What Have I Learnt This Year? Some reflections on Adult Learners’ Week.
May 15th, 2012 by Paul Richardson
It is Adult Learners Week once again. While it hardly seems a year since the last one, it’s a good time to look back to the learning of the last year, and to look forward to the next one. NIACE has just published the headline findings of its annual survey ‘Widening participation in adult education‘. The results of the survey are interesting enough (although a bit depressing in terms of the levels of engagement), but I thought I would take a look at what the survey has actually asked people this time around.
Each year, 5,000 adults aged 17 and over across the UK are provided with the following definition of learning, and asked when they last took part in any learning, as well as how likely they are to take part in learning during the next three years. NIACE takes a very broad view of what learning actually is: “Learning can mean practising, studying or reading about something. It can also mean being taught, instructed or coached. This is so you can develop skills, knowledge, abilities or understanding of something. Learning can also be called education or training. You can do it regularly (each day or month) or you can do it for a short period of time. It can be full time, or part time, done at home, at work, or in another place like a college. Learning does not have to lead to a qualification. We are interested in any learning you have done, whether or not it was finished.”
No rigid boundaries there, then. This set me to thinking about what learning I have been up to, and the broad definition really inspired me to take all sorts of things into account. Music? I have done a little, but not as much as I should (but perhaps more than the rest of my family would wish). Welsh? Not enough, but I plan to put that to rights by attending the Ysgol Haf (Summer School) in Bangor this year: two weeks of intensive language – I hope I am up to it. Coding? Well, I have signed up to the ‘Codeyear’ project, but I haven’t been a good student so far. I kept going for about two weeks, but then I was feeling a bit bored and isolated, if I am honest. Learning solo can be such a dull business at times. The other day I signed up for “Open Content Licensing for Educators” (a Massive Open Online Course, MOOC); we will see how good my staying power is when it comes to informal online learning with a bit more of a social element, even if it is likely to be a bit of a crowd in there.
Casting my eyes over these learning experiences, it struck me what a huge diversity is possible. Most educational providers don’t explore all these possibilities – probably for very good reasons, such as funding and inspection requirements. However, it is not a bad idea for teachers to try these out, and see how the land lies. How else will we know what the learners feel like when we try them out on them?
I am hoping that Adult Learners Week is providing a nice varied menu for all those learners who are experiencing taster sessions. The full list is on the NIACE and NIACE Dysgu Cymru web pages. Personally, I am going for the online Spanish experience (‘Hola!’) tomorrow morning; May 16th, 10 am. It is open to all here:
http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/education-and-learning/adult-and-community-education
We’ll see how that goes….
