Category: ACE

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Listening to individual voices and stories – the mature-age student experience

Author/s: Cathy Stone

Edition: Volume 48, Number 2, July 2008

Summary: This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project, part of a doctoral thesis, which examines the impact of university study on a group of 20 female and male mature-age students at the University of Newcastle, Australia, who have entered university via a non-traditional pathway. These students are in the second to final years of their undergraduate degree programs and have all faced significant hurdles in gaining university entrance and continuing with their studies. The majority have come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, with little, if any, family history of higher education and little positive experience of prior study. This paper gives voice to their stories – their triumphs and achievements as well as their struggles – and highlights the important role that publicly funded institutions can play, not only in widening access to higher education, but also in encouraging and assisting students from a diverse range of backgrounds to participate fully in higher education and achieve their goals.

Keywords: mature-age students, non-traditional pathways, qualitative research

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Houses and sheds in Australia: an exploration of the genesis and growth of neighbourhood houses and men’s sheds in community settings

Author/s: Barry Golding, Helen Kimberley, Annette Foley and Mike Brown

Edition: Volume 48, Number 2, July 2008

Summary: This article reviews research into the genesis and spread of both neighbourhood houses and learning centres in Victoria and community-based men’s sheds in Australia to identify some similarities and differences. Our article asks questions about the gendered communities of practice that underpin houses for women on the one hand, and sheds for men on the other. Our particular interest is with the gender issues associated with the development of the relatively mature neighbourhood house ‘sector’, and those associated with the very recent and developing community-based men’s sheds ‘sector’. Our underpinning research question has to do with the desirability (or otherwise) in each of these sectors of political and strategic decisions being either gender specific or gender neutral. We identify a number of tantalising parallels between the rationale behind the establishment of both sectors, for women and men, albeit in very different circumstances, along with some obvious differences.

Keywords: neighbourhood houses, men’s sheds, comparison, gender

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Professional knowledge formation and organisational capacity-building in ACE: lessons from the Victorian Research Circles

Author/s: John McIntyre

Edition: Volume 48, Number 2, July 2008

Summary: The national reform agenda of the Council of Australian Governments challenges community education agencies to contribute to its goals and raises questions about their capacity to do so. It is crucial to define the conditions that are necessary to develop the capability of adult and community education (ACE) organisations to play a broader social and economic role. These include not only policy frameworks underwritten by strategic research, but the engagement of practitioners and organisations. The recent development in Victoria of Circles of Professional Research Practice, a form of participatory action research designed to promote such an engagement by ACE organisations, is analysed, drawing on material from an evaluation of the Circles intended to capture the experience, document its outcomes and recommend on its future applications. The article reviews the rationale of the Research Circles, describes aspects of their operation and analyses the factors creating conditions favourable to professional knowledge formation and organisational capacity-building. In doing so, the Research Circles are theorised as a ‘negotiable space’ constructed at the intersection of policy, research and practice, drawing out implications for capacity-building in Australian community education and training organisations.

Keywords: ACE organisations, social, economic, role, engagement, circles of professional research practice

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A competency approach to developing leaders – is this approach effective?

Author/s: Patricia Richards

Edition: Volume 48, Number 1, April 2008

Summary: This paper examines the underlying assumptions that competency based frameworks are based upon in relation to leadership development. It examines the impetus for this framework becoming the prevailing theoretical base for developing leaders and tracks the historical path to this phenomenon. Research suggests that a competency-based framework may not be the most appropriate tool in leadership development across many organisations, despite the existence of these tools in those organisations, and reasons for this are offered. Varying approaches to developing effective leaders are considered and it is suggested that leading is complex as it requires both competencies and qualities in order for a person to be an effective leader. It is argued that behaviourally-based competencies only cater to a specific part of the equation when they relate to leadership development.

Keywords: competency, frameworks, leadership, behaviour

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Negotiating learning through stories: mature women, VET and narrative inquiry

Author/s: Jeannie Daniels

Edition: Volume 48, Number 1, April 2008

Summary: This paper explains my choice of narrative inquiry as a methodological approach in my recently completed PhD study. My research investigated learning experiences of mature women learners in VET. Notions of learning as negotiated lived experience called for a methodological approach that privileged the learner’s perspective and opened space in which alternative notions of learning might emerge. From interviews with twelve mature women, I explain how I use stories of learning to understand how these women, as learners with distinct yet diverse life experiences, contextualise their everyday into their VET learning. Some ethical considerations in using other people’s stories in narrative research are also identified. I argue for the use of stories to research women’s understandings of their VET learning and to reconceptualise learning as an ongoing and integrated process that must be understood within the everyday contexts of women’s lives.

Keywords: VET, mature learners, women, experience

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Adult education, social inclusion and cultural diversity in regional communities

Author/s: Rob Townsend

Edition: Volume 48, Number 1, April 2008

Summary: This article presents the outcomes of recent research into adult education programs and experiences in the Shire of Campaspe, a region in northern Victoria. Research data of people from diverse cultural backgrounds reveal how individuals can utilise adult education as a space to explore their own social and cultural isolation in a regional context. The research reveals patterns of migration, internal population mobility, social isolation and cultural identity within the context of this one regional shire. The article discerns the roles that adult education providers play in creating specific kinds of space for people to discover new social networks while interacting with informal and formal structures and processes of adult learning. Adult education programs and practices can play an important role in providing space for the exploration of social, cultural and economic experiences. However, individual adult education organisations manage their spaces and programs in such a way that excludes some people from social and economic activity crucial to the development of individual and community social capital. Adult learning policies, programs and practices in regional communities need to address the holistic nature of adult learning for people from culturally diverse backgrounds in order to contribute to the development of sustaining social capital for individuals, families and communities in Australian society.

Keywords: adult education, policies, programs, practices, regional, social capital

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Exploring the contribution of play to social capital in institutional adult learning settings

Author/s: Pauline Harris and John Daley

Edition: Volume 48, Number 1, April 2008

Summary: This paper explores how play as an educational tool can enhance social capital for adult learners in institutional settings. Framed by conceptualisations of social capital (Putnam 1993, 2000) and play (Melamed 1987, Meares 2005, Vygotsky 1978) and supported by research literature on play in adult learning, our action research in our adult education classes focuses on cooperative forms of play in which pretend, role-play, improvisation, playful activities and a playful mindset were key components. We investigate these play experiences in terms of their implications for nurturing adult learners’ social capital. Our preliminary findings to date reveal that play contributes to social capital by enriching adult learners’ engagement, cooperation and sense of connectedness with one another as well as with people, resources and information beyond their group.

Keywords: Vygotsky, social capital, institutional settings, adult education, cooperative play

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Innovations in bridging and foundation education in a tertiary institution

Author/s: Rae Trewartha

Edition: Volume 48, Number 1, April 2008

Summary: A 2006 survey of programs at Unitec, New Zealand concluded that, in the main, Unitec programs and courses were not meeting student needs in the area of foundation and bridging education. Invoking international research and practice, a report was compiled proposing a number of recommendations to remedy this situation. Academic Board, in accepting recommendations that were based on developing and re-developing foundation and bridging courses and programs to better staircase students into degree programs, and to support first-year students in undergraduate degree programs, has challenged the Unitec community to think in new ways about the needs of students entering the institution. It was argued in the report that the key determinant in developing these strategies should be the need to provide students with bridging/foundation education that supports them to develop the contextualised discipline knowledge and academic literacies they need in order to transition to the next level of study as independent, critical learners – as students who know ‘how to learn’. Over the last few months, many exciting and challenging developments have occurred in relation to this initiative. This paper begins by examining the research that informed the recommendations in the report. Initiatives that are proposed or underway arel then outlined, and discussed in conjunction with examples of the challenges associated with making this shift in institutional thinking and practice.

Keywords: foundation, education, bridging, Unitec, courses, programs, literacies

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The power of ‘e’: extending the ‘E’ in ACE

Author/s: Jane Anderson

Edition: Volume 49, Number 2, July 2009

Summary: Over the past decade or so, an educational evolution has been redefining our understanding and practices of adult community education (ACE) in profound and comprehensive ways. The name of this transformation is e-learning. A bountiful interpretation and practice of ‘e-learning’ in ACE results inevitably in extending our educational work; its presence automatically extends the WHY (our purpose), the WHO (our community), the WHEN (the timing), the WHERE (the learning spaces), the WHAT (the scope), the WHAT FOR (the learning achievements) and the HOW (the modes, methods and media). In other words, the power of ‘e’ as a multidimensional force in ‘e-learning’, and the way it extends meanings, values, ideals, purposes, practices and participants in ACE, means it redefines our  understanding of education itself. As a consequence, e-learning has given us new possibilities of connectedness, community, democracy, global citizenship, lifelong learning, transformational learning, learning to learn, critical literacy and much else.

Keywords: ACE, e-learning, results, achievements, connectedness, community, democracy, lifelong learning

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 49_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

 

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Community education and youth mentoring: how to build good practice?

Author/s: Robyn Broadbent and Theo Papadopoulos

Edition: Volume 49, Number 2, July 2009

Summary: In 2008, the Helen Macpherson Smith (HMS) Trust commissioned Victoria University to conduct an evaluation of the Mentoring and Capacity Building Initiative’s Regional Coordination Projects (RCPs). The RCPs are founded on a model of community education and collaboration that aims to enhance cross-sectoral and whole of community approaches to mentoring and community building. Their specific objectives are to:

  • coordinate effective regional delivery of new and existing mentoring programs and related activities
  • identify, document and share best practice mentoring models
  • strengthen community partnerships and collaboration, and the capacity and skills delivery of mentoring programs
  • develop cross-sectoral and whole-of-community approaches to mentoring.

The aim of the evaluation was to determine the effectiveness of the RCPs in achieving these objectives, including the monitoring of program outcomes and strategic partnerships supporting these  projects. This paper reports on some of the key findings of that evaluation.

Keywords: mentoring, capacity building, whole of community approach, partnerships, collaboration

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 49_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.