Through the 1990's, a network of researchers and social activists studied the informal, often unrecognized learning of working people across Canada. This collaborative initiative was entitled "New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL)", led by Dr. David Livingstone at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The work was completed by 2001, and this site provides access to the project descriptions and publications. The work of NALL has since been followed up by the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) project, again led by David Livingstone and funded by SSHRC.
BACKGROUND SUMMARY:
Education and training involves much more than the organized activities that go on within formal educational institutions. (Formal education denotes full-time school programs; nonformal education refers to classroom-based courses; informal learning refers to all other deliberate forms of self-directed or collective learning.) Some people have noted that informal learning may be the submerged part of the education iceberg in modern knowledge-based societies. An international research tradition initiated in the 1970s by our member Allen Tough established that self-directed informal learning projects are indeed very extensive.
However, in spite of the universal recognition of the importance of education and training, we still have very limited understanding of the relations between the formal and nonformal educational participation of people and their engagement in deliberate informal learning; therefore, we are not effectively linking informal learning with organized education and training programs.
NALL's basic objectives:
are to document current relations between informal learning and formal/nonformal education, identify major social barriers to integrating informal learning with formal/nonformal programs and certification, and support new program initiatives that promise to overcome such barriers.
