily favour formal learning, whilst marginalizing informal learning. Because informal learning is central to our argument, we then review relevant literature on this topic, including debates about its definition and its connections or otherwise with formal learning. We then turn to an overview of the literature on workplace learning, the third notionally different type of learning that is vital to our argument.