Educating Informal Educators

2005

This thesis is a comparative study of youth and community work in three countries. Using field work in Australia and Singapore, and a study of German literature I examine the way youth and community workers in these three countries theorise about their educational practice. The following questions guide the research: • Do youth and community workers practice informal education? • What is successful informal education practice in youth and community work? • Does the educational practice of youth and community workers serve to control its learners? • Can the educational practice of youth and community workers emancipate learners? The starting point for the research is an examination of informal and popular education in Australian youth and community work. I have practised, researched and taught youth and community work in Australia for almost twenty years. Drawing upon this experience and a series of interviews I describe and discuss the contradictions, ambiguities and different consc...

2015

YOUTH WORK as a distinctive process-led, young person-centred educational practice has been on the wane for at least two decades (Davies, 2008; Jeffs and Smith, 2008; IDYW, 2009). Its open, improvisatory and unpredictable character has not fitted well with an increasingly instrumental and behavioural neo-liberal agenda. As youth work has declined, other forms of work with young people have risen in prominence, particularly those favouring structured and targeted approaches based on prescribed outcomes. By and large these behavioural modification schemes have hesitated to give themselves an identity, preferring the pretence of still defining themselves as youth work. In the emergence of this array of interventions intent on regulating young people’s lives (Taylor and Taylor, 2010), relatively few writers have drawn attention to the significance of the technocratic ‘youth development’ model. Given this silence we welcomed the appearance earlier this year of an article, ‘Non-formal you...

This report formed part of the NIACE response to the government's consultation on the future of Informal Adult Learning. It concluded that some operational definitions in the consultation process ignored the employment-related gains from informal adult learning.

Higher Education, Skills and Work Based Learning, The Journal of the University Vocational Awards Council, 2011

Purpose – Higher education institutions (HEIs) can face barriers implementing the accreditation of informal learning, despite many institutions having developed policies and strategies to embed employability and skills. The purpose of this paper is to present the case of the institutional response of one HEI when dealing with the various drivers and challenges faced when accrediting informal learning at higher levels. Design/methodology/approach – The case study approach was adopted as this method allowed for in-depth qualitative enquiry into a contemporary phenomenon in a real-life context. Findings – The paper finds that by designing a shell framework incorporating module outlines and a toolkit of support materials for various stakeholder groups, HEIs may overcome many of the implementation problems often associated with HE accreditation of informal higher level learning. Practical implications – This framework and toolkit approach could help other HEIs better enable the wider accreditation and embedding of work-based learning within HE, which is deemed so important in facilitating the achievement of UK Government targets for 40 per cent of UK adults to gain a qualification at Level 4 or above in the next ten years. This is also a particular issue for Wales, dealing with its own skills agenda in response to specific skills gaps needed to ensure the sustainable future of the Welsh economy. Originality/value – While a limited number of HEIs have adopted a framework approach to the accreditation of work-based learning, this paper addresses the issues in a regional context, as the framework and toolkit presented is the first of its kind to be articulated for the Welsh skills agenda by a Welsh HEI.

This paper explores experiences at the interface of research and policy through the lens of informal learning. The paper contends that In order to further social justice it is essential to value the informal learning that takes place outside the confines of educational institutions. However, it also demonstrates the difficulties in getting policy makers to take this issue seriously. Formal education, in its fixity around the neoliberal human subject, will inevitably reproduce the values and assumptions that have created an unequal society in the first place. To achieve social change, what constitutes learning and where and how it happens must be rethought. The paper reflects on three research studies, two achieved, one imagined which help to reveal the extent and nature of young white working class informal learning. These findings challenge their positioning as abject, deficit and hating learning. It discusses the policy interest in these studies and the current move of white working class masculinity to the centre of political debate. It argues that despite the nominal attention to such working class lives, their informal learning was and is deflected and ignored by policy makers. It is not a question of educating policy makers better, but that policy actively chooses this blinkered stance because a shadow body of unrecognised informal learners helps to shore up the status of their privileged

Education Sciences

This review explores how critical pedagogy, often cited by educators of informal educators as a key influence, actually informs teaching of informal educators in higher education and assesses its potential to do so. It explores the background to critical pedagogy, its principles, aims and approaches and examines its worldwide influence on the teaching of informal educators. The authors argue that critical pedagogy is crucial for the teaching of informal educators, enabling lecturer and practitioners to interrupt the hegemony of neo-liberal and neo-managerial thinking in their practice and in higher education, and re-orientate themselves and examine their positionality within their institutions. It will focus on practical examples of enabling critical pedagogy in the teaching of informal education in higher education institutions.

2000

Young people and contradictions of inclusionTowards Integrated Transition Policies in Europe, 2003

Education Sciences

Community and youth work (CYW) practice has been articulated as striving towards a more socially just and equal society and is theorised as a catalyst for social change that seeks to overcome power differentials. Yet, despite these claims, there is limited empirical evidence to inform knowledge about the extent to which ‘equality work’ is featured and practiced in CYW programmes in higher education. This article draws on perspectives from current and former CYW students in the UK which routinely claim critical pedagogy as the bedrock of professionally approved degree programmes. Utilising a survey approach, our aim was to examine the experiences of students to find out if teaching, learning and assessment practices in professionally approved CYW programmes can be argued as helping students to articulate practice as emancipatory. The findings indicate that there was coherence and a strong understanding of core theories that confirmed CYW programmes as helping students to articulate e...