Every day adults drive by your center or browse your website, wondering what actually happens in your adult education program - will they find a place for themselves there? Will they find the supports they need to "make it" through an adult education program? In planning how to recruit - and retain - adults in programs through completion, it's puzzling to know what potential adult learners are thinking and experiencing as they answer those questions, but the answers would be very informative.
The Critiquing Adult Participation in Education (CAPE) research project did just that: interviewed groups of adults who were eligible for adult education but not participating, to get their insights on what it would take to get them involved in adult education. In CAPE, which was sponsored by VALUEUSA, adults identified not only their challenges - including the support systems they said they would need - but also the solutions they recommended to get involved.
Join us this week as we discuss Support Systems Potential Adult Learners Need. A new CAPE report considers support needs with respect to missing support from adults' inner circle, and for childcare, community, and financial needs. Adults may need support from people important to them or from adult education’s partners to even get started.
To get our discussion started today, here are a few questions to consider:
1. In what ways do adults get discouraged from pursuing learning? How can adult educators and adults' peers lessen stress and encourage them to focus on their original purpose for going to a program? Patrice, one of three young mothers in a group interview, related how “discouragement causes stress. If you start getting discouraged, like ... ‘I ain’t going to get my GED because I don’t have no support, I don’t have no help’, you’re going to get discouraged to the point where it is stressing you out. It makes you feel like you don’t even have a purpose to be here.”
2. Many adults talked about adult education as a way to "better myself" - what are the implications of doing that in neighborhoods where education may not be highly valued? In another group, a man said: “Some people... aren’t there for you. They say, ‘You don’t need to go to school to get a raise.’ Or they say, ‘You ain’t going to make it.’ A lot of things to discourage you.” Another man in that group explained about trying to better himself, “Sometimes, ... you may get up and want to have a change, saying, ‘I need to better myself.’ But then you hang around friends or family, and they say, ‘You [are] 25 years old, what do you want with school?’ ...So you sneak around, tell them you got a job on the side, then you just get to the point where you feel like you don’t want to hear the negative comments. Sometimes the embarrassment factor will drive you away from trying to do good, especially if you grew up in a negative environment to start with. Now all your boys are doing their gang banging stuff and you know they don’t want you to better yourself.”
Please plan to join us on Thursday, June 17, at 12 ET for an online event and guided discussion on this topic. You can register here. Looking forward to your thoughts!
Comments
Thanks, Margaret, for sharing these questions about learner persistence. They're important questions to ask ourselves as adult educators. We all know that family, friends, and other life demands can distract and sometimes derail learners' plans for their education.
The comments you shared from participants you interviewed are ones that I think many of us have also heard in some capacity. You ask, "How can adult educators and adults' peers lessen stress and encourage them to focus on their original purpose for going to a program?" One way I can think of is mid-term check-ins with learners, focusing not on the content, but on their experience. You could do this in-person, over the phone, via text/e-mail. However it works best, it's important to check the pulse of your learners and be sure they are managing the stress of being in classes with everything else going on in their lives.
What other ideas do members have for encouraging learners to focus on their original purpose for being enrolled in a program?
Mike Cruse
Disabilities and Equitable Outcomes Moderator
michaelcruse74@gmail.com
Yes, those check-ins sound super important to encouraging adults. Thanks, Mike, for suggesting that idea. I'd love to hear what others think!
Today I'd like to add a few solutions that adults in CAPE interviews recommended - if they knew from the get-go that these supports were available to them, it would make them feel welcome and encourage persistence. Both of them center around peer supports, through facilitated support groups or through mentoring.
Support groups for emotional and mental health issues were recommended. Support means providing encouragement, as a female interviewee explained, “Someone to be there to say, ‘Good job!’ and encourage you.” Another woman recommended having mentors to explain why a person needs to do things and to help the student hang in there. “You can encourage somebody. Yeah, encouragement… You can believe in somebody, that they can do it. And you know that they can do it when they make it all the way.”
Has anyone following this discussion tried offering these types of supports to learners - if so, how did it go? When deciding to enroll, how did learners know that they could get access to these supports?
Margaret
I firmly believe that one of the first class discussions in adult ed programs should be a presentation about adults with LD. We should explain how teachers can help with supports. We need to explain what those are, and we need to explain how students can easily access those.
That's useful advice, Susan! And I would add to that, since many adults have either not had access to psychoeducational evaluations or could not afford them (which I know earlier discussions in this community have covered recently), they may not realize what "LD" is. So explaining that in that initial presentation would be helpful. And even before that, providing clear messaging in outreach could aid adults in deciding they want to come to your program. The messaging could communicate that even if they have had difficulty learning in the past, they will find plenty of flexible options and supports in your program, from staff and peers who care about learning. And the point about easy access is very welcoming too!