11 - Adult learning

Summary

Introduction

Adult learning encompasses different types of provision, designed to address various education and training objectives. It takes place in communities, further education colleges, higher education institutions, training centres and the workplace, as described in the following quotation:

The work that adult educators do is, and should be, essential for the well-being of the societies in which we live. Adult educators train members of our military, provide continuing education for health care providers, and offer EAL to newcomers. They help low-level literacy learners obtain skills to gain better employment and teach grandmothers to read so that they can assist their grandchildren with their schoolwork. In colleges and universities, they provide formal education, and in community groups and organizations they facilitate on-the-ground learning opportunities to advocate for resources and participate in governance. … Adult educators work in all walks of life. The way in which they approach this work matters significantly, because adults need to engage in learning not just for individual career success or to develop workplace competencies but also to be critically informed and thoughtfully engaged citizens, capable of creative thought, and able to adapt to change. (Gouthro, 2019, 73)

We acknowledge that the adult education landscape is different in different countries, across different regions and within different localities, informed by different political systems, views of welfare and the role of the state. Adult learning is a wide topic and we have had to make choices about what to cover. In this chapter, we have chosen to explore what is distinct about the community-based adult learning that takes place in community settings, focusing in particular on basic skills education for adults. This includes informal learning and Adult Basic Education (ABE) programmes provided for adults at the elementary level of literacy, with an emphasis on communicative, computational and social skills. We would argue that these social practices are different to other forms of adult education, which focus on fixed programmes of learning that are institutionally determined and are more likely to have a fixed curriculum.