The health and wellbeing benefits of Men's Sheds to the men who participate have had significant research attention for over a decade. However, there has been little research into the broader impacts of Men's Sheds, particularly in relation to the impacts on significant others in the lives of the men who participate. Our paper aims to redress this lack of research by focusing on the interrelated perceptions and experiences of men and those closest to them in four Men's Sheds in regional Victoria, Australia. The research shows that the partners and carers of 'shedders' reported that the men's participation not only benefited the men but also had benefits for their significant others. The study also showed that the partners of shedders in the study found that their individual and joint adjustment to retirement was in some cases assisted by the men enjoying the social and structured environment of the Men's Shed, while in other cases it was seen by partners as an over-commitment and impacting negatively on the marriage. The findings also shed some important light on some tensions experienced by the partners associated with carer burden and adjustments to retirement.

This paper proposes a new theory of Conditional Social Equality (CSE) which in some ways challenges the theory of cumulative advantage/disadvantage (CAD), which postulates that inequalities and social divisions necessarily increase over time. Using evidence from informal learning groups in Men's Sheds in three countries, we conclude that some social divisions between homosocial groups, in this case groups of older men, may actually decrease - but only under certain conditions. Male-gendered learning groups that were relatively homogeneous by age helped erase class divisions and softened gender stereotypes. Our theory of conditional social equality (CSE) predicts the following: i) in-group homogeneity can enable the acceptance of some aspects of heterogeneity, ii) some other aspects of in-group heterogeneity may not be tolerated, thus maintaining in-group cohesion, and iii), in-group homogeneity and boundary setting towards out-groups may be prerequisites for the acceptance of (some) aspects of in-group heterogeneity. All of this has important implications for adult learning in both heterogeneous and homogenous groups.

This paper provides a window into recent developments in the international Men's Shed movement up to 2022. It includes useful insights into the complex, fascinating and still evolving role that gender plays in Sheds, and is essential for understanding where the 25 year old Men's Shed movement and also the decade old Women's Shed movement, both originating in Australia, might be headed, and perhaps how it might take root in Poland or elsewhere in mainland Europe. The paper also explores what it is about Men's Sheds which is so attractive to older men and particularly how it informally enhances their learning and wellbeing. I have also included a brief reflection on some of the professional and personal factors which attracted me to research Sheds internationally, and to since become a Shed advocate and an Australian Men's Shed Patron.

Older men are less likely than women to meet in social groups and have greater difficulty developing social relationships beyond paid work. Yet they are joining Men's Sheds in ever greater numbers, often with the support of women, as wives, partners and daughters. Little is known about women's perspectives of Men's Sheds and what women get from men's participation in Sheds. Informed by social role theory, the present study explored narratives from 26 significant women of male Shedders in Ireland and Australia. The narratives reveal how gender roles and unspoken rules shape people's lives, with three overarching themes emerging. These include (1) older men being vulnerable, with subthemes men's masculine persona, and women's vigilance, (2) gendered spaces for older men, with subthemes companionship: men mending men and healing in the Shed and (3) the spill over effects of Men's Sheds. Retirement, whether planned or prompted by ill-health, ushers in a new stage of life, requiring new routines and social contacts. For men who lived their life according to gender social roles, which perceive men as masculine, independent and assertive and not inclined to open display of emotion and affection, adjusting to certain aspects of retirement may be difficult, particularly the lack of purposeful activity. Conversely, for women social role identity may be a source of strength for recognising and accepting vulnerability, and for seeking help. Our findings suggest women are central in encouraging older men to join Men's Sheds. In turn, women may experience an alleviation of stress when men participate in Sheds because they are not under the same pressure of their traditional social roles as carers and nurturers.

In this article, a migration historian, a Dja Dja Wurrung storyteller, and a long-time local combine their insights to analyse an encounter on the colonial frontier between a Clan of the Dja Dja Wurrung, on their Country, and the Italian Raffaello Carboni, the summer before he took a leading part in the Eureka uprising. Gilburnia, the long-lost pantomime Carboni published back in Rome two decades later, is hitherto unrecognised evidence of the cultural exchange that took place on the banks of the Loddon in central Victoria during the warmer months of 1853–54. In Gilburnia, Carboni attempted to share for an Italian audience what he had learned from his Dja Dja Wurrung hosts; the Dja Dja Wurrung appear to have welcomed this stranger into their Country and enveloped him in their storytelling.

Our paper focuses on delineating and scoping international Women's Sheds, a movement that has emerged within the past decade, mainly in Australia, Ireland and the UK. It addresses two main research questions. Firstly, what is the origin, distribution, nature and intent of Women's Sheds internationally to March 2021? Secondly, how might Women's Sheds be located within a typology inclusive of Men's Sheds and a range of community development models? We employed a systematic search via the internet in 2020-21, followed up by attempted email or phone contact to publicly reported Women's Sheds and like organisations internationally. In the process, we created a publicly shareable blog including a database of 122 existing, previously active, developing or planned Women's Sheds and like organisations to 13 March 2021. We identify four nations where self-identified Women's Sheds have operated or commenced within the past decade: Australia (61), the UK (30), Ireland (28) and New Zealand (3), particularly during the five years between 2014 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously curtailed this previous momentum and development after March 2020. We identify some similarities but also important differences between Women's and Men's Sheds. We propose a typology that accounts not only for the different ways in which Women's Sheds operate and women participate within their communities but also the different ways in which they locally collaborate (or not) with Men's Sheds in different countries. We conclude that Women's Sheds have largely been created by women in order to claim the shed as a positive female gendered space, in order to create an alternative community of women's hands-on practice.

This timeline focuses on the main developments in the field of Adult and Community Education (ACE) in Australia from the formation of the first national association, Australian Association of Adult Education, (AAAE) in 1960 to the present association, Adult learning Australia (ALA). It is based primarily on documentary evidence available in the association journals. The timeline starts in the early 1900s to provide the context for the formation of AAAE and includes several developments internationally, nationally and within states that affected the development of ACE in Australia as well as the association as it transformed over time to become AAACE and more recently ALA. It is necessarily selective and partial but provides references to other sources for those seeking a more detailed history.

This paper poses three research questions, based primarily on evidence from six decades of the Australian Journal of Adult Education (AJAL, 2000-present) and its antecedent journals dating back to 1961. Firstly, it asks what was the context for establishing a national adult learning association, Australian Association of Adult Education (AAAE) in 1960, renamed the Australian Association for Adult and Community Education (AACE) in 1989, and Adult Learning Australia (ALA) in 1998? Secondly, it asks how the association, the research in its journals and the field of adult education adapted to the rapidly changing context, opportunities and needs for lifelong learning in Australia? In doing so, the paper critically examines evidence of ongoing tensions and difficulties delivering on ALA's 2020 vision of 'lifelong and lifewide learning for all Australians'. It also asks what the current situation is for Australian adult education, and what possible new courses for the future ALA and AJAL might take. The first two research questions are addressed in the body of this paper. The third question is addressed primarily within the Discussion.

Our paper uses a qualitative, case study approach to critically examine the role of community involvement in learning to adapt and develop resilience in the face of disaster. Within a decade, the already disadvantaged, small, Australian rural community of 'Bellbird' faced three catastrophic, human induced disasters: the Millennial Drought (1996 to 2010), a March 2013 bushfire and the COVID-19 epidemic of 2020. Our interviews were conducted during late 2019 and early 2020 with men and women shedders as well as their significant others in the usually vibrant and unusually gender inclusive 'Bellbird Men's Shed'. For at least six months following the interviews, the Bellbird Men's Shed was shut as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdowns. We opportunistically reflect on the data from our interviews and emerging literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to critically interrogate the role local community learning plays in responding to and developing resilience in the face of locally experienced global disasters. We conclude that Bellbird is a good example of a small, rural community where formal, top down decision making approaches to adult and community education in 2020 in Australia are sometimes impossible or inappropriate. Bellbird in effect exercised agency to create its unique, place and needs-based form of lifelong and lifewide learning 'bottom up' at its atypical community Men's Shed. The practices and commitments the Shed adopted have provided the community with opportunities for developing personal and collective wellbeing and the necessary resilience for adapting to likely future shocks.

Our paper focuses on intergenerational learning in informal community settings between older men and boys. It examines and challenges narrow definitions of the notion of what is meant by "older" and "intergenerational" learning. It stresses the importance of older men's capacity to be contemporary in their worldview, while drawing from a deep knowledge and wisdom developed from their life experiences and also from their formative cultural, national, and Indigenous learning traditions. Our paper provides an account of intergenerational stories wherein men informally mentor, share skills, and develop meaningful relationships with disengaged and disconnected young people in the community Men's Sheds.

Learning through life experiences as distinct from learning through the academy and courses have become increasingly important themes in later life adult education research and practice. Whilst the dominant discourse for most younger people is still about education and training for students in standardised and accredited courses, there is increasing concern to find ways of giving voice to empower people otherwise excluded, disempowered or missing from mainstream education, learning, research and the community. This paper specifically explores and actively mirrors ways of using techniques developed through academic autoethnography to empower older people to share and make sense of the lives they have lived by exploring some of the unexamined assumptions that govern everyday life, behaviour and decision making including in the many, often very informal contexts well beyond educational institutions, the academy and paid work. In essence, like autoethnography, our paper seeks to identify, interrogate and celebrate ways of revealing and displaying multiple layers of consciousness connecting the personal to the cultural for sharing and celebrating diversity in later life.

In our final paper we reflectively stand back and ask, 'What do we know and what have we learnt about lifelong learning in later life from the international Getting of Wisdom Exchange program and process, including the research papers in this volume? In critically addressing this question we draw not only on new insights from the papers in this themed volume and the wider literature of lifelong and later life learning, but also on insights from Indigenous knowledge(s). We sense an ideal opportunity to reflect on our insights into Indigenous learning and eldership in Australia and New Zealand to go beyond what research is actually included in this volume. In part, what we do is ask what voices, pedagogies and research tends not to be included here, that is also missing in most mainstream Western research, that typically seeks universal 'truths' about learning through peer reviewed scientific perspectives and methods. We certainly do not regard learning shaped and re-shaped by governments through neoliberal and conservative discourses as the only or last word. We have chosen the ancient te reo Maori words, Ma te ora ka mohio/'Through life there is learning' as the title for our paper to emphasise that lifelong learning is an ancient and wise construct that regards life and learning as inseparable and mutually reinforcing.

Australia has around 1,000 Men's Sheds informal community based workshops offering men beyond paid work somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to. They have proven to be of great benefit for older men's learning, health and wellbeing, social integration, and for developing a positive male identity focusing on community responsibility and care. A Men's Shed is typically self organized and 'bottom-up', which is also a key success factor, since it provides participants with a sense of ownership and empowerment. Men's Sheds are now spreading rapidly internationally, but the uptake of the idea varies with the local and national context, and so too may the consequences. Our paper describes how the Men's Shed travelled to Denmark, a country with considerably.more 'social engineering' than in Australia, where Sheds were opened in 2015, via a 'top-down' initiative sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Health. Using data from the study of the web pages of the Danish 'Shed' organizations, from interviews with the central organizer, and from visits and interviews with participants and local organizers at two Danish Men's sheds, we describe how the idea of the Men's Shed on the Australian model was interpreted and translated at central and local levels. Preliminary data indicate that similar positive benefits as exist in Australia may result, provided that local ownership is emphasized.

This paper presents a case study of the experiences and reflections of four fourth year pre-service teachers from Federation University Australia who completed their three-week teaching placement in Anshan, Liaoning Province, China, in April 2014. The study also explores the perspectives and opinions of both the Chinese mentor teachers and Chinese students towards the Australian pre-service teachers. The research confirms the mutual benefits of cross-cultural teacher education professional experiences for pre-service teachers, Chinese mentor teachers and Chinese students. The teaching experiences revealed major differences in educational concepts and teaching strategies and approaches between the two systems because of the different social and cultural contexts. The evidence from the voices of the participants indicates that the professional experience in these two Chinese schools fostered the Australian pre-service teachers' cross-cultural communication skills, developed their confidence and skills as teachers and generally enriched their personal and professional lives.

This specially themed ‘Getting of Wisdom’, Learning in Later Life Edition of AJAL is not so much concerned with the issue of ageing itself, but more about quality of life regardless of age. It is about taking, but also giving back as best as possible at any age. As guest editors, we regard this as being about rethinking the possible richness of humanity and connectedness of lives regardless of time and space. We are hopeful that this issue provides an optimistic and timely message that each of us can contribute towards social emancipation and greater equality.

BACKGROUND:Given Australia's population ageing and predicted impacts related to health, productivity, equity and enhancing quality of life outcomes for senior Australians, lifelong learning has been identified as a pathway for addressing the risks associated with an ageing population. To date Australian governments have paid little attention to addressing these needs and thus, there is an urgent need for policy development for lifelong learning as a national priority. The purpose of this article is to explore the current lifelong learning context in Australia and to propose a set of factors that are most likely to impact learning in later years.CONCLUSION:Evidence based policy that understands and incorporates learning opportunities for all citizens is required to meet emerging global challenges. Providing appropriate learning opportunities to seniors is one clear pathway for achieving diverse health, social and economic outcomes.

This paper explores some important aspects of the generation of practical knowledge through later life. It is about the relationship between knowledge generation, agency and capability, developed informally through the life experiences in and through the Company of Others. It emphasises how the everyday processes of socialisation create invaluable opportunities to know how to navigate the diverse and complex changes thrown up in the journey through later life. It asks where and how knowhow is generated after workforce participation ceases and pays particular attention to 'third places', opportunities in the community that enable social connections beyond the first and second places, home and work, respectively. The empirical and theoretical data come from two main Australian sources amplified by new international research in cognate fields. The first is a study about Generating knowhow in later life. The second derives from insights from research for a book into the origins and nature of the now international Men's Shed Movement.