In Search of Informal Learning, with a Focus on Australian Vocational Education and Training

Informal learning remains an elusive term. Despite its long history, prevalence and significance, informal learning has often been neglected or downplayed. Its intangibility and largely invisible character result in little attention from employers, educators and policymakers, and difficult for researchers to investigate it. Using the metaphor of dolphins/sharks for informal learning, this chapter seeks answers to three questions about its characteristics, visibility and prevalence. It examines recent research literature at three levels: 1) international, 2) Australian and 3) three of my own studies. Analysis of international literature identified seven key lines of inquiry: models and frameworks; personal factors; organisational antecedents; interrelationships between informal and formal learning; trends coalescing over recent decades fostering informal learning; emphasis on the positive aspects to the neglect of the ‘dark side’; and implications for practice. Review at the second level revealed both its recent emergence as a topic and the paucity of publications on it in Australia, in major national reviews and accessions into the premier vocational education and training (VET) database. At the third level of analysis, many instances of informal learning could be discerned in the author’s research. These showed that it was prevalent, not reflected in early competency standards, often fostered by owners/managers in small businesses, serves as a means for apprentices to contribute to the informal development of employers and VET practitioners, and its embeddedness in working means they are coterminous and shape each other. The chapter concludes with three more philosophical questions for reflection.