Community Learning Development Resource 101 – 07
WIDENING PARTICIPATION IDEAS
SUMMARY
If we are concerned to contact and capture the voice of all adult learners in the community – then where are the widening participation hard targets? Is widening participation a strategy with one outcome – recruitment of people into education and training?
THE IDEAS
- Soft targets are existing learners – those already participating and those confident learners who are aware and experienced in post school education or training. They are generally confident to make their own learning choices and are capable of referring themselves into learning opportunities, within education and training institutions and agencies.
- Hard targets are those learners who are non-aware and not confident as learners and as such they are disadvantaged, disenfranchised, marginalized and excluded. They may have a sense of failure as learners, low self-esteem as learners, lack awareness, confidence and may have learning difficulties and /or disabilities.
- Within strategies with hard targets – to capture the voice of non-confident learners, there is always a concern to remain on target, when there is pressure to gain learner numbers from softer markets. Performance criteria must be used which identify, analyse and measure success in learning in relation to the hard target priority.
- The community learning model of capture takes time for pre- recruitment progression via learner-centred non-formal first-steps. Support for individual capacity-building and progression is the key feature in the capturing process – individual learners need to move forward by their own choice and intent, not to be forced into formal learning situations too soon.
- Economic and employment factors, such as addressing local labour or skill shortages may produce a pressurised situation, where non-confident learners are recruited before they are ready and confident to be successful learners. Pressured recruitment and progression often leads to later failure and disengagement, evident in poor retention and successful completion rates.
- Hard target learners are the most difficult to recruit successfully, the most costly, in terms of the length of their learning journeys and the support hours needed, but real success can be dramatic in terms of the learning distance travelled and how people’s lives can be changed for the better.
- Hard target learners usually have the longest learning journeys to travel and the greatest need for support and encouragement. Hard target learners need learning success and positive feedback, which confirms their success in ways that they understand and appreciate, and which can help build their self-esteem.
Widening Participation and Progression
Widening participation is more than increasing the numbers of adults engaging in post-16 education and training. Learning in its widest sense includes informal and non-formal learning as well as formal learning. Such informal and non-formal experiences may be as much as some learners want or can cope with. Many may not be ready for some time to engage with formal learning opportunities – courses and classes. An important value underpinning community learning approaches, is that learners should have choices and the capacity to make effective choices.
Non-confident learners may not engage in formal education and training but may learn and choose to apply their learning in other personal and locally directed ways – where the learning is of greater relevance to their immediate and developing needs and can enable them to solve problems immediately relevant in their lives. Participation in community development and neighbourhood action are areas is one such outcome.
Widening participation does not necessarily result in increased numbers of adults engaging in formal education and training provision. It should not be just another provider recruitment strategy.
Six practical suggestions for connecting with non-intending learners:
- Make contact – door-knocking, conversation, etc.
- Build relationships and jointly devise first-steps learning to build learner confidence and open up options
- Provide for learners, short and quick routes to individual learning success and positive feedback
- Offer support, advice and information
- Establish sensible progression routes in collaboration with local providers
- Enable individual learners and groups of learners to make choices about their own learning journeys.
Is the assumption, that the only goal for widening participation, should be the engagement of new learners in formal education and training, in relation to employment and increased economic activity, out of step with current government thinking, policy and priorities?
The contribution of learning to building individual capacity by which benefits impact to bring about quality of life improvement, must be part of our thinking about why we should seek to widen participation by adults in learning. Seeing individual capacity building leading to collective capacity building and community capacity building is also clearly an important outcome of widening participation.
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