The curriculum of education and training
9106
The curriculum of education and training for adult educators: A re-think on some basic assumptions?
N.C.Boreham, University of Manchester
British adult education is undergoing one of its periodical sea-changes. By some freak of geophysics, the level of the water around the British Isles is rising to the level around the coast of North America. In plain English: recent changes in British post-school education (modularisation, assessment of prior experience and learning, credit accumulation and transfer, and fee-based financing) are bringing us to a state which has existed in North America for a long time.
North American post-school education appears to be healthy enough, in spite of tight finance. So why are British adult educators exhibiting such concern at the convergence of their own system on the North American model?
The answer, or at least part of it, must be the inertia of traditional British beliefs about the nature of adult education. The irritations of administrative upheaval are merely surface features: what really worries us is the challenge to our assumptions about the role of adult educators in society, and our own role in preparing them for this. The contributions to Strand 2 all stimulated a re-think of these assumptions, albeit from different perspectives.
Patrick Keane began the discussion by raising the question of what the public expected of adult education before formal programmes of professional training for adult educators began. The answer is that, in the days of volunteerism in early nineteenth century America, they expected friendship and non- directiveness. Patrick’s paper described how the early volunteers opposed the ‘professional’ adult educators who came later on the grounds of their didacticism and cult of information. But growing professionalism in adult education steadily reinforced this approach. In the 1930s, Columbia University, for instance, based their courses of professional training for adult education on a school/higher education model, not on the self-help movement of the 1830s United States.
Barry Hake traced the transformation of adult education in the Netherlands from an open vocation to a closed occupation, with an increasingly task-oriented focus. He reported that, from September 1991, adult education in the Netherlands became in effect a closed profession. Now the training is task-oriented and field-specific, with little on the broader issues of adult development.
Susan Knights pointed out that adult education is an adventitious profession - people fall into it after developing expertise in something else - and discussed the problems of opening access to professional training for these individuals. She described courses at the University of Technology in Sydney which are designed to overcome these difficulties.
Barry Bright asked how far reflective practice is actually being achieved in courses of professional training. His review of how different professional groups are responding to this idea highlighted the prevalence of a kind of superficial compliance which does not take account of the central issue - that reflective practice requires understanding of self.
Reg Wickett raised the important question of whether competence-based education and training could meet the needs of the leaders of adult education for the future. The main impact of master’s courses in adult education is at this level, not at the level of field-worker. The prime focus should be on management education and training in curriculum design, not on the basic facilitation skills which CBET often selects as its main concern in this area. In a final session, Reg Melton illustrated the advantages and disadvantages of competences as a tool of curriculum development.
Instead of looking back in history for some golden age whose successes might provide a model for the present, the curriculum of education and training for adult education needs to break out of the grip of traditional assumptions. The best way to do so, suggested Liam Carey, is to ask one central question: What does the adult educator see him or herself doing in two years’ time?
Unpacking the nuances of meaning in this misleadingly simple question can be as valuable an input to the process of curriculum development as obtaining the answers!
Reproduced from 1991 Conference Proceedings, pp. 27-28 SCUTREA 1997