Adult And Community Education Research Articles

Adult and community education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand 2000–2014: neoliberal influences?

Changes in tertiary education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand in the last decade have impacted on adult and community education (ACE). Marginalized and understood as non-formal education at the turn of the century, ACE is now part of the ‘tertiary landscape’. It is explicitly steered by education policy, its role severely narrowed, its emphasis shifted from empowerment, equity, active citizenship to preparation for employment and skills for work. This article explores the policy developments which have led to the changes and analyses possible links between the policies and three neoliberal suppositions: free market economics, the role of the state and homo economicus. It concludes that policies have been influenced by a neoliberal hegemony under both Centre-left Labour-led and Centre-right National-led governments, and that neoliberalism is likely to remain dominant into the future.

The Anthology Project: giving voice to the silent scholars

The paper describes an Anthology Project for newly-qualified teachers in the post-compulsory sector, designed to celebrate their achievements and to encourage the dissemination of their work via a printed and bound set of papers. The teachers worked in Further Education Colleges (FECs), Sixth Form Colleges, private training providers and Adult and Community Education (ACE) and had recently completed an in-service Initial Teacher Training (ITT) qualification. Some held secure, full-time positions, while others had part-time or insecure work. The project supported their transition from trainee to fully qualified, recognised professional teacher by promoting the value of their scholarship and its impact on practice. A rationale is provided, exploring themes of good practice in Higher Education (HE) using concepts of student as producer and as change agent. The paper draws on Eraut’s (2004) writing on the formation of professional identity and Wenger’s (1998) work on communities of practice. Vignettes are provided, using Bourdieu’s (1986) work on social and cultural capital to analyse the contrasting situations of two participants. The use of the Anthology to support other trainees is described. A recommendation is made for similar projects to be developed.

Developing communities: serving ACE through tertiary education

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the focus and practice of Adult and Community Education (ACE) as well as its conceptualization and delivery and to suggest parameters for an approach based on excellence, a balanced scorecard and performance to meet community needs.Design/methodology/approachThe review examines key aspects of the field of ACE and its strategic shaping, especially towards professionalization and a masculine‐oriented approach portrayed through Australian tertiary ACE courses.FindingsA new understanding emerged that sees the practice of ACE in tertiary institutions already leading to the professionalization of work roles such as community educators, developers and counsellors. Through universities, ACE has embraced developments in information and communication technology and new productivity agendas without losing its caring approach. A proposed framework suggests that it is time for ACE to be transformed in the modern era, to become more systematized, to collaborate more deeply with universities and to strengthen its ability to balance a nurturing focus with a stronger masculine strategic approach.Originality/valueA new ACE game of hitting winners is being played by Australian universities engaged in the professionalization of ACE through their accredited programmes. These tertiary strategies are fusing the feminine aspects of ACE such as social connectedness and caring with the masculine characteristics of performativity, strategic policy agendas, standards and scientific approaches to quality. ACE should be fully reviewed, improved and integrated better with the new higher education performance approach.

The complexity of collaboration: Opportunities and challenges in contracted research

This article explores some of the challenges of utilising collaborative research approaches when undertaking contracted research projects for government and non-government agencies in the adult and community education (ACE) sector. To discuss these challenges, the article draws on three recent examples of research projects undertaken for ACE sector organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand. These challenges include managing relationships with the different parties to the research; dealing with conflicting expectations of funding agencies, commissioning organisations and practitioners; and ownership and dissemination of findings. We highlight the complexity of notions of collaboration and the importance of deliberate trust-building in establishing credibility. We also open up for discussion the thorny issues of who owns the right to disseminate research findings and how far should researchers’ and universities’ responsibilities extend to ensure that research findings are put in the public domain?

Social, Local, and Situated: Recent Findings About the Effectiveness of Older Men’s Informal Learning in Community Contexts

The informal learning that older (age 50+) men experience in Australia has been the subject of a suite of recent, intensive, mixed methods research projects in community-based voluntary organizations. The purpose of the research was to examine where men are learning in these contexts beyond work and formal education rather than to assume and problematize older men as nonlearners. This article draws together strands of completed field research to suggest that learning is effective for older men in community settings when it is social, local, practical, situated, and in groups, particularly for older, sometimes isolated men who have experienced a range of setbacks in life. While older Australian men tend to be missing from adult and community education (ACE) providers, they are able to informally share hands-on skills from their work lives with other men of all ages, with a range of important benefits to their own well-being, the well-being of other men, and the well-being of their communities. Some future areas for comparative international research are identified.

The development of adult and community education policy in New Zealand: insights from Popper

This paper examines the process by which all post‐compulsory education in New Zealand has become integrated under one administrative structure, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), with the intention of developing a single coordinated system of tertiary education. In particular, adult and community education (ACE), the least formal and organised sector, is required to develop programmes that align with an externally conceived set of priorities, which themselves arise from the Tertiary Education Strategies. Using Popper’s concepts of ‘holistic’ versus ‘piecemeal’ change, it is argued that such large‐scale change is potentially dangerous as there are likely to be unintended, damaging consequences of such policies; consequences which are difficult to fix in modern, complex societies. In particular, ACE which is built on an insider, community‐focus ethos, able itself to identify and respond to community‐learning opportunities, is likely to be changed fundamentally so that the very characteristics that have made ACE effective in the past will be lost in the process.

Examining the Development of the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning and Its Implications for Schools and Teacher Education in Australia

The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a very successful senior secondary school qualification introduced in the Australian state of Victoria in 2002. Applied learning in the VCAL engages senior students in a combination of work-based learning, service-learning, and project-based learning and aims to provide them with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to make informed choices regarding pathways to work and further education. The program has enjoyed rapid growth and its system-wide adoption by Victorian secondary schools, Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, Registered Training Organizations (RTOs), and Adult and Community Education (ACE) providers has broadened significantly the range of senior schooling pathway options for young people. This paper will examine reasons for developing an applied learning senior secondary certificate and its rapid growth in Victoria since 2002. The authors draw on a number of case studies to profile the unique nature of applied learning in the VCAL, including its dimensions of service learning, work-based learning, and project-based learning. These case studies are also used to discuss a number of implications that have emerged from the use of applied learning in the VCAL, including approaches to teaching and assessment that will support applied learning and the development of new partnerships between VCAL providers and community partners. Finally, the paper considers significant implications the VCAL has created for teacher education in Victoria by discussing the new Graduate Diploma of Education (Applied Learning) developed by Deakin University.

Adult and Community Education

Any discussion about the nature and meaning of higher education has to take place in the context of enormous changes in society, probably on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. However, while the Industrial Revolution was driven by the economy as a social institution, with subsequent social and cultural transformations, the knowledge revolution is driven by technology and social change pivoting on democratisation. As a society, we are moving closer to individuation, within community and the social, amid discourses that construct our sense of reality and of our identities. This article will consider the key question for higher education: in what way ought it serve society? For those who defer to market forces, the value will be in terms of laws of economics, profit and loss. However, the meaning and value of higher education is underpinned by a basic ideological stance, if the answer includes priority for fostering places and environments for learning and scholarship in order to improve, ultimately, the lives of people in society. This is the position that I take, in my work in adult and community education. In this article I will consider the parallels between liberation movements-such as the women's movement--and adult and community education, as adult and community education has developed over the past twenty years in Ireland. The women's movement, for example, has been pivotal in changing discourses around femininity and masculinity, problematizing both, but simultaneously enabling individual women and groups of women to reflect critically about their individual lives, drawing conclusions and insights that may be generalised, not only to the total cohort of women as a group (if such an entity can be said to exist), but also translated, as it were, for other oppressed or marginalized groups.' The article will draw on the learning from social movements to illuminate the place of citizenship education, in the context of radical humanistic discourses conducted through lifelong learning, Finally, it will argue that higher education, underpinned by the moral positioning around justice and equality, could learn fiom this model, in order to reassert the meaning and value of its role in society.

Pedagogies on the edge: researching complex practice in youth and adult community education

This research arose from our involvements in adults and community education, adult literacy, youth issues, and in researching the new movement in Australia for the inclusion of ‘generic skills’ in education and training curriculum. We recruited twenty-two practitioners in Adult and Community Education (ACE) in a participatory action research approach to assist us in exploring how ‘generic skills and attributes’ are fostered in the context of adult and community education and to theorise pedagogies of ACE in the light of the changed demographic of those who access ACE programs (especially disaffected young people and older unemployed men). A ‘Framework for ACE Pedagogy’ was one outcome of the research. In this paper we describe the five ‘elements’ which we found to constitute ‘The Teacher’ in ACE. The elements include: personal engagement with learners; self-reflection on one's teaching and one's own learning journey; improvisation and risk-taking; awareness of relations of power; and having patience and trust in the learning process.

Baby Boomers Meet The Third Age

Recent trends in adult and community education (ACE) in Australia have implications for the University of the Third Age (U3A), even though the way the U3A operates isolates it from some of these external pressures. Issues include: funding constraints and government priorities, the change from empowerment to instrumentalism, with an emphasis on education for employment, accreditation and articulation, and an increasing perception of ACE as a market commodity. These developments challenge U3As to develop a curriculum of enrichment, more rigour in their programs and new education formats as they face increased competition from other adult education providers. In addition, U3As may well engage in some introspection as well as reflection about what might be the evolving needs of an increasingly better educated older generation.

Revisiting Reading: Exploring an intensive reading pedagogy in adult literacy

Applied linguistic research into genres of written communication hashad a considerable impact in recent decades on the pedagogy of writing inall sectors of education in Australia, from early schooling to post-secondaryand workplace contexts (eg. Christie and Martin 1997). Attending to thesocial purpose of language and modelling and deconstructing texts inpreparation for supported writing has become a common feature of manyprograms, including those in the field of adult English as a SecondLanguage (ESL) and adult literacy. However, effective engagement withmodel texts for writing is dependent on students being able to read thosetexts. While reading continues to be explicitly identified as a component ofmost adult literacy programs, there is evidence to suggest that less attentionmay be given to the deliberate supported development of reading skills(Burns and de Silva Joyce 2000, 2005). This paper reports on a projectfunded by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research(NCVER) in Australia. The study, Investigating the impact of intensive readingpedagogy in adult literacy, was designed to explore the relevance and thepotential of an intensive, explicit reading pedagogy, Reading-to-Learn, in adultand community education (ACE) and TAFE colleges in metropolitanSydney, teaching literacy in ESL and adult basic education (ABE) classes.The study was a partnership between practising teachers andresearcher/teacher educators. It identified positive outcomes for students,with advances in reading abilities for many students well beyond thoseanticipated by teachers and students alike. Teachers also reported verypositive outcomes for their own professional development. Importantly, thestudy also identified a number of system-level features that would need to bein place to support a broader adoption of the pedagogy.