ABSTRACT
My concern in this chapter is about what informal learning men seek and undertake when not in the paid workforce and the potential benefi ts of that learning to their wellbeing. It is one outcome of my 15-year Australian research journey from mainly vocational and formal learning in the 1990s, to my current interest in non-vocational and informal learning. In that journey my interest has changed from equity and recognition for formal participants in education and training to the arguable inequity, exclusion of learners and lack of recognition of valuable learning experienced in non-formal contexts. I have slowly but surely come to regard educational formality, based around what Livingstone (2001: 3) calls a formal knowledge tradition of ‘scientifi c cognitive knowledge which emphasizes recordable theories and articulated descriptions as cumulative bases for increased understanding’, as one part of the problem of widespread disengagement from formal education, particularly in compulsory years. I have at the same time come to regard so called ‘informal learning’, acquired through what Livingstone (2001: 3) calls ‘a practical knowledge tradition which stresses direct experience in various situated spheres’, as one of several informal solutions.
