Adult Learners, Education and Training

Richard Edwards, Sandy Sieminski, David Zeldin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136140846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In recent years, economic and demographic changes have brought into question the adequacy of initial education programmes for continuous employment. While the primary focus of debate has been on creating structures of continuous education and training linked to the economic needs of Britain, arguments and movements for wider access to all forms of learning have continued to be made. Drawing on the experience of other European countries as well as Britain, this book addresses the three major themes of the ongoing debates: who participates in what forms of education and training and how can access be widened and increased: the relationship between economic development, education and training; the education and training developed by social movements, and the changes sought in the formal sector of provision.

Part 1

Participation, non-participation and access

Chapter 1

Participation and non-participation A review of the literature

Veronica McGivney

Source: Edited version of Section 1 in V. McGivney, Education’s for Other People: Access to Education for Non-participant Adults, Leicester, NIACE, 1990.

Research on participation and non-participation has been prolific, particularly in the United States. However, participation is a complex field of enquiry and it is worth signalling from the outset some of the misgivings that have been expressed about this kind of research. First, the sheer size, diversity and complexity of post-school education makes the concept of participation impossible to pin down:

The concept of participation may be a different species for different strata of society … ‘Adequate’ or ‘successful’ participation is a chameleon set aginst a background of quick-changing groups, courses, centres, areas and times. Lack of participation is an equally elusive reptile flitting across the same institutional neon.

(Courtney 1981: 104–5)

Second, in view of the diversity and complexity of human beings and their circumstances, there is no single theory that can satisfactorily explain participation or non-participation:

We are presented with a set of partial and overlapping existing explanations in which the different approaches each offer plausible suggestions for lines of enquiry – in effect they are investigative pointers rather than testable propositions.

(Usher and Bryant 1989: 106)

For the purposes of this chapter, however, some of the main findings of existing research have been taken on trust in order to provide a general starting point.

WHO ARE THE PARTICIPANTS?

[…] Participation surveys inevitably vary enormously in methods and terms of reference. The definition of ‘adult’ can vary from anyone aged 17 or over to anyone aged over 20, and estimates of adult student numbers fluctuate widely, according to whether learning activities are defined as all voluntary learning efforts or institutionally-based activites and courses taken part-time. This divergence suggests that survey results should be treated with caution. Nevertheless, there is enough consistency in research findings to take them as a reasonably reliable guide. In Britain, for example, most of the larger-scale surveys suggest that, discounting school-leavers who go straight into further or higher education, adult participation in organised education usually lies somewhere between 10 per cent and 15 per cent at any given time, although this figure would be much higher – over 40 per cent – if any participation since leaving school is taken into account. A Further Education Unit (FEU) survey of participation in adult and continuing education in three different English locations suggested that 14 per cent of adults were currently participating and 32 per cent had done so at some time in the past (FEU 1987). Research in Scotland (1988) came up with a higher figure: approximately 42 per cent of a sample of 2000 had returned at least once after leaving school to organized education, defined here as courses or systematic programmes of learning lasting for seven hours or more within a three-month period (Munn and MacDonald 1988).

Participant typologies

‘Mature students do not represent a cross-section of the adult population … adult education is largely the preserve of the middle classes’ (Woodley et al. 1987: 85). This conclusion, based on the results of a survey of mature students attending qualifying and non-qualifying courses in England and Wales, confirms the findings of virtually all British national and regional surveys in the last 20 years. The 1970 National Institute of Adult Education study Adequacy of Provision showed that while the non-vocational adult education service had expanded, it had chiefly benefited younger, better-educated and higher-income groups. A decade later the ACACE survey showed little change:

All the indications show that those with the longest initial education, those who are in the higher social classes, the young, men, and those seeking vocational education are consistently better able to take advantage of the existing opportunities for continuing education.

(ACACE 1982: 58)

The 1987 FEU survey, also found participation skewed towards the young, higher social grades, owner-occupiers and those with access to a car, while the Munn and MacDonald survey in Scotland (1988) reported that adult ‘returners’ – people over 20 who had been out of full-time education for at least two years – were predominantly in socio-economic groups A and B. Unsurprisingly, an investigation into use of education information, advice and guidance services also found that people seeking advice and guidance about education, training or jobs were more likely to be young, male, from the higher socio-economic groups and in possession of some educational qualifications (Alloway and Nelson 1987). Smaller local surveys confirm this general picture.

Thus, despite their diversity, studies of participation in the UK reveal a striking consistency in the composite picture they yield of the typical participant body:

The empirical evidence … consistently shows that adult education of all kinds recruits disproportionately from certain parts of the adult population: those of working age rather than the retired; those in non-manual rather than manual occupations; and those with more than minimal previous educational success.

(Woodley et al. 1987: 5)

This phenomenon is not confined to the UK. Similar findings have been reported in OECD countries. […] Moreover, the general profile of adult participants appears to be consistent across all levels of education. […] Thus, in spite of developments such as comprehensive schools and polytechnics and repeated calls for improved access, inequalities in access to post-school education have not been eliminated.

It has been observed that, even in lower occupational groups, the same general characteristics distinguish participants from non-participants. This became evident in a French study of participation in targeted programmes in several mining communitites (Hedoux 1982). Confirming the findings of other French researchers, this enquiry demonstrated that participation in education within working-class groups is governed by exactly the same sociological factors that create inequalities in access between different classes and social levels. Jacques Hedoux, the author of the study, discovered that participants in the programmes comprised an ‘active social minority’ characterized by certain favourable attributes, namely: good material circumstances (higher income and occupational levels); greater mobility (ability to anticipate and instigate social change); cultural familiarity (higher level of schooling, extended social relationships and cultural practices).

Involvement in social, community and cultural activities

Hedoux observed that educational participation was strongly connected with the extent of an individual’s integration into community life. Participants were generally leading a more diverse and intense social life than non-participants, and tended to be more involved in voluntary groups, political parties, unions, churches, and local cultural activities. In consequence they had more contact with key local figures (notables), such as teachers, religious leaders, council members and people in management positions.

He found that whereas participants and non-participants engaged equally in mass culture (newspapers, TV, holidays), participants and their families were significantly more engaged in cultural practices such as reading, and visiting cinemas, theatres, museums and exhibitions. For Hedoux this implied ‘a dynamic of cultural development within families which reinforces the positive thrust towards education’. He concluded that participation in adult education arises from ‘particularly tenacious social differentiations’ and that voluntary participation in education in itself constitutes a strong discriminating variable in the working-class population. […]

WHO ARE THE NON-PARTICIPANTS?

There are substantial numbers of people who have been defined as failures by the schooling system and who remain outside the world of adult education. The lower you go down the social hierarchy, the more there are.

(West 1987)

The ACACE national survey of 1982 estimated that 51 per cent of the adult population of England and Wales had not engaged in any kind of education or training since leaving school. The survey in Scotland (Munn and MacDonald 1988) found a slightly higher proportion – 58 per cent of the sample population – to be non-participants. An OECD conference report referred to non-participation as an international phenomenon: ‘Irrespective of their political ideologies, technologically advanced and industrially backward countries alike testified at the Tokyo conference that the overwhelming majority of their populations were not participating in adult education’ (OECD 1977).

Major characteristics

The characteristics that distinguish non-participants from participants are age, educational background, and socio-economic status.

Age

Older adults are less likely to participate than younger ones and most available research shows a fall-off at retirement age, particularly among men.

Educational background

Non-participation in education in adult life is closely linked with initial educational experience. Virtually all the British and non-British survey reports consulted for this chapter show that people who do not participate in any form of continuing education or training tend to be those with the least initial education. The ACACE national survey revealed that the majority of non-participants had left school at the minimum leaving age; in the 1988 Scottish survey, 80 per cent of non-returners had left school at age 16 or under.

Socio-economic status

Socio-economic status (which is often linked with experience of and attitudes to initial schooling) also contributes significantly to non-participation. One of the ‘most persistent’ findings of a large-scale survey in the USA was ‘the great disparity in involvement in continuing education of segments of the population situated at different levels of the social hierarchy’ (Johnstone and Rivera 1965: 231). An OECD report referred to the striking under-representation of unskilled manual workers in learning activities in the USA, Denmark, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and the UK (OECD 1979). In England and Wales, the low proportion of participants from working-class backgrounds and occupations in all levels of post-compulsory education frequently arouses comment. A study of post-initial education in the north-west of England (Percy 1983) found that only 18 per cent of participants were working class, and a wider national survey (Woodley et al. 1987) concluded that working-class people, particularly women, are ‘massively under-represented’ throughout post-school education. The close relationship between occupational status and participation is stressed in the Woodley survey, in the findings of the American researchers, Anderson and Darkenwald (1979), and in the work of de Montlibert (1973), whose study of paid educational leave in France highlights glaring disparities in access between different occupational groups.

Non-participant groups

Cumulatively, the evidence implies that irrespective of location or educational setting, certain sections of the community tend not to engage in any form of educational activity after leaving school – older adults; less well-educated people in lower social, economic and occupational strata; women with dependent children; ethnic minority groups; and people living in rural areas. These groups, which were singled out in the large American survey in the 1960s (Johnstone and Rivera 1965) have remained virtually unchanged in two succeeding decades. The 1977 OECD report, for example, identified the following non-participant typologies:

• unemployed young adults (especially premature school leavers);

• some rural populations;

• immigrants;

• the aged;

• urban poverty groups;

• unemployed and underemployed workers with little education;

• unskilled and semi-skilled workers;

• some groups of women (housebound mothers, women from lower socio-economic groups);

• people with linguistic problems.

Taken together, these groups add up to a large majority, whose main characteristic, according to the OECD report, is social and economic deprivation. There is a certain amount of crossover betwen groups: the least educated are often unemployed or in unskilled occupations and have low incomes; people on the lowest incomes are likely to be found among the elderly, immigrant groups and women. However, each of the categories listed is a large and heterogeneous section of society and each contains many sub-groups, some of which are more likely than others to engage in voluntary learning.

Non-participant categories vary according to different geographical, demographic and cultural situations. In the US, research shows that women, especially young mothers, are particularly educationally disadvantaged. In France, a survey of participation in specially targeted programmes in mining communities revealed two sets of non-participants: a group mixed in age and gender who knew about the programmes and were favourably disposed to them but still chose not to participate, and a hard core of no...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Learning Through Life
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Participation, non-participation and access
• Part 2 The economy, education and training
• Part 3 Social movements and change in education and training
• Author index
• Subject index