Symposium on management of adult education
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Symposium on the management of adult education
The Chairman, Professor Wedell, opened the session by reminding the group that the managerial role of teachers vis à vis students had been dealt with in the previous session. He went on to say that this Symposium might possibly look at (a) the institutional responsibilities of adult educators, and (b) the management of the system.
Professor Jones opened his contribution by saying that as adult educators we were not managers except to set up training programmes and initiate educational and research processes, He continued with an exposition of his paper (‘Russell and SCUTREA: Some notes as a prelude to discussion’) and drew attention to the fact that the institutional mode of adult education was not altogether different from that of industry; that adult education is only a small scale professional organisation which may draw on external resources; that it has an enabling and facilitating role rather than a providers role; that status, remuneration, etc., is related to managerial aspects, e.g. number of students; and that it is necessary to discern a professional input as opposed to a managerial one. He continued by stressing the need to draw up a shopping list of research requirements from small to large scale. Finally, he spoke on the research requirements as enunciated in his paper on page 3.
It was asked whether co-operation, which Professor Jones had expressed as being vital, did not in practice reinforce existing divisions. In reply it was suggested that independent research along these lines may provide the answer. A further question asked was whether a function of management is to extend equality of opportunity and if this is so would not very real difficulties arise in dealing with higher authorities, Mr. Stock was the next speaker who spoke at some length on the points raised in his paper ‘Management of Adult Education: the LEA Sector’. Again, he stressed the importance of research and in particular that which should be carried out before training frameworks are established. The Chairman endorsed this by pointing out the various levels of training which were being conducted.
It was asked whether a certain number of teachers should become managers and whether there should be an alternative promotional structure, i.e. are managers to be distinguished from teachers. In reply it was said that this is a problem across the whole range of service industries and in some areas e.g. social services, the two are becoming blurred. There was in fact a move away from the virtuoso role. It was suggested that perhaps there should be equality of status between teachers and managers. It was also said that there was a problem of defining a pattern of lateral relationships between all personnel but by substituting lateral mobility for vertical mobility this could perhaps be beneficial to the service. The subject of imminent local government reorganisation was also brought up. In this connection it was suggested that practice will undergo some modification i.e. style will be changed. It was noted that this may be an additional item to be put on the research shopping list.
Mr. Marriott’s contribution was prefaced by his stating that the problems on which he would talk stemmed from the point of view of one personally involved in planning and providing adult education training.
Relevance. This is likely to become an especially salient issue in ‘management’ studies. The alternatives of academic detachment versus the servicing of specific needs are too stark; the situations we are involved in are likely to be much more complex. The stated or implied psychological contract between university employer and learners may be critical to the students’ reception of what they are offered. The collaborative work with employing agencies is important - staff development rather than provision of qualifications.
What is Management? The contributions of Messrs. Stock and Wheeler (in the previous session) extended ‘management’ to cover almost all the activities of the adult education specialist. The question of priorities for the professional trainer was therefore unresolved. Is ‘management’ concerned with certain kinds of people (a range of work or functions)? This also raises the question of importation of models into adult education. Dubbing an approach as ‘management’ may simply create a symbol that serves to sell the ideas, or persuades people to attend to neglected areas of their work.
Content of Courses. Are we still at the stage of honest but idiosyncratic selection? Organisation theory is important, but what bits of it do we select? With the sort of students met it might hold to two anchoring points: (a) value technology (the means and dynamics of changes concerned with the creation and maintenance of values); and (b) the dynamics of ‘associations’ (given current ambitions for adult education this offers an important view not adequately provided by conventional material on organisation and bureaucracy).
In conclusion Mr. Marriott suggested that collaborative action/ research may short cut some problems. Finally, the question was raised whether one ought not to look at the way successful extension and, in particular, university research entrepreneurship has operated and been guided by a constant system of values and adopt this method in the development of adult education.
Reproduced from 1973 Conference Proceedings, pp. 1-3 SCUTREA 1997