Designing learning trajectories for adults

• Professional educators or amateurs in the “adult learning sector”?

The Comenius heritage

• Children should be the prime target for education. Didacta Magna, Chapter 7: The education of man is easiest in childhood and it is actually the only time for education.

• Nowadays• Teacher training focussed on children• Professional training for the adult learning sector

unsystematic• Resource priorities: Children before adults

Qualifications for the adult learning sector is different

• The training of professionals in the “learning sector” is extremely focussed on a limited variation of contexts, i.e. schools.

• In the wider sector, where adults learn, qualification requirements should be more profound and broader.

A preparation for life

• Idea for a new curriculum 2007.• Decided 2009.• Implemented from 2010.• First cohort pupils 5 years old – leave work-

life 2070 (if they still have a job). • If the curriculum survives 15 years – it

pretends to prepare for 2085.

The Societal change

• Last 50 years:

• From few women with paid work to almost all

• From almost all in manual work to a dominating service-sector

The adult learning sector

• Involves many adults in a broad variety of activities in various contexts - from work-life and community education to vocational and higher education.

• More profound skills, when context is less institutionalised and fixed.

The size of the sector in Sweden

• Equivalents to full-time study years. (2002): • 789 000 fulltime equivalents incl. higher education.

Higher education (309 000) excluded: 480 000 full-time studying adults in the year.

• Folk high schools: 26 000 • Municipal adult education: 143 000 • Study association (study circles): 125 000 • Work-life training: 96 000• Labour market training: 26 000• Qualified Vocational Training: 11 000.

Professional educators?

• Professional preparation exists in Sweden:• Folk high school teacher training• Maybe for the work-life sector, with HRD-

programmes. However, it is unclear how strongly HRD is professionalized.

• Conclusion: In the sectors responsible for more than 350 000 fulltime study equivalents there are no organised professional training for organisers of adults’ learning trajectories.

A paradox

• In spite of the more challenging task - those responsible for designing learning trajectories for adults often have little education or training for their task

Is there a curriculum?

• Yes

• Two kinds of research-based knowledge:

• Context: The understanding of important context, which adults´ learning is embedded in.

• Tools: Pedagogy for adult learning

Contextual knowledge

• Insights into the role learning and education plays for adults. The life trajectories, where adults move and use education and training to cope with life and societal changes.

• Learning transcends the institutional frames.

- the interplay between life and learning

Context - contin.

• Societal condition changes - designing learning trajectories, which are related to changes.

• ”Identity-work” - choices of specific learning trajectories are ways of reconstructing identities in contemporary societies.

Pedagogy

• Review of international literature

• Swedish research council:

• 15 lines of reasoning, which could be sorted into 6 overarching projects

Project 1: Reform-didactics

• Line of reasoning 1: The competent adults and their need as norm.

• Line of reasoning 2: Problem-based learning

• Line of reasoning 3: The competent practitioner as norm.

• Line of reasoning 4: Work as norm.

Project 2: Work didactics

• Line of reasoning 1: Develop novices to experts.

• Line of reasoning 2: Develop workplaces through learning

Project 3: Life shaping didactics

– Line of reasoning 1: Studies and learning as identity projects

– Line of reasoning 2: Transformative learning

Project 4: Deconstructive didactics

• Line of reasoning 1: the curriculum of relativism.

• Line of reasoning 2: Didactics as stories

Project 5: Mobilising didactics

Line of reasoning 1: Forming opinions for democratic action.

Line of reasoning 2: Mobilising collective self-development

Line of reasoning 3: Radical consciousness-raising

Project 6: Empirical didactics

• Line of reasoning 1: Empirical studies of didactic beliefs as frames for didactic choice

• Line of reasoning 2: Development of didactic within existing frames