More, Different and Better

The WI’s role in educating members and communities

The final guest blog as part of Adult Learners’ Week is written by Ruth Bond, Chair of the National Federation of Women’s Institute (NFWI).

It was a great honour to be asked to sit on the NIACE panel to determine the Learning through Arts, Craft Skills and Culture Individual Award winners for Adult Learners’ Week. The National Awards ceremony was held on Monday 20 May at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Hall, where I was very proud to also present the two awards in this category. The first was presented to Dean Short, who has overcome severe dyslexia to achieve a distinction in a Film and Television Foundation Degree. He is now dividing his time between working at Pinewood Film Studios and studying for a BA (Hons) degree. The second was presented to Artspace, a project that occupies town centre properties to offer art-based learning workshops and exhibition space for local amateur and professional artists, as well as the general public.

As an educational charity, learning and development has always been an integral part of the WI, and the NFWI has been campaigning for the continuance and development of adult education since the organisation’s inception in 1915. Originally, the NFWI was formed to revitalise rural communities by educating and connecting women and encouraging them to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. Since then the organisation’s aims have broadened and the WI is now the largest voluntary women’s organisation in the UK, with over 212,000 members in around 6,600 WIs.

The WI is not only interested in the education and development of our members, it also has an important role to play in the education and development of members’ communities. Every year, WI members put forward a range of issues for national debate at the AGM, which, if passed, go on to become the mandates that form the basis of the organisation’s campaigning and awareness-raising activities in the years ahead. The resolution process is wholly democratic, meaning that members play a central role in defining policy and bringing issues onto the WI’s national agenda. 

The WI also offers a variety of courses at our adult residential centre in Oxfordshire, Denman, for members and non-members alike. Courses cover many topics including food and drink in the WI Cookery School, art and craft in the WI Craft School, and a range of others from health to history.

Other opportunities for learning within the WI include:

1) WI Moodle: An exciting online environment developed to train and support WI members in a range of topics integral to the organisation.

2) Let’s Cook Local: A nationally-led and managed project delivered locally by trained WI volunteers, which gives young parents (from disadvantaged backgrounds) opportunities and access to the skills and information needed to provide basic, healthy and economical family meals using high quality and locally produced fresh food.

3) Craft Clubs: WI members are encouraged to volunteer to run Craft Clubs in their local schools, libraries, museums, galleries or community halls. In collaboration with the Crafts Council of Great Britain and the UK Hand Knitting Association, volunteers in the scheme receive training manuals and handbooks, goody bags, attendance sheets and stickers for the children. All Craft Clubs are logged on the Craft Club map enabling potential students to find Clubs in their area – over 586 Craft Clubs are run across the country by 273 trained tutors. The Craft Club initiative was celebrated at the 2012 NFWI AGM where the Guinness World Record for the most  number of people knitting simultaneously for fifteen minutes was won by 3,083 members; a true celebration of knitting, craft, and the links formed by WI members in their own WIs, federations, communities and nationwide. 

4) National Competitions: WI members can take part in a wide range of competitions as part of their membership subscription. Competitions are devised not only to bring fun and motivational opportunities to members, but to also act as a learning tool to develop members’ skills and encourage them to try new activities. There are competitions available to suit all members; cookery, craft, writing, design, sport, competitions that require members to work as a team, and others as individuals.

There are also a range of roles available for WI members to undertake either for the NFWI or within their local federation. These include:

• NFWI Judges: NFWI Judges have sound technical knowledge in specific areas such as cookery, preservation, craft, floral art and staging and interpretation. The NFWI trains members and non-members to be tactful and courteous ambassadors, who show an understanding of the needs of the exhibitor and show committee.  The role of a judge is to act as an educator and to help improve the standard of entries.
• WI Advisers: WI Advisers are responsible for forming, suspending and closing WIs. They are also communicators, counsellors and mediators who make sure that members know what opportunities are available and help them make the most of their subscription. WI Advisers are trained and appointed by the NFWI to work under the direction of their Federation Trustees.
• Skills Co-ordinators: This role is to encourage and promote the development of learning opportunities available to WI members, both locally and nationally, within her federation and act as a link between the NFWI and members. A Skills Co-ordinator aims to raise awareness of accreditation, encourage and support fellow members in following accredited courses, arrange classes as necessary and recommend tutors, arrange assessments within the federation, support members working on certificates, and investigate funding support.
• Federation Representatives: Federation Representatives are volunteers within their federation who act as a liaison between the NFWI and members in promoting and raising awareness of sport and leisure, combined arts and science matters within the WI.

Becoming multilingual – a week at @NIACEhq

NIACE is a great organisation with great staff. The welcome I have received a week into my new job – despite joining during Adult Learners’ Week, one of the busiest periods in the year – has been phenomenal. I can see dedicated, experienced staff, many established thought-leaders in their fields, all working hard on the economic and social benefits that we know adult continuing education brings to the UK. The passionate focus in this work on the learner experience, and on social impact, is inspiring.

It’s already clear to me that NIACE is people-focused, internally and in our strong community and citizen focus. Adult Learners’ Week this year has showcased life-changing stories: people progressing to employment and greater academic achievement, becoming active citizens, and building community cohesion. This is the stuff that changes lives and changes societies. NIACE does this well – it supports individuals to participate and helps tell their stories in ways that bring a tear to the eye.

We are well connected with government, courted by ministers, respected by those within and connected to our fields of expertise, as well as being a membership organisation with good reach across colleges, universities, councils, charities and many more besides.

These relationships matter to us. It’s no accident that we are well regarded as the foremost and amongst the largest adult learning NGOs in the world. This can only be to our advantage in the years ahead. Improving our reach, impact and national influence will continue to be challenging given the climate of austerity and the sluggish prospects for growth across the UK.  But we have a great story to tell and a compelling contribution to this debate. 

At the NIACE poverty conference in Cardiff last week, we showcased the five key benefits from participation in adult learning – wage gains, health benefits, civic participation, social value and improving family life chances. We showed how life-changing learning experiences contribute to slowing entry into that most costly of UK public services – the adult social care system.

These are ‘big ticket’ issues – at the core of the national debate on the future shape, purpose and funding of public services and of education across the UK. They are reflected strongly in our asks for the forthcoming spending review.

Add to this the political consensus on the priority of adult learning and we have the grounds for great success. Matthew Hancock, the Skills Minister, was clear on his priority on this agenda in his address to the Adult Learners’ Week National Awards Ceremony in London last week. And David Willetts, the HE Minister, has challenged NIACE to “hold him to account” for this priority at our recent parliamentary reception. We must be strong in doing so.

NIACE recognises that we need to continue to finesse our language to ensure the big national debates on skills, growth, LEPs and the consequences of the Heseltine review for devolution of skills funding are debates we continue to influence in pursuit of those five “big ticket” benefits.  People have said to me already we need to be “bilingual”, and act out of our comfort zones.  I would argue we may need to be “multi-lingual”.  That could well define our communications and public affairs challenge in the years ahead.

NIACE is a big organisation, with big ideas and lots to contribute to the debate on UK recovery and social renewal. I’m as excited as the rest of the great people I have already met about making sure we have a lasting influence on that debate.

Nine Nudges

Written by Paul Askew, National Project Manager for the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy’s two year programme to Champion Continuing Professional Development, which is funded by the Union Learning Fund. Paul’s background is in the public, regulatory and non-profit sectors, developing and delivering strategy, change and performance programmes. 

The headline findings of his year’s Adult Participation in Learning Survey from NIACE show a relatively stable level of overall participation in learning over the last 14 years. Participation has varied between 46%, a high in 2001, to 38% in 2004, 2008, 2012 and now 2013. Over those same 14 years there’s continued to be a significant investment in adult learning and this is why NIACE has been actively seeking “new actions and initiates…if the scale and patterns of participation are to change”, including a super workshop I attended last year. Reflecting on these latest findings, here are my nine nudges, which collectively, might help lever longer term and sustainable increases in adult learning.

1.       Mainstream a self-sustaining approach to learning

This is about creating a mindset of self-motivated, self-directed, self-sustaining approach to learning. It might be a personal paradigm shift, but once we help people into that space, then they help themselves and potentially others, leading to less need for intervention. It’s about reinforcing that personal ownership for personal development. Give a person a fish and they eat for a day, support them to learn to fish and they eat for life. They can maybe even help others learn to fish.

2.       Be purpose driven

The ‘why’ can be our underlying motivation for anything, whether conscious not, so it’s important to be clear about it. In learning, it’s about ‘being the best I can be’ for whatever’s most important to me, my job, my career, my family, my children, my contribution to the greater good. Helping clarify that purpose can give meaning, direction and context for specific and then continued learning.

3.       Promote a continuous process of personal or professional development

Develop the idea of lifelong learning as a more dynamic way of thinking. Mainstreaming a simple and continuous personal or professional development cycle (CPD), along the lines of thoughtful reflection on needs, planning some learning to meet those needs, doing that learning and then considering how that learning has provided benefit. And then continuing that cycle from an ever-stronger base of learning achievements and awareness.

4.       The ‘so what?’ test

It can be easy to see the input (time, money, energy), the process of study and learning and the output of skills or knowledge. But the real value lies in the difference it all makes – the outcome.  What is now different?  What is the impact? What is the benefit?

 5.       Appeal to both the head and the heart

Top-down evidence would seem to indicate that learning leads to better effectiveness and / or better efficiency. This appeals to the logical head. Then there’s also the emotional demonstration of the power of learning to specifically transform lives and circumstances. 

6.       Evangelise the power of learning

Having the head and heart cases for learning goes some way, it’s the convincing dissemination that’s top down, bottom up and sideways. It’s also about doing all of that in different ways: one-to-one, one to many, many to many and even many to one. This includes an individualised approach and thinking of and engaging employers as comprising individual CEOs, leaders and managers.

 7.       Learning is in our head and heart, not a classroom

 Moving the apparent commonplace perception that learning is by default in a classroom, to learning being something we do in our head, wherever and however. This is strengthened with the emphasis on those informal learning opportunities.

 8.       Learners understanding learning styles

Individuals can have preferred styles of learning (visual, audio, hands-on, etc) and it’s important to for them to understand how that preference can enable them to choose ways of learning that are more likely to be enjoyable, effective and sustainable.

9.       Realise that everything can be learning

Informal opportunities can have great value as learning in their own right and as a stepping stone to more formal learning. Encouraging an even more pro-active way to seek personal or work experience, activities and challenges can provide relevant and accessible ways to learn and grow. Even clouds have silver linings.

Bringing theory alive

Guest contribution for Adult Learners’ Week, written by Toni Fazaeli, Chief Executive at the Institute for Learning (IfL).

Is learning about theory dull and practical learning exciting? During Adult Learners’ Week, let’s listen to what the learners have to say.

I have been talking with students and trainees across England to find out the latest views about how theory comes alive.

Geoff Petty, one of IfL’s patrons, talks about research showing that too often vocational tutors are imaginative when teaching hands-on activities – which is good – but revert to an archetypal ‘chalk, talk and copy down’ method when teaching theory.

We would never do that, would we?

Let’s examine our own record in this. Do we ever keep on doing things, hoping for or actually expecting a different result, despite the evidence? Do we boil an egg without timing it, confident that it will be perfectly cooked this time, even though this flies in the face of our experience that this approach is somewhat hit and miss? Do we think we will make it from the bus stop to the office in six minutes this time, for that meeting, yet it takes eight minutes – again?

So what did the young adult learners I met recently have to say about how they are learning theory and what the very best looks like from their point of view?

Francesca, Jordan and Connor – three catering students studying at levels 1, 2 and 3 at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College – described the best theory teaching they had experienced, starting with wine tasting. They enthused about theories linking to acidity, balance, nose and terroir (not my field, as you may have gathered already) and said they got to understand the theory as it was blended and reinforced with actual wine tasting.

They had also learned the theories behind why boiling points vary between different oils and fats, and what this means for cooking (and burning), through hypothesising what they thought would happen, then using a probe to test temperatures as fats and oils heated up.

International educational research shows that estimating an outcome and articulating the rationale for this, followed by testing and reflecting upon the actual outcome, results in powerful learning. Integrating maths and English with the vocational area – for example, calculating portion sizes and costs and profit margins, and reading and writing about restaurant customer service – also works.

At Seetec, I met Emma and Jayshree, who are training in retail and have covered theory in ethics, the environment, health and safety, raw materials to the market, communications, customer service, and equality and diversity.

Their faces lit up when they explained how the tutor got them in groups to guess the significance of different elements of communication: words, body language and eye contact. The trainees were all so confident they had it right – words are the top priority. It was a memorable revelation, indeed a shock, when the tutor revealed research findings showing that body language comes top. They love theory and enjoy the exercises the tutors use to get them to think and reflect, drawing on their experiences and what they know from other areas of their lives.

At BAE Systems in Preston, the engineering apprentices I met grasped complex theories of water flow and dynamics by designing and creating water pumps of their own and gauging very precisely which worked fastest and what this confirmed or challenged about the theories.

Listening hard to explanations from the tutor has its place. But it must be snappy, and tutors should not be tempted to drift down memory lane of how they first learned this theory, bringing it alive for themselves, but not for their students.

So as you boil an egg and it is predictably too runny or hard, or you arrive two minutes late for a meeting, remember how hard it is to change behaviour patterns. If you teach theories in any subject or vocational area, or if you learn or work alongside teachers, let’s agree to be imaginative, look to the educational research, and bring theory alive, with confidence and aplomb.

Adult learners deserve no less.

A perfect fit

Guest contribution for Adult Learners’ Week from Kim Thorneywork, Chief Executive at the Skills Funding Agency (SFA).

Helping people reach their full potential is what it’s all about at the National Careers Service. So working hand in hand with Adult Learners’ Week, which kicks off tomorrow, is a perfect fit for us and we are always delighted to be involved.

I believe that learning transforms lives. The weeklong celebration of the benefits of learning encourages adults to take part in the many activities during the week – and beyond!  I’m really pleased that the National Careers Service can be there to help people find out what’s on offer.

The benefits of learning are universal, but people learn in so many different ways. Further education courses and qualifications offer very flexible learning that allows people to learn at a time, and in a place, that suits them. There are a huge range of FE options for whatever stage in life or career people have reached, all widely available in local communities across the country. 

From my own experience, I know that the world of learning in FE can offer success and fulfilment for both individuals and employers, helping both play their part in improving skills in England in a way that contributes to economic growth. Skills deliver real economic benefits to individuals, to the communities they live in, and to the country as a whole. In these challenging economic times, learning becomes more important than ever before, playing a vital part in building a sustainable economy, nourishing social mobility and feeding social justice.

The National Careers Service is here to help right now, and it can.  We are committed to getting people the right information, advice and guidance on learning and work, at the right time, whether that’s during Adult Learners’ Week or any other week.

The wider service is available to everyone aged 13 and over in England and there are many ways to make contact to receive quality information and advice at a time that suits the individual person. Customers can either call free on 0800 100 900 to speak to an adviser, or visit the interactive website for information, to use the useful online tools or speak to an adviser via webchat. For those over 18, a face to face service with advisers is available, giving personalised guidance on learning options so that people can move on in their careers and find the perfect fit for their ambitions, whatever their circumstance.

There is more information on events and taster sessions taking place through Adult Learners’ Week 2013 from the National Careers Service helpline or at http://www.alw.org.uk/events.