Learning in Formal Settings

• Adult Literacy and Basic Education • Continuing Professional Education • Labor Education • Universities, Polytechnics, and Community Colleges • Training in Business and Industry • Contextual Distortions

Adult Literacy and Basic Education

• 1985 – 60 million Americans, 1/3 of the adult population were illiterate • Voluntarism – Where volunteered frequently served as teachers.

– Professional educators played the supervisory and training role.

• Literacy Volunteers of America – Is concerned chiefly with deploying volunteers to help adults learn basic literacy skills.

Adult Literacy and Basic Education

• Volunteers – Made the teaching of literacy more of a business encounter.

– Less of a chance of the “deficit” – Learners are less likely to be intimidated by volunteers. – Encouraged to use learners’ real life experiences as curricular materials • The use of rifle catalogues as teaching aids for an adult who had an interest in guns

Adult Literacy and Basic Education

• Freirean Methods – Advocate the use of home visits, group walks, analysis of learners’ photographs, personal storytelling, songwriting, and humorous skits as teaching devices • Made learners feel more comfortable with their exploration of language and symbols. • Principles of effective facilitation – Involve inculcating a spirit of critical inquiry in adults and assisting them to take control over their personal, social, and work lives.

Adult Literacy and Basic Education

• Heaney 1983 – “when adults truly take control over the educational structures governing them and when they create their own curricula and educational activities, they run the risk of exiling themselves from their institutional base.” • Majority of illiterates – Woking-class – Ethnic minorities – Individuals in an economic disadvantage

Continuing Professional Education

• Goals (CPE) – Helping professionals to master the theoretical knowledge.

– Increase problem-solving capacities – Ability to use practical knowledge – Enhance their careers

Continuing Professional Education

• Houle’s Collective Identity Characteristics – Sense of belonging to discrete occupational groups. – Credentialing, creating a professional subculture – Seeking legal reinforcement – Gaining public acceptance – Developing ethical codes of proactive – Enhancing relations with other vocations – Clarifying professional relationships with users

Continuing Professional Education

• Houle’s view of CPE – An articulation of the vision, the principles, the content of the ideal in the name of which control is to be exercised” – Critical awareness • CPE programs should include some attention to the ethical dimensions of appropriate practive. • Assist professionals to consider the moral correctness and social justification of their activities.

Continuing Professional Education

• Jarvis 1983 – The aims of the educational process are about the learners rather than about the profession or the wider society.

– The aims of professional education may not relate intrinsically to the needs of the profession nor to those of the wider society.

Continuing Professional Education

• CPE is not always voluntary – Adults are forced to learn against their own inclination and desires.

– Resulting in resentment – Can become a major block to any kind of meaningful learning

Continuing Professional Education

• MCE - Mandatory Continuing Education • Being ordered to learn new knowledge, upgrade existing skills, or attend professional development workshops can cause resentment • Likely to act as a major block to effective learning • No one wishes to hire lawyers who are ignorant of recent legislative changes or be under the knives of surgeons who are unaware of improved surgical techniques.

Continuing Professional Education

• Benefits of CPE – Made professionals more mindful of elements in their own practices • Intimidating or insensitive • Offered reflection of ones own behaviors, expectations, and attitudes • Help alter ones approach to the next class.

Labor Education

• International Ladies Garment Workers Union – First example in America 1926 – As 20 th Century progressed, these became more organized in the form of workingmen’s colleges, mechanics' institutes, the WEA, the Labor College, and workingmen’s residential colleges

Labor Education

• Typical program areas are: – Finance – Health and safety – Business management – Social studies – Apprenticeship programs

Labor Education

• Workers Education – Is used in a general sense to refer to the development among workers of a sense of critical awareness regarding political, economic, philosophical, cultural, and sociological matters. • Labor Education – Is used to refer to educational programs designed to help union representative and member perform their union related functions more effectively.

– Attempt to meet workers’ educational needs as they arise from participation in unions.

Labor Education

• Labor Studies – Describes a new curricular area and field of academic specialization that is offered as a degree option in university programs. • Subjects include: Various I/O Psychology courses, group dynamics in workplace, leadership styles, management theory, collective bargaining, etc. • Labor Education Programs – Those crated to assist union member and representative in the performance of their union functions.

Labor Education

• Labor Education Programs cont… – Tend to be highly instrumental and oriented toward the acquisition of specific skills through active modes of learning. – Participants acquire skills in such areas as handling grievances, conducting committee meetings, collective bargaining, interpreting safety and health regulations, recruiting members, and explaining union policy and decisions to members.

Universities, Polytechnics, and Community Colleges

• One of the most significant developments in higher education in the last fifteen years has been the increasing number of adult students enrolled at these institutions. • More Adult Learners are entering four-year college/university.

• Women aged thirty-five and over are the fastest-growing student group in colleges

Universities, Polytechnics, and Community Colleges

• Who’s going… • More independent studies.

• Courses and services that help adults acquire learning-to-learn skills • Lead to the use of learning contracts • Helped establish a academic curricula that deliberately oriented itself to take account the adult students’ experiences.

Training in Business and Industry

• Focuses on the principles in business and industry, and exploration and human resource management. • Reasons why educators should be more aware of the world of corporate training.

1. There is a long tradition of companies funding liberal studies programs in universities for management personnel.

Oil companies, Ford, GM, GE, Proctor & Gamble, etc.

2. A recent report on state policies and institutional practices on adult learning recognized private industry is becoming a major provider of education for adults.

Training in Business and Industry

• Reasons why educators should be more aware of the world of corporate training.

3. Many trainers, training managers, and educational consultants see themselves as educators, not simply as trainers, and draw from adult learning concepts and methods in designing training experiences. 4. A number of concepts and methodological approaches developed within the corporate world have a good deal of relevance for educators of adults who work in non-business settings. 5. Human Resource Development

Training in Business and Industry

• Human Resource Management – A matter of organizing learning experiences that take place within a definite time period – Increase the possibility of improving job performance – Organizational Growth

Training in Business and Industry

• Human Resource Management – Du Bois 1982 • The emerging role of the human resource developer encompasses much more than that of the traditional adult education. This professional is a new professional on the educational scene; an adult educator with new and more expansive expertise, aware of the dynamics of human behavior and the workings of organizations.

Training in Business and Industry

• Human Resource Management – The traditional management skills • Planning, budgeting, and business information processing • profit and costs • Committed to the goals of the organizations of which they are a part.

• Adult Educators – Employee centered approach • Instructional planning, instructing and meeting planning, and facilitating • Growth and development of the individual • Center on continuing education in universities and colleges, and school-based adult education programs.

Training in Business and Industry

• QWL (Quality of Working Life) – An extension of participatory management that is aimed at increasing organizational effectiveness.

– Focus on the skills of problem solving, collective decision making, and leadership development.

Gardner’s Multiple Intellegences

• Logical/mathematical • Visual/spatial • Bodily/kinesthetic • Musical/rhythmic • Naturalist • Interpersonal • Intrapersonal • Verbal/linguistic

verbal

• Drilling • Discussing • Note-taking • Summarizing • Vocabulary & grammar • Giving oral presentation

mathematical

• Classifying • Problem solving • Critical thinking • Puzzles • graphs

Spatial – Art Smart

• Mind – maps • Storyboards • Reading diagrams • Watching films

Body

• Role playing • Physical games • Hands-on learning • Acting out words • Body language & gestures

musical

• Singing songs/ jazz chants • Responding to music

Interpersonal learners – people smart

• Leading & organizing • Cooperating • Sharing & comparing ideas • Group work & games • Debating & discussing • Interviews & questionnaires

Intrapersonal

• Working alone • Self-paced instruction • Planning • Writing a reflective journal • Writing essays

Naturalist

• Analyzing similarities & differences • Categorizing • Investigating • Linking • Being outside