EPALE Thematic Coordinator, Andrew McCoshan, reviews content on EPALE to see what it can tell us about the essential ingredients we need to achieve inclusion in adult learning.

A challenge in adult learning is how to move towards inclusiveness in a context where the hardest to reach learners need intensive and tailored interventions. It is difficult to generalise as to what might be the essential ingredients for these interventions. However, collectively the content on EPALE points us in a number of directions.

First of all, we need to reach out to those people with least access to adult learning. Our target groups may have negative perceptions of education that they acquired in school, and they might have current lifestyles that are chaotic. Such outreach needs to be assertive and go beyond simple publicity to engage with target communities.

We also need to focus on the skills people actually possess, and not just those they lack. We should not regard the ‘low skilled’ as having no skills; indeed, we should probably stop using the term altogether.  There needs to be a positive process to help people to identify their skill sets and where they need help to address deficiencies. The individual learner is the only person who knows what they can already do, but often they need help to bring skills to the surface and identify them.

Armed with knowledge of where learners need support, we can then design programmes appropriately and also choose the most suitable pedagogies, as well as identify the most appropriate times and places for learning.  We may also be able to start the process of involving learners in more formal modes of education and training through the recognition of prior learning, linking the skills they already have to learning outcomes in qualifications. The approaches to these are many and varied across Europe, often within national frameworks.

It is not just learning that we need to be concerned with. We also need to pay attention to the issues that might affect an individual's chances of effectively engaging in learning, such as their circumstances at home which might make it difficult for them to attend all learning sessions or underlying attitudes or pre-dispositions they may hold. Support for these ‘non-learning issues’ can be as vital for an inclusive adult learning as the design of the learning process itself.

Hopefully, such elements will help to improve the chances of positive results, the learners perhaps finding work or flowing into further learning. Whatever the situation, follow-up support can be vital, although often this is a missing piece of the jigsaw. It raises questions about who is responsible for providing such support – the adult learning community, or other organisations and authorities. As this month's podcast pointed out, it is important we break down the walls that might exist between organisations as part of the drive for inclusion.

Pulling these elements together, we might build the type of process model shown in the graphic. I’m sure there are other pieces we could add to this ‘jigsaw’.

It is clear from this that the solutions for inclusion do not, by any means, rest solely on the shoulders of adult educators: other public services and community groups will surely be needed for their expertise.  As another blog post this month pointed out, it is in their own classroom or learning environment that adult educators can have the most impact. Indeed, perhaps what adult learning practitioners need most are:

1. freedom to be able to design appropriate content and pedagogy;
2. the ability to access resources and organisations that will help them to run programmes at appropriate times and places;
3. resources and expertise to provide learners with essential support;
4. top-down support and frameworks in the form of flexible qualifications and approaches for the recognition of prior learning that will enable them to get on with the job.

I wonder how many of us feel these are already in place?

Andrew McCoshan has worked in education and training for over 30 years. For more than 15 years he has conducted studies and evaluations for the EU, and before that was a consultant in the UK. Andrew is currently an independent researcher and consultant, and Senior Research Associate at the Educational Disadvantage Centre at Dublin City University in Ireland.