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Listening to Learners: Consultation with Learners about Adult Literacy Education in Scotland

2 Consultation with Learners

Learners are not often asked for their ideas, although it will be clear from the rest of this report that they have much to suggest about ways that adult education could be better. We asked about several different aspects of learner involvement: negotiation of course content, planning and evaluation of programmes, as well as the existence of formal student representatives or forums.

The focus groups revealed how little consultation with learners is currently happening. In local authority run and voluntary organisation literacy and numeracy programmes there appears to be some level of individual negotiation of course content between individual learners and their tutor. There is very little collective discussion of course content. Consultation on programme planning or evaluation seems occasional at best. The people we talked to had remarkably little experience of formal student representation, unless they were in FE colleges, in which case they were likely to feel the system didn't work for them (whether because as adults they felt marginal to the college representation system, or because they felt the representatives were not responded to).

a) Negotiation of course content

Negotiation with individual learners about the content of their learning varies greatly from one type of programme to another. ALN programmes seem especially likely to offer some kind of flexibility to learners in terms of choosing what they want to work on and when. In many of these schemes, learners seem to be aware that they could ask their tutor to work on particular skill areas. When asked 'who decides what you do in your class?' several students gave comments similar to this person:

'Overall [tutors] but we have an influence on everything that we do ourselves, because if we need help with something I'll say to [tutor] I'm not managing this very well, and she'll say well, why don't you try it this way and she'll bring in different sheets to maybe look at things from a different aspect. So although the course picks out which different subjects you're going to cover we'll have a bit of input into how you're doing it.' [Lothian, ALN Learner]

Some (but not many) learners said they had set their own learning goals at the beginning - 'at my first meeting it was literally to find out what I wanted, not what she was going to do for me'. But we will see below that other ALN learners were not confident that they could say what they wanted to learn, and preferred an 'expert' to tell them what they needed.

Most of the other adult learners said there is very limited negotiation of course content. The learners in Return to Learn classes, for example, said they could choose a topic they were interested in to research and write about, but they had no other choices or options. The programme is tightly structured. In the most tightly structured courses, learner choice is limited to choosing which worksheet to work on, like in this New Deal course: 'I ask for some of it myself. Helen mentioned stores sheets and I said I would have a go at that, because the boy I sit beside he was doing it, and I had a look at it and I thought that looks quite interesting.' [Fife, Other Adult Learner]

Other participants in more flexible community-based provision felt they had more choices. For example, a learner in a creative writing class said:

'We were allowed to put forward ideas. If we weren't terribly sure about grammar we asked if we could get something on that one of the times, and if we were maybe not so good with paragraphing and things like that we could have that on one of the other days.' [Fife, Other Adult Learner]

We only had one example of a course where learners as a group choose the programme. In this case, learners said they started with a more or less blank sheet, and as a group planned the programme:

'We had choices in everything, it was all talked about and decided what we as a group wanted and each person had a say in what to do... We were given the guidelines and then we had to fill in the blanks... We set our own timetable, and after all our discussions it was decided and then our tutor organised everything that we wanted to do.' [Highlands, Other Adult Learner]

As we will see below, learners had very different attitudes about how much they should be able to negotiate course content (see section 2e).

b) Consultation for future programme planning

Many learners felt that there should be consultation with learners about what courses to offer, although they had little experience of this happening. Learners in courses outside ALN were most likely to feel they knew what they wanted and had a right to be consulted.

'If it wasn't for the learners there wouldn't be the courses because they've got to have the people there to do the courses, and therefore they've got to do the courses to suit the people.'

'We know what we need, don't we? We know what we're looking for.'

'We know what we want.' [Highlands, Other Adult Learners]

Despite this, most learners had no experience of being asked what they thought the programmes should offer. In two ALN focus groups a tutor present said that some consultation had been done in the programme - but either some time ago (2 years) or in a daytime only meeting (excluding most employed learners). None of the learners in the focus group had taken part in these. Consultation on non-learners (potential learners) is even more rare. A focus group of non-participants were part of a women's group, and said they had all put in requests for classes they wanted to see offered at their centre. Not only were the classes not offered but there had been no response, telling them why not:

'We suggested that, we've all put the lists in.'

Q. 'And what happened?'

A. 'Nothing. They've no really come back and said OK then, we're going to start a yoga class, a cooking class or anything.'

Q. 'How long have you been waiting?'

A. 'I'd say a year.' [Lothian, Non-participants]

When learners get no response or feedback to consultation efforts they are discouraged from participation in future consultation.

c) Evaluation, feedback and problem-solving

Consistent opportunities for learners to evaluate their course and feed back their experiences to management seem rare. Some learners said that one organisation in particular regularly uses feedback and evaluation sheets. But most learners in other programmes had not been asked for their views.

One might expect that learners would have an opportunity to evaluate each course they take part in - being asked about content, tutor, resources and so on. In practice most of the learners we talked to were not aware that such an evaluation takes place. One focus group talked about an 'assessment sheet' they filled in on the course, and their views. Several other groups said they felt confident that they could speak to their tutor and be listened to, but nothing more formal. In fact, if they were to have a problem with their tutor (which none said they did) there would be no avenues of redress.

One of the few examples of an evaluation questionnaire was criticised by learners (in a community-based literacy and numeracy programme) because it was not confidential:

Q. 'How easy is it to fill in?'

A. 'Well, put it this way, it's got your name at the top ...you've got these tutors standing above you looking over your shoulder. You've got a form with your name on the top, are you going to put I hate the tutor, she stinks?... Especially when it's the tutor who's going to be giving you a grade.' [Glasgow, ALN Learner]

d) Formal mechanisms for representation and consultation

There are very few examples in the focus groups of formal systems of student representation, committees or forums. One community-based programme had tried a student forum three years before, but found it didn't work well and had reverted to more informal methods. Another ALN programme was said to have a management committee but the focus group learners did not know who was on it.

Other adult learners were somewhat more likely to say that they had avenues for evaluation and problem solving than did ALN learners. One group spoke about a monthly meeting in their organisation - but said that the meetings 'are usually going over minutes of the last meeting'. Nevertheless, it provides a formal structure within which problem solving can take place. As the same focus group explained:

'We did have a say last time when we had been attending a group and there were things in the group that weren't going as they should have gone, and it was a general consensus of the group that this was the case. So yes, we did speak up and two or three of us said this is not how we want it to be, and it was taken notice of. Yes, definitely.' [Fife, Other Adult Learner]

The only examples of formal student representatives were in the focus groups with FE learners. In one ALN/FE focus group there were two class representatives, both ESOL students, who said:

'There is a meeting twice a year and they ask the other students what do you need, and are you happy about that, and then there is one person in the group and they are going to represent the group, and then they speak to the council. We tell if we are happy or unhappy.' [Lothian, ALN/FE Learner]

The other FE groups were less positive about the actual practice of the student representative system:

'I'm the student rep for my catering class, but none of them listen. We are trying to get a bus shelter for the car park because everybody is just standing there but they've rejected that because they say we haven't got the money -they are just building on extra bits to the college.' [Aberdeen, Other Adult Learner]

Everyone in that focus group, including the student rep., said they were not involved in planning courses or programmes at all. The FE-based learners on the whole (both ALN and Other Adult Learners) were mostly not impressed with formal mechanisms for student representation -they either didn't know about them, didn't feel they applied to adult part-time learners, or didn't think management listened anyway.

One ALN group in an FE college discussed student involvement as something removed from what they might do. One person said 'we're not really students here, we're just like in a way visitors, because we've got different jobs, the only reason we come here is to learn how to read and write.' [Fife, ALN/FE Learner] Asked about student involvement this person interpreted 'students' as meaning '18 and 19 year olds', not the adult learners, and he didn't want to see them involved in his course.

The most positive experience with a learner forum was reported from Edinburgh, where a group called ALFIE provided a city-wide forum of adult learners. One of the focus group participants had been a member of a literacy and numeracy group within ALFIE, and had positive experiences from it. The group had input into policy development in the city, and had even taken a trip to London to make their views known. However, he said the group had since been disbanded.

e) Attitudes and perceptions

There were mixed feelings among the learners we talked with about their role in consultation and evaluation. Although many learners would like to be listened to, there was a sizeable group of ALN learners who felt they did not know enough to be consulted - they would like an 'expert' to tell them what they need to learn.

The most unconfident learners were those who know they have literacy and numeracy needs, and have not been long in their programmes. These were most likely to say that decisions about programme content should be left to the experts.

'I wouldn't know how to start to change anything.'

'I wouldn't want it. It's for them to decide what type of courses they want to do.'

'It would be better if somebody told us what we would be doing, show us what we would be doing.' [Fife, ALN Learner]

Focus group participants raised other problems with the concept of learners having a significant role in planning their own programme. One concern is about how much time it would take. Another problem is with the expectation that involvement in a committee or similar group would pose reading and writing demands that are too great for literacy and numeracy learners. 'I wouldn't want that, too much paperwork. Too much reading and writing and I wouldn't do that. Not until I was confident about my reading and writing.' [Glasgow, ALN Learner]

Other adult learners especially had concerns that consultation for course planning would raise so many different interests among learners that consensus would be hard to obtain:

'Perhaps a certain amount of input but that could lead to it being awkward because you would have a dozen people all with entirely different ideas and the timespan that it has to be done over you would never be able to cover them all. [Glasgow, Other Adult Learner]

Learners in programmes other than ALN on the whole had much more confidence that their own perspective is valuable and should be listened to. They thought they should have a voice.

'Adults should be able to tell you what they want to learn, not what you want them to learn.'

'The course that I'm doing, everybody has agreed that the way they've done the modules and everything is all back to front. They are asking for feedback for the next year's course and we are able to put our points of view forward, because it's only really if you are actually doing the course you can see it from a student's point of view.' [Aberdeen, Other Adult Learners]

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