This study examined characteristic attributes of non-formal education and the non-formal pedagogy directing its teaching and learning processes. Data were collected on organizational and pedagogical characteristics in several out-of-school organizations (youth movements, youth organizations, community centers, bypass educational systems, local government agencies offering cultural and other activities geared to youth, and museums of art, science, and history with educational departments or branches). Interviews with key players focused on what was being taught, who the teachers were, how teaching was accomplished, and how the organizations understood their role in facilitating teaching and learning. Texts pertaining to the educational organizations were also reviewed. Results highlighted consistently recurring activities, values, and behaviors. Four major genres were revealed: the generative element genre, the administrative-organizational genre, the genre of informal learning, and the genre of the social function of non-formal education. Characteristic practices in non-formal pedagogy included practices that: initiated and fostered images of time and place; engendered phenomenological processes of teaching and learning through which knowledge was singularly negotiated; applied dialogue and conversation in teaching and learning processes; and used play to shape the bond between reality and probability by expanding the notion of what was considered within the bounds of plausible reality. (SM)