Basic Competencies In Adult Education

Adult learners aren’t just older students. They arrive with existing careers, existing failures with formal education, and existing reasons to walk out of a room that feels like school — which is exactly why a general “good teaching” course doesn’t automatically transfer to adult education.

In 2010 a study funded by the European Commission proposed a set of key competences for adult learning professionals, for Member States to use on a voluntary basis. This week uses that set as a mirror for your own practice: you choose a teaching method against a named barrier and a named motivation, rather than out of habit.

• Monday — you meet the 2010 competence set and place your own work on it: which competences you use daily, which rarely.
• Tuesday — you read four adult-learning theories (behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, transformative learning) beside the barriers and motivations of three invented adult learners, and choose one to design for.
• Wednesday — you work on communication and on groups whose members differ in age, background and experience, and practise a difficult moment in a role-play.
• Thursday — you choose a teaching method for your learner and redesign one of your own sessions around it.
• Friday — you try ten minutes of the redesigned session on colleagues, get feedback, and plan your first change back home.

The week ends with one redesigned session for your own adult learners, with the barrier, the motivation and the method written down side by side.

The 2010 study proposes seven generic competences for anyone working in adult learning (reflecting on your own practice, communicating and collaborating, taking responsibility for the institution, subject expertise, using different learning methods, motivating learners, and working with groups that differ) and further specific ones for people working directly in the learning process, such as assessing what learners need, choosing methods and evaluating whether the learning worked. It is a proposal for voluntary use, not a certificate or a rule. The week uses the competences most connected to teaching as a way to look at your own practice.

Behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and transformative learning are taught as adult-learning theories in their own right, each with a classroom example, not as the content of the 2010 study. On Tuesday they are set beside three invented adult learners: a returner who remembers school badly, a newcomer working shifts, and a retired learner who dislikes tests. Each has a barrier and a motivation, and choosing a theory that helps you read one of them is the first step to choosing a method.

Wednesday moves from the individual learner to the group: how you speak to adults so that a session does not feel like school, how the same instruction is read differently by people from different backgrounds, and what to do in a difficult moment. Thursday turns the week into a method: you compare two methods against simple criteria and redesign one of your own sessions. On Friday you try ten minutes of it on colleagues.

Everything is done on paper and in the room; no software is needed, and nobody brings a real learner’s details, because the learner profiles are invented. The week suits adult-education staff, and school or vocational staff who also teach adults, for example in evening classes, parent programmes and second-chance courses. Teaching inside a prison, or supporting release and reintegration, is covered in Second-Chance Education: Prison, Release and After; this week is about the general method.