The ACE Experience
Pedagogies for life and employability
Final Report
May, 2004
Jill Sanguinetti
Peter Waterhouse
David Maunders
And 22 teacher co-researchers
Page 2
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of 22 participant researchers who
produced the data and assisted in framing the findings of this research. Thanks to:
Gale Berg Von Lindhe
Margaret Brickhill
Wendy Corvell
Tony Costa
Leslie Currer
Trish Curtis
Angela Di Sciascio
Julie Duffy
Yvonne Evans
Theresa Gate
Kathy Hatton,
Rick Jamieson
Robert Mangion,
Marilla Mason
Maz McGann
Kerrin Pryor
Leigh Reilly
Naomi Rivers
Bonnie Simons
Rebecca Simpson
Heather Williams
Audrey Ysenbruk
These teacher-researchers have documented their practice, their values, dilemmas, joys
and struggles as teachers and managers in Adult and Community Education (ACE). They
have provided vignettes, insightful reflections and detailed accounts of what they do and
why, in teaching, supporting, coordinating and managing, within and beyond classrooms.
They describe the myriad inter-related strategies, approaches, philosophies, activities,
attitudes and ways of relating to learners within ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and
Wenger 1996) in ACE centres.
The participants’ skills, commitment, creativity and passion for teaching have been a
source of inspiration for the researchers, and we hope, for the readers of this report.
Jill Sanguinetti, Peter Waterhouse, David Maunders May, 2004
The ACE Experience: Pedagogies for Life and Employability
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Contents
Executive Summary
1. Background and Methodology
1.1
1.2
1.3
Background
Methodology
Conclusion and recommendations
2. Pedagogy, Generic Skills and Participatory Action Research
6
16
16
17
20
21
2.1
Discourses of research and policy in ACE
21
2.2
Multi-faceted and holistic practice
22
2.3
Multiple theories and perspectives in adult education pedagogy
24
2.4
ACE pedagogy as feminist practice
25
2.5
ACE centres as communities of practice
27
2.6
Differing discourses on generic skills
27
2.7
Participatory action research for knowledge, professional development and the revitalisation of education
29
3. Dimensions of ACE pedagogy: the Teacher
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
‘Engaged pedagogy’: passion and personal identity in teaching
‘The reflective practitioner’
Improvising and risk taking
Deconstructing institutional power – sharing personal power
Having patience and trust in the learning process
4. The Teaching
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
5.1
Collective values: commitment to education, to community service and to
the ACE sector itself
5.2
Enabling Management
5.3
Strongly networked communities of teaching and learning practice
5.4
Community oriented, community owned and community-building
5.5
Creating a sense of belonging
6. The Curriculum
ACE pedagogy in context
Constructing a framework for ACE pedagogy
Uses of the framework of ACE pedagogy
8. From ACE Pedagogy to Generic Skills
8.1
38
40
45
46
47
49
49
51
53
55
57
58
Creative interpretation of accredited curriculum guidelines
The integration of generic skills: for employment, life and further study
Contextualised curriculum
Negotiated curriculum
Accredited and non-accredited curricula
7. A Descriptive Framework for ACE Pedagogy
7.1
7.2
7.3
30
32
34
35
36
38
Developmental
Experiential and contextual
Multi-layered and eclectic
Empowering
Fostering critical thinking
5. The Pedagogy of plACE
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
30
‘Life and Employability Skills and Attributes’
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59
60
60
60
62
62
63
65
66
66
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8.2
8.3
8.4
8.5
8.6
Autonomy and self-direction
Work readiness and work habits
Enterprise, innovation and creativity skills
Learning, thinking and adaptability skills
Interpersonal skills
9. ACE Pedagogy and Young People
9.1
9.2
9.3
Provision for youth
Pedagogy and young people
An “intolerable burden”?
10. Action Research and Professional Development
67
67
68
68
69
73
73
75
77
78
10.1
Feedback from participants
78
10.2
The value of participatory action research in ACE for professional development
and research
83
10.3
Conclusion
84
11. Conclusions and Recommendations
11.1
11.2
Conclusions
Recommendations
References
85
85
86
88
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Tables and Figures
Table 1. Principles and dimensions of ACE pedagogy
10 & 64
Figure 1. Clusters of key generic skills
7
Figure 2. Dimensions of ACE pedagogy
63
Figure 3. How ACE pedagogy contributes to ‘Autonomy, Personal
Mastery and Self-Direction'
72
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Executive Summary
Introduction
Over recent years there has been increasing interest by employers, policy-makers and researchers in
‘generic skills’, also known as ‘employability skills’, ‘life skills’, ‘key competencies’, ‘skills and
attributes’ or ‘lifelong learning skills’. The research described in this report is an investigation of the
pedagogies and contexts that are characteristic in ACE, and that foster and develop generic skills and
attributes amongst ACE learners.
The ACE sector is frequently characterised in terms of educational outcomes that combine general
cognitive and social capacities with technical and cultural development as individuals
(Commonwealth of Australia, 1997). The positive outcomes of ACE programs (e.g., Golding and
Rogers 2002) are often attributed to the holistic and flexible approaches to teaching and learning (that
is, pedagogies) that are the norm within the sector (Clemans, Hartley and Macrae, 2003). ACE
practitioners work with learners on several levels; developing their personal and social skills while
teaching practical skills across a broad range of program areas. There is significant overlap between
the personal and social skills (including work readiness skills) that have traditionally been a focus of
ACE teaching, and the skills, competencies and attributes that are the focus of policy under the rubric
of ‘generic skills’. As shown in this report, ACE teachers or practitioners draw on a wide range of
strategies, approaches and pedagogies to foster and nurture generic skills development. These skills
and approaches are intrinsic to and connect with the cultures that characterise ACE centres, ACE
environments, and ACE places: what we have called, ‘the pedagogies of plACE’. The unique
educational and social contribution of the ACE sector can be found in the intersection and
interaction between pedagogies of personal engagement, and pedagogies of ‘the plACE’.
The purpose of this project was to research ACE pedagogies in order to gain a better understanding
of the connection between pedagogical practices and generic skill outcomes; to tease out the ways in
which the practices and the pedagogical culture of ACE interact to produce the ‘complex tangle’ of
outcomes of which Clemans and her colleagues speak (2003).
Central to this purpose was the involvement, as co-researchers, of 22 ACE practitioners based in
Melbourne and two regional/rural areas. These practitioners (including managers as well as teachers)
collaborated to reflect upon, discuss, share their issues and analyse their practice in relation to generic
skills. They each produced reports of their practice after a protracted period of individual and
collective reflection on, and documentation of, their practice. These reports formed the core of the
data that was then analysed by the three lead researchers to answer the key research questions and to
identify the linkages between pedagogy and generic skills development. The participant co-researchers
also contributed to the analysis and the key findings of this report.
A definition and a framework of generic skills
The definition of generic skills that we have adopted as most appropriate to ACE is that of Kearns
(2003) who writes of generic skills as “life and employability skills and attributes”. This definition
ascribes equal value to both ‘life’ and ‘employability’ purposes and recognises that these two
dimensions of human learning are ultimately inseparable. It also recognises that personal attributes
and values underpin other skills.
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Kearns’ definition leads to the conceptualisation of generic skills and attributes within a
developmental framework that in turn can be linked with the pedagogies and teaching strategies
which nurture their development.
The Kearns’ framework (see Figure 1 below) provides a holistic view of ‘skills and attributes’. It
enables connections to be made between the five ‘key skills clusters’ and the pedagogies that are
directed towards their development in teaching and learning situations.
Figure 1. Clusters of key generic skills
Basic Skills
Enterprise
Using Technology
Entrepreneurship
Practicality
Enterprise
Innovation
Creativity Skills
Work Readiness &
Work Habits
Business Orientation
Planning and Organising
Activities
Innovation
Creativity
Autonomy
Self-direction
Learning
Communication
Personal Mastery
Team Skills
Interpersonal
Skills
Customer Service
Learning
Thinking &
Adaptability Skills
Self-Direction
Cultural Understanding
Thinking
Analytical Capability
& Problem Solving
Systems Thinking
Adaptability

The Interpersonal (or social) Clusters
with underpinning personal attributes
and values
eg
emotional intelligence
self-understanding

The Cognitive Clusters with underpinning
personal attributes
eg
willingness to learn
positive attitude to change
and complexity mastery of mental
models
From Kearn’s Developmental Framework for Generic Skills, Generic Skills For The New Economy –
review of research, NCVER, Adelaide, 2001
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A definition of pedagogy
Pedagogy is a complex notion that takes different meanings within different discourses and
theoretical traditions in education. The notion of ‘pedagogy’ often refers to the intangible aspects and
processes of teaching and learning and to the social and political dynamics that are enacted in
teaching and learning situations. For the purposes of this project, we have used the following
somewhat eclectic definition that takes account of several major pedagogical theories and traditions.
Pedagogy is about the processes and dynamics of teaching and learning, including the purposes,
relationships, environment, management and social context of learning.
Methodology
The project adopted a participatory action research approach that values the practitioners as the
expert ‘knowers’ about their own pedagogy. It incorporates cycles of action, individual reflection and
documentation, consideration of theory, and collective reflection and identification of issues and
practices. This continuous process of action, reflection, consideration of theory leading to further
action and reflection is also known as ‘praxis’. The process has enabled documentation and
distillation of a ‘slice’ of the collective wisdom and experience within the field in Victoria at this time.
A one-day seminar was held on April 4, 2003 to introduce the project and invite the participation of
teachers, tutors and managers. From this meeting and subsequent notices disseminated through the
ACE regions, 28 people were recruited, of whom 22 participated until the completion of the project.
A reference group was established at the Office of Training and Tertiary Education to advise the
researchers and oversee the project.
A one-day orientation and training program was provided for the participants / co-researchers. This
focused on action research theory and methodology, the notion of, and research about, generic skills
and an overview of pedagogical theories. A strategy for the project was developed with the
participants, who formed three separate research groups: one in Melbourne, and two in regional
Victoria. Each group was facilitated by one of the three lead researchers.
At the orientation workshop, the participants agreed to document their practice. They kept journals
about daily teaching experiences and challenges, critical incidents and ideas about their pedagogies, in
relation to the generic skills development of learners.
Each of the three small groups met 3 or 4 times with their facilitator to discuss their journals, and
issues emerging in relation to their teaching. In the course of these discussions, a picture began to
unfold of common practices and collective understandings of ACE pedagogy. These meetings were
tape recorded and transcribed.
Where possible, each of the three lead researchers also visited the participants at their places of work,
observed lessons and entered into further discussion about how each one practises. At the end of a
twelve-week period, the participants each submitted a report and/or their journals and other
documentation of their programs.
The data that were analysed for this report consists of the 22 practitioner reports, the transcribed
small group meetings, and records of follow-up and one-to-one discussions.
A draft report was prepared by the lead researchers and presented to the participants at a final oneday workshop. The findings were discussed in detail and there were some amendments. The
participants unanimously endorsed the draft findings and the Framework for ACE Pedagogy.
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ACE pedagogy in context
The picture of ACE experience that emerges within this report is of the synergistic relationship
between pedagogies and places: of multi-faceted, person-centred pedagogies sustained within
supportive, community-based learning environments. It is this combination which is unique to ACE
and which provides ideal conditions for generic learning and transformation to take place. We do not
claim that ACE teachers are necessarily better then other teachers, but that the ACE context
stimulates and enables particular kinds of practices and relationships. Traditional institutional
contexts, on the other hand, often constrain the degree to which teachers can engage with students
on a personal level and the degree to which learning activities can be customised to suit particular
needs.
Analysis of findings
A common coding system for the pedagogical ‘practices’, ‘relationships’ or ‘approaches’ reflected
within the data and relevant to the chosen definition, was agreed on, and the data were coded
accordingly. This yielded a list of over 20 pedagogical approaches or practices that we called
‘elements’. We divided the list of pedagogical ‘elements’ into four broad pedagogical ‘dimensions’.
These were:
 The teacher (the personal, social, and attitudinal values and characteristics of ACE teachers),
 The teaching (i.e. the practices, approaches, methods, strategies and purposes),
 The plACE (the geographical, social and institutional contexts of ACE), and,
 The curriculum (including content, purposes and approaches to assessment).
With a little re-organisation, the elements could then be arranged according to five ‘pedagogical
principles’, along a vertical axis. Thus a ‘descriptive framework of ACE pedagogy’ was produced.
The framework (see Table 1 below) is a distillation of the pedagogical practices and understandings
that were expressed and reflected in the data provided by the participants. As such, it is a kind of
snapshot of ACE pedagogy as it is being practised in these settings at this time. It is not a definitive
framework and should be seen as one way of describing a complex and ever-changing field of
educational practice. While the notion of a framework can have the discursive effect of ‘capturing’
(and perhaps ‘freezing’) a set of understandings, we hope that this framework will continue to grow
and develop as pedagogy in different contexts continues to evolve and be described.
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Table 1. Principles and dimensions of ACE pedagogy
Principles of
ACE
pedagogy
Dimensions of ACE pedagogy
The Teacher
The Teaching
The Place
Focus on learners
and their needs
Is engaged with learners and their
learning on a personal level
Is developmental (starting from where
learners are at and consciously helping
them to progress)
Embodies collective values:
commitment to education, to
community service and to the ACE
sector itself
Prioritises learner needs
through creative assessment for
accredited curricula
Continuous learning
for work and life
Is reflective and open about her/his
own practice and professional
learning journey
Is largely (but not exclusively)
experiential
Is a strongly networked community of
teaching and learning practice
Is oriented towards generic
skills for employment, life and
further study
Building learning on
and within real-life
contexts
Is able to improvise and take risks
Fosters skills of critical literacy
Is community-owned and is engaged
in community building locally
Is contextualised (in terms of
local, community and individual
issues, interests and needs)
Sharing power empowering people
& communities
Is aware of relations of power
Includes various strategies to empower
learners
Is led by management committed to
enabling learning processes and staff
needs
Is negotiated wherever possible
(i.e., learner respected as key
player and partner in the
learning)
Many roads to
learning
Is patient and able to put trust in
the learning process
Is multi-layered and eclectic
Creates a sense of belonging
Opens pathways through
accredited, non-accredited and
enrichment programs
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The Curriculum
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Generic skills development and ACE pedagogy
In making the connection between pedagogies of ACE and generic skill and attribute outcomes, we
refer back to the Kearns developmental framework (Figure 1) and to the research literature, both of
which suggest that what are referred to as ‘generic skills and attributes’ are composite and interrelated and underpin the overall development and education of individuals. Hence, the development
of ‘autonomy’, ‘self-mastery’ and ‘self-direction’ underpins the development of all the other skills.
Likewise, the development of ‘interpersonal skills’ will feed into ‘work readiness and work habits’,
‘enterprise, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation’, and ‘learning, thinking and adaptability skills’,
and so forth.
It can be seen that all of Kearns’ five skills clusters are encouraged, fostered and strengthened by
practices that implement the elements, dimensions and principles of ACE pedagogy as described
throughout this report (and formalised in Table 1 above), and the opportunities and affordances
provided by ACE centres as ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1996).
The pedagogical elements in the ‘ACE Pedagogy Framework’ correspond to the five ‘key skills
clusters’ on the Kearns framework. For example, the central cluster of ‘autonomy, personal mastery
and self direction’ would (at least theoretically) result from practices that reflect or enact the
pedagogical elements within each of the dimensions as shown on the following page. There is a
commonsense link between the pedagogical elements and the attributes described by Kearns in his
Developmental Framework. Further research could help to clarify the linkages between outcomes
and pedagogy.
ACE pedagogy and young people
Over the last decade there has been an influx into ACE providers of youth ‘at risk’. Unemployed,
sometimes homeless, youth (including large numbers of early school leavers) who are at risk of longterm marginalisation from work and mainstream society have found their way into ACE programs.
The role of ACE has changed accordingly, and there has been much research in recent years
identifying ACE’s new role in relation to young people and related issues.
More than half of the participants in this project were involved in programs for youth, and much of
the data was about the particular strategies and approaches they employ when working with young
people. These included: findings ways to support young people while managing challenging
behaviours, democratic ways of developing and enforcing behaviour guidelines, ‘behaviour
modification’ (with disabled young people), offering genuine adult relationships, engaging young
people creatively (such as with drama and performance art) and engaging them politically, by teaching
skills of critical literacy and social theory.
In the main however, the pedagogies for young people were not fundamentally different from ACE
pedagogies as a whole. It seems therefore that the successes that the ACE sector has achieved in
dealing with young people and bringing them back in to the educational system are at least in part
because of their learning experiences in ACE settings (the pedagogies of ACE).
Vignettes and case studies scattered throughout this report illustrate the various approaches to
teaching and interacting with young people.
However, the participants also spoke of the pressures that the youth programs place on the
providers, the practitioners and resources. The participants spoke strongly about the additional
burden being placed on ACE of working with young people in the context of casual part-time
employment. They also discussed strategies that worked and noted that the ACE sector had much to
offer other sectors concerned about the development of generic skills.
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While it is clear that a number of our participants had success with disadvantaged young people,
others found that it is difficult to manage and change some challenging behaviours, given the shortterm nature of many programs. Pinkney (2002) suggested that few ACE providers are likely to be
well- equipped to deliver effective programs for ‘at-risk’ young people. Bradshaw, (2002) also warned,
“an influx of young people would put an intolerable burden on ACE… it is best that only a few ACE
agencies work with young people”.
Clearly, the pedagogical skills and knowledge within the ACE sector, as demonstrated by this
research, have potential application beyond ACE to schools and to the TAFE and VET sectors.
However, partnerships between ACE and schools, TAFE, and VET, which are aimed at creative
solutions to the educational needs of young people, should be properly resourced and seen as longterm undertakings.
The ACE generic skills action research project as professional
development
One of the aims of this project was to trial a process of professional development with teacher-based
participatory action research. The principles of action research were followed in all stages of the
project, with the teachers acknowledged as participants and co-researchers. As a result, this report is
the result of a genuine collaboration between the lead researchers (two of whom had been ACE
teachers in the past) and the participant co-researchers (who were also teachers). While there is great
diversity in the practices and approaches documented here, the findings of this report have been
unanimously endorsed by the participants.
The feedback from participants about the personal and professional significance of participating in
the project was extremely positive. According to them the project has been an outstanding success as
a professional development undertaking. Written feedback and follow-up emails referred to the
following aspects in particular:
 the benefits of reflection and keeping a teaching journal;
 the value of sharing ideas and concerns with one’s peers in a collective process;
 the development of awareness and self-validation from this process;
 the instances of personal and professional transformation;
 the contribution to the quality of their teaching, especially in ways of embedding a focus on
generic skills in every day teaching;
 the project as a model for continuous improvement;
 the importance of skilled and experienced facilitation;
 the growth in their awareness and understanding of the sector and its importance; and
 the significance of learning about and integrating new theory into one’s own personal theories of
teaching.
All the participants thought the project should be continued or replicated in some way.
Conclusions
ACE pedagogy is holistic and learner-centred by intention and in action (as shown by this report). It
is geared to fostering and nurturing the development of generic life and employability skills amongst
learners. This report demonstrates the many ways in which ACE practitioners are able to engage
marginalised ‘second chance’ learners of all ages and ethnicities in explicit learning while attending to
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implicit processes of their personal, intellectual and social development. However, ACE pedagogy is
as much the product of the shared culture and values, enabling management, community orientation
and community linkages that characterise ACE learning centres.
ACE pedagogies contribute indirectly to the development of attributes such as ‘autonomy, personal
mastery and self-direction’. Such attributes cannot be taught directly through explicit curriculumbased activities. ‘The ACE experience’ therefore has important implications for current thinking
about how generic skills and attributes can best be developed throughout the educational system.
The Framework of ACE Pedagogy that has come out of this research demonstrates the diversity of
strategies and theoretical perspectives that ACE teachers incorporate into their work, and the
dynamic interaction between practice and context in ACE. The teachers’ personal skills, attributes
and values are an intrinsic part of their pedagogical ‘good practice’. How they teach is inseparable
from their personalities, their aspirations and their commitments to learners and to community
education as part of building a better world. Individually and collectively they are practising what bell
hooks calls ‘engaged pedagogy’ (hooks 1994 b), which according to her, is more demanding than
conventional pedagogy because of its focus on reflectivity and mutual well-being: “This means that
teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualisation that promotes their own wellbeing if they are to teach in a manner which empowers students” (p 15). There are many instances of
engaged pedagogy in which the all-round wellbeing of students is the major concern, and a balance is
constantly being struck between personal and professional modes of relating to learners. The teachers
are reflecting individually and collectively upon their ‘teaching selves’; they are actively pursuing their
own personal and professional growth as ACE teachers, community members and citizens of the
world. The managers, volunteers and other staff at ACE centres also practise ‘engaged pedagogy’ in
their relationships with learners and kinds of supports that they offer.
As Kearns and others (e.g. Gonczi, 2000) have claimed, the key to developing the generic skills of
learners lies in complex and multidimensional pedagogies, rather than in one-dimensional
instructional methods. It is about attending simultaneously to the personal, the relational, the social,
the practical and the moral dynamics of teaching and learning. Those pedagogies may be conscious
teaching strategies, or they may be implicit within the culture and daily interactions within centres.
The participants in this study were self-selected and most were experienced ACE practitioners. One
would therefore expect the demonstration of higher levels of pedagogical skill and commitment than
would be expected with a random sample of teachers. Nevertheless, the pedagogical excellence
displayed by all of the participants in this project speaks volumes about what the ACE sector is
providing and could potentially provide. For ACE to continue to grow and make its unique
contribution, it is important that politicians, policy-makers and members of the general public are
well informed about the unique educational, training, social and community development work that is
being carried out by the ACE sector.
The experience of this project also demonstrates the value of the action research approach as a form
of professional development in ACE. The key features of this project which were particularly helpful
as professional development, included the: protracted period of journaling, the opportunities for
reflection, the small group discussions, large group meetings, the focus on a product (a text in this
case) and the fact that they were involved in genuine and significant research.
One of the features of this project has been the fact that the professional development was carried
out in the context of real research, and vice versa. The synergies between research and teachers’
experiential learning were a key ingredient in the success of this project. That is, the research has a
genuine purpose in contributing to public policy, and is therefore taken seriously. The combination
of personal reflection and documentation and collective reflection and analysis creates a dynamism in
the exchange of experiences and development of ideas. The materials that are generated in these
processes are valuable resources, documenting the details of classroom practices and providing a base
for future professional development purposes.
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Recommendations
Recommendations
1. That the Board use the ‘Framework of ACE Pedagogy’ to promote the pedagogical and
developmental culture that characterises the ACE sector. The potential of the ACE sector to
contribute further to adult education and training in local areas, and more broadly, in building social
cohesion and social capital within disadvantaged communities needs to be constantly highlighted.
There are many instances in this report of how ACE pedagogy is making a direct contribution to the
lives of individuals who are at risk of long-term unemployment and social marginalisation. ACE
providers, teachers, managers and coordinators provide a first step into education, training and
community networks that may and do make a significant difference to a person’s life trajectory.
Empowering people by welcoming and inducting them into ‘communities of practice’ in the context
of genuine, respectful relationships and making community linkages, is to create optimum
environments for the development of skills and personal attributes. This report may contribute to
building greater recognition and respect for the work that ACE does in bringing together personal,
social and community development in the context of teaching and learning. The report suggests that
future policy directions should be geared to nurturing and enhancing the unique qualities of ACE and
furthering its special contributions to education and community life in Victoria.
2. That the findings of this report in relation to how ACE pedagogy fosters generic skills be
taken up with a view to the sector offering partnerships and professional development to
other sectors. Other sectors are becoming aware of the centrality of generic skills and attributes in
educational and training provision. Sharing the pedagogical culture of ACE with other sectors, if it is
done sensitively, would be a way of raising the profile of ACE and extending its influence and its role
in partnerships with other sectors. While ‘good practice’ pedagogy is not unique to ACE, it is in the
ACE sector that the optimum conditions prevail for excellent pedagogy to flourish. While it might
not be possible to to replicate ACE pedagogy in other sectors that do not share the same structures
and conditions, the principles of adult education and skills developed by ACE practitioners could be
promoted through partnerships and other forms of collaboration.
3. That the researchers in this project (including the participant researchers) provide a series
of professional development workshops based on the findings of this report. The issues that
have been researched in the course of this project, the theoretical under-pinnings and the ‘Framework
for ACE’ pedagogy have created a high level of interest amongst participants and others. We
therefore propose that the research team, including some of the participant teacher researchers, offer
a series of professional development workshops as a follow-up to this research. The aim would be to
embed the ideas and pedagogies of generic skills development in the discourse of the field of practice
and to further develop ‘good practice’ pedagogical and management skills. Each workshop would
consist of two half-day sessions approximately a month apart so that the ideas and frameworks
introduced in the first workshop could be followed by a period of reflection and documentation by
individual participants. The final session would include collective reflections and consideration of
current practice in the light of Framework for ACE Pedagogy and other findings of this report. In this
way a participatory process of action and reflection would be built into the workshops.
4. That in addition, individual ACE providers or clusters consider conducting similar
participatory action research projects as a powerful means of professional development. As in
this project, the teacher-researchers would be central in planning, producing reflective reports and
developing and giving feedback on the findings. Such participatory action research projects have the
potential for strengthening the sector through developing research and writing skills at the grass roots
level, and training a new generation of practitioners who may take on leadership, advocacy and
research training roles themselves. Funding could be attracted from the‘Reframing the Future’
program to support such projects.
5. That Victoria University investigate the possibility of developing partnerships for
postgraduate study with ACE. There is a need, identified by the participants in this project, for
postgraduate study programs in adult education and in ACE to be made accessible for ACE teachers,
The ACE Experience: Pedagogies for Life and Employability
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coordinators and managers. Access to such programs would provide accreditation as well as exposure
to a broader spectrum of educational and policy knowledge and knowledge of ACE. An appropriate
course work subject could be negotiated within the context of current postgraduate courses such as
the Master of Experiential Learning. ACFE personnel may assist in developing a specialist subject
about the history, policies, funding and administration of the ACE sector.
6. That ACFEB and Victoria University collaborate to submit for an Australian Research
Council Linkage Grant for further research into the nexus between teaching, learning and
communities of practice in ACE. This report demonstrates what is unique about the ACE sector:
how the development of generic skills is fostered through the interaction of pedagogy and context –
the pedagogy of plACE. We now need to understand more about how ACE centres operate as
‘communities of practice’ and what is meant by the term ‘community of practice’ in the ACE context.
What are the essential linkages and relationships in ‘communities of practice? What are the shared
beliefs, practices and value bases? How does the acquisition of generic skills in classroom activities
flow into the informal learning that takes place within the wider community of practice? What do
ACE practitioners and planners need to do, in order to cultivate and sustain their centres as
communities of practice? In what ways is learning in ACE an individual activity, and in what ways is it
a collective, social process, and what does this mean for our pedagogy? Such knowledge could be fed
into popular discourse in ACE to bring about more conscious and theoretically informed approaches
to furthering ACE’s unique contribution to people, education and communities. We therefore
recommend that the Victoria University School of Education continue its collaboration with ACFEB
in developing a proposal to seek ARC funding for a further research project that would build on the
findings of this project. Two additional partners would also be sought to make financial and in-kind
contributions to support the ARC submission from Victoria University.
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1. Background and Methodology
1.1
Background
This is the report of the project titled “There’s More to the Person than Learning Outcomes” - The
Development of Skills for Life and Employability in Adult and Community Education: An Action Research Study of
Pedagogy. The project was funded by the Adult Community and Further Education Board in
partnership with Victoria University.
The project arose from the collective involvement of its three authors in adult and community
education, adult literacy, youth issues, and in researching the new movement in Australia for the
inclusion of ‘generic skills’ in education and training curricula. In the recently concluded NCVER
research into the generic skills of older unemployed workers (Virgona, Waterhouse, Sefton and
Sanguinetti, 2003) we came to the conclusion that ‘generic’ or ‘life’ skills develop as the result of
complex interactions involving multiple factors. These factors include one’s personal and
psychological attributes, life experiences, work experiences, formal training, mentoring or other
models provided and the opportunities, fortunes or misfortunes that impact on all of us.
To some extent, generic skills can be taught explicitly, but their acquisition is often more about the
processes of personal development, processes that ‘quick fix’ training programs are unlikely to
address. The acquisition of generic skills depends on context, relationships, experiences and the
dynamics of personal growth. The pedagogical challenges of working with these processes are
complex and are not adequately encompassed by formalised competencies, instruction manuals and
training programs.
We felt that the Adult and Community Education (ACE) sector has much to contribute to debates
about generic skills. The development of generic skills has always been an important part of nonformal community education and in this sector teachers have always attended to the intangible
developmental aspects of their learners’ progress (Clemans et al, 2003).
We therefore conceived a participatory action research project that would engage adult literacy and
adult and community education (ACE) teachers in reflecting upon, sharing and documenting their
practice with a view to making the connection between their pedagogies (understood as complex,
situated teaching practices) and the ‘intangible’ processes of learners becoming more confident, selfdirected and developing better social, and cognitive skills1.
Research has shown that the ACE sector has been quite successful in engaging with and providing
education and training to youth and other potentially marginalised groups in the community (Golding
and Rogers 2002, Clemans et al 2003). Government acceptance of its effectiveness in supporting 1519 years old who had not been well served by schools was reflected in the decision to direct funds to
students under 15 “who are experiencing extreme difficulties in engagement with learning”, who
enrol in an ACE provider (Department of Education and Training, 2003). This project sought to
document the reasons for ACE being able to operate successfully in this context.
The Adult Community and Further Education Division (ACFED) vision statement, ‘Taking ACE to
the Year 2000’, draws on the Delors Report (1996) in stating that educational opportunities should be
created which assist learners to:
Throughout the report we refer to ACE teachers or practitioners. We include centre/program coordinators
and managers in our references to ‘ACE teachers’.
1
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 combine a broad general education with specialised knowledge and skills (to know);
 develop the capacities needed to undertake work (to do);
 learn to live interdependently (to live); and
 take on the responsibility for the development of their own potential (to be).
Clearly, there is much overlap between these educational aims and values and the generic ‘life skills’
that have been identified by the OECD process and by authors such as Kearns (2001). The aspiration
to teach in ways that contribute to greater levels of autonomy, self-confidence and self-awareness on
the part of students is widespread within the adult literacy and basic education sector.
Adult learning principles (eg, Knowles 1990), involving active, co-operative learner-centred strategies,
are part of everyday teaching in the ACE sector. This project has tapped into teachers’ pedagogical
‘knowing-in-action’ (Schön 1983), in order to advance our understanding of what teachers do to
contribute to the development of generic skills (defined in the broadest sense), and to develop new
frameworks for the kind of ‘tacit’ pedagogies that we believe underpin and enhance the development
of such skills.
This project, therefore, has taken up the notion of ‘generic skills and attributes for employability and
for life’ (Kearns 2003). Through a participatory action research process, expert practitioners of adult
education pedagogy have been able to speak about, document and bring into research and policy
discourse, the art and craft of their teaching of adult (and young adult) learners.
1.2
Methodology
Aims
This project had four inter-linked aims.
The first was to investigate teaching and learning practices in Adult and Community Education
(ACE) classrooms in order to learn whether and in what ways the pedagogies and the ‘pedagogical
culture’ of teaching in that sector might support the development of generic skills amongst learners.
The second was to document and analyse cases of ‘good practice’ pedagogy in order to develop a
theoretical framework which would make sense of the kind of ‘good practice’ pedagogy with ACE
(Golding and Rogers 2002, Bradshaw 1997).
The third was to make an analysis of the professional development needs of teachers in ACE in
relation to the development of learners’ generic skills in ACE programs, including cognitive,
interpersonal, creative and work-readiness skills.
The fourth was to model within the sector a form of professional development that empowers
practitioners by engaging them directly as participant-researchers in self- and collective reflection on
practice, taking action to improve practice, developing research skills and a theoretical discourse for
ACE pedagogy.
We set out to:
 ‘capture’ the incidents, interactions and learning activities that reflect the development of generic
skills amongst learners,
 document teachers’ interventions or approaches that appear to contribute to the development of
particular generic skills,
 analyse the relationship between learning environments and generic skills development,
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 investigate whether and in what ways problem-based or experiential learning may lead to generic
skills development, and
 document the whole project as a model of professional development within the sector.
Participatory action research was an appropriate research methodology for this project as it
corresponds to the culture of collaboration and empowerment within the ACE sector (Reason and
Bradbury 2001, Zuber-Skerritt 1996, McTaggart 1991, Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988) and usefully
framed the cycles of planning, action, reflection and documentation and, finally, because it posited
the teachers as full partners in the research.
Action research has other spin-offs in that it contributes to building the culture of ACE (the
‘community of practice’ of Lave and Wenger, 1991) and contributes to professional development
processes and programs for teachers and the field at large.
The research process
The first reference group meeting for the project was held on March 6, 2003 with the principal
researchers as well as representatives from ACFE, Victoria University and the ACE sector.
On April 4th the project was launched at a forum held at the William Angliss Conference Centre
entitled ‘Generic Skills’ and ‘Learning to Be’: how do practitioners in Adult and Community Education foster the
all-round development of learners? Teachers, tutors and coordinators from all ACFE regions were invited,
and 50 people attended. It was a very lively meeting and the discussion of issues indicated a high level
of interest in and support for the project. A number of participants in the forum decided to join the
project as action research participants.
Over the next few weeks, 28 people from 19 different providers were recruited through ACFE
networks and word of mouth. They agreed to be named as a group, but not to be named in a way
that would connect them with any of the data. In this reports pseudonyms are used in presenting
direct quotes from the participants.
The second reference committee meeting was held on April 8 at ACFE in Treasury Place.
The first (all day) workshop for practitioner researchers was held on May 22 at Workplace Learning
Initiatives in Northcote. The aim of this meeting was to provide some basic training in participatory
action research, to introduce the participants to concepts and resources in relation to generic skills
and notions of pedagogy. The 28 participants formed into three groups – two in regional Victoria and
one in Melbourne. Each group of researchers discussed the issues and planned how they would meet
and maintain contact with each other. The participants began to keep reflective journals and to
document critical incidents and descriptions of practice following this meeting. An official contract
between ACFE and Victoria University was signed on May 27, and funds began to flow shortly after
that.
Five of the original 28 people discontinued at an early date due to other commitments. During June
and July, the members of each of the three groups met at least twice to share their journal writing and
their experiences issues in relation to the main research topic. These meetings have all been taperecorded and form part of the data. One of the meetings was held by teleconference.
At the end of the twelve week period, the teacher-researchers each finalised their account of their
observations and insights and submitted these to the researchers.
The 22 participants were each paid an honorarium for their participation. The honorarium was
important in acknowledging the voluntary contribution of time and skills by sessional teachers who
are not well remunerated.
The lead researchers visited some of the participants in their classrooms as participant observers or
visited the teachers at their centres. This was a means of gaining a sense, at first hand, of the
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classroom interactions, offering support to the participants, and triangulating the findings by adding
another layer of data and analysis.
The 22 participants sent in their reflections and journal writing by mid August.
The project subsidised three participants to go to the ACAL (Australian Council of Adult Literacy)
conference in Alice Springs in September to present the research then in process.
A final all-day meeting with the project participants was held on October 10, 2003. At this meeting
the principal researchers shared with practitioner-researchers the draft findings and there was lively
discussion and critical feedback. After this, the report was further developed and the current draft
was written. Notes were taken of these sessions and the participants did written evaluations of the
project as a whole.
A draft of the evolving ‘Framework for ACE Pedagogy’ was then sent to the participants, and
additional feedback and suggestions were received and incorporated into the final draft.
At a reference group meeting on November 10, the draft was accepted with some suggestions for
revisions and recommendations.
Data analysis
The data consisted of the 22 written reports submitted by the participants at the end of the period of
action and reflection. The written reports included background information on providers, courses
offered, and other publications that threw light on programs and pedagogies. The researchers’ notes
and transcriptions of the small group meetings were also included as data. Notes of the participants’
meeting on October 10 and follow-up phone calls and email messages have also been included.
A ‘grounded analysis’ approach (Patton, 1990) was employed. The researchers agreed upon a
common coding system after an initial period of analysis. The categories of analysis grouped together
the practices and approaches that the teachers reported on. The categories of analysis were then
grouped according to four ‘dimensions’ of ACE pedagogy (‘the teacher’, ‘the teaching’, ‘the pedagogy
of the plACE’, and ‘the curriculum’). Sub-categories under each of these dimensions were then
regarded as ‘elements’ of pedagogy. A considerable degree of over-lap and duplication was reduced
through repeated cycles of reorganization and simplification. The researchers focused on developing
an accessible and logical analysis and presentation of the data whilst not losing the complexity and
subtlety of the pedagogical elements that were identified.
Constructing a framework of ACE pedagogy
A framework of four dimensions of ACE pedagogy was constructed by the above process. This
framework listed the pedagogical elements under the four dimensions of pedagogy noted above. As
the analysis continued it became evident that the elements within each dimension could be arranged
so as to create five horizontal axes that were meaningful as principles of ACE pedagogy.
These were identified as follows:
 Focus on learners and their needs,
 Continuous learning for work and life,
 Building learning on and within real-life contexts,
 Sharing power- empowering people and communities, and
 Many roads to learning.
The dimensions, principles and elements of the framework
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Hence, a framework consisting of four dimensions, five principles and 20 elements finally emerged from
the data (see Table 1). This framework is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.
From ‘ACE pedagogy’ to ‘generic skills’
The next level of analysis involved re-examining the Kearns’ ‘developmental framework of generic
skills’ – consisting of five skill ‘clusters’ – and cross-referencing the central skills cluster with the
elements and practices identified in the framework. The connection between Kearns’ central generic
skills (autonomy, personal mastery and self-direction) and ACE pedagogy is discussed in Chapter 8.
ACE pedagogy and young people
More than half of the participant researchers were working with groups of young people in different
kinds of programs. The pedagogies that they described were thus of particular interest in terms of
provision for young people and ‘youth at risk’. An overview of the issues and presentation of data in
relation to young people is in Chapter 9.
A model for professional development in ACE based on participatory action research of
teachers’ pedagogy
The written feedback of the practitioners was analysed in order to draw out themes from their
perceptions of the current project and their views about the value of such an approach generally.
Analysis of their feedback and suggestions are in Chapter 10.
1.3
Conclusion and recommendations
In the final chapter we briefly discuss the significance of the findings and make six recommendations
about how these findings may be used. These include further developing the action research
framework and a small follow-up project.
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2. Pedagogy, Generic Skills and
Participatory Action Research
The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) through its research arm, the National Centre
for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER), has undertaken research and policy development
in the area of ‘generic skills’ (eg, Kearns 2001, Virgona et al 2002). Employers are calling for a
workforce equipped with ‘generic skills for employability’ (Curtis and McKenzie 2001) and recent
research has been investigating how the VET system might better respond. Questions include how
generic skills should be described and categorised; how they might be assessed and integrated into
training packages; how they are transferable from one context to another; and how they are
developed in formal and informal training and in life or work contexts (NCVER).
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Definition and Selection
of Competencies (DeSeCo) Report argued that key competencies are important, not only from a
purely economic viewpoint, but “because they contribute to individual participation in democratic
institutions; social cohesion and justice; and strengthening human rights and autonomy as
counterweights to increasing global inequality in opportunities and increasing individual
marginalisation” (OECD 2000).
The Kearns report (2001) analysed the teaching and learning implications of generic skills for VET
providers, and concluded: “fostering generic skills requires active learning strategies in which learners
take responsibility for their own learning so that they develop the attitudes, habits and skills of
motivated lifelong learners” (ibid, p, 42). Kearns quoted the Ministerial Committee on Employment,
Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) Working Group on Key Competencies
(MCEETYA 1996, p. 9) that there is a need for a “more dynamic pedagogy that motivates learners
and is meaningful to them as well as more satisfying to teachers”. Kearns noted that skills for lifelong
learning are developed through ‘adult learning principles’. According to ANTA, these include active
participation, meaningful content, holistic learning, multi-sensory learning, practice and
reinforcement, feedback, reward (ANTA Feb 2002). One of the aims of this project was to
investigate whether and how these principles are actualised in teaching practice in ACE and to
construct a pedagogical framework on that basis.
Kearns noted that while there is evidence of ‘good practice’ within the VET system, “there is a need
for a stronger teacher development effort” (ibid p 54) in relation to the sorts of holistic, active
learning strategies that are associated with the development of generic skills.
The DeSeCo Report, the ACER Report on skills for employability, the ANTA Report, ‘National
Marketing Strategy for Skills and Lifelong Learning’ (2000) and recent research by Australian
educational researchers such as Kearns (2001), Gonzci (2002), Down (2001), Comyn (2002) and
Virgona et al (2002) have important implications for the ACE sector, and for the post-compulsory
sector more broadly. These national and international studies and research papers suggest a need to
investigate pedagogical practices in ACE in order to learn more about learning and teaching strategies
that are likely to enhance skills and attributes for life-long learning and for employability.
2.1
Discourses of research and policy in ACE
The role of Adult, Community and Further Education (ACFE) is to provide “lifelong learning
opportunities for Victorian adults, contributing to their social, economic, and cultural development as
individuals and members of the Victorian community”.
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(http://www.acfe.vic.gov.au/about/default.asp). This research project is an attempt to identify and
document the ways in which those aims are realised in teaching relationships and pedagogies in a
variety of ACE programs and settings. It is an exploration of the ways in which the ACE sector
works to provide lifelong learning and to contribute to the social, economic and cultural
developments of learners as individuals and as members of the community.
A recent review of ACE research (Golding, Davies and Volkoff 2001) delineated two main,
sometimes competing discourses reflected within ACE research. “Top-down”, sector-oriented ACE
research, commonly commissioned by stakeholders on the positivist (managerial and market) side of
the continuum, differs from humanist research, which focuses on ACE service and participation (p
27). This research is located mainly on the ‘humanist side’. It is about ‘Community ACE’ (contextspecific, action-based research, participation and empowerment) and ‘Professional ACE’ (facilitation
of learning, personal fulfilment, and service provision). However, it is also about ‘Managerial ACE’ in
the sense of focusing on both social and economic outcomes and ‘Market ACE’, in the sense that the
findings about ACE as a ‘socially valuable commodity’ could be used eventually to promote and
advocate the sector as well as market ACE programs in the community.
Many claims are made about the benefits of ACE to individuals. In this research, benefits to both
individuals and to communities are suggested in the teachers’ accounts of their pedagogy and the
personal and professional values that underpin their work. According to Golding, Davies and
Volkoff (2001):
The benefits of ACE to individuals can be broad, or diffuse, and difficult to measure.
Appropriate measurement is particularly important, however, given the ‘lateral’ rather than
hierarchical nature of ACE. ACE is highly decentralised and local, and its openness or nonselectiveness enables it to be accessed by a wide range of individuals. Its cumulative or aggregate
impact on communities is therefore potentially very significant, and this has been a developing
research theme since the early 1990s. More and more, then, ACE has come to be seen as a
vehicle for generating social capital—for creating assets in the form of more organised, better
networked, better communicating individuals, with greater know-how, greater self-confidence
and greater capacity and energy. The accumulation of social capital through broad participation
in ACE is seen as a source of regional regeneration, neighbourhood, town or community
development, working in a constructive direction against some wider economic trends which
have had a negative impact on local communities.
The documentation of the social and individual benefits of ACE therefore has policy significance
beyond marketing and promoting the sector. This report can be seen as adding to the analyses of
Falk, Golding and Balatti (2000) and of Clemans et al (2003) of the social capital implications of the
work of ACE providers. The notion of developing social capital through community education has
been linked by many authors and researchers to that of lifelong learning. It is by providing
opportunities for lifelong learning that we might address the economic and social marginalisation of
disadvantaged members of the community, and provide bridges and pathways into employment and
further education and training (Suda 2001, Castleton, Sanguinetti and Falk 2001, OECD 2000).
2.2
Multi-faceted and holistic practice
ACE sector provision is frequently characterised in terms of broadly defined educational outcomes,
which combine general cognitive and social capacities with technical skills (Commonwealth of
Australia, 1997). The Adult Community and Further Education Division (ACFED) vision statement,
‘Taking ACE to the Year 2000’, draws on the Delors Report (1996) in stating that educational
opportunities should be created to:
 combine a broad general education with specialised knowledge and skills (to know)
 develop the capacities needed to undertake work (to do)
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 learn to live interdependently (to live)
 take on the responsibility for the development of self-potential (to be).
These four educational aims match (to an extent) with Kearns’ four ‘clusters’ of generic skills and
attributes (Kearns 2001). These are, ‘learning, thinking and adaptability skills’, ‘work readiness skills’,
‘interpersonal skills’ and ‘creative, innovation, and enterprise skills’. To address these different
domains of social, intellectual, work-related and personal growth and development in teaching calls
for a pedagogy that is multi-faceted and holistic.
Bradshaw’s conceptual framework for further education, located at the intersection of educational
principles, practices and learning outcomes, provides another useful model for thinking about the
multi-dimensional yet holistic practices and activities that are typical in ACE settings. Her framework
calls for “a multiplicity of inclusive, inter-connected practices that encourage creativity, critical
analysis and agency, based on multidimensional pedagogies, embedded assessment and continuous
assessment” (Bradshaw 1997). This sense of multiplicity is also reflected in the notion of
multiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis 1996).
The work of teachers is complex, eclectic and multi-dimensional (Connell 1985; Schulman 1990;
Hatton 1991; Levine 1992). Levine explains the eclecticism of teaching thus:
“Teaching is an eclectic undertaking, and complexly so, its character frequently arising from
putting together often very disparate, even unlikely, concerns related to theory, knowledge,
understanding and experience” (p 200).
Hatton’s notion of teachers as ‘bricoleurs’ (who craft their teaching in an ad hoc way out of the limited
repertoires and means available to them) is another way of conceiving of the eclecticism, or multidimensionality of teachers’ work (Hatton 1991).
The complex, multidimensional practices that are evident in the work of experienced ACE teachers is
a reflection of skills developed over years of practice. They have access to extensive repertoires,
which they combine eclectically and constantly develop as they teach, in the manner described by Lee
Schulman. Schulman uses notions of repertoire, flexibility and eclecticism to describe the working of
‘excellent pedagogy’: “The pedagogical mind sweeps effortlessly across the range of methodological
options, never chained to a single approach” (Schulman 1990: p 20).
The significance of the eclecticism is that it is a part of praxis: the continual development of
personal/professional knowledges as repertoires, insights, skills, sensitivities and the ability to listen,
to respond and to teach appropriately. It can also be understood in terms of Van Manen’s
formulation of pedagogical tact and thoughtfulness ... the improvisational pedagogical-didactical skill
of instantly knowing, from moment to moment, how to deal with students in interactive teachinglearning situations. (Van Manen 1995 p. 41). This ability to respond wisely and thoughtfully in an
instant is paramount in ACE.
Schön (1983) writes famously about the development of pedagogical practice through praxis, which
includes “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action”. Teachers’ complex eclectic practices
develop with the continuing development of their personal and professional knowledges, repertoires,
insights, skills, sensitivities and the ability to listen, to respond and to teach appropriately.
The recent research by Clemans et al (2003) into ACE outcomes proposes a set of 20 distinct
outcomes, including individual development outcomes (personal domain, public domain and work
domain), community development outcomes, and economic development outcomes. They write that
these outcomes are in reality interwoven and intrinsic to ACE teaching as a whole:
This tangled complexity need not destroy efforts to identify ACE outcomes, as long as all
concerned recognise that the different kinds of outcomes rarely, if ever, manifest themselves in
isolation from the others, even in one individual learner, and that the complexity is only a
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problem for those with a need to account for, or measure, what is going on. On the ground, the
complexity is part of a coherent, satisfying whole. (Clemans et al 2003)
The ‘tangled complexity’ of outcomes identified by Clemans et al reflects an equally complex and
tangled mix of pedagogies in ACE practice. Pedagogy is as much about the heart, the gut and the
body as it is about the brain. As Willis notes, adult education is:
a far juicier, fraught and exhilarating process than might have been concluded from instructional
manuals setting out objectives, strategies, competencies and generalised information about the
‘adult learner’ (Willis 2000 p. 62).
Waterhouse (1999) similarly observes, on the basis of his dissertation research on adult education
practice, that adult education pedagogy:
reminded me constantly of the complex personal and psychological domains of the learning
process. Time and again analysis of significant learning events and experiences highlighted the
individuality, even the idiosyncratic nature of meaning making and learning processes. These
qualities were revealed in the multiple source materials that represented and reflected the living
and learning under scrutiny. (Waterhouse 2004 p. 4)
2.3
Multiple theories and perspectives in adult education
pedagogy
The diversity within ACE or adult education pedagogy reflects a diversity of theoretical traditions and
a number of authors have developed typologies of such educational theories (eg Foley 1995,
Waterhouse 1999, Gribble 1990, and Sanguinetti 1999). Waterhouse (1999) identifies seven
‘traditions’ which, although not entirely distinct, tend to emphasise different aspects and outcomes of
adult education. These different traditions in adult education he names as follows:
Humanist
Golding, Davies and Volkoff (2001) note that “the central focus on learners and their needs” is a
defining feature of ACE provision. This focus is a continuing legacy of the humanistic tradition and
the influence of writers such as Maslow (1968) and Rogers (1961, 1969) who stressed the value of the
teaching-learning relationship and the capacity of the individual to grow in confidence, self-assurance
and personhood.
Liberal
The philosophy of John Dewey (1916) and others in the liberal tradition of education is evident in
the ACE focus upon the place of the individual in society and a commitment to developing
participatory and critically enquiring learners as citizens in democratic society.
Mechanistic
The mechanistic tradition, with its roots in behaviourist psychology has a continuing influence in the
identification of competencies, the structuring of learning objectives, and the targeting of skills,
behaviours and aptitudes which will lead to employment and other desired learner outcomes.
Critical-emancipatory
The critical-emancipatory tradition most often associated in adult education with the writings of
Friere (1971, 1985) and more recent writers such as Lankshear (1993), places emphasis on the idea
that education ought not be about simply ‘fitting-in’ to society – and sustaining the status quo - but
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rather challenging and changing society in ways to redress inequality and oppression wherever it
might be found. This orientation to adult education has a continuing influence in expressions of adult
education practice as means of building better and alternative futures.
Ethnographic
Inspired by the work of educators and researchers such as Ashton-Warner (1963), Brice-Heath
(1986), Smith (1988) and Darrah (1994), educators have come to appreciate the importance of
particular and localised ways of knowing and practising and coming to know. The significance, for
teaching and learning, of a group of people’s ‘ways with words’ is coming to be better understood.
The ethnographic tradition, as the name suggests, highlights issues of language and culture in the
context of education practice. In ACE this tradition is evident in the attention to group and
community identity/identities and respect for local ‘voices’ and practices.
Entrepreneurial
The entrepreneurial tradition reflects the contemporary focus upon ‘user-pays’ philosophies and
economic activity regulated by market forces (Watson, Buchanan, Campbell and Briggs, 2003).
Variously referred to as economic rationalism, neo-liberalism and corporate managerialism, trends in
public policy over the past two decades have seen declining public expenditure on services
traditionally funded through the public purse. Service providers, including educational providers,
have been forced to develop and adopt income generation strategies and to adopt commercial,
entrepreneurial and ‘market-driven’ strategies for survival. The ACE sector has not been immune
from these developments and adult education has become increasingly identified as a commodity.
Polytheistic, post-modernist
The final ‘tradition’ is the recognition of multiple ways of knowing, and ‘multiple gods to teach by’
(Neville 1992) which is developed by post-modernist or post-structuralist authors and argues for the
legitimacy (within a constructivist epistemology), of multiple perspectives, orientations, methods and
means of coming to know.
2.4
ACE pedagogy as feminist practice
Another distinctive aspect of ACE in the Australian context is its explicit attention to issues of
gender related power and privilege. This dimension of ACE practice is closely related to the critical –
emancipatory tradition of Freire et al noted above. Historically the focus was explicitly informed by
feminist principles. As Macrae (1997) notes, feminist principles and commitment to women’s
empowerment were founding principles for ACE.
The emphasis on serving the needs of women and providing opportunities to enable women to
challenge and change their perceptions and circumstances has continued to this day. However, the
view of ACE centres as centres of women’s growth and empowerment has softened over the last
decade with the opening up of ACE to labour market programs, youth programs and a wide range of
vocational programs attended by men and women. According to ACFEB (1996), 75% of Australian
ACE participants are women. This is reflected in the gender composition of ACE practitioners.
Among the teachers in this project for example there are 19 women and 4 men.
ACE pedagogy is about valuing, engaging with and educating the whole person with holistic, multidimensional ways of teaching and learning. Such pedagogy is strongly reflected in the writing of
feminist authors such as Belenky, Field et al, (1986). On the basis of researching the learning
pathways of women who had been ‘silenced’ in institutional contexts, Belenky et al offer an
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epistemological framework for women’s journeys from ‘silence’ through several stages or ways of
knowing to ‘connected knowing’.
Whilst the concept of ‘connected knowing’ is seen here in the context of a feminist and constructivist
account of pedagogy, in the ACE context, it has become accepted wisdom (reflected for example in
the emphasis on ‘connectedness’ as a principle in Bradshaw’s 1997 Conceptual Framework for Further
Education.). Other feminist authors such as Grumet (1988) and Gilligan (1995) write about the role of
nurturance and relationship in learning. Grumet argues that femininity has been suppressed within
patriarchal educational institutions and that her project is to “draw that knowledge of women’s
experience of reproduction and nurturance into the epistemological systems and curricular forms that
constitute the discourse and practice of public education” (p 27).
The extent to which learners need to be ‘nurtured’ and what this might mean, is a subject of debate
within the field of ACE. Some are critical of a tendency to over-personalise relationships and to
nurture learners at the expense of professional teaching and training. This debate is also reflected in
the literature of feminist pedagogy. For example, Gore (1993) offers an analysis, based on Foucault,
(eg Foucault 1975, 1981) of the ways in which the classroom can be understood in terms of power
relations, of discourses and practices that operate in constraining and productive ways. In her
analysis, nurturance may be a medium for the teachers’ ‘discursive micro power’: the power of
teachers to normalise certain ways of behaving, in classrooms, to subjectify and regulate learners
through discourses of mothering. On the other hand Ellsworth (1989) raises questions about the
practices of critical pedagogy and suggests that these may be used to disempower rather than to
empower learners. She writes that critical pedagogy is based on a masculinist model of the ‘ideal
rational person’, and that such a rational approach to solving problems may be alienating to many
students. As teachers, we take part in and therefore reflect the powerful discourses of educational
institutions, in our practice, even in small ACE centres. The important thing is for teachers to have a
reflective self-awareness of their (our) discursive and institutional ‘knowledge power’ and how we
may use or abuse those powers (Sanguinetti 1999).
Many ACE teachers would identify with claims for the productive power of desire in the classroom
that some feminist educators have put forward. bell hooks writes of the need “to restore passion to
the classroom” and the need to “find again the place of eros within ourselves and together allow the
mind and body to feel and know and desire” (hooks, 1994a). Grumet writes of the split between
father and mother, public and private, rationality and emotion, separation and connection, in
patriarchal educational institutions and the need to bring ‘an epistemology of love’ into the classroom
(Grumet 1988 pp. 1-30). Culley and Diamond (1985) celebrate the role of nurturance and
emotionality in teaching: the classroom as an “eroticised milieu”, the “fusion of affect and intellect”
and the “intrusion/infusion of emotionality... as a step towards healing the fragmentation capitalism
and patriarchy have demanded from us” (Culley et al 1985 p. 19).
McWilliam argues for reclaiming ‘seduction’ as “a legitimate metaphor for the sort of pedagogical
work successful teachers do” and that successful teachers “mobilise forces of desire (the desire to
teach and the desire to learn), both of which are productive, not malevolent” (McWilliam 1995 p.
15). According to her, contemporary constructions of teaching have “neutered teachers, rendering
them functionaries without self-interest, without desire, without any ‘body’ to teach (with)... The
possibility of an erotic inter-subjectivity of teacher and student has been disallowed” (p. 17).
Feminist educator bell hooks writes about ‘engaged pedagogy’ in ways that resonate with many of the
teachers’ reflections documented in this report:
To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. That learning
process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our
vocation that is sacred; who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to
share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects
and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions
where learning can most deeply and intimately begin (hooks, 1994b).
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Other educators who do not specifically identify as feminist such as Collins (1991), Neville (1992),
Beckett (1997), Waterhouse (1999), and Willis (2000) also call for embodied practice that nurtures the
learners spiritually as well as mentally.
2.5
ACE centres as communities of practice
The importance of shared understandings and ways of naming and doing things is highlighted by the
work of Lave and Wenger (1991) writing about communities of practice. Their analysis stresses the
significance, for learning, of the collective or social dimensions of human interaction. As Hanks
notes, the challenge of their analysis is profound; it suggests a fundamental re-conception of what it
means to learn. According to Hanks, in the foreword to Lave and Wenger (1996 p. 15):
Learning is a process that takes place in a particular framework, not in an individual mind. This
means, among other things, that it is mediated by the differences of perspective among the coparticipants. It is the community, or at least those participating in the learning context, who
‘learn’ under this definition. Learning is, as it were, distributed among co-participants, not a one
person act.
Such an understanding of learning places emphasis upon the culture and context within which
learning takes place. As Hanks explains, although individuals may be dramatically affected by the
learning that takes place, ‘the wider process … is the crucial locus and precondition for this
transformation’.
Lave and Wenger (1996) explain the learning process, within the ‘community of practice’ in terms of
what they call ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (LPP). Offering a new take on notions of learning
via forms of ‘apprenticeship’ they argue that:
Legitimate peripherality provides (learners) with more than an ‘observational’ lookout post: It
crucially involves participation as a way of learning – of both absorbing and being absorbed in –
the ‘culture of practice’. An extended period of legitimate peripherality provides learners with
opportunities to make the culture of practice theirs (Lave and Wenger, 1996, p. 95).
It is important to note the focus here is not merely upon ‘apprenticeships’ as they might be conceived
narrowly within formal training systems for tradespeople. The concept of apprenticeship being
articulated here is broader and more metaphorical. It encompasses all forms of learning where the
initiate, novice or newcomer moves from the audience, to take up diverse roles within the community
of practice. Such novice or ‘apprentice’ roles may involve lesser degrees of responsibility than other
roles in the community, but they are nevertheless, ‘legitimate’, meaningful and purposeful. Such an
understanding of learning sees the newcomer in the ACE setting as an ‘apprentice’ moving into a
community of practice – or a network of communities of practice. Through ‘legitimate peripheral
participation’ the newcomer will come to know what it means to be a member of these communities.
In time she, or he, may become a fully-fledged member of the community of practice – which might
be a group of writers, or computer users or adult VCE learners. There are significant issues of
identity formation, membership and identification involved. These themes also resonate with the data
of this study.
2.6
Differing discourses on generic skills
Golding et al (2001 p.26), highlight the ways in which policy and research in ACE involves different
discourses framing different questions and concerns and different value positions and points of view.
This is particularly evident in the contemporary debates on generic skills.
Policy makers, employers and educators are focusing increasing attention on the knowledges, skills
and attributes deemed necessary for successful life and work. These are variously termed ‘soft skills’,
‘key competencies’, ‘generic skills’, ‘core skills’ or ‘employability skills’. Much of this increasing
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interest has been stimulated by awareness of the changing nature of work and society, the perceived
increasing pace of change and the requirement for lifelong learning, training and retraining.
The debates continue on what skills are essential, how they might be defined, developed and assessed
– and whether such things can be considered as ‘skills’ as distinct from aspects of personality,
attitudes, attributes and values.
Payne, for instance, notes that ‘We have reached a point …where skill means whatever employers and
policy makers want it to mean’ (Payne 2000 p. 361). He points to the dangers of educators and policy
makers relinquishing responsibility for education policy to employers. He suggests that employers’
definitions of skill, may not address questions of inequality and discrimination as certain groups are
advantaged over others in the skills market. Such matters ought to be of concern to the wider
community and be the focus of public policy. He expresses concern over expectation that the training
system should uncritically embrace employer expectations:
Not only does this promise to cast the VET system in a new and unfamiliar role of speech
training and personal grooming ‘makeovers’, but the fact that individuals may be expected to
have their personal and class based identities re-engineered in this way raises major ethical
concerns as well as the possibility of adverse psychological side effects for those whose self
image now comes under closer scrutiny. (Payne 2000 p.363).
Within these broad national and international debates it is apparent that generic skills are talked (and
written) about in different ways by diverse groups of people. Virgona, Waterhouse, Sefton and
Sanguinetti (2003) point out that the way teachers and learners talk about generic skills is often
different from the way employers, politicians and public policy makers talk about them. The
difference in perspectives is encapsulated by Stevenson (1996) when discussing research he
conducted with colleagues into the application of generic skills in workplace settings. Drawing on a
substantial body of research he points out that:
Taken together, the studies … indicate that, even in the case of key competencies, it is
problematic to conceptualise these competencies, once operationalised in specific contexts, as
value free or generic. Their expression and their meaningfulness to individual workers and their
workplaces are highly situated. ... Thus while it may be possible conceptually to abstract a
generic label for a set of site-specific capacities with superficial similarities (eg numeracy, literacy,
problem solving, use of technology), at this level such entities are not the concrete or functional
capacities that individuals actually use. They are meaningful only at a distance (Stevenson (ed)
1996 pp. 2-3).
Virgona et al (2003) point out that even when using the same list or labels for a set of generic skills
the discursive tensions may lead to miscommunications and:
VET policy makers and practitioners may be talking about quite different constructions or
conceptions. ... It can be shown that the complexities and the tensions inherent in these different
discursive purposes have profound implications. There are particular dangers when the
differences are not recognised or acknowledged. The dominant discourse of policy makers
threatens to overwhelm the grounded understandings of practitioners and demand adherence to
abstract and de-contextualised conceptions which have little utility and meaning in workplace
practice or teaching and learning (Virgona et al 2003 p. 15).
Our research team has adopted a situated and contextualised understanding of generic skills, with a
particular interest in pedagogical issues and how these skills, aptitudes and understandings might be
developed. With such interests and understandings in mind, we sought a framework to support our
data analysis. The Developmental Framework of Generic Skills developed by Kearns (2001) (see
Figure 1) has thus been selected from amongst a number of lists and frameworks of generic skills
because it demonstrates the inter-connectedness of ‘generic skills and attributes’, and hence is useful
in conceptualising related pedagogical frameworks.
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2.7
Participatory action research for knowledge,
professional development and the re-vitalisation of
education
This project has been planned and conducted in accordance with the principles of participatory action
research in the sense defined by McTaggart (1989) as “the way groups of people can organise the
conditions under which they can learn from their own experiences and make this experience
accessible to others”. The adjective ‘participatory’ or ‘participative’ is often used to highlight that a
key aspect of the methodology is the participation in all parts of the project and the ‘ownership’ of
those most directly involved in what the research is about (Wadsworth, 1991). Participatory action
research (or its close relation, ‘practitioner research’) are variants within a ‘family’ of action research
traditions, as described by Dick:
Action research can be described as a family of research methodologies, which pursue action (or
change) and research (or understanding) at the same time. In most forms it does this by using a
cyclic or spiral process, which alternates between action and critical reflection, and, in the later
cycles, continuously refining methods, data and interpretation in the light of the understanding
developed in the earlier cycles
– Dick (2004)
A definition by McNiff (1996) links the three elements of enquiry, action and purpose:
“Action researchers are intent on describing, interpreting and explaining events (enquiry) while
they seek to change them (action) for the better (purpose). This involves:

systematic, critical enquiry made public,

informed, committed, intentional action, and

worthwhile purpose.”
This project is a systematic, critical enquiry made public; it is informed by theories of current ACE
policy, and theories of pedagogy and generic skills. The ‘worthwhile purpose’ is two-fold. Firstly, to
produce knowledge (including a framework of ACE pedagogy and generic skills), that will contribute
to the professional knowledge base of teachers and to inform policy-makers, funding bodies and the
public at large, and secondly for teachers to develop their practice through self and collective
reflection on, and the sharing and identification of issues and models of good practice.
The use of practitioner research, action research, or participatory action research in education is a
tradition that can be traced back to Corey (1953), Elliot (1978), and Stenhouse (1980). These
pioneering educational action researchers developed the idea of the ‘teacher researcher’ who reflects
on and problematises his or her own practice and develops curriculum from cycles of critical
reflection on practice. The Action Research Planner by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988), has been a
handbook for a generation of teacher action researchers in Australia and internationally. Kemmis and
McTaggart contributed to theorizing educational action research by relating it to teachers
participating actively in the social and cultural reproduction that occurs in classrooms. The Handbook
of Action Research (Reason and Bradbury 2001) with its wealth of contributions giving action research
examples, practices, and theoretical groundings is an indication of how the field of action research
has blossomed and diversified in the last two decades.
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3. Dimensions of ACE pedagogy:
the Teacher
As explained in Chapter 1, the data were coded in relation to four main categories:
1. The teacher: the teacher’s skills, identity, educational values, the quality of relationships they
engender, and personal pedagogy;
2. The teaching: styles and approaches;
3. The curriculum: what is actually taught (accredited frameworks and teacher developed curriculum;
and
4. The plACE: ACE centres as communities of practice and the role of centres as environments of
learning.
In this chapter we present the characteristics of ACE teachers as follows:
3.1 Personally engaged in their teaching;
3.2 Reflective about his/her practice and the wider context;
3.3 Able to improvise and take risks;
3.4 Aware of power dimensions in their teaching; and
3.5 Patient and trusting in the learning process.
3.1
‘Engaged pedagogy’: passion and personal identity in
teaching
The participant teachers spoke in ways that showed how deeply engaged they are, not only with the
practical and intellectual challenges of their work, but with the relationships of teaching and learning.
The American feminist educator bell hooks writes about the ‘engaged pedagogy’ of “teachers who
really care about teaching in uniquely passionate and caring ways” (hooks, 1994: 117). The teachers in
this project have provided many examples of ‘engaged pedagogy’ as described by hooks. Several have
written or spoken about the ways in which teaching in ACE is intrinsically pleasurable and rewarding
for them: teaching and learning with and from the learners is part of their own personal journey,
their own life project.
Engaged pedagogy’ in ACE is centrally about relationships – relationships within the centre and
relationships between teachers and learners. Fundamental to their work is the building of positive
relationships and creating environments and classroom cultures in which authentic, relaxed yet
respectful and supportive relationships will flourish.
The stories and reflections of ACE teachers and coordinators in this study demonstrate that they
engage with students firstly as individuals (as people) and secondly as learners. As one participant
said, “it’s simple really, it is about caring about people and being oriented to where they are at then
moving them on from there.”
Karina wrote:
And I’m paid!
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I have come away from the writers’ group with a feeling of exhilaration and awe. Why? Because
I’m a little incredulous that I should be paid to listen to such stories! Today, a member reads
the words she has crafted so beautifully about her family fleeing from Poland during WWII. She
introduces the story and we settle back to listen. We can feel the twelve year old’s fear, as her
father negotiates with the soldier over whisky and money. We can hear the shots behind the
family as they disappear over the snow-covered hill to freedom. She looks up from her paper
wide eyed when she has finished. The group is speechless. All our eyes are moist. “Wow” is all
I can say. I ask for a moment to collect myself before offering feedback. “Look at the faces
around you. How you have touched us!” She smiles. Her eyes become shiny too. Members
begin to ask her questions about her experience. And we all learn so much. In writers’ groups
there is a need to create a safe environment so that people can read what they want to. I know
we have achieved that today, the emotion, acceptance and appreciation was tangible. What a
treat!
Such experiences are of course not exclusive to ACE, but ACE provides the conditions for more
personally engaged ways of relating with students than may be possible in other contexts. In other
words, teachers have a lot of freedom to be themselves, to bring different aspects of their personality
into the classroom, and to engage on an emotional as well as an intellectual level in their teaching.
For many of these teachers, it is the relationship that they build with and amongst learners that is at
the heart of their work. Frances said:
I’ve always seen the teaching-learning as a really creative process. I remember once, my father
being a bit dismissive of some of my issues when I was a young teacher, I said ‘Do you realise
Dad that you’ve got to have a meaningful relationship with 30 or 40 young people all at once?
You’ve got to do this creative work with all of these people’. … So it is a creative process. If
you’ve got a whole lot of other stuff, ‘shit’ as you say, to contend with, you can’t focus and you
can’t do good work as a teacher.
Kirsten reflects on her own learning and development as an ACE student, and the pleasure of ‘reliving’ that earlier learning now that she herself is an ACE teacher:
One of the things that I think also stemmed from, after I started working at the community
centre was, you were talking about how much the students absorb, and how much you change,
become more flexible and change, and I find that I changed enormously once I became part of,
even before I started teaching, once I became part of a community centre. I’d come from a very
religious background, so I had very rigid ideas about what was right and wrong, at the same time
I’m a very empathic person, so that often didn’t equate. And I found that when I started being in
that community division and you’re seeing people that have been battered and you’re seeing
child abuse and you’re seeing homosexuality, half the people at the centre were lesbian, and
you’ve got this whole different view of the world which I’d never had contact with. I never knew
anything about battering or any of these kinds of things, and I found that being in that
environment changed me personally.
… And once that started, that happens in my class as well, because I enjoyed that, it was thrilling
to me to find all these things changing…I didn’t realise at the start that it was happening, it was
several years before I noticed it happening, but now I make a point of saying to the students that
I learn from them as much as they learn from me, and every time they say something that I
didn’t know before, I’ll make a point of saying ‘wow’.
But that’s I think one of the nicest thing about being a ACE practitioner is you’re responsive to
your students and you’re learning all the time too and you’re exploring new areas and you’re
gathering research and you’re taking it back and sharing your new knowledge...
Others spoke in terms of having ‘genuine interest in and respect’ for students’ lives. Janine said:
What I believe I am consistent in, is maintaining a genuine interest and respect in their lives and
their thoughts and feelings. The development of generic skills can occur when the time and
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opportunity is ripe for that individual student. The following circumstances work to enable a
caring, more individual support base for the development of these skills: The use of an informal
breakfast room where students, counsellors and teachers can gather for half an hour before
class….
The sharing of food (some centres provide lunch for young students) is fundamental to creating a
community and a common culture. In this way, conditions are being constantly maximised for the
‘time and opportunity to be ripe’ for individual students to want to learn.
These vignettes demonstrate the degree of personal engagement of many ACE teachers in their work.
As Len commented:
It’s ironic that ACE teachers, who have the worst conditions and worst pay in comparison in
other sectors, seem to derive the most real satisfaction from our work.
The pedagogical skill here is steering and cultivating real, but nevertheless professional relationships
because the building of these relationships and this community is part of creating the learning
environment of ACE.
By giving of themselves, the teachers are not only building ideal learning environments, but are
deepening the scope for reciprocity and mutual giving.
The significance of building genuine personal relationships with adult learners is that teachers are
engaging with students’ subjectivities and helping them to build new subjectivities or identities as
learners with a more positive self-image. Our identities and subjectivities are socially formed in the
context of new and changing social relationships and settings. These teachers are engaging with
learners on this deeper level as well as using a range of strategies to interest students and to teach
them. Open, authentic relationships increase the quality of the ‘gift’ of the teacher’s efforts, (and
reciprocally, the student’s efforts) and so add to the motivation to stay on in the course and to learn.
Engagement in ACE is tied to a deeper sense of self and purpose, what Collins (1991) calls a
principled vocation. Consider this tutor talking about her work:
The first time I delivered accredited training in communication skills, I felt a stirring in my soul,
a bit corny I know, but I cannot describe it otherwise; a stirring and a sense of exhilaration that I
had found my niche. I could feel myself above myself, observing myself. I still experience this
sensation sometimes when teaching. I am reminded of the little girl I was once, rounding up
brothers and neighbourhood children to be reluctant pupils in my cubby house school. I have
found my vocation after so many years of searching. And I am back in Adult Community
Education and loving it.
As we engaged with our groups in discussions, pored over transcripts of our meetings and analysed
the reports submitted by each practitioner, we were struck by the evidence of professional awareness
and reflectivity of these practitioners, as discussed in the next section.
3.2
‘The reflective practitioner’
Donald Schön’s 1983 book of the same title provides a theoretical context for on-going learning
from reflection on professional practice. Theories of participatory action research and organisational
and professional development do likewise.
The ACE practitioners in this study are clearly reflective practitioners. They have contributed many
instances of reflections on their practice – instances of their learning journeys as developing teachers.
Beverley wrote:
The other thing I’ve learned from the class is how little you change from when you were first a
student. I’ve always been an anxious sort, worry too much about it all … I still have to get the
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homework done instantly. That doesn’t mean I do it right. Over the years I’ve convinced myself
I was better at school than I really was. Now I remember, and I have more sympathy for the
kids. Real sympathy rather than just the patronising kind that says, ‘If only you’d do it my way,
you’d be fine.’
Melanie’s reflection on an incident of classroom conflict led her to reflect on the demands of her role
in the following way:
This “Monday Morning Kettle” incident has made me think about the myriad of behaviours,
issues, moods, personalities, skill levels, prejudices etc, etc, etc, that we face in our literacy
practice. It has also made me think about just how stretched I am in my co-ordination/teaching
role. It has in fact helped to confirm in my mind that my decision to find another teacher for my
Pathways class is the right one. I need to be available to support teachers when issues such as the
one this morning erupt. So it is time to search for another person to work with my M.I.D. group
and after 7 years begin the weaning process for them and me!
Halina said:
One of the questions was ‘why do you teach the way you do?’ and I started documenting what I
thought was the broad influences on that and I think one of them was hugely influenced by my
personality preference and the fact that I now know a whole lot more about my own learning
style than I did ten or 15 years ago and that’s been through Professional Development and
talking with colleagues and looking at Myers-Briggs and a lot of other elements, and I think it
was my life experiences … I’ve always been fairly reflective in what I do to try and work out
whether it suits people or whether it doesn’t. So I tried to embellish on some of those things to
make them a bit clearer to myself.
This insight into Halina’s practice highlights the importance of the teacher’s self knowledge, what
Gardner (1985) calls ‘intrapersonal intelligence’ which is closely aligned to the ‘emotional intelligence’
discussed by Goleman, (1996). Without knowledge of self, and a certain degree of confidence in self,
it is impossible to offer self in the teaching-learning interaction. These teachers, in various ways,
demonstrate a willingness to offer themselves and to critique themselves in their work. These are
qualities of the ‘principled vocation’ discussed by Collins (1991).
Bringing self into teaching means being prepared, as a teacher, to expose vulnerabilities and ‘personal’
information. Frances said:
It’s that notion of being prepared to share a bit of yourself with people rather than just standing
up and having a bit of a data show and presenting information. You tell people some anecdotal
stories about what happened to you so it’s exposing yourself in the human practice that goes
with it, that often make a difference, and that willingness to say you’re really not the expert these
things happened to you too and provide those anecdotal stories and be able to laugh at yourself
at the same time.
The key point here is related to self-knowledge and the willingness to show vulnerability and share
the inner dialogue, which inevitably takes place as we learn. As Nina explained:
Just lately, I chose to go into a situation so I’d learn things … and I’ve had to keep telling myself
‘I’m doing this because I want to learn about it’ but already I’m telling myself ‘I’m a failure, I
can’t do it properly’. And it’s self-talk, ‘I can’t do this’. But I’m finding if I say to someone ‘This
is really difficult, it’s a challenge’, then I’m affirmed by that person saying ‘Well yes it is, it is a
hard thing to do’ and so don’t go into it thinking ‘I can’t do this properly’, I keep checking
myself.
Time and again our co-researchers in this process spoke of their own continuing development as
teachers and the strategies of reflective practice they had adopted.
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3.3
Improvising and risk taking
The teachers in this study provided many examples of the dynamic interactivity of teachers ‘in full
flight’, working simultaneously on multiple levels of activity. This meant dealing with individual
needs, managing the dynamics of the group, instructing and giving information, while being able to
respond to demands for attention and the need to impose some form of discipline and order.
Teaching groups of young people, many of whom have been expelled from school and are there
‘under sufferance’, in order to receive the Youth Allowance, presents challenges in both managing
and teaching effectively.
Janine improvised with a bit of inspired madness in order to invigorate a group of disabled students
who were bored and becoming restive in a class where the planned content had proved too difficult:
We saw that we had totally lost them and they were mucking up, as you do when you are bored
stupid, so we started some movement. I was throwing fish at them. We had this wooden fish,
and this video about attitude. Seattle fish market. These guys sing and have the best time of their
lives, are delighted to go to work, get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, and the message we were
trying to relate to the students is attitude at work. That was a generic skill. We were trying to
deliver the idea that your attitude affects your learning and affects your relationships, everything.
We did not do very well just talking at them, they got a little bit out of the fish thing because
there was lots of action, lots of fish flying around, so then I got my fish and was throwing my
fish around and people were laughing. We started to break the mood..
In other situations teachers need to respond to immediate practical needs and to help the learner to
begin to cope with the issue. Melba was approached by a learner with no money and no clothes. Her
family had not allowed her to have access to her own money and had left in such a rush that she had
left all medication and clothing at home.
I initially calmed her down and explained the process we were going to take and explained what
role I would do and explained what she would need to do. I coached her on how to speak to
DHS and what would likely occur. We went to the bank and she gained access to her first ATM
card – this will lead to delivery of skills to her such as budgeting and not spending money just
because she has access to it.
Here, Melba is comforting, instructing, counselling, attending to her student’s immediate needs.
Networking with community organizations with budgeting and banking skills, was integrated in the
web of strategies set in place to help to resolve the conflict, provide immediate support and move the
learner forward.
Teaching groups of disadvantaged and often disaffected learners and working to build a sense of fun
and trust within those groups, while managing the more difficult students, may involve a degree of
risk-taking. Because of the informality of the settings and the imperative to keep groups together and
engaged, the responses that ACE teachers have to take on the spot are sometimes risky.
Tillie described taking risks in order to get students to open themselves to taking responsibility for
their own learning:
When I was arranging the Occupational Health and Safety activity I was concerned about letting
the students out on their own but I realised that I too had to take risks if I wanted them to take
risks and if they were never given responsibility how would they learn responsibility. As it was
most of them did go off for a smoke etc but at the end of the time limit I had given them they
had returned and completed the task.
Here, the practitioner is becoming aware that her openness to risk-taking is part of fostering amongst
the learners the kind of risk-taking that’s necessary for people to grow and learn.
Terry’s classes may look like ‘mayhem’ but his teaching style enables the learners to learn in their own
way, and to have ownership over their learning. He says he teaches in a way that:
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…encourages movement, activity, communication, and interaction. To the outside naïve
observer this type of environment would look much like mayhem, as it is seen in a traditional
school environment, rather it is the type of environment that encompasses a lot of different
learning styles that caters for all students, allowing them to feel ownership over their learning.
This environment encourages students to learn and feel comfortable learning, whilst surrounded
by other young people of differing ages and varying abilities.
3.4
Deconstructing institutional power – sharing personal
power
The dynamics of supporting and challenging students in the midst of intense interactions and actions
of teaching and learning are also about power. In any educational institution, a certain amount of
institutional power is invested in teachers, including the power to award marks and grade learning
outcomes. They also have personal authority (or power) that follows from their status, personality
and professional and life knowledge. Foucault (1980) called this ‘knowledge power’. ACE teachers
also have institutional, personal and knowledge power invested in them, and some ACE teachers no
doubt hold onto that power. However, the particular conditions and the shared culture of ACE
encourage and enable teachers to deconstruct or disavow themselves of such power in the interests
of creating a personally supportive and democratic learning environment. Diffusing their personal
and institutional power, and developing a model of ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’ is part of
the skill of teaching. That is, facilitating the transformation of the institutional classroom into a
learning community, as we have seen.
The teachers in this project spoke of another sense in which the teacher’s power in an ACE setting is
necessarily curtailed. Most students who attend ACE are there voluntarily and often they are ‘only
just’ there. In other words, those who have low self-esteem and have had negative experiences with
schooling in the past will leave if their needs are not being met, or even if their needs are being met
and they have other issues impinging in their lives. ACE teachers have to work hard to keep their
students, and this equalises power relationships in a way that does not apply in the same way in
universities and elsewhere. Len spoke of this as students exercising their ‘legitimate option’:
… when people have a choice of what they do they only do things that they want and as you say
it’s contingent - people come there because it meets their expectation and it meets their
circumstances like you go back to tap dancing when it suits your circumstances, you didn’t go to
tap dancing at a certain stage in your life when it could be the beginning of an alternative career
or anything like that, so these things are contingent but at all times students have the option of
going somewhere else. …They have as much real power as we have and it does make it an
equally powered relationship.
There was a discussion about how the marginal commitment that many learners make and lack of
institutional rewards or sanctions usually associated with schools or other kinds of post-compulsory
education tends to relativise power relations in ACE. Len said:
[We are trying to create] a responsible environment and it gives people a chance, it gives them a
comeback. But this is something which is always included in the ‘adult ed’ introduction and it’s
part of how we work. Like … if a student says to me you know I’m really not happy with what
we’re doing in class I’ve actually got a responsibility to do something about it and even if I don’t
want to (laughter), even if I want to be teaching them something else… There is an element of
open accountability that’s seen as necessary for any sort of learning.
Power becomes relativised around the essence of the teacher/learner relationship: whether the
learner is learning, and how the teacher can support better learning. Len said:
Well they can ask for what they want and we can tell them what we expect … and everything is
focused towards this notion. Are you learning? Does this help you learn better? Do you feel
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confident? Do you feel good about what you’re doing? If I’m feeling that my students are not
happy then I feel unhappy. I start questioning what I’m doing.
This equalisation of power through open accountability and the need to defer at times to student’s
opinions and their demands (even if these may seem to be unreasonable) is not always easy.
Sometimes teachers would defer to students’ demands, even when these might be expressed in an illmannered way. Karina related an incident in which she deferred to a student’s comment about her
perfume:
I had a young fellow in the literacy class, I bent over one time he went [pulls a facial expression]
… He didn’t like sandalwood perfume. He said “you stink!” in front of the whole class and I
said “well I won’t wear it anymore, obviously it’s interfering with your learning and I shan’t be
wearing it anymore” and that was it (laughter).
This teacher, while putting up with more ‘cheek’ than others in that situation might be prepared to,
nevertheless has demonstrated to that student that above all else, his learning is her paramount
concern. It could be seen as a positive move to ignore the childish insult and turn it into an
opportunity to show how seriously she takes him as a learner, thus implicitly engaging with the ‘adult’
in him, rather than the ‘child’. An important aspect of this is being able to relate to young people as
adults. Raelene said:
I think judging by the student feedback that feeling of being treated like an adult in an adult
environment is a real buzz. We certainly make TAFE rules and regulations clear to the students
and give them a supported entry into this new environment.
A lot of the young people I teach often tell me how they hate teachers because they don’t listen
and they are always telling you off for no reason. They view me differently to that of a high
school teacher. I think this is because I build a rapport with the young people. They call me by
first name and I take the time to find out what everyone’s been up to or whether they had a
good weekend or not. I share a part of myself with them and tell them what I’ve been up to.
To them, this makes me a real person they can relate to.
At the same time as creating adult learning environments with a high degree of equality between
teacher and learners, the teachers also consciously work to ‘empower’ learners by building their selfconfidence and therefore their capacity to act autonomously and ability to learn, as discussed in the
next section.
3.5
Having patience and trust in the learning process
Many of the above glimpses of teacher-learner relationships in ACE reveal an impressive capacity for
patience in assisting, supporting and coaxing their students in the early stages of their learning
pathways. The patience that teachers display in adult literacy is something that should be
acknowledged and appreciated as one of the characteristics of ACE pedagogy. Teaching in ACE
entails providing for students who have experienced failure (and rejection), working with people who
may have multiple issues, which get in the way of their learning, and people with multiple disabilities,
including intellectual disabilities.
One teacher of a disability class described it as follows:
All of these clients, like an average class, work at a variety of levels but the frustration of
showing the same task eleven times in one session in the space of 10 minutes is wearing and the
need for you to be there instantly when there is an issue is a constant source of weariness…
The actual assessment task on the computer was altogether another challenge. For some - they
were quite comfortable using the computer – had put in time outside of class to refine their
computer skills and flew through. Others continually asked questions expecting the type of
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assistance that is required during a normal training session. All had been prepped for weeks
before hand about what would be required but it still didn’t register.
There are also students who never seem to change despite everything. In fact they seem to be unable
to change their challenging behaviour or to do any learning at all. Kirsten wrote:
This student has been difficult from the beginning. He turns up when he feels like it, laughs at
other students’ attempts to say things (even though his oracy is very poor, too), talks when the
teacher is trying to explain something and is generally very uncooperative. He behaves as many
young teenage boys do but he is in his thirties. He also acts as if he does not need to be in class,
although he was only primary educated in Vietnam and is low across all macro skills in English. I
realise his self-esteem is probably low, but it is difficult to help him achieve any successes when
he will rarely participate with the class in an activity without disrupting or interfering with
someone else … Such attitudes make learning a slow process and are very frustrating to the
teacher.2
The patience manifested by the teachers, in the way they discussed their work and their issues, relates
to the notion of bringing learners to the point of being ‘learning ready’. In many cases, assisting
students to deal with a whole range of problems is a necessary preliminary stage before the students
are deemed to be ‘learning ready’. In one discussion about the need for students to be learning ready,
Len said that it is just as important to make it easy for someone who wants to leave, and to do so, as
to try to keep them in the ACE program. In that way teachers are maximising the opportunity for
learners to come back on their own terms, when they are ready. Some students come and go several
times before their lives are settled enough for them to make a real commitment to study.
It is the nature of ACE, however, that the teachers do continue on with slow and difficult learners.
Sharing the occasional step forward or triumphant learning achievement of such students is their
reward.
2. Kirsten has since reported that this particular student has made a big change in his attitude and is now
actively cooperating with other learners in the classroom.
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4. The Teaching
We found great variety in the diverse strategies and approaches that the ACE teachers bring to their
work. In this section we describe the findings focusing on the teaching approaches and strategies that
were commonly reported by our participant researchers about their practices.
Here we describe these approaches teaching under the following headings:
4.1 Developmental
4.2 Experiential and contextual
4.3 Multi-layered and eclectic
4.4 Empowering
4.5 Fostering critical thinking.
These approaches are seamlessly inter-connected within the practitioner’s ‘complex situated practice’
(Preston 1996).
4.1
Developmental
Participants were clear that teaching had to start at the learners’ level, not at the beginning of a
course, with an abstract set of competencies, or with the teacher’s starting point. As Terry put it:
It is about the learning. Finding where they are at and then building on that. We might know so
much more than them (but) there is no point in trying to pump that into them, as they are not
going to understand. Taking 5 steps back and building to where they are. It might not be what
you want to teach anyway but you have got to have foundations. Take your eyes off you, [and
focus ] onto their knowledge.
Many of the stories are about how teachers deal with the personal baggage and negative experiences
that get in the way of students’ learning, at least initially. The ACE teachers spoke of taking on board
the students as they are, and engaging with them on a personal level, being flexible and tolerant and
supporting them through their problems as part of the educational process.
The perceived responsibility of ACE teachers to engage with students at this level is expressed by
Halina:
It’s all this personal stuff that’s wound up with learning, and that’s a huge side of it all. You can
talk about a tutor having wonderful strategies but one of the huge barriers is what’s in people’s
heads and the emotional baggage we carry.
Knowing the issues and problems of individuals is more possible in ACE environments than in many
other institutional environments. Terry discusses the importance of this in the context of a youth
program:
The key to helping the students all achieve what they want and helping them get to where they
want to go, is knowing these things about the individual. Teaching in this environment allows
the opportunity to facilitate learning for the individual in comparison to teaching a class. The
setting we work in caters for this knowledge as each student has a case manager and a mentor.
This type of information is shared through a close-knit team environment between the staff and
students. Teachers traditionally are not privy to this type of information, which has a major
effect on the ability of the young person to learn, and the ability of the teacher to connect with
the individual to teach.
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This case is slightly unusual in that a case manager and a mentor, as well as the teacher share the
‘pastoral care’. In other ACE centres, the centre coordinator and other staff members form part of
the team that is working to support individual students. Knowing about the particular needs and
problems and needs of individuals also enables a more flexible approach in meeting students ‘where
they are at’ and ‘sharing their journey’ as they move forward. Miriam, for example, said that:
Sometimes, once they have missed a few classes, there seem too many obstacles to ‘go back’ to
study. In these cases a phone call (from the coordinator, expressing understanding and concern,
more encouragement, and offer of assistance to catch up), has meant that they have been able to
return and ‘get going’ again. It is important to meet students ‘where they are at’ and share their
journey as they move forward. It is sometimes hard to get the balance right between being
‘lenient’ (eg. about missed classes) or ‘challenging’. We have developed a policy of not posting
written work to a student, unless they have phoned to indicate that they are unable to attend …
[However] We often break this policy … Recently the VCE teacher sent an assessment piece
(graded B) to a student who had missed three classes … And she came back because of the
encouragement it gave her to keep going (even though she was trying to cope with the break-up
of her relationship).
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that people cannot start to take responsibility for learning when
they are facing other pressures and priorities (Maslow 1968). This could be a matter of what
proportion of their day, their concentration, their priorities they can direct to learning at any time.
The teachers are working with them on those other projects and are there for the gradually more
frequent moments when they have the space to actively commit to learning. On the other hand, there
are times when students need to be moved ‘out of their comfort zones’ as is discussed later on.
Alison started with very basic skills ensuring that the learners could enjoy the course:
When I actually start with them in the first week, I certainly don’t expect them to start doing
drafts of things, especially because the course is family literacy. As a theme it is really great
because I can teach them how to play games that their kids will be interested in, teach them to
start doing things like word searches, cross word puzzles and they can actually use the computer
to set those up. A lot of them can’t even start a computer. That is a good starting point for them
as well as learning to learn and so those are very basic skills that we can start with that they can
actually enjoy.
It was important for learners to be able to feel that they were succeeding and fitting in to the learning
process. As Alison commented on one of her learners, who:
was feeling like a failure. Now she does not feel like a failure. It opened the eyes, learning to
learn and finding your place within a learning context and environment. She had to find where
she fitted and how she fitted.
Sareem, an ESL student, was frustrated at not being able to learn English as quickly as she had
hoped. Ariel, her teacher, sent her a message:
“I think that learning English, especially when you have moved countries and have started a new
life in an English speaking culture, is not a fast and easy process. You may go through some
periods where you feel that your learning has slowed down or that you are not learning at all that is very normal. You can't also give yourself a time limit, for example some students come
and say that they will learn English in one year. Everyone is different and you can't pressure
yourself with such goals - you have to "go with the flow". Also don't measure yourself against
others, measure yourself against yourself!”
“My suggestion is to let English wash over you. There will come a time when you will use some
of the phrases we learn and practise in class outside in the 'real world' - and you may not even
realise you are doing it!”
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“I appreciate what you said about your fellow students. Sometimes this can be due to their
personality more than your English so don't let that stop you trying to communicate and express
yourself with them.”
This approach, that addresses in a detailed and thoughtful way the needs of individuals, and prizes
individual people, is summed up by Karina: “there is more to the person than the achievement of
learning outcomes”.
A number of participants spoke about the development of their students in terms of their developing
a ‘learning’ or ‘student’ identity. Some people come to a learning environment and they don’t see
themselves as a learner, their identity doesn’t take that in. A fixed idea of education has to be
transformed before learning can be extended. Waterhouse, (1999), talks about easy unconscious
learning and difficult, conscious ‘unlearning’. For many ACE learners becoming conscious of earlier
unhelpful learnings and ‘re-framing’ them is an important part of the process. Karina described an
exercise on following instructions, but it was underpinned by a powerful message. This involved
making a paper plane:
Then the students proceed to make the paper planes. I make mine and challenge the students to
see whose paper plane can fly the longest. I sense the reluctant learner’s discomfort. He remains
silent watching other students fly their plane around the classroom until the teacher stands up
and I shoot my paper plane into the air. I cry with joy as it sweeps to the air to the other side of
the classroom. The reluctant student cannot bear it anymore. He looks straight at me with a
mixture of confusion and accusation. ‘I used to get told off at school for doing things like this.
This is not teaching us anything, we’re just mucking around’.
I explain to him that he has learnt a format for instructional text, that he has offered some
excellent criticism for the lay out and I will be asking him to create his own instructional text
about something he knows how to do well, after the break. And I add over my shoulder as I
retrieve my plane from the floor, “ Why shouldn’t learning be fun?” He shrugs his shoulders
and seems to accept this. BUT I know that flying paper planes in class goes against everything
he has known and experienced in a learning environment. I know he believes learning
environments are based on power relationships and I, as the deliverer of knowledge have
disappointed him. And I also know that this disappointment is the first step to him assimilating a
new learning identity. I feel proud of his courage to speak up and tell him so.
4.2
Experiential and contextual
Building on real life problems
Depending on the context, the teachers structured their teaching to involve practical learning and to
relate this to the experience of the learners whenever possible.
ACE teachers often take specific student needs and build a program of instruction in relation to it.
Len told of a student who had fallen into the hands of a loan shark and was being charged 34%
interest. As well as steering him towards legal advice, he developed a series of numeracy classes on
percentages and interest calculations, to help him and other learners, to gain mastery of this area:
So the next time we go through, show him a simple interest calculation, the next lesson we do
paying off a loan ‘simple interest accumulates at this much, you divide by that many months, this
is how you work out the monthly repayments’. And other people in that class they talk about
their loan experiences, how things had come about etc, etc, etc.
Now this would have been part of the program, like teaching simple interest, teaching effective
interest rate is something that I do. How you work out what the effective interest rate is, on a
loan, is something I do. But in this particular case it was all fed very strongly by this particular
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character and it was a real story and he wasn’t just paying off a loan he was being done over big
time. And that was just something that came out directly from doing a number task.
Kirsten used a student’s parking fine to focus almost a whole lesson on preparing a formal letter:
One student told us about a double parking fine he had just received at the beginning of the
week. He was very upset as he felt that it was unfair. He had been outside his child’s primary
school and had been waiting in the street to allow another car to back into a parking space. I told
him he should write to the council to tell them what had happened. I asked the rest of the class
if they would like to help him and they were all very keen. After the coffee break, …we started
to create the letter.
Problem-solving and investigation
Alison explained how problem-solving contributed to the teaching of numeracy skills:
In my delivery of numeracy skills, problem-solving strategies are explored in almost every lesson.
However, students must be very gradually introduced to difficult concepts by offering simple
puzzles to solve initially until they develop confidence to try strategies on more difficult
problems. Often students intuitively know an answer to a simple problem, but can’t verbalise the
process, which will allow them to solve and understand more complex problems. While working
through problems, I feel it is very important to begin with real situations, which can be
represented by diagrams, or models for visual support.
Laura had students looking at hygiene by collecting a sample of bacteria from around the building
and then sealing it into a sterile agar plate so that they could observe the growth of these bacteria
over the next week. She also used a practical activity to demonstrate the need to wash hands carefully:
I applied an ultra-violet type cream to student's hands and then challenged them to wash it off
their hands. Then we went to a dark room and turned a special torch on that would detect the
ultra-violet hand cream to see how successful students were in washing their hands.
Ariel taught a different aspect of Occupational Health and Safety by getting the class to practise
exercises to prevent repetitive strain injury. She then set them a task to do, an analysis of the TAFE’s
Occupational Health and Safety, by walking around the grounds, finding risks and checking off items
on a list. The students were then required to report back to the class the risks that they had found.
Gabriel encouraged her students to learn about computers by discovery, to try things out:
The first thing you do when you get into a new car is to try out all the buttons to see what they
do. I ask my students to approach their computers the same way – try things out, find out what
they do. Investigation leads to discovery, which leads to understanding – the learning equation.
Playing games
In common with other participants, Janine uses games in teaching numeracy:
Game playing … is certainly a regular and useful part of the teaching I do. Playing Monopoly as
part of a money unit in numeracy resulted in the best of round table discussion on fairness and
playing by rules and conflict and handling conflict…
Ariel substituted answers to questions on grammar structure for dice in snakes and ladders and
constructed a special board game for teaching language skills using comparatives and superlatives. As
students moved around the board, they spoke to the group following the cues on the board for
example they might describe the most expensive thing they had ever bought, or the longest journey
they had taken.
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Role playing and brainstorming
Many participants used brainstorming as a classroom technique. Terry employed the ‘Real Game’,
which was designed for students as part of a career and life skills program that aims to help students
to make the connection between education and their future working life. Students role-play allocated
occupations, learn to budget within confined incomes, pay tax, plan holidays, balance work and
leisure time, discover transferable skills, understand their role in the community and so on. Ariel
encouraged students to find locations such as Trades Hall on a map or to walk there. She
encouraged students to ring up for an appointment, talk to people in their field of interest about
union matters and so on.
The pedagogy of role-playing entails students trying on different roles or personae in order to gain an
immediate embodied sense of a process, relationship or task. Group reflection following role-plays is
a powerful learning experience for role player and audience in terms of how we are and how we
practise in certain contexts and envisioning and practising how we could be in that context. As Ariel
said:
Physically going to places of interest with a pre-discussion of expectations or some questions
that they would like to find out about, visiting the location and here we really get into some
Generic Skills - having the social skills to listen to the speaker, practising some level of self
control so as to be respectful of others learning, thanking the person for their time.
Janine used role-play to teach telephone skills to job seekers:
… one would be enquiring about a job and one would be the business answering. It was a bit
ordinary for a while. There were two in the group that were great. So we modelled our responses
on what they did. They prepared their spiel, did their role-play in front of the class, and then we
worked to where I got on my office phone and they went to the extension. They were terrified.
It was really interesting. Much more meaningful. One of them said “she sounds so fair dinkum”.
That was great because they really seemed to get something out of that.
Alison felt that role-play was not appropriate for many of the women she worked with. They “do not
want to be put in that difficult position knowing that they already have literacy issues let alone to put
them on the spot in front of someone”. However, she did use structured experience to teach team
building:
Students are formed into teams of three, or four and directed to build the tallest tower they can,
using only newspaper held together with paperclips and sticky tape. The teams are usually very
competitive and often need to rethink their strategies as their towers collapse and the opposing
teams appear to be winning.
Group projects
Roberto described an activity in which mildly intellectually disabled students produced a video of the
Student Handbook, which, according to the Australian Quality Training Framework, every student must
possess. He describes how they led and supported the six students to develop, produce and edit the
video (which had a direct practical application in the centre):
The overall ongoing outcome of the project was to visually display by PowerPoint or via a video,
made by the students, parts of their student handbook they felt would make for easier
understanding.
The project would come under the CGEA curriculum, Research and Enterprise. We hoped to
actively engage students in the teaching / learning process and encourage personal and collective
responsibility within the group. Staff assigned to oversee the training sessions met and discussed
what input they would have in the project. It was agreed that they would give direction in ideas,
recapping where they are at, and structure for the next session, and then let the students go
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about the various tasks. They felt the project encouraged the transfer of learning across separate
academic disciplines.
Students who have used a video camera before would instruct others on the use, students who
have been in theatre productions would train others in the techniques required, those who have
done some editing at home or are familiar with web page design will assist; writing scripts,
lighting, costumes etc were other components. The only production equipment available for the
project was a video camera, digital still camera, tripod and an editing program on a personal
computer. What we were looking for was imagination and creativity, hoping they would learn by
using their combined skills and abilities in various ways to produce the required outcome.
At the end of the third session, his journal recorded:
WOW!!!!! What a difference a camera made to this class situation. The script was discussed, a
‘get to know me’ type script written quickly “Hi my name is Bill Smith I am a student at etc”.
Every student was ready to have a go. Students, who getting an answer or even a reply from
during class, was sometimes akin to pulling teeth, were excited and happily reading the script
which had been put on the whiteboard, a couple had no idea what it said but they were trying,
they would just mumble something, then say their name.
Setting up the camera was left to the film crew students, without using an instruction manual they
each had a turn, all assembled it successfully
I asked them where these skills came from, trial and error was one answer, and the other said it
was a lot like the video recorder at home, which he mucks about with all the time. The final
student said he looked at the attachment at the end of the cables, found a hole he thought
matched and just plugged them in.
Filming started and everyone had a go at it, using the camera, a bit a self directing, telling each
other to smile, look here, don’t look down, it was amazing, some of these students find it very
hard to take direction at anytime, but this time they were willing to conform with requests from
their peers.
Again the students performed in the script reading, willingly performing and speaking in front of
the camera, whereas in other classes they would not say boo. The student who did not wish to
be filmed was coaxed into using the camera, he showed a lot of interest.
My thoughts on this session are that, if students who are usually apprehensive about speaking in
public or speaking at all, willingly take part in a session like this, how can we incorporate
something similar into their everyday education to break down their obvious fears, or lack of self
confidence.
Both Laura and Raelene used cooking and budgeting based activities to teach hospitality and related
skills. Raelene took the process as far as establishing a micro enterprise:
I have been developing a project in hospitality, based on these plus generic skills. We have been
having sausage sizzles two weeks running. …. As far as work readiness goes, I thought that if we
do something like this they are going to get some technology skills, barbecue and all that sort of
equipment. There is orientation by working out expenses and materials we have to purchase for
it and the profit. They have to plan and organize the activity. We all went to the supermarket and
we all chose what we needed. At the end they needed to keep a running total in their head of
how much we had spent. So they got close to the estimate of our materials. Our end goal is for
them to self manage the sausage sizzle so that it is like a small business, so that they can go and
make the purchase and come back and set up the sausage sizzle and all that sort of thing.
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Community service
Some projects employed a practical community service experience. Terry described a significant
incident where a young participant moved out of character to offer support to a young woman with
Downs Syndrome:
There was a bit of a critical moment when a … young person … (with) … a brain injury, he is a
bit slower than his age. Anyway, he started coming to community service, probably a bit
negative, when we introduced the idea of trying to get to know (people and) build a relationship,
actually talking to the class about your partner, what sort of things they like, what abilities they
have what disabilities they have, presenting field work with those interpersonal skills,
communicating with peers stuff like that. The young person, I happened to overhear it, his
partner had Down syndrome she was visibly upset. He said “ You OK?” she said “No. I am
sad”. He said “ Why are you sad?” She said, “ I am a loser”. He goes, “ You are not a loser you
are a winner”. And gave her a big hug. It was one of those things out of his character. I let him
go and he was chatting with her and she ended up smiling and happy. When we got back to
school and sat and had a chat with him, I said, “What you did was awesome, it made her day”.
He said, “She is just a beautiful person”. Kids don’t say this.
Structured reflection
Teachers encouraged their learners to reflect on their learning and to become conscious of their
developing skills. Ariel and Tillie encouraged learners to reflect on their own learning as a basis for
development. “One thing I was conscious of was getting my students to reflect on what they had
learned a bit more clearly” (Ariel).
Tillie observed:
I get students to do self-reflection. To write what they liked about a lesson, even those who are
not good at writing. I teach VCE in Industry and Enterprise, which teaches generic skills.
Students have a logbook and do a work placement. They consider how and if they have
developed generic skills. Does being conscious of a skill make you able to reuse or reapply it?
Terry also encouraged learners to reflect on their learning styles and behaviour. This may take the
form of self-imposed time out, asking to speak to a counsellor or teacher to explain what is going on.
Raelene worked out a strategy to move a group of young students out of short-term thinking into
planning for life:
I told them to do planning until they are 35 years old. They had all these years to plan and one
of the first things they did was to think of the 35 year old… What am I going to want then?
They said, “I need a house, a car”, some of the girls wanted to get married and have children at
certain ages. We picked through all of those things and I said to them “How are you going to get
money for this? How are you going to get this car because you have not got a job yet”. “I’ll get a
job”. “How are you going to get a job? You need to get your skills”. OK so then they went back
to the school again, went back to basics and went right through how they are going to get there.
They actually enjoyed that activity. I am going to extend it for next term. I am going to make a
whole project out of it because they enjoyed it and I’ll include some literacy and numeracy
together. Go to the bank and find out how much interest on house loans, they need so much a
year, what they can actually do for it…
One point of view is that generic skills are not so much taught as absorbed from positive role
models. The teachers in this project often spoke about the need to ‘walk the talk’; to model at all
times the behaviours and attitudes they wanted to engender in the learners.
One teacher, in discussing the notion of generic skills with her group, invited them to reflect on these
issues:
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I spoke to Jane about generic skills and asked if she felt that self esteem and working as a team
and other generic skills could be taught. She thought for a while and then said ‘No,’ she didn’t
think they could be taught in a class but were taught by example, by being exposed to someone
with those values and attributes.
Involving students in reflection upon the pedagogy of their own learning, or ‘meta-learning’ is a
sophisticated strategy in experiential teaching. This strategy is discussed further in Chapter 9.
Developing pedagogies of the arts
Roy works with young people to facilitate their self-expression through a variety of media including
‘performance arts’ – the idea of performance as a medium, in which artists perform a work of art.
They use the body as a medium and communicate through movement and gesture. According to Roy,
this medium provides a concentrated form of self-expression and self-experience, giving shape to
some personal experience or a personal narrative. The performance arts course can be a pathway to a
variety of arts and/or performance courses.
Roy said that:
Serena was a learner who had come with a background of depression, drug abuse and selfmutilation. I said to her, “I can’t help you with your problems, but I can help you to work with
them to create an art work”. She made a film installation of herself enacting through movement
the pain and trauma that she had been through. She felt she could turn all this stuff around
through her art work, by giving them form and expression, making it safe, understanding it in
some way. What was essentially a damaging thing, became understandable and was made safe
through her art work. The film installation was part of the exhibition – so it was a public
manifestation. It validated her experience and normalised it in some way, and turned it around.
So the performance art and film installation was a forum of acceptance in that context.
She has also produced lovely, lyrical pen and ink drawings. Over a three year period, she has
gone on to [a tertiary institution] to do art. She is still coming to our workshops and seems to be
settling …
While many community centres integrate such things as craft, drawing and creative writing into
courses, the concentration on ‘performance art’ and drama as the primary focus of activities
represents an innovative pedagogy that is especially successful in certain youth programs in
Melbourne and internationally.
4.3
Multi-layered and eclectic
Participants’ accounts of their teaching show that they draw eclectically on a range of different styles
and approaches, often from different and apparently contradictory teaching paradigms. ‘Eclectic’
means that the different styles and work belong to different and possibly conflicting paradigms. One
example is the way teachers have been able to marry competency-based assessment with experiential
and developmental ways of teaching within relationships that are both personal and professional, as
we saw in the previous section.
Ariel’s journal listed a diverse range of approaches: Listening and taking notes from a lecture, a survey
of the class about what makes them happy, a group problem solving task, a geography listening quiz.
She employed group approaches - some groups worked well together and came to consensus
answers, even if they disagreed. Other groups worked individually. On another occasion she listed a
range of approaches:
 Listening & note taking – watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding
 Guided note taking
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 Group comprehension game
 Comprehension discussion questions in groups (about themes)
 Crossword (specific listening)
 Writing essay on Advantages/Disadvantages of inter-cultural marriages.
Alison integrated a focus on interpersonal skills, including all aspects of communication and the
ability to work effectively with others, into all of her teaching on a daily basis. Students were
encouraged to discuss their ideas with each other. She felt it very important to begin with real
situations, which can be represented by diagrams, or models for visual support. Most often, she
presented numerical problems as word problems first, encouraging students to summarise the main
points of the problem and to think through steps to finding a solution.
The integration of many different methods, approaches and paradigms, as shown in these examples,
reflects the eclecticism that is common to all teaching, but perhaps particularly in ACE. Here the
challenge to teach disparate groups in relatively informal settings calls for variety and sophistication in
bringing it all together into coherent programs and the teaching moment.
The teachers in this study provide many examples of the dynamic interactivity of teachers ‘in full
flight’, working simultaneously on multiple levels of activity. This meant dealing with individual
needs, managing the dynamics of the group, instructing and giving information, while being able to
respond to demands for attention and the need to impose some form of discipline and order.
4.4
Empowering
Another way the developmental approach was described was in terms of ‘empowerment’. Teaching
developmentally entails finding ways of getting students to be confident in moving outside their
comfort zones, boosting esteem and confidence, creating the conditions in which they feel more
empowered, as individuals, and therefore build the potential for success in learning and in their lives.
Melba said:
I have witnessed students moved to tears when receiving a certificate, commenting that they
“have never been successful in anything before and this is the first time they have ever
completed anything”.
Janine’s story illustrates how supportive discussion and creative teaching on the part of teachers may
lead to learners feeling more empowered in real life situations. The first involves a group of young
women learners taught by Janine:
Two of the girls came to me and said “Janine, we have just been followed by someone back
from MacDonalds”. We had been talking a bit about protective behaviours, which I consider to
be a generic skill. Protecting yourself on the phone and being careful about what information
you give out. We had a discussion, the two female students and myself about what happened.
What they could do to prevent it and some ideas about what they could do next time. That
learning was followed up the following day (and) they went back to MacDonalds.
The follow up involved role-play:
One of them said, “I am really scared to go back to MacDonalds”. I said, “You cannot let that
man upset you”. She went with her friend and it all worked out well and she said, “I am really
glad that I did that”. That was a nice learning outcome.
Empowerment is also about having the personal resources to deal with intimidation and threat.
Janine offered support but challenged the learners to overcome their fear by going back to
McDonalds.
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Ariel’s story tells of a student who was intimidated by the teaching situation but with challenge and
support became able to accept and take advantage of it. Sareem was a very able student from a nonEnglish speaking background, who was lacking confidence in speaking in English.
[I] had a situation with Sareem today. She left the class during the ELICOS group activity. I
went out to speak to her – she was very upset. She felt that she would not be understood and
could not express herself and that it would be best for her not to come to class. I tried to explain
that it is normal to go through what she is feeling – that she is afraid to take risks and expose
herself. She feels that she is less able to communicate than her peers but I assured her that it is
her perception only. Sometimes when learning a language, we need to let it wash over us and
passively receive it before we have the confidence to use it. In hindsight, it was quite a
challenging task for a shy person and she was in a group with Antonia who is quite dominating.
Ariel later added:
Sareem returned to class today with new enthusiasm. I was afraid I had lost her. I feel she may
have turned the corner. She participated in the group activity quite actively and equally inputted
to the task.
A number of teachers gave examples of serious indiscipline and how this was handled. Melanie
related a democratic and empowering way of dealing with the poor behaviour of a certain group in
the following anecdote:
We try to empower students who behave badly by getting them to develop guidelines, a contract
and to suggest consequences if the guidelines are broken. A group of five very disruptive (and
destructive) young men were told that their behaviour could not be tolerated at the centre and
were asked to go away for a week and meet together and work out what the guidelines should be
for their behaviour at the centre and what should happen to them if they failed to meet them.
Four of them met together and developed their guidelines and decided that if anyone breaks
them they should be expelled. The five returned the following week. There was a marked
improvement but the fifth one continued to make life unbearable for those around him. The
other four were adamant that he should go, so he did leave. The four who remained all went on
to get jobs, apprenticeships of training in a job of their choice.
The key strategy here was that the five miscreants were given responsibility for developing their own
future behaviour guidelines, and to decide the punishment if these were broken.
4.5
Fostering critical thinking
Some of the teachers spoke about their ways of encouraging and challenging students to think
critically about social issues and issues that affected them. Mostly, this was integrated into the usual
learning activities rather than as a separate activity within itself. Often the development of social
critique comes from sharing and comparing stories about different experiences in different contexts:
I discovered that Natasha from the women’s access economics class was in fact an immigrant
from Russia. Whilst in Russia, she had studied economics at a tertiary level. I invited her to
speak to the class about her experiences living in a command economy including the plusses and
minuses. She did a great job and for students to hear her experience helped them to understand
the different economic theories in a more personal way.
Kirsten gave an example of getting learners to think critically through studying a series of newspaper
articles about speeding:
After the general discussion I gave them the question sheets to work through. We also looked at
the persuasive devices used in the text. This led to a discussion of some of the different ways
that information can be presented to colour how it is received. Some of the newer students were
surprised at the idea that newspapers and other media had agendas, either hidden or even
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unconscious, which colour their texts. I said we would find some articles on the same subject
from two different papers next week and compare them. This critical thinking and awareness
that anything people might say is coloured by their beliefs and experiences is new to many
students. It is also vital in the employment context as it helps to show them that a person who
sounds authoritative does not necessarily have the only truth. Of course, when the person is the
boss, this can mean knowing when to challenge and when not to. All these are skills that are very
hard to learn.
After coffee, we continued with the “Speedy Returns” Unit. Most of the students are still doing
the question sheet or writing their opinion. Despite going through and comparing the two texts
last lesson, 3 students were still not sure what they had to do for that question. We discussed the
similarities and differences again. I also re-explained how important it is for people to think
critically and not accept everything at face value. We talked about the danger of being
manipulated by companies, politicians or people if you do so.
It is knowledge like this that allows people to function more effectively in their everyday lives.
Perhaps if more German people had had this skill we would not have had the Holocaust. At
least there may have been less people willing to follow like sheep, unquestioningly. Obviously,
there were many other factors involved, but critical thinking could have made a difference in
how extensive Hitler’s influence was.
Roy on the other hand teaches a course explicitly about ‘Text and Culture’ to two ‘access’ or ‘return
to study’ groups. For example, he brings in examples of advertisements, films, magazines and other
texts and, in getting the learners to think about the meanings that these communicate, he introduces
concepts such as semiotics, critical analysis and discourse theory. He said that:
Semiotics is a form of critical analysis. We talk about the use of advertisements in the culture,
about denotative meaning, and connotative meaning, then bring in ideas of ideology, gender
construction, identity, stereotyping, binary opposition, how the text or advertisements constructs
the reader constructs the reader or viewer, and so forth. How does their class, gender, and
employment status mediate those meanings. It opens up their eyes. One advertisement that
sparked a big discussion was that of a hand holding a personal ID card, with the words, ‘I shop
therefore I am’…
… We have to go to where they are at, work from what they know, introduce these ideas…
“let’s go back to what you know, and mediate from these forms.” They practice these ideas in
discussion. For example, working with deconstruction, they take a given form, and deconstruct
that form along the lines of what it says to readers. Then re-construct it in terms of new
meanings that they have found from the critical perspectives.
The commitment to a critical perspective extends to cultivating the learners’ capacities to challenge –
and to judge when and how challenges might be appropriate.
Encouraging critical thinking: I make a point of showing students, even low level ones, that there
are different ways to present information which can make opinions sound like facts, appeal to
our emotions, manipulate us, etc. I do this by comparing different texts on a similar subject and
analysing the language and effects. The person who sounds authoritative does not necessarily
have the only truth! The knowledge that different people can have different interpretations of
the same text, depending on their life experiences, is eye-opening for many, too.
These teachers have demonstrated a commitment to adult, community education in the Freirean
tradition by focusing on critical analysis, personal empowerment and community development.
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5. The Pedagogy of plACE
In the previous sections we have explored the nature of the teaching-learning relationships and the
diversity of teaching purposes, styles and approaches. We have also considered, to some extent, their
underpinning philosophical traditions aligned with literatures, or discourses, in adult education.
However, the teachers’ texts referred continually to the contexts, the settings and the localised
communities within which this work was being done. Time and again the data suggested the
significance of what Lave & Wenger (1991), called ‘community of practice’. Our participants talked
about the importance of the culture of their providers, the significance of attitudinal variables, the
importance of values, which are discussed, demonstrated and enacted within the ACE setting where
the learning is happening.
In some stories it was clear that exposure to the place was a significant factor in the learning that was
happening. The role of teachers, coordinators and managers – and their direct interactions with
learners in the context of the ‘plACE’ - was highly significant. In some cases there was almost a sense
of mystique about ‘the Centre’ and its effect on people – what Willis (1998), wrote of as ‘building a
Utopian space’. There was a perception that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Simply
spending time at ‘the Centre’ was seen to be beneficial for many people.
It is not our intention to romanticize or essentialise neighbourhood houses, learning centres and
ACE pedagogy. However, the data on ACE ‘places’ provides insights into the significance of the
learning spaces, of the cultures, values, and community networks in which ACE pedagogy is
embedded. Clearly, holistic pedagogy entails much more than what happens in classrooms, and more
than what happens between teachers and students.
In the following section we explore through the participants’ stories and reflective accounts, five
aspects of the ‘pedagogy of plACE’, which are significant to them in terms of pedagogical outcomes
and practices. These are:
5.1 Collective values: commitment to education, equity and community service
5.2 Enabling management
5.3 A networked community of teaching and learning practice
5.4 Community ownership and community building
5.5 Sense of belonging
5.1
Collective values: commitment to education, to
community service and to the ACE sector itself
In various ways the co-researchers articulated their philosophies and underpinning values - either as
individuals or as ‘we’, the collective values of ACE centres and of the sector itself. These are the
values that inform and drive their practice. The over-riding values seem to express and demonstrate
fundamental beliefs in the potential of education for empowerment and the enhancement of life.
These are the values that are enacted in these communities of practice, which in many ways drive the
organizations and the imperative to build and to defend those organizations.
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Commitment to education
Some of the statements are about how centres can provide opportunities by improving access
through a range of supports. Alison said:
One of the philosophies of ACE is improving opportunities within the community, by
improving educational achievement and/or a broader understanding of life, via educational
programs. In order to improve opportunities, barriers to learning must first be addressed,
including access to courses, child-care needs and costs of courses. All members of our ACE
cluster support this philosophy and the development of flexible delivery, to better address
barriers to learning.
Teachers spoke about their personal philosophies of education. Alison again:
I came to teaching through volunteer work with Adult Literacy programs and my educational
philosophy is one of empowering students, encouraging them to be responsible for their own
learning and [to see the] teacher as facilitator of the learning process…My own teaching
philosophy is most closely allied to the humanist, learner-centred approach. When working with
adults, I believe that it is most important to boost people’s confidence in order to help them to
manage their own learning.
Others linked their commitment to ACE as part of a broad personal philosophy of equity, respect,
the right to an education and the potential of everyone to achieve goals:
My educational philosophy, my beliefs and values, dictate much of the way I foster learning. As
a graduate, I entered my career with idealistic views and naivety. I believe in treating others the
way I would like to be treated and I believe in using my manners. I thought these were simple
things because this is the way I have been brought up. I also believe in equality and I believe
everyone has the right to an education. I believe in tolerance and the celebration of people's
differences. I believe everyone has the right to be safe and to feel empowered. I believe
everyone can achieve their goals.
Community service
A strong value reflected in the data is ACE as a commitment to community service. As one
participant reported:
I began to think more about the sorts of people who are attracted to working in the ACE sector,
and why they choose to work in it for a pretty ordinary salary (and often conditions that aren’t
great), and what it is about me that has attracted me to ACE with the intention of staying put for
awhile yet … One of the things that attracts me to ACE is the passion and dedication of the
people that work in it, particularly in areas such as mine, which covers literacy, numeracy, ESL,
youth, VCE and pre-employment. I have observed the same sort of dedication in people
working in the same sorts of areas in TAFE, so why do people choose ACE over a better paid
position elsewhere?
Program coordinators involved in the study reported the exceptional dedication and commitment of
their staff, their colleagues and peers, and in several cases, the volunteers supporting the provider. In
this context we heard program managers and coordinators expressing their admiration for those with
whom they work:
After I’ve talked to the teaching staff in my group I feel very humbled by their dedication and
very lucky that we have these sorts of people working in our organisation.
The freedom to organize curriculum around community needs is a bonus for many of the teachers:
I choose to stay in the sector because of the huge amount of flexibility that ACE organisations
have to be responsive to what is happening in the community.
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They (ACE providers) think about the individual students, who’ll be there and who won’t, what
sorts of issues they know are happening in their lives outside of the classroom, what activities
they are likely to enjoy and get the most out of, who learns best from particular activities.
Karina said:
I enjoy working at […..] The people I work with are committed and caring to each other and
the clients that come through the doors. We accept that we don’t get paid as much as our
counterparts “down the line”. We’re always struggling for funding so sometimes a lot is
expected of us. We all work longer than we are paid to. We all work in cramped, under
resourced offices. Some leave after a couple of years but others like myself grow, accept the
challenges and keep adapting. So why do I love it ? Because of these cultural aspects: It’s
flexible, (for example, if we have office work and our child is sick, nobody raises an eyebrow if
we sit the little tyke beside us with some textas and colouring books while we get on with it or
perhaps come in, announce our child is sick, grab our work and go home to complete it.)
While some participants spoke of poor terms and conditions, there were a few contributions (even
from the same people) to the effect that being under-funded is part of the culture of ACE, which
attracts certain kinds of teachers and not others:
It’s a bit like what you were saying about that person who said you lose the fire in your belly if
you get too much money. As much as I hate that comment, maybe if we were funded in a really
high way it would attract different sorts of people into the sector and that would change the way
we do it.
This person is alluding to a paradox. it seems that the evolution of the ‘culture’ of ACE on the
margins of mainstream institutions with (never enough) funding cobbled together from different
sources, is part of what makes it tick. People join, and remain in ACE for the love of it, and for the
real satisfaction to be derived from working closely with learners, teaching them and being part of
their lives, even for short periods, and seeing the difference the experience of learning in ACE often
makes. The poorer terms and conditions of ACE teachers in comparison with others is a badge of
ACE identity, one shared with many learners, as well as a source of inequity to be addressed. In this
sense, the ‘fire in the belly’ translates into participating in something special and worth doing for its
own sake.
You’ve got to have that fundamental belief, you must believe that education makes a difference
otherwise you shouldn’t be here, you must have that conviction.
5.2
Enabling Management
As we listened to the stories emerging from the field; about the commitment to person-oriented
practice, the focus on individual development, on building vocational pathways and providing
experiential learning strategies, we began to consider the significance of the management style and
culture which enabled these practices.
A spirit of generosity
The data provided multiple examples of the ways practitioners were supported as they took proactive
steps to support their learners. One example was provided when an adult learner, with counselling
support from his teacher, applied for and subsequently won a job promotion. The new job prevented
him from continuing with his adult education class. This vignette shows the spirit of generosity that
characterises many centres:
Being now unable to attend classes, we negotiated a time for an hour a week, just the two of us.
I was concerned that there be acknowledgment for the little extra photocopying I would need to
do for him and to check that it would be OK for us to continue to meet at [the ACE centre]. I
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would be prepared to pay a fee for room hire, as it would be a private arrangement. I consulted
our Department Manager - a fellow researcher in this project - who in turn consulted a longstanding member of staff at the centre whose role is presently Office Administration. In his
opinion, no extra payment was needed for room hire or photocopying, just that we should let
our office staff know of our whereabouts in the unlikely event of fire. In turn, he pays less for
the hour’s session.
The ability to give to those who need is seen as a positive, in itself a ‘gift’. As Natalie put it:
Many would envy my position where I am able to give much individual attention to those who
need it most.
Management by collaboration
How is it that these teachers are able to provide the support to their learners? In the following extract
Miriam discusses her role as a program coordinator/manager and the relationship she has with one
of her teachers:
She’s actually said on a number of occasions that she needs the support of a coordinator to be
able to do that work, to be doing some of the chasing up of students, to discuss a lot of
frustrations, just to be there as someone who can reflect educationally on what’s actually
happening, to develop policy, to try and cope with issues, especially around young people and
adults and to think through the context of the learning. … My role is to be there, be
someone…a lot of it’s a sounding board, it’s valuing her input in terms of the decision that’s
made…it’s a sounding board. … We don’t have as much opportunity as I would like to be able
to actually think through a lot of these educational issues. We’ve talked about ways that we
might do that and that’s one of the reasons the research has been useful too… we’re often
talking about pedagogy and we’ve been doing it for years
Tamsin, also a program manager-coordinator, as well as a teacher, talked about her growing
understanding of the nature of the management role in ACE:
I used to work at [another provider] before I worked here and I spent a bit over a year as a
program manager in IT and the tutors were actually the last thing that you’d worry about. You’d
set up the course, do what you had to do then you’d find a tutor, whoever it was, great. So you’d
have your contract and that was that. And then when I worked at the regional office I realised
without the teachers you’ve got absolutely nothing so they are absolutely core and fundamental
to what it is that you do [this understanding has grown] from sitting in the centre and dealing
with a lot of teachers. So now my attitude is completely different, they [the teachers/tutors] have
to take priority. It’s an interesting progression from my own earlier understanding …
Miriam further elaborates on the program manager or coordinators role:
The way I think of it is we’re trying to optimise that learning environment, you help create it and
you’re supporting it and you’re optimising it and what I think is an issue for us is that it’s with a
very small financial resource.
Optimising the learning environment entails providing support to the teachers who are at the
‘coalface’. This time spent is part of the enculturation process, in some paradigms this work might be
characterised as part of the quality assurance process – as indeed it is. However the time spent and
the relationships developed go beyond ensuring that the right forms are filled. This is educational
work, premised upon educational values and educational goals. As Miriam explains:
…there’s the focus on the learner in ACE and valuing everything that person brings and valuing
their potential to learn and their wish to learn and knowing that learning matters and that
learning is transforming in a whole lot of ways. So there are a whole lot of roles in ACE, which
can actually help optimise that and particularly support that teaching-learning interaction.
Miriam sees her role as a manager as that of an ‘educational collaborator’:
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It’s a collaborative thing, one’s not any better than the other. We’ve got a couple of examples of
program managers … who employ these sessional tutors and they spend a huge amount of time
sitting down with them helping them develop stuff in accordance with our expectations
admittedly, but they don’t just hire someone and send them off to do what they have to do.
They’ve spent a lot of time where possible and practical because people often come into the
centre in their own time to meet with the program manager. They spend a lot of time supporting
them and helping them understand the client group they’ve got, helping them to understand
what’s required of record keeping, helping them develop assessment tools that are accredited. I
see them coming in and out and talking with a couple of our program managers in particular, so
they’re providing that really face-to-face support for that person as well. It’s not just a matter of
hiring and going through a contract and then getting them to deliver, it’s a lot more.
Another participant sees it as more “a coaching role”. However this label does not sit entirely
comfortably with Tamsin:
I don’t know, it’s so mutual, mutually supportive that it’s hard to describe…
… it’s the feedback that you get from people that you’re talking to, like if I had a conversation
with Miriam for example about an issue that she’s facing, we can talk them through together, it
actually helps my confidence considerably being able to do that, my confidence, my ability to be
able to communicate and problem solve, those sorts of things so that would for me be a very
useful and beneficial thing. That’s what I get out of it.
She further notes that the management style is premised upon collaboration and supportive
relationships:
You like that collaborative interaction happening in meetings where it might be the two or three
people that are involved in the program and the four or five of us will sit down and say ’This is
what’s happening with our students at the moment. This one’s doing this, this one’s doing that.
We hope to do this or that, how are you finding this?’. [The Manager] likes the opportunity to
information-share between the various members of staff who are actually teaching different
disciplines, whether it’s personal development or literacy, English or Maths, you love that
sharing of information and ‘How can we do it better?’ or ‘We’ve got a problem with this
particular student, they’re doing this, how can we support them?’ The work that Miriam does in
chasing up after students is just…phenomenal …exceptional…beyond the call of duty!
5.3
Strongly networked communities of teaching and
learning practice
Collegiality and collaboration
Participants discussed the attractions of working in ACE, in the light of relatively low remuneration
and the lack of a traditional and formally recognizable career structure. In Halina’s view, however,
the lack of hierarchy and competition is a factor in building collegial, positive relationships:
Well this is an organisation that has a reasonably flat structure so there’s not much opportunity
for advancement internally and so I’m comparing it with large schools that I used to visit and
would see the factions here and there and they wouldn’t share this because if I share it with
someone else they might use it in their curriculum vitae to get the next position. And because of
that notion, being able to progress internally within the school, people are much more precious
about what they've done and what they’ve developed, whereas there’s nothing precious in this
organisation, the people are really willing to share and support and help each other. And my
theory is that the lack of competition for positions is a big contributing … factor to that … I
think that lack of competition and jostling for positions is important …We all know we’re not as
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well paid as we’d like to be we’re all in the same boat …So people are not coming in here for
monetary reasons, they’re probably coming here because they like the work they do.
According to her:
I love working at the ACE Provider, so I guess if you are happy in the workplace, this emotional
state must impact on training and relationships with participants…We are fortunate to have a
very supportive friendly working environment. There is little opportunity for promotion within
the organisation and I believe this factor almost eliminates competition and so leads to
openness, sharing of ideas, flexibility and getting the best out of people. Employees are valued
and trusted and we have an Executive Officer who is capable, consultative, fair and “nonpushy” for want of a better term. Even though we have department managers, the structure is
reasonably flat and Managers are involved in the “doing” as well as the managing. There is
always someone to answer questions or provide ideas when stuck and we all engage in the odd
chat about anything except work around the photocopier, heater or urn on occasion. All
members of the staff are friendly, competent, professional and committed to their work.
Teamwork, discussion, cooperation and collaboration interspersed with the odd smidgen of
humour are all part of the way we work…
I have learnt a great deal since coming to work here, (6 years) most of which has been on the job
informal learning, working on group projects, belonging to cross centre working groups, some
funded Workplace Learning Projects and having many opportunities to attend seminars,
conferences etc. related to work. I am well into my sixties in age. The culture and working
environment at this place makes a big contribution to ongoing learning and enjoyment of my
work.
Another tutor and program coordinator noted:
At [this centre] I found that I became passionately interested in adult education. I think in part it
was the friendly, supportive working environment, but as time went on, and I became more
involved with the students, both as a program manager in the information technology area, and
as a tutor in IT.
Clearly, there is something about the organisational culture of ACE centres that sustains and
facilitates learning. As another of our co-researchers reported:
I have been struck by the manner in which various program managers at the ACE centre cooperate and collaborate to share physical and financial resources to enable more innovative
learning possibilities to occur. The ESL students usually accompany ours on an excursion or
groups will combine to hear a visiting speaker. The staff acknowledge the wealth of learning
opportunities which exist simply by getting different groups of students together.
Multiple and shifting roles
Collaborative networks of practice are also characterized by the multiple roles adopted by some
players; sometimes teachers-sometimes learners; sometimes managers-sometimes teachers. For
instance:
One other student is a lady who achieved her VCE through the Centre. She attends on Fridays
to hone her computer skills but attends the other classes as a volunteer so she can assist. She is
invaluable to our program, especially for those who need intensive one-on-one assistance until
they become a little more independent. One student in his 40s, “Dennis” (who successfully
avoided school as a child) has made wonderful progress largely due to the extra help she gives
him. She has helped a number of students – individually and in other classes… [the centre] is
unable to offer her a regular wage, nor does she seek it. Some ‘pocket money’ is given as a
token for the extraordinary gift of time she makes to our organisation.
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Merril, who also managed multiple roles as a tutor and program co-ordinator and sometimes
administrator, said:
I found it difficult to separate my work within ACE organisations as an administrator and as a
tutor. Therefore some of the data I have collected comes from outside the classroom – I feel it
is still quite relevant to the project and believe the development of generic skills in ACE must
take into account the larger structure of the organisation, not just the relationship in the
classrooms.
Time and again in these ACE settings we see the lines being blurred between teachers and learners.
We see managers as teachers, teachers as learners, learners as teachers, students as volunteers and
volunteers as students – all ‘creating opportunities together’. Peer learning and support is an
important part of the mix:
Students work together in other ways besides class discussion. They co-operate on tasks like
collecting / finding articles from newspapers and recording TV media items. There is never any
competitive edge in the classes, but a spirit of co-operation and ‘we’re in this together’. Students
have told us that they have learnt that ‘learning is a co-operative venture’. Students ‘look out for’
and assist each other in many ways and strong friendships develop between students and also
between students and teacher. The contributions and co-operation … is a strong reason for
most adult students maintaining good attendance. Very many adult students try hard not to miss
any classes, despite sickness and other family issues.
Resources stretched to the limit
It appears that individual commitment to the work of ACE impacts on organisations at multiple
levels and in various ways. One consequence is that the capacity of ACE centres or organisations and
the goodwill and personnel resources of practitioners may be stretched to the limit. As Miriam said:
ACE has got a reputation for doing well with a little, … like with very small resources, ACE
does a huge amount of work, and a lot of that has been because it has committed people who
are prepared to put in. I’m absolutely sure of that. But I wonder whether we’re coming to some
sort of critical point and I’m also starting to wonder whether needing to deal with young people
might be something that’s pushing us to the edge? That’s my own feeling around working with
young people fairly intensively over a couple of years and feeling that I’m getting to a bit of a
burnout stage now, and thinking about it personally about in terms of how I cope and how I put
in and that’s necessarily a good thing but I just wonder whether it’s got a wider implication?
I think the burnout is a real deal. I’m going through that at the moment because there’s just too
much to do and not enough help, and I do get a bit annoyed when I look at schools and I look
at TAFEs and I see that … there is the money to pay for administration and other things and
yet the government gives so little to ACE organizations, so a lot of it has to be voluntary, or a lot
of it is unpaid time and people take on too much because there aren’t the people who are willing
to work for nothing.
Cos you want to make it work but it’s the teaching, it’s the supporting learners, it’s the admin, it’s
the management…not only is it a lot, but it’s multi-focus work, especially with the youth.
5.4
Community oriented, community owned and
community-building
Reiterating an earlier theme, a recurring principle was expressed as the need to both be a part of, and
responsive to, the local community. As one of our co-researchers said:
Our neighbourhood house does see itself as part of the community but it’s being responsive too
… we’re just doing some strategic planning at the moment, and one of the things is to respond
to the community, not to impose on them…
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Some providers have more formal structures, but they are still attuned to and designed to be
responsive to community needs:
We have a legal department, we have a consumer affairs and tenancy department, an area for
child protection. They’re all separately funded but they all work for the centre and they’re all part
of a large community centre. So what’s fantastic is that we often get referrals across the
programs, each different program cross refers, so if somebody comes to me with a legal
program I’ll refer them to the legal people. Somebody comes because they’ve bought something
and it’s broken and they don’t know what to do, I don’t just help them write a letter I send them
to the Consumer Department.
It is worth noting here that many of the service providers connected to this study also draw funds
from the Department of Human Services. They are not merely ACFE providers. Hence there are also
administrative, bureaucratic and accountability responsibilities which carry their work beyond a
narrow conception of adult education and into broader conceptions of community development and
support. The individual history of service providers also shapes their particular place in the
community and the nature of their offerings. Whilst traditional bureaucratic analysis often looks to
separate and compartmentalise social services and eliminate any potential for ‘duplication’. There can
be valuable synergies and links established which promote an interdisciplinary approach to service
delivery, which is more akin to a ‘whole of government’ approach. Such strategies, in practice, can
make the sum greater than the total of its parts.
Beverley described her provider as:
a melting pot of the community – many of our classes, particularly our computer classes, draw
participants from all sectors of the community. People who would not normally associate with
each other find themselves in a small classroom together, quite often with similar learning
problems and goals.
Some centres have developed out of the feminist struggles of the seventies, and created themselves as
communities grew, using what ever funding was available at the time. Kirsten said:
In our centre, that was, before we were a learning centre, we didn’t start off as a learning centre,
we started off as that kind of community centre and what happened … to start with in the late
seventies, early eighties, it was a centre really focussing on women at that stage. It isn’t anymore
but it was, within the community, but trying to empower women, that was part of the mission in
those days. So as funding became available for different things that’s how the program’s
developed …The Justice Department had some funding available and we’d had a lot of legal
issues constantly coming into the centre and so they decided we need that here. And that’s
what’s happened is that each time something’s come up, they’ve seen that we get people coming
into the centre for these things and they’ve acquired the money.
Repeatedly, participants in this study highlighted the way they perceive their learners ‘in community’
and they see their work as community building or capacity building. One participant picked up that
there is a contradiction between the notion of ‘generic skills’, which are individually defined, and the
collaborative community context in which their teaching operated. Miriam said:
…. the generic skills are quite individualistic in a way, or they could be read that way. And I want
to keep thinking ‘well this is in a community context’ this thing of ‘self-mastery’, ‘self-direction’
and self this and self something else and my employability…For me the ultimate is around that
sense of community, it’s the community-building that’s important to me as well … it’s about that
citizenship stuff … we find ourselves in community, we find ourselves in relationships with
others ... These students focus on what they have learnt and how they’ve changed but they’re
really aware that it’s because of their interactions with others, that’s what they talk about, the
discussion in the class is valuable and important to them in terms of reflecting on who they are.
An important contribution to community building is the training in management and community
organization that centres provide to volunteers and committee members.
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Some providers are also involved in providing committee of management training for other
community -based groups:
This kind of training involves generally a different cohort of people compared with other
programs I’m involved in. Committee members of the smaller organisations and particularly
neighbourhood houses are often very caring, older community members who come onto a
committee to help out and know very little about their legal obligations and responsibilities. It is
very difficult to get committee members, so when doing training it is a challenge to cover roles
and responsibilities without “scaring them off” … [but] Later I received a letter from the
chairperson, explaining how they were moving ahead and that they would like me to return for
another workshop … While I never look for accolades it is really satisfying to know that you
have contributed positively to people’s lives.
5.5
Creating a sense of belonging
The role of centres in offering a sense of belonging was also significant. There is almost an
indigenous sensibility expressed in some accounts. Teachers and learners do not merely work, or
learn, or visit, at the ACE centre, they belong to it. The place and all it represents, is in some ways
embodied in their practice and in their learning.
One of the traditional purposes of community centres is to create a sense of belonging, to create
learning groups that will be inclusive of all kinds of social diversity.
According to Beverley, the diversity has the effect of encouraging “a rare type of respect”:
It is a relaxed class atmosphere, they chat, enjoy coffee breaks together and help each other
complete class exercises. Despite their vast differences these people bond with each other
…realising that people from all sorts of economic and social backgrounds have similar learning
needs promotes a rare type of respect that I really enjoy seeing in my classroom.
The sense of belonging may be created and reinforced by a multitude of small exchanges that have
the effect of linking learners back into the community and developing their own networks. Melanie,
for example, related this anecdote of a learner who had housing problems:
One of the students had housing problems and had to move urgently. I got a friend of a friend
who is in real estate to find a flat for a couple, then the friend helped them move with his trailer.
This was done on the basis of the norms of a supportive community, rather than as a special
favour or special effort on the part of the teacher. Hence, we shift the focus away from the
teacher/learner relationship towards linking the learners back in with their community.
The sense of belonging and community extends to involvement in local struggles. Sandra reported
that:
In 2000 when the then Mayor … told me he wanted to bulldoze the building rather than help us,
I decided to ‘show him’ and when he rang in January this year (some two years later) to tell me
the Centre had been awarded the Australia Day award for Organisation of the Year, the feeling
was, well very, very sweet.
There were many other examples, including collaborating with other organizations for adult learners’
week, and a range of local community festivals and projects.
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6. The Curriculum
The final dimension of ACE pedagogy is the curriculum. There are four aspects of curriculum
relevant to ACE pedagogy that became evident in the data. These are:
6.1
Creative interpretation of accredited curriculum guidelines;
6.2
The integration of generic skills: for employment, life and further study;
6.3
Contextualised curriculum;
6.4
Negotiated curriculum; and
6.5
Vocational and Non-Vocational, Accredited and Informal.
6.1
Creative interpretation of accredited curriculum
guidelines
For ten years, since the introduction of competency-based curriculum and assessment frameworks,
there has been an uneasy tension in ACE about the requirement for competency-based assessment.
However many ACE practitioners have found, or developed, creative strategies to work within the
constraints of competency based frameworks. One strategy to ensure learner needs prevail over
requirements for competency-based assessment is to ‘back plan’, as described by Melanie:
Spontaneity, flexibility and responsiveness support effective literacy practice but are also the
enemies of accountability by which our field is increasingly driven. Literacy curriculum, through
necessity to remain responsive, is back planned. That is, it is recorded once it has taken place in
the classroom, once it has evolved, and then is also back-mapped against the curriculum
framework (in our case CGEA). I suppose it is the teacher’s experience that ensures all domains
of the CGEA (such as Knowledge, Self Expression, Public Debate and Practical Purposes in
Reading & Writing) are covered throughout the course.
Some teachers in this project voiced their unease about the contradiction between ‘learner-centred’
teaching and ‘competency-based’ assessment requirements. Kirsten summed up this feeling:
[There is a]… difference in the milieu, the environment, the feel of it, when you’re dealing with
an accredited course like one of the Certificate II modules in IT, as distinct from a programme
that you’re developing yourself … We notice it, students notice it, everybody knows this is a
little bit different and it is more pressured and it puts strain on the trust that you’ve built up with
the students in other sectors or in other areas so we certainly feel it because it’s proscriptive.
Many of the teachers talked about the ways in which they shape or customise the competency
requirements according to the particular context and circumstances of the learner groups. Halina gave
this example of customisation:
This year the focus has been mainly on Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training,
Frontline Management and Committee of Management training. Several options are offered for
Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training. These are:

Face to face weekly 3-hour sessions conducted over a 6-month period;

Flexible delivery using print based learning materials with participants meeting fortnightly
with me or at time negotiated to discuss progress and questions etc;
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
Print based material but main communication via initial meeting then e-mail and phone
support (this model mainly for people in isolated situations);

A modified delivery model for teachers delivering VET in schools, including face to face
delivery for the assessment units and modified face to face for programming and delivery
with a project and portfolio of evidence focus; and

Face to face delivery for assessment only units on demand.
Why all these variations? Definitely not to make it easy for me!!! It can be quite a task keeping
track of everyone however the range of models has been developed to accommodate the
different learning needs, social situations or geographical locations.
Others devise their own means of assessment that focuses on learner needs rather than on the official
‘legalities’ of assessment performance criteria, standards and conditions.
These examples illustrate that in ACE practice, the curriculum is mainly used as a tool rather than as
the driver of learning.
6.2
The integration of generic skills: for employment, life
and further study
Many of the programs that the participants were providing have an explicit focus on skills for
employment. However, within the holistic and multi-faceted teaching culture of most centres, the
teaching of those skills is integrated into the developmental, life-skills and community-building
approach that we have discussed so far. For the most part, activities and classroom talk that aim to
develop generic skills are integrated with other aspects and aims of the curriculum.
Introductory computer skills applications are a major work-related part of ACE curricula. Other
kinds of explicit vocational skill training that the participants in this project were involved in included
horticulture, computers, retail, etc, at a pre-vocational level. Some of the teachers spoke of integrating
an awareness of generic skills for work with the vocational or technical content.
Kirsten wrote in her journal of the competing demands of learner-centred, adult pedagogy and the
need to habituate and train the students in the disciplines of punctuality and personal organization
that are basic requirements for work, study or for an efficient domestic or social life:
There were a few away today and several were late. I find it very difficult to know what to do
about lateness with adult students. As these clients are mostly job seekers you would think that
being punctual is a crucial requirement for employment. However, some of them are also single
parents with young school age or even pre-school children. This means that getting to class by
9am is difficult and most do not have financial assistance from Centrelink for their childcare
costs because it is not a full time course. As a mother who has been in the same predicament
myself, trying to juggle family (especially when they are very young) and work requirements, I
am not comfortable getting heavy handed with them. They are also adults who have other
worries, responsibilities and needs so do I respect that or insist on punctuality. (Do I take
empathy too far? I have wondered about this before.) Some have negotiated a later arrival time
with me. Perhaps this is the way to go with EVERYONE. I think I might try telling them ALL
that they are expected here on time unless they have negotiated an alternative time. I am not
tough enough with people over things like this. With this group of people, though, I can use the
reason that the employer will expect it and is likely to fire them if they aren’t punctual.
I had never realised how often I used organisational skills for what seem to be obvious and
everyday types of activities. Nor how decision-making can present some people with major
problems! I try to get them to think logically about what they have done before and what might
follow easily, or what area they are interested in (book-keeping, websites, Internet etc.) but it still
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takes ages. This type of difficulty would preclude them from any senior position in employment.
Organisational and decision-making skills are fundamental workplace skills!
One approach to addressing such generic, personal development issues in the context of vocational
programs is to ‘lay down the rules’ and to provide very clear models, including models of behaviour,
dress and ‘standards’ which reflect the expectations of employers.
As Gemma explains:
So I lay down the rules, that’s probably not the way I say it in class…but we have a dress code,
we have standards, we have policies, we have behavioural policies… it’s Business Services. If
they want to get a job out there then they’ve got to expect to pretend that they’re in work and
I’m their supervisor and that’s how good it gets. … I’ve felt if I slack off once and let them have
an extra 10 minutes here and an extra 10 minutes there, if I don’t have those rules, then I’m
letting them down. They should know, don’t just walk into a class in the middle of something,
don’t just walk in when you feel like it…We have all these rules…and it’s not really nasty, it’s
just setting the rules down, and business employers around probably want us to do that. They
want them to have some good work ethics, they want them to be diligent, committed and
reliable. So I do what they want me to do. … The students have got to see [what is expected of
them] in the first place and I don’t think they see anything like this in the environments they
have come from.
6.3
Contextualised curriculum
Learner-centred curriculum often means contextualising the curriculum around student needs and
interests. Depending on the context, the teachers structure their teaching to involve practical learning
and to relate this to the experience of the learners whenever possible.
As mentioned earlier, Kirsten used a student’s parking fine to focus almost a whole lesson on
preparing a formal letter:
One student told us about a double parking fine he had just received at the beginning of the
week. He was very upset as he felt that it was unfair. He had been outside his child’s primary
school and had been waiting in the street to allow another car to back into a parking space. I told
him he should write to the council to tell them what had happened. I asked the rest of the class
if they would like to help him and they were all very keen.
It eventually transpired that was afraid to send the letter in case he got into trouble from the
police. This led to a discussion about how local government and the police force were structured
and a comparison of dictatorships and civil society.
Other examples have been given in earlier parts of this report.
6.4
Negotiated curriculum
As shown in Sections 4.1, 4.2, 6.1 & 6.3 the given curriculum, both content and level, is negotiated
where appropriate. The learner is respected as a key player and partner in the learning.
6.5
Accredited and non-accredited curricula
While the participants in this project spoke mainly of their teaching in accredited and non-accredited
vocational programs, it is important to remember that other kinds of curriculum and programs
feature strongly in ACE, providing different kinds of ‘ACE Experiences’ and different pathways to
further learning or involvement in centres. A recent report of ACE Statistics (NCVER 2000) states
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that in 2000, about half of all ACE activity, out of 477,800 students was vocational and half was nonvocational (mainly enrichment or recreational courses). Of those enrolled in vocational programs,
70% were enrolled in informal, non-accredited programs, and 30% in formal, accredited courses.
Thus, the participants in this project (mainly in accredited, formal vocational courses) represent about
half of ACE teaching overall. This is probably a reflection of the fact that teachers in non-accredited
and enrichment courses would work token sessional hours in short-term courses and would not take
part so much in the ACE culture and communities of practice as their colleagues represented here.
Nevertheless, it is an important part of our analysis of ACE pedagogy to note that the richness
provided by ACE centres includes a range of course types, requiring different levels of commitment
and effort on the part of students and different levels of payment.
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7. A Descriptive Framework for
ACE Pedagogy
7.1
ACE pedagogy in context
Are there any essential differences between ‘ACE pedagogy’ and ‘school’, ‘TAFE’ or ‘university
pedagogies’? Our investigation indicates that there are significant differences, but that these can be
explained in terms of the unique context – the policies, traditions, purposes, environments, and
resource conditions of ACE, rather than as essential differences.
As we have seen, the starting point in ACE pedagogy is the individual learner – his or her purposes,
learning needs and issues, impediments to learning, how they can be helped to develop towards
employment, active citizenship, their own personal goals or whatever. The actual education programs
and learning outcomes are not embraced for their own sake, they are harnessed to this central
purpose and are, in a sense, secondary to it.
On the other hand, the main purpose of more institutionalised provision is the delivery of education
or training to a class of cohort. The primary focus therefore in institutions is on learning outcomes and
these are usually thought of as group outcomes, rather than individual outcomes. Of course, teachers
in other contexts care about and are supportive of individual learners. But in schools and universities,
the aim of supporting students is conceived of in institutional terms: that is, in educational programs
and goals and the institutional structures and practices that are in place to achieve these goals are the
primary focus. Many teachers in larger institutions, dealing with larger groups of students (and usually
being on full-time loads) do not have the same opportunities for ‘engaged’ or ‘developmental’
pedagogy as do ACE teachers. The infrastructure, purposes, practices and norms of larger institutions
or work place training contexts are geared less to individual progress and nurturance and more to
processes, procedures, curriculum and group outcomes.
It seems that an orientation to the individual person rather than his or her educational program
outcomes could be what most distinguishes ACE from other kinds of (larger educational)
institutions. The smaller size of classes and frequency of contact enables more ‘feedback loops’
between teachers and learners, hence more meaningful and informal relationships to develop.
The diverse and sometimes extreme needs of the learners, especially in the youth area calls forth
innovative pedagogies and an intensity of relationship as committed teachers struggle to make a
difference or to really engage individual young people in learning. The general lack of resources and
flexible arrangements within common curriculum (such as the CGEA) mean that in comparison with
other forms of pedagogy, ACE pedagogy is possibly more contextualised, more improvisational, more
eclectic, more demanding of the teachers’ powers of innovation, and more relational than other
pedagogies.
Another contextual difference that the participants drew to our attention is that the unique situation
and purposes of ACE may attract certain kinds of teachers. The community-based location of most
ACE provision on the margins of the educational mainstream, affording greater flexibility, and having
a more distinct social justice role has an appeal for some teachers but not others.
The dimensions, elements and principles of pedagogy that we describe should therefore be seen as
relative to educational contexts and roles. This is to recognise that adult community educators are not
necessarily ‘better’ than school or tertiary teachers as a group but that the particular conditions,
context and clients of ACE call for the construction and expression of particular pedagogies.
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7.2
Constructing a framework for ACE pedagogy
Pedagogy, as we have seen in Chapter 3, is a complex and fluid notion that has taken on a specific set
of meanings within the discourse and practice of ACE. We have organised the teachers’ reflections
and discussions, that were documented for this project, under four broad headings that could be said
to correspond to the four main dimensions of ACE pedagogy. These four dimensions of ACE
pedagogy can be diagrammatically displayed as follows:
Figure 2. Dimensions of ACE pedagogy
The teacher
The teaching
ACE
pedagogy
The Curriculum
The plACE
We also identified, through analysis of the data, a set of elements, which appeared to characterise
ACE pedagogy. We arranged the elements to form a grid. By re-arranging the elements within each
main category (pedagogical dimension) we found that they reflected pedagogical principles which could
be arranged along a vertical axis. These we named as follows:
 Focus on learners and their needs;
 Continuous learning for work and life;
 Building learning on and within real-life contexts;
 Sharing power - empowering people & communities; and
 Many roads to learning.
Hence, the framework cross-references between four dimensions and five principles of ACE pedagogy.
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Table 2. Principles and dimensions of ACE pedagogy
Principles of
ACE
pedagogy
Dimensions of ACE pedagogy
The Teacher
The Teaching
The Place
Focus on learners
and their needs
Is engaged with learners and their
learning on a personal level
Is developmental (starting from where
learners are at and consciously helping
them to progress)
Embodies collective values:
commitment to education, to
community service and to the ACE
sector itself
Prioritises learner needs
through creative assessment for
accredited curricula
Continuous learning
for work and life
Is reflective and open about her/his
own practice and professional
learning journey
Is largely (but not exclusively)
experiential
Is a strongly networked community of
teaching and learning practice
Is oriented towards generic
skills for employment, life and
further study
Building learning on
and within real-life
contexts
Is able to improvise and take risks
Fosters skills of critical literacy
Is community-owned and is engaged
in community building locally
Is contextualised (in terms of
local, community and individual
issues, interests and needs)
Sharing power empowering people
& communities
Is aware of relations of power
Includes various strategies to empower
learners
Is led by management committed to
enabling learning processes and staff
needs
Is negotiated wherever possible
(i.e., learner respected as key
player and partner in the
learning)
Many roads to
learning
Is patient and able to put trust in
the learning process
Is multi-layered and eclectic
Creates a sense of belonging
Opens pathways through
accredited, non-accredited and
enrichment programs
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The Curriculum
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7.3
Uses of the framework of ACE pedagogy
The framework of ACE pedagogy is a kind of distillation of the pedagogical beliefs, practices and
understandings expressed and reflected in the data provided by the participant researchers. As such, it
is a kind of snapshot of ACE pedagogy as it is being practised in these settings at this time. It is not a
‘definitive’ framework and should be seen as one way of describing a complex and ever-changing
field of educational practice. While the notion of a ‘framework’ can have the discursive effect of
‘capturing’ (and therefore freezing) a set of understandings, we would hope that this framework will
continue to grow and develop as pedagogy in different contexts continues to be researched, described
and analysed.
The framework might therefore be useful in professional development or as a tool for teachers’
private reflections on their teaching. In research, it might be a basis for further investigation of
teaching practice and the correlation between pedagogy and a range of student outcomes – the
‘intangible’, ‘generic’ or ‘developmental’ outcomes that are not able to be measured or assessed in the
usual ways, and therefore are often neglected in planning and policy-making.
In the next chapter we will examine the connection between ACE pedagogy as it is described in the
framework and a range of generic skill outcomes.
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8. From ACE Pedagogy to
Generic Skills
In Chapters 3 - 7 we showed how the four dimensions of ACE pedagogy combine in a multitude of
ways to create a holistic, and multi-faceted pedagogy that draws on a range of strategies, purposes,
media and theories of learning. We demonstrated that there is a strong connection between ACE
pedagogy and generic educational, attitudinal, cognitive, social and skills development. The data also
shows the extent to which the process of learners’ ‘generic’ development is integrated within teaching
and learning activities and relationships. The contexts of learning – the ‘communities of practice’ that
evolve within centres and classrooms, the personal support and meaningful relationships and
innovative approaches provided are key factors in supporting such learning and development.
However, a further level of analysis of the data will be useful to show in more detail the connection
between ACE pedagogy and the acquisition of generic skill and attributes. It is important to reiterate
that this is not research into generic skills outcomes, but into the processes and pedagogies that appear to
foster and support them.
8.1
‘Life and Employability Skills and Attributes’
The Kearns (2003) definition of generic skills that we have used in this project describes, generic
skills as “life and employability skills and attributes”. This definition ascribes equal value to both ‘life’
and ‘employment’ purposes and recognises that these two dimensions of human learning are
ultimately inseparable. Personal attributes and values underpin the human qualities and attributes that
are also seen as ‘generic skills’ by employers. Kearns’ definition leads to the conceptualisation of
generic skills and attributes within a developmental framework that in turn can be linked with
pedagogies and strategies for their development. The notion of life and employability skills and
attributes relates with the notion of holistic pedagogies for development.
Here we demonstrate the connections between ACE pedagogy and the more broad notion of
‘generic skills and attributes’ by working from the clusters of skills and attributes that construct
Kearn’s developmental framework and connecting these with the data about ACE pedagogy. In this
section we will refer to each of the five dimensions (clusters) in the Kearns framework and show how
these may be linked with the particular elements and principles of pedagogy that we have derived
from data. The five skill clusters can be seen as implicit outcomes of the pedagogical approaches and
elements that have been described. These are:
 Autonomy, self-mastery, and self direction – the central and underpinning skill
 Work readiness and work habits
 Enterprise, innovation and creativity skills
 Learning, thinking and adaptability skills
 Interpersonal skills
Here we demonstrate the connection between ACE pedagogy and the more broad notion of ‘generic
skills and attributes’ by working from the clusters of skills and attributes that construct Kearn’s
developmental framework and connecting these with the data about ACE pedagogy. In this section
we will refer to each of the five dimensions (clusters) in the Kearns framework and show how these
may be linked with the particular elements and principles of pedagogy that we have derived from
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data. The five skill clusters can be seen as implicit outcomes of the pedagogical approaches and
elements that have been described. These are:
 Autonomy, self-mastery, and self direction – the central and underpinning skill
 Work readiness and work habits
 Enterprise, innovation and creativity skills
 Learning, thinking and adaptability skills
 Interpersonal skills
8.2
Autonomy and self-direction
The Kearns’ framework reflects the view that “personal development is a dialectical process of
understanding self and understanding others” (Kearns and Schofield 1997). Kearns describes the
central focus on personal development towards autonomy and self-direction as “a foundation for
good teaching practice throughout the ages, and even more critical in the Learning Age” (Kearns
2002 p. 42). The ‘meta competence’ of autonomy, self-mastery and self-direction interacts dialectically
with the development of the surrounding four clusters of key generic skills. The growth in autonomy,
self-mastery and self-direction will feed into and enhance the acquisition of the clusters of generic
skills and vice-versa.
The integration of pedagogies for personal, cognitive development and basic skills development
within ACE pedagogy in fact provides an exemplary model of the humanistic and learner-centred
strategies that Kearns and others have called for in relation to “life and employability skills and
attributes”. The core of the developmental framework is reflected throughout the elements of ACE
pedagogy in the framework that we have developed from the data in this project. ‘Autonomy, selfmastery and self-direction’ are seen to be central to the principles and practices of ACE pedagogy.
One point of view is that generic skills are not so much taught as absorbed from positive role
models. The teachers in this project often spoke about the need to ‘walk the talk’, to model at all
times the behaviours and attitudes they wanted to engender in the learners. The following example
(quoted earlier), reinforces the obvious point that generic skills and attributes need to be
demonstrated by the teachers, not simply taught or ‘trained in’.
I spoke to Shana about generic skills and asked if she felt that self esteem and working as a team
and other generic skills could be taught. She thought for a while and then said ‘No,’ she didn’t
think they could be taught in a class but were taught by example, by being exposed to someone
with those values and attributes.
8.3
Work readiness and work habits
Many of the participants in this project have focused explicitly on work readiness and work habits, as
part of the study disciplines they are attempting to engender, and in order to train people at a basic
level for the realities of the workplace.
One explicit way to address some vocational issues in the context of personal development and ACE
programs is to coax, exhort, encourage or require that learners start to display work disciplines and
work ethics in their class room demeanour. Again, teachers have spoken of the need to provide clear
models, including models of behaviour, dress and ‘standards’ that reflect the expectations of
employers. Kirsten’s account, quoted in the previous chapter, about how she ‘lays down the rules’
about dress codes and behavioural policies in her Business Services classes provides one example.
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Such on-going training in appropriate attitudes and disciplines for employability takes place at all
levels. Melba describes her practice as ‘behaviour modification’ for her disability learners in relation
to work readiness:
When I worked in with the computer class this week I found that I focused much on providing
reassurance and revision of tasks to ensure that the skills that are required to demonstrate
competency in Certificate II Business. Some of the class required reassurance that they were,
whether performing the functions correctly or had completed the work to a satisfactory level,
and others required modification around appropriate behaviours that were being displayed i.e.
attitudinal – sitting in appropriate manner, being punctual on return from breaks, disruption and
bullying of other clients.
In other cases, the work readiness and work skills are developed by opportunities for volunteering at
the centre. As this story shows:
A few weeks after completing her last program, Charlotte came and asked for some guidance in
preparing her resume. She confessed to me and the house coordinator that she desperately
wanted to get work – “I want my daughter to go to school and have something to say when the
other kids ask her what her mum does, I want her to be able to tell the other kids that I have a
job.” In preparing her resume, Charlotte realised she needed to get some administrative
experience, she had never been officially employed by anyone and her resume needed some
serious padding out. She asked if she could do some volunteer work in the office at the house to
gain some practical office experience. After some later thought, I asked Charlotte if she would
consider joining our Committee of Management. In my mind she was perfect, she lived in the
local community and could easily convey the needs of local residents and she was familiar with
the house and staff but best of all she needed some experience in administrative procedures. It
was clearly a win-win situation. Charlotte gladly accepted my offer and is currently serving as a
committee member. She has also been successful in gaining some casual employment over the
last few months.
8.4
Enterprise, innovation and creativity skills
There are examples sprinkled throughout this report of how teachers have involved students in
innovation, enterprise and creative projects.
A number of teachers reported involving learners in life writing projects and arts and crafts. Other
teachers encouraged learners to create moneymaking enterprises. Some examples are: a small business
enterprise, theatrical productions, a new career path in Community Arts, and the making, marketing
and selling of Christmas hampers. This was a commercially successful project (on a small scale) that
the students developed themselves from a ‘float’ of $20. The students then voted to donate the
profits to a charity.
8.5
Learning, thinking and adaptability skills
According to Kearns 2001, this ‘cognitive cluster’ is underpinned by personal attributes such as
willingness to learn, having a positive attitude to change and complexity, and mastery of mental
models.
In the previous section we saw how one teacher (Roy) introduced theoretical models such as critical
analysis, deconstruction and semiotics in order to provide learners with frameworks for thinking
about and understanding their worlds. There are many other examples of teachers using a variety of
games designed to develop skills in logical, spatial and numerical thinking. Some teachers, as part of
their on-going interaction with learners, challenged them to think historically and logically about
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current social problems, and to challenge biases and prejudices. Literacy and language development
are in themselves a powerful means of cognitive development.
Melba talked about introducing systems thinking as part of business development and enterprise
projects.
Over the course of a program, many learners gain some sense of an awareness of themselves as
learners or potential learners. Some catch the ‘learning bug’, once they are exposed to learning in a
supportive context. Halina related the following discussion with a learner who has a passion for
learning and positive attitude to change:
… I said “what keeps you motivated?” and he said “keeping reading and keeping learning” and
he said “learning just opens doors that you never thought were possible to you, the more you
know, the more you learn and the more that opens up things to you and the more internal
awareness you have”, and I’m thinking “this is such deep stuff over the phone”, I didn’t know
where to stop, it was a time thing, you have to step yourself through this process so I said “have
doors actually opened for you?” and he said “oh yes, no way could I have the job I’m in now ten
or fifteen years ago, ‘cos I couldn’t do professional writing, I like writing but I couldn’t do
workplace writing”.
She reflected on how difficult it is, with some learners to develop a positive attitude to change:
People are afraid of the unknown, and stepping outside, and I think it was the first time a lot of
them had been put outside their comfort zone and that’s a bit scary and it’s more scary for some
people than for others, and that some people’s comfort zones are really very small, and to get
them stepping even a tiny bit outside that is quite daunting for some people...
This example, demonstrates again, that the development of new thinking and cognitive skills is
intrinsic to overall personal development. A level of personal confidence may be required before a
challenging new idea or new mental model could be embraced.
A large proportion of ACE learners are learning language and literacy. There is research
demonstrating the link between language development and cognitive development. Such cognitive
development is both formally structured (such as in acquiring the syntactic logic of English, new
words, and new ideas) and informally acquired simply by spending time within language rich
environments and being engaged in intensive communication, reading and writing activities.
8.6
Interpersonal skills
The data in the previous chapters details many ways in which interpersonal skills, emotional
intelligence and self-understanding and self-confidence are fostered in the course of every day
teaching and learning activities and interactions in ACE.
Melanie described an incidence of classroom conflict and how it was mediated through discussion
and negotiation. She described the facilitation of a conflict resolution session by a second teacher at
the centre (not the classroom teacher):
The class appreciated having a forum to discuss the incident and what had been going on for
them in the previous few weeks. I feel the difficult issues were pulled out and laid on the table,
preventing the bubbling- underneath that can be so destructive to the learning environment. It is
very difficult to marry people with differing reasons for participating in a class and the
prejudices they bring along often towards each other. The client group we are working with
often come from families with well-developed and in fact ingrained prejudices. Tolerance is not
easy to learn and I think can be more difficult to teach!
The classroom teacher received valuable professional development in experiencing Warren’s
facilitation of the class discussion. When I think back to my years of teaching at this low level
(Cert 1 Intro, and Cert 1 CGEA) a major part of the literacy is embedded in real situations the
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students bring to class, which provide opportunities to problem-solve life’s real social and
personal issues but a teacher needs to be confident to facilitate these discussions as they can be
confronting and confrontational.
However, in attending to students’ personal and interpersonal needs, teachers must tread carefully on
the invisible boundaries of their professional responsibilities and limitations as teachers. Karina, for
example, related the following incident of treading a ‘fine line’ between teacher and social worker:
It is the second day of Communication Skills. Certificate III). It’s been a long day and my
heart and thoughts are going out to a student. I was going to say “going out to a stranger” but
no student is a stranger. At the end of the session, a woman hangs back, after the two or three
stragglers have left, she approaches me. “Um… I wonder if you can help my husband … and
me? We don’t communicate. It’s really awful. Things are awful. I don’t know what to do.
Could you help us communicate better? Maybe we could have some private counselling”. Her
eyes brim with tears as she fights for composure.
I think, she thinks I can solve her
problems. I listen. I validate her situation and feelings. Then I gently tell her, “ I’m not a
counsellor.” I offer some listening techniques for relationships. I share with her, my
experiences with my husband who felt threatened by his wife going out in the “real world” and
getting an education. I tell her I had to talk a lot with my husband to discover he was feeling
insecure, he was worried that I might not want to be with him anymore after I got an education
and my horizons started to expand. I make her laugh. And I tell her about the services
offered by[local community health and community services] and Anglicare. We talk more. I
give her phone numbers. I arrive late to pick up my kids from school.
Later, she reflected on the incident:
When I talked to this woman and the man prior to her, I was not in a classroom/group
situation. This made it different, I could offer more active listening and support. When in a
class, although you sometimes move between good friend (good listener), counsellor (helping
the student to articulate his feelings and wishes) and teaching (doing words and writing and
reading, activities) you need to tip the balance towards the informational/ teaching side. You
cannot attend one person’s needs only in a group. But sometimes people can be very
vulnerable. And you pick it up. And you need to do something. You need to attend the need.
The inclusion of ‘interpersonal skills’ and ‘emotional intelligence’ (Goleman 1996) in the Kearns
framework picks up on many of the expert papers presented to the DeSeCo conference in Europe in
2002, (eg, Keating, 2002, Gonzci, 2002). One of the key arguments being put forward for the
inclusion of interpersonal ‘soft skills’ in generic skills frameworks is that recent advances in
neuroscience demonstrate that reason and emotion are vitally connected in the physiology of the
brain. The Cartesian separation of mind and body, object and subject, on which the Western
educational system has been based for centuries, is no longer valid.
Much of the teaching, training, supporting and modelling of ‘all-round’, ‘generic’ educational,
cognitive and social development that has been highlighted in this report has been intuitive, rather
than theorised in advance. One outcome, hopefully, of this project will be to develop the implicit and
sometimes unconscious pedagogical theorising that underpins these practices.
Generic Skills Development and ACE Pedagogy
In making the connection between pedagogies of ACE and generic skill and attribute outcomes, we
referred back to the Kearns developmental framework and to the research literature which together
suggest that what we call ‘generic skills and attributes’ are composite, inter-related and underpin the
overall development and education of individuals. Hence, the development of ‘autonomy’, ‘selfmastery’ and ‘self-direction’ underpins the development of all the other skills. Likewise, the
development of ‘interpersonal skills’ will feed into ‘work readiness and work habits’, ‘enterprise,
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entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation’, and ‘learning, thinking and adaptability skills’, and so
forth.
It can be seen that all of Kearns’ five skills clusters would be encouraged, fostered and strengthened
by practices that implement the elements, dimensions and principles of ACE pedagogy as described
throughout this report.
The pedagogical elements on the ‘ACE Pedagogy Framework’ (and others described in the body of
the report) connect up with each of the five ‘key skills clusters’ on the Kearn’s framework. For
example, the central cluster of ‘autonomy, personal mastery and self direction’ would (at least
theoretically) result from practices that reflect or enact the pedagogical elements within each of the
‘dimensions’ as shown on the following page. There is a commonsense link between the pedagogical
elements and the attributes described by Kearns in his Developmental Framework’. Further research
needs to be done in order to make the linkages between personal developmental outcomes and
pedagogical elements more explicit. However this would be hard to do without artificially atomising
holistic practice in order to test the elements separately.
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Figure 3. How ACE pedagogy contributes to ‘Autonomy, Personal Mastery and Self-Direction'
The Teacher
The Teaching
Engaged, respectful
relationships
Provides role models
Relationships a context for
changing subjectivities
Support and challenge
Encouragement and
motivation
Patience
Commitment to education,
equity and social justice
Starting ‘where learners are at’
Experiential learning
Democratic classroom
Problem-solving
Skills of critical literacy
Role-plays
Artistic self-expression
Playing games
Structured reflection
Group projects
Autonomy
Personal Mastery
Self-Direction
The plACE
The Curriculum
Sense of belonging
‘Communities of practice’
Purposeful activity
Enabling management
Supportive environment
Opportunities for voluntary
work or local projects
Community linkages
Referrals
New contacts and
friendships
Accredited curriculum
Assessment prioritises
learner needs
Skills for employment
Life skills
Skills for further study
Work experience
Discussion and critique of
social issues
Pathways to work and further
study
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9. ACE Pedagogy and
Young People
The Kirby Report, (Kirby 2000) received many submissions from the ACE sector detailing programs
“designed to accommodate young people in very difficult personal circumstances and/or with
histories of very poor educational experiences and outcomes”. The report concluded, “ACE
providers clearly have an important niche in provision for youth”.
For young people, eligibility for income support through the Youth Allowance, for those who had
left school without completing Year 12, depended on participation in approved education or training.
As a result, case managers and schools increasingly sought alternative options for young people ‘for
whom school has already been shown not to work’ (Golding, Davies and Volkoff 2001). One major
initiative, which followed the Kirby Report, was the establishment of Local Learning and
Employment Networks (LLENs) to encourage cross sector collaboration. Another was the
introduction of the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning in 2002 with wider implementation in
2003, as an alternative curriculum for young people at risk of leaving the education system without
formal qualifications. This combination of community demand and government recognition provides
an incentive for ACE providers to extend their work to school age young people or those who have
left early (Pinkney 2002). In March 2003, the Victorian Department of Education and Training
provided guidelines and funding arrangements for students under fifteen years of age “experiencing
extreme difficulties in engagement with learning … in exceptional circumstances” to enrol in ACE.
Whilst youth work is essentially a separate professional practice from teaching in ACE, many of the
values and approaches are held in common. Corney (2003) in a study of the values underlying
professional education for youth workers, found an emphasis on social justice, with practice values of
community orientation, empowerment, participation and challenge showing strongly. Notley (1997),
defined generic core competencies for those working in youth development in a Pan Commonwealth
context as:
 Enabling – creating the conditions in which young people can act on their own behalf without
relying on others to do things for them;
 Ensuring - operating in accordance with value systems which give a sense of purpose and meaning
to how young people use their skills and knowledge; and
 Empowering – putting democratic principles into practice so that young people can play an
assertive and constructive part in decision-making at different levels of society (1997 p. 3).
These ‘competencies’ accord well with the approaches to ACE described in Chapter 3. However, the
participants in this project, even those working significantly with young people, described themselves
as ACE teachers rather than youth workers.
9.1
Provision for youth
A number of participating ACE agencies provide major programs for young people and others are
involved on a smaller scale.
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Program 13 is delivered to students who have prematurely exited the mainstream school system or
need extra assistance whilst completing their formal education. The program has roughly 40 students
enrolled either full or part time. Students have predominately lower numeracy and literacy skills than
their peers still in the school system. The program aims to help young people achieve the Certificate
in General Education for Adults, as well as developing both generic and employability skills. It aims
to help young people develop pathways to further Education Training or Employment.
Program 1 offers opportunities which:
 develop the creative potential of students, encouraging them to profile their artistic skills in the
local community through exhibitions and public art events;
 deepen students’ understanding of culture by the development of journals and incorporation of
creative writing and English literature;
 involve students with the development of a small business layout involving graphic composure
and writing of pamphlets, flyers, letterheads and business cards;
 develop students’ vocational skills in the hospitality area;
 offer a wide variety of activities via a ‘small business model’ through the ‘Bubble Youth’ fashion
label which enables students to create their own designs, produce, market and label clothing
whilst building connections in the community;
 engage disenfranchised young people in working towards a better community including projects
such as public murals in roller rinks, on council walls, and on bus shelters;
 incorporate the development of vocational numeracy skills and deductive reasoning ability via
practical and innovative methods;
 develop healthy life style skills through health and nutrition, understanding of how the body
works (anatomy and bio-mechanics), exercise and recreation, injury prevention and rehabilitation,
first aid, OH&S issues and sex and drug education; and
 allow the students to combine what they learn from other projects and collate material to publish
their own magazine utilizing multi-media computer.
Program 1 attracts students from various backgrounds and differing ability levels between the ages of
14-19, with some exceptions younger/older. These are usually students who for whatever reason
didn’t fit into the mainstream school system and were not particularly suited to the scholastic skills
and structured learning environment that is offered in that type of setting. Students with learning
difficulties, ADD, ADHD, drug and alcohol problems, dysfunctional family backgrounds are
common clients. These are the students who, in the mainstream school environment, will be
classified as the troublemakers, or disruptive and bad students. There has been little scope for one on
one work with these students in the school system although the inclusion of MIPS (Managing
Individual Pathways), VET and now VCAL (Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning) in schools
allows for more pathways for this type of student.
Program 1 students have predominately lower numeracy and literacy skills than their peers still in the
school system. This also means that there are students at different levels due to their school progress
and also their varying age. The classes are structured in such a way that they are able to cater for these
differing ability levels in a project base model.
Program 2 is a half-day a week transition program run in conjunction with high schools. This
program is aimed at students who have come to the end of the road with school and are looking for
alternatives. Students, who may be feeling unmotivated, find it a relief to have a break from the
school environment and to consider new options in an adult environment.
3
This is not the real title of the program.
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The students are usually 16 years old but a few are 18 and occasionally up to 21 years. The intake
process involves referral of students from schools, an information session, an interview with the
student and parent and a brief literacy and numeracy test. During the interview process students talk,
sometimes guardedly and sometimes openly of bullying. They either express a liking for sport or the
art programs but the rest of school is seen as difficult. In possibly 70 % of cases the students have a
lot of social difficulties.
Program 3 is an alternative education setting for young people aged between 14-19 years old. The
youth involved in this program are teenagers who, for some reason, have been disengaged from the
mainstream school system.
There are several reasons for this. They may learn differently to the majority and have found
themselves lost in the large, impersonal setting of the traditional classroom. They may need extra
assistance than a teacher with 25 other students can offer. They may have a learning disability,
disorder or acquired brain injury. They may have behavioural problems and were no longer accepted
in a prior mainstream school or perhaps their life experiences led them to refusing to attend.
There are specific counselling staff for Programs 2 and 3, which gives continuity and enriches the
relationships and a sense of belonging. It is also vital for maintaining day to day support for the many
disadvantaged young people and their difficult circumstances. The ratio of support staff per student
makes a big impact on their successful experience in a course with one counsellor per 10 students.
In smaller centres, vocational counselling is significant. Miriam notes:
My role as VCE and VCAL Co-ordinator could be described (in relation to the interaction with
students) as a Pathways Negotiator, which has been described (by a social worker / teacher
providing professional development while the Centre was engaged in setting up a Pathways
Network with local schools and youth service providers), as something between a teacher and
counsellor.
Miriam also recounts one of many little incidents, which characterise this supportive role:
WL (young person doing VCAL) put her head round the door of my office while I was talking
to CN (teacher) before classes began. I said I’d be able to see her soon, but she persisted … she
just wanted to tell us that she had a job! Much rejoicing, and discussion. CN and I could leave
further discussions till later! Taking time to celebrate is also important in our organisation.
Laura works with youth groups doing English (as part of the VCAL certificate) and Work Skills
(document production/internet usage and a module on food hygiene). She also has a basic literacy
class with some older and some young participants as well as a disabled literacy/computer class with
older and younger participants attending. A VCE Health and Human Development class has a
mixture of mature and young students. Occasionally she has some young people in the Basic
Computer and the Food Hygiene classes.
9.2
Pedagogy and young people
As has been shown in Chapter 3, ACE teachers seek to engage learners on a personal level. Laura
used a ‘young person’s reader’ (on doing tattoos and other images) but could not always maintain
interest. Terry talked of connecting young people with the community as follows:
We’ve got kids, they love speeding and tagging, one of the projects we run is they go out and
connect with the community to do a proper mural on a wall. So if they want to do it they have
to approach someone, be able to talk – it’s not really work, as they want to do it for fun.
Raelene described how her approach contrasted with the approach of a local secondary school when
she was invited to contribute to a VCAL program:
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I immediately felt the sense of being in an authoritarian environment where I had no identity but
the teacher who stands at the front of the room barking orders and talking at the faces dressed
in identical uniforms in front of me.
I told the students they could call me by first name and we rearranged the seating. We began by
writing a ‘mock’ resume together on the whiteboard. We were having a bit of fun with the
activity and one of the students suggested that our ‘pretend’ person had previously worked as a
drug dealer. From this the students were coming up with a range of skills the person would
have, for example, customer service, money handling and the list went on. The students were
engaged in learning and grasping the concept of what content needed to be included on a
resume.
At this point of learning, the teacher decided that the activity should be stopped as it was
deemed inappropriate and the students were obviously not taking it seriously. How dare they be
engaged and have fun while learning a dry concept! They were asked to return to normal seating
and begin completing their own resume. The expressions of boredom reappeared as students
took out their pens and stared at the blank gaps on the page in front of them.
Where young people and adults are together in the same class, a positive effect on behaviour can
result. Laura describes such mixed classes as follows:
Some classes are a mixture of older and younger students, which seems to work well as the older
students become a role model for the younger students in returning from breaks, talking one at a
time, using appropriate behaviour and common courtesy. This is effective when the numbers are
mainly older people with just a few young ones in the class and when those young ones do have
some incentive to learn. Whereas if there are a majority of young ones in the class it becomes
off-putting for the older students as the young ones often display socially inappropriate language
and behaviour in the classroom. It is not only when we have older people in the classroom that
this role modelling occurs but if there is a student that has been in the workforce before and is
keen and ready to head back into some form of employment then they often become a
wonderful role model to other young people. Usually these students display socially acceptable
behaviour such as arriving regularly and punctually to class, listening to and respecting others,
offering information during class discussions and by completing the prescribed work. When
students display negative behaviour, the body language that the mature students display as well
as the occasional comments such as "grow up" or "we are here to learn" will often have more
effect than anything the teacher can say to remind the students about an opportunity to learn in
adult education.
Terry told of a young disruptive student who after being taken aside by an older learner, then
withdrew from the class. He later reported “George told me to ‘pull my head in and go back to
school’”, (which he did).
For specific youth classes, some form of discipline and control of anti-social behaviour has still
proved necessary. Terry and Raelene described the approaches used at their agency:
I, as a teacher and facilitator for these young people, try to take the emphasis off the
punishment, negative aspect of their behaviour and encourage and work with their good
behaviour, including random rewards. The students all seem to relate fairly well to the positive
reinforcement, rather than the negativity of criticism and punishment.
We have developed a behaviour modification chart, which was introduced to try to eliminate
some of the undesirable behaviours becoming more prevalent amongst the young people. It
works on a ‘three strikes, you’re out’ basis, which allows students to receive three strikes or
crosses in any one column (which represents a particular behaviour, such as swearing at teacher)
before being suspended for anywhere up to a term. This system takes the emphasis off the
teacher being the bad guy and puts the ball in the student’s court. The students know what
behaviours are inappropriate and unacceptable and they are punished not on an individual
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incident but rather collectively from a series of bad behaviour. This system also promotes
positive behaviours through a tick system and a random reward.
9.3
An “intolerable burden”?
Whilst it is clear that most of our participants had success with disadvantaged young people, others
expressed a degree of uncertainty and frustration. Participants also noted that whilst the ACE
learning environment may help many young people to establish, or regain, identities as effective
learners, a significant increase in the numbers of young people in ACE centres may destabilise and
undermine the very qualities which make such settings effective. Miriam suggested, for instance, that
having too many young people might just be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back:
We're trying to optimise that learning environment, you help create it and you're supporting it
and you're optimising it. And what I think is an issue for us, is that it's with a very small financial
resource. And I wonder whether the work with young people, because we're recognized as being
able to do all that stuff, but the work with young people might be the straw that breaks it,
because of the small resource [available] and the huge resources actually needed for young
people.
Bradshaw, (2002), likewise observed that:
An influx of young people would put an intolerable burden on ACE… it is best that only a few
ACE agencies work with young people.
Likewise, Pinkney (2002) has suggested that few ACE providers are likely to be well equipped to
deliver effective programs for ‘at-risk’ young people.
What might be seen as characteristically ‘ACE pedagogy’ is in fact practised in other sectors. VCAL
curriculum is predicated on adult learning principles, and ACE already contributes to VCAL
programs. The development of partnerships between ACE, schools and TAFE is already taking
place, especially through the Local Learning and Employment Networks (LLENs). For these
partnerships to come to fruition they must be properly resourced and supported.
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10. Action Research
and Professional Development
The third main aim of this project was to trial a process of professional development, based on
teacher-based action research. In this chapter we present the outcomes of the ‘ACE Pedagogy and
Generic Skills’ project as a case study in participatory action research and as a professional
development undertaking. First, we present the participant’s feedback on the project, organised into
themes. Second, we present a brief discussion of issues in relation to carrying out similar projects as a
professional development initiative. Third, we present a recommendation to continue or develop the
project, or versions of it, in the future.
10.1 Feedback from participants
The participants’ feedback was written at our last group meeting on October 10, in response to two
questions:
 What has been the value and significance to you of this project?
 How could the project be developed in the future?
The participants were also asked to write down any problems or ways the project could have been
improved.
There is strong positive feedback from the 22 participants about the value and relevance of their
participation as professional development. In this section we let the participants speak for themselves
about the different ways in which this project contributed to their professional and personal
development.
The value of the reflection and journaling
…The journal writing and report made me really think and flexibly plan learning outcomes as
opposed to assessment criteria for students. It also assisted me in seeing ACE as the home away
from home that it has become for many students in the ACE setting. I am even more conscious
of helping to make ACE comfortable place to encourage learning to occur.
…Reflecting on my current practice has been a very valuable part of the project. I have always
done a lot of this my head, but it often comes out differently when you commit to paper or the
screen! I put a lot of thought into appropriate demonstrations/models I provide in my training
and try to provide examples of what I do myself. Concentrated reflection made me more aware
of why some learning strategies work and others are not quite so successful, advantages and
disadvantages of different delivery models and the difficulties some participants are likely to
encounter either with the model or the program content.
Developing awareness and self-validation
…Being involved in the project has been great as it made me rethink my values in working with
students at ACE. It also validated many teaching techniques and curriculum focuses such as the
team building and problem solving exercises that occur with many of the classroom discussions
that occur frequently.
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Throughout the project, my awareness has developed the most: my awareness of my own
practices, other practices and students’ learning. The action research has made me more critical
of my practices. I think sometimes we are slightly blinkered but this project has helped me
develop better reflective skills, taking into account positive and negative occurrences.
…I found that through the reflective process I examined my training skills, which I thought, had
become redundant and rusty through over use actually became validated.
The main value to me has been that I have been given an opportunity to reflect on my practice
in a legitimate way. It made me think about my teaching and approach to teaching. It made me
re-affirm why I became a teacher in an adult setting. It also allowed me the ‘critical perspective’
I needed to reaffirm my practice, I thought about – the setting of my workplace (plACE!):

my commitment to ESL;

the wonderful experience and knowledge of my workplace colleagues (and how I value
that);

personal relationships I build with my students and why I naturally do build them;

my vocation (why I became an ESL teacher); and

value of access department in a TAFE setting (why I fight for it).
Personal and professional transformations
…I have greatly enjoyed this action research project. I am grateful for the opportunity to
participate. I don’t think I have disciplined myself sufficiently to the writing process, but I think
I have developed a sense of its potential for transformative professional development. It is
certainly a fascinating research method. It has, I think allowed, a richness of experience to be
uncovered and described; and hopefully it has produced data of sufficient quality and quantity
for the three main researchers. Such reflective writing might also be an antidote for stress and
burnout, maybe a bit like ‘meditating professionally’ with the requirement of close attention to
detail, and taking time (out). I have a preference for working things out / reflecting through
talking with others. It is important to be open to other ways of developing insights…
…The project has affirmed the value of what I currently do as a teacher and clarified what
generic skills are. I think reflecting day-to-day on the myriad of the discussion and responses
you make in the classroom (before and after) has really brought forward my unconscious drive
and philosophies. What on the surface appears as just helping someone approach an employer
about a job I can now see in a greater light as having enormous impact on a student (and
teachers) life long learning.
… I’ve benefited from discussion about the power base of the teacher and student the impact
of considering the philosophy of the institution at which I work. Put simply, I feel I have gained
greater insight into what I do and more importantly why I teach the way I do. This has not been
all about positive discovery I have been uncomfortably challenged by some deep-seated
assumptions and expectations. This has been valuable and certainly a manageable project to be
part of…
…The best bit is that not only are the students more “fun” being the teacher. My personal
satisfaction in doing my job has increased significantly – which alleviates stress in I think a fairly
stressful profession and working environment.
…My students often say to me recently “how come you are so energetic and enthusiastic”.
…Throughout the project/journal keeping time, the reflection that I was required to do made
me consider what I do. The reflection re-enforced the learning I was making as an individual in
regards to behaviours and implementation of skills. I saw the amount of personal involvement
and commitment that I made personally to programs and clients. The reflection process
demonstrated how much I expose my inner self and leave myself vulnerable to being exploited
by students or staff. This then prompted me to review my boundaries and directions in my life.
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The benefits to me as a participant have been:

developing a personal critique of my practice;

increased awareness of the facilitation of generic skills development in the classroom and
how I can better do this;

being affirmed by other participants;

learning about other practices/styles from other participants;

becoming more aware of how valuable our practices in ACE are;

lessening the feeling of being the ‘Cinderella’ of education.
Most of all it has allowed me to grow and develop as an ACE practitioner and as a person. By
having the opportunity to step back from my practices and reflect on these I have been able to
identify some of the values/philosophies I bring to my practice in a clear way. Some I already
knew I had and acted upon these now. I can more confidently talk about i.e., holistic practice
encouraging shifting identities and some like my personal identification with my role I kinda
only knew in a fuzzy way. Now I know this clearly and have therefore broadened/deepened my
own self-awareness.
….. So much self-doubt I felt I must be the only one. Then I spoke to another participant who
also felt inadequate, yet I saw them as highly capable and their perception of me was that I was a
high achiever. My students, volunteers, committee etc. then began to give me the same feedback
and I realized that not only had our centre become “more” than I ever thought possible but I
had also grown to be far more than I ever thought I was. This realization was actually humbling
and at the same time elevating. I have a clearer view of what I hope to achieve for my
community and an increased sense of my ability to reach any goals I now set myself.
…I know there can be a feeling of being the underdog even at time feelings of resentment
(ouch!) or perhaps more it is a sense of being undervalued and being a part of this project has
given me a feeling of being valued in what I do. It has given us a voice and an audience.
Embedding generic skills
… It has raised the bar for my own practices in that, now I consciously seek/question. How
can I embed generic skills here? What generic skills most need developing in this class for this
subject for the student’s personal goals? I now fully consciously add this perspective to my
repertoire of teaching skills. It has also given me some theoretical frameworks to better
understand the ACE sector as well as my own role in ACE.
… A checklist for attending to generic skills: i.e., Awareness of ensuring covering generic skills –
i.e., stop getting bogged down in curriculum and look outside the square.
… The project has affirmed the value of what I currently do as a teacher and clarified what
generic skills are.
I have also been thinking about generic skills and ACE and the ‘marketing’ fostering importance
of generic skills of ACE ….the outcomes and development of this project could have some
relevance here
A model for continuous improvement
It is not about talking yourself up but talking about reality and how we do or how we can
develop best practices and ‘teaching’ and foster generic skills.
…I would definitely support this project as a PD project. I think it provides a useful forum to
reflect and explore teaching practice and the essential core of what we do when much time can
be about timetabling, form filling and managing management demands. It’s so true that the
acquiring of generic skills is an individual journey of a lifetime and trying to fill in the box and
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dance for QLF and Auditory and the narrowing assessment of these skills, as a specific learning
outcome is very difficult. I guess these issues of assessment could be part of the PD program
…worthwhile ideas to reproduce in the future – continuous improvement.
The value of sharing ideas and concerns
…Another thing I value which has come from meetings during this project is forming
relationships with other practitioners is my community. This forms a good outlet to
communicate ideas, problems, concerns or attain advice from others operating with a similar
client group and similar circumstances. From this, we can work together to develop better
practices, which benefits our students, learners in the community and also us. We as
practitioners are happier when we are making things work.
…As for my personal professional development, I have found that I am more able and ready to
discuss and possibly initiate discussions on classroom practice with other colleagues that I work
with in VCAL coordinators meetings and at the conference. My personal experience of teaching
previously was that most teachers operated in isolation in the classroom and with little time for
meeting and planning which increased the feeling of being isolated. I have also found that many
teachers seem to be cautious to have their practice analysed or to share.
…Since being involved in the project I have probably had more of an excuse to initiate
discussions with colleagues, which has encouraged others also to explore – reflect on their own
practice.
…Another significant value has been the experience of doing all this with a group of teaching
professionals outside my teaching area i.e., non-ESL teachers. I found so many commonalities
that made me think of myself as a “teacher”: not necessarily an “ESL teacher”.
…So often my colleagues and I sit around at lunch and do just that – but what if we were paid
to do it!! – what a brilliant opportunity to value the need for this, to encourage an atmosphere of
reflection – accept that the ad run demands mean that we have less and less time to think about
“teaching” and that it would be in the spirit of quality, continuous improvement and
collaboration that reflective sessions are a “must have” for good teaching to occur and is “good
business” as well.
…In my case, working in a TAFE, I would love to open up this discourse to teachers across all
areas – to pull away from training packages and talk about pedagogy – which is the essence of
TAFE business anyway.
…The value/significance has also been in terms of the importance to me of reflecting with
others on practice.
..I need it. This project provided it…with colleagues and facilitators and in a wider context.
It has been absolutely wonderful to talk to other practitioners from a diversity of workplaces and
backgrounds. His has increased my knowledge of the ACE sector in general and the
commonality of our philosophies and along the way I’ve picked up tips and insights as well.
Sometimes, especially if you are a session tutor it can be isolating in that you don’t work along
side other people who do your profession. You can’t observe others doing their stuff, observe
etc. This project has given me opportunity to learn from other teachers.
… I realized too, listening to the other in this project that we all have very valuable and uplifting
things to share with each other that because of the nature of contract teaching especially offsite,
we so rarely get the opportunity to do.
Another aspect is the generosity of most ACE teachers to share, both experiences and resources.
One doesn’t get the feeling of competition (I might lose my job to her/him if she/he uses my
ideas).
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Value of experienced facilitation
… and the support and experience offered from the project team was fantastic. As they led
discussions, asked questions and drew relevant threads of information from our meetings, it
helped me clarify many aspects of ACE pedagogy which seem to occur naturally but by the
same token need to be documented.
…I enjoyed and admired the way collaborative approach from ‘the three main researchers’ with
each other and with us. There was good modelling of many aspects, especially critical reflection
…asking questions of ACE practice…. relating experiences.
…The value of the researcher as academic partners has been in their ability to take our raw data
and “match it” to academic theory. This, in effect, also has a feeling of validation and
recognition. Finding that my instincts, feelings and hunches can be discussed in “real terms”,
the terminology or language of power in the funding arena, was exciting!. I loved having a
critical friend who would pose a question, which made think hard about how or why I did
something and after re-direct my thinking in another new direction.
I valued the reading and the input from Peter and others in the team of three too and linking
theory and practice.
I would like to see [the researchers] involved in the project if it should occur again as their
expertise and philosophical approach largely contributed to the success of the project as well as
my overall enjoyment and motivation of skill development.
Developing awareness and understanding of the sector
I had dedicated myself to the rescue and development of our Neighbourhood Centre as I had
always felt it could have an important role to play in our community and I was proud of what it
was achieving but I did not realize the full extent of the influence it could have on people’s lives
until I took part in this research project.
I was now forced to look closely at our students, committee, volunteers, tutors, community
perception, “bodies of authority” perception and my own role in the organization.
What I discovered was the immense opportunities for learning and growth that simply being a
part of the centre could supply.
This realization has seen me set about developing volunteer/committee training around an
accredited training package that will enable a volunteer to obtain full benefit from participating
with us by gaining an accredited certificate.
I began to see that we not only offered training programs but we were an ideal training ground
where not only academic skills and competencies could be achieved but also the skills of caring,
loyalty, commitment, giving, community spirit.
In addition to the generic skills of teamwork, problem solving etc. were fostered.
I admired this sector prior to the project: I commended its philosophy of student needs before
‘making money’. Now I am in awe of the magnificent achievement of those I have met through
the project and my commitment now is to ensure our centre maintains that line balance between
growing, evolving, meeting the communities’ needs and sustainability.
Contributing to awareness of ACE in the broader community
…Hopefully this documentation will assist funding bodies, industry and greater community to
understand what actually happens at ACE… I would like to see this project continued or moved
into industry and community groups. This continuation of the project would actually help ACE
to be accepted and encouraged into these areas more.
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Engaging in theory
…The project has given me the opportunity to engage in some ‘theory’ for want of a better term
– reading, discussion with others, application to practice, reflection of the theory on current
practice. It’s an important mental exercise as you get older, to continually be challenged by new
ideas, concepts, models etc. Listening to, sharing philosophies, values, practice etc. with others
in a time “set aside” from the daily itinerary (meetings etc as part of the project) was interesting
and valuable for me as little of these kinds of discussions occur in the workplace.
…ACE/Generic Skills research has provided a framework of articulation of practices that never
existed before and is much needed – I hope it has an impacting influence on how this sector is
viewed. Much improvement is needed. The project has provided me with a research
framework that will facilitate my own research proposal related to my work in the ACE sector.
A possible future project
…It must continue!! There is so much benefit to be gained by others reflecting on their practice
and being helped to see the big picture….
The experience gained by the teacher-researchers needs to be filtered out, into the field.
Perhaps workshops could be held in the ACFE regions to disseminate the findings of the
experience. Perhaps ACE clusters could be utilized to this end.
…A repeat of the project next year with different teacher researchers, I believe would be useful
to ACE in general, as it would continue the debate and momentum that has been developed
through the project…
…I have been involved in some ANTA “Reframing the Future” Action Research/ Learning
project in the past, which have been worthwhile but I think the model used for this project with
some but not too much theoretical input, led by “educators” appealed to me.
I think also, there is real value for participants in this approach as a PD model, in that it had a
defined start, middle, end, not too long (involvement on top of work load), voluntary, some
financial recognition and focus on “where we are at” and professionally facilitated. The
electronic communication for our group didn’t work quite as well as I has hoping it might re
philosophical questions, issues, discussion but the face to face sessions with Peter were most
enjoyable.
Developing this idea perhaps using a very similar model but taking concepts from this research
further then reproducing project – possibly learning pathways.
… The project has brought to light my aspect of ACE pedagogy, there are many focal points
contained within that could be the subject of further investigation in greater depth. Things of
interest related to my practice include research context for changing student subjective/how
they see themselves changing through a process – changes in self esteems, cultural values, sense
of place in community and identity
10.2 The value of participatory action research in ACE for
professional development and research
Clearly, the project has provided a valuable professional and personal learning experience to the
participants. Although many have suggested continuing or replicating this project, there are a
number of issues to consider in relation to this.
These are:

the need for participants to gain some kind of accreditation for their work.;

the issue of cost;
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
the need to embed the project within ACFE processes; and

the value of combining professional development with real research.
Accreditation
The findings of this project attest to the high level of skills, knowledge and commitment that ACE
teachers have brought to the project and bring to their teaching on a daily basis. Ideally, if the project
were to be repeated and developed as an ongoing professional development, the participants should
gain an academic accreditation that would be recognised by all the universities and enable them to
articulate into a Master’s degree. The other advantage of accreditation (which might be in both
participatory action research and in ACE issues and pedagogy) would be as a first step in training
ACE practitioners to become facilitators themselves, hence embedding the process and the relevant
skills within ACE itself.
Embedding the project within ACFE processes
Ideally such an ongoing action research/professional development process would eventually be
embedded within ACE processes and funding models. ACFE could co-sponsor those who wish to
gain the initial training at graduate certificate level, and be part of the accreditation process. One aim
of the initial training (action research supported by an academic and theoretical component) would be
to imbed participatory action research as a form of on-going evaluation and development into the
culture of ACE, and find ways of encouraging and rewarding those who continue their work in an
informal action research style. Supports could be put in place to help the development of small
participatory action projects that were carried out by individuals or groups of practitioners (say,
within a cluster).
The value of combining professional development with real research
In our judgement, there was great value in conceiving and carrying out this project with an equal
focus on the research aims, and the professional development aims. The enthusiasm and
commitment of the participants in this project were undoubtedly fired by the fact that they were
active researchers in relation to issues that they all cared about. Future projects should likewise have
a ‘real’ research component, and provision should be made for publishing and disseminating the
findings.
10.3 Conclusion
The researchers and the participants in the ACE Generic Skills project have identified a need for
continuing opportunities for ACE teachers, managers and practitioners for professional development
based on participatory action research, along the lines of the current participatory action research
project. We have also identified a need for academic accreditation (towards a Graduate Diploma or
Master of Education) for those who do such professional development.
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11. Conclusions
and Recommendations
11.1 Conclusions
ACE pedagogy is holistic and learner-centred by intention and in action (as shown by this report). As
such, it is geared to fostering and nurturing the development of generic skills and attributes for life
and employability amongst learners. This report demonstrates the many ways in which ACE
practitioners are able to engage marginalised ‘second chance’ learners of all ages and ethnicities in
explicit learning while attending to implicit processes of their personal, intellectual and social
development. However, ACE pedagogy is as much the product of the shared culture and values,
enabling management, community orientation and community linkages that characterise ACE
learning centres.
ACE pedagogies contribute indirectly to the development of attributes such as ‘autonomy, personal
mastery and self-direction’. Such attributes cannot be taught directly through explicit curriculumbased activities. ‘The ACE experience’ therefore has important implications for current thinking
about how generic skills and attributes can best be developed throughout the educational system.
The Framework of ACE Pedagogy that has come out of this research demonstrates the diversity of
strategies and theoretical perspectives that ACE teachers incorporate into their work, and the
dynamic interaction between practice and context in ACE. The teachers’ personal skills, attributes
and values are an intrinsic part of their pedagogical ‘good practice’. How they teach is inseparable
from their personalities, their aspirations and their commitments to learners and to community
education as part of building a better world. Individually and collectively they are practising what bell
hooks calls ‘engaged pedagogy’ (hooks 1994 b), which according to her, is more demanding than
conventional pedagogy because of its focus on reflectivity and mutual well-being: “This means that
teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualisation that promotes their own wellbeing if they are to teach in a manner which empowers students” (p 15). There are many instances of
engaged pedagogy in which the all-round wellbeing of students is the major concern, and a balance is
constantly being struck between personal and professional modes of relating to learners. The teachers
are reflecting individually and collectively upon their ‘teaching selves’; they are actively pursuing their
own personal and professional growth as ACE teachers, community members and citizens of the
world. The managers, volunteers and other staff at ACE centres also practice ‘engaged pedagogy’ in
their relationships with learners and kinds of supports that they offer.
As Kearns and others (e.g. Gonczi, 2000) have claimed, the key to developing the generic skills of
learners lies in complex and multidimensional pedagogies, rather than in one-dimensional
instructional methods driven by competency-based assessment. It is about attending simultaneously
to the personal, the relational, the social, the practical and the moral dynamics of teaching and
learning. Those pedagogies may be conscious teaching strategies, or they may be implicit within the
culture and daily interactions within centres.
The participants in this study were self-selected and most were experienced ACE practitioners. One
would therefore expect a a higher level of pedagogical skill and commitment to be demonstrated than
would be expected with a random sample of teachers. Nevertheless, the pedagogical excellence
displayed by all of the participants in this project speaks volumes about what the ACE sector is
providing and could potentially provide. For ACE to continue to grow and make its unique
contribution, it is important that politicians, policy-makers and members of the general public are
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well- informed about the unique educational, training, social and community development work that
is being carried out by the ACE sector.
The experience of this project also demonstrates the value of the action research approach as a form
of professional development in ACE. The key features of this project which were particularly helpful
as professional development, included the: protracted period of journaling, the opportunities for
reflection, the small group discussions, large group meetings and the focus on a product (a text in this
case). Professional development through participatory action research should be led and facilitated by
experienced educational facilitators who understand action research and who have knowledge of
ACE pedagogy.
One of the features of this project has been the fact that the professional development was carried
out in the context of real research, and vice versa. The synergies between research and teachers’
experiential learning were a key ingredient in the success of this project. That is, the research has a
genuine purpose in contributing to public policy, and is therefore taken seriously. The combination
of personal reflection and documentation and collective reflection and analysis creates a dynamism in
the exchange of experiences and development of ideas. The materials that are generated in these
processes are valuable resources, documenting the details of classroom practices and providing a base
for future professional development purposes.
11.2 Recommendations
1. That the Board use the ‘Framework of ACE Pedagogy’ to promote the pedagogical and
developmental culture that characterises the ACE sector. The potential of the ACE sector to
contribute further to adult education and training in local areas, and more broadly, in building social
cohesion and social capital within disadvantaged communities needs to be constantly highlighted.
There are many instances in this report of how ACE pedagogy is making a direct contribution to the
lives of individuals who are at risk of long-term unemployment and social marginalisation. ACE
providers, teachers, managers and coordinators provide a first step into education, training and
community networks that may and do make a significant difference to a person’s life trajectory.
Empowering people by welcoming and inducting them into ‘communities of practice’ in the context
of genuine, respectful relationships and making community linkages, is to create optimum
environments for the development of skills and personal attributes. This report may contribute to
building greater recognition and respect for the work that ACE does in bringing together personal,
social and community development in the context of teaching and learning. The report suggests that
future policy directions should be geared to nurturing and enhancing the unique qualities of ACE and
furthering its special contributions to education and community life in Victoria.
2. That the findings of this report in relation to how ACE pedagogy fosters generic skills be
taken up with a view to the sector offering partnerships and professional development to
other sectors. Other sectors are becoming aware of the centrality of generic skills and attributes in
educational and training provision. Sharing the pedagogical culture of ACE with other sectors, if it is
done sensitively, would be a way of raising the profile of ACE and extending its influence and its role
in partnerships with other sectors. While ‘good practice’ pedagogy is not unique to ACE, it is in the
ACE sector that the optimum conditions prevail for excellent pedagogy to flourish. While it might
not be possible to replicate ACE pedagogy in other sectors that do not share the same structures and
conditions, the principles of adult education and skills developed by ACE practitioners could be
promoted through partnerships and other forms of collaboration.
3. That the researchers in this project (including the participant researchers) provide a series
of professional development workshops based on the findings of this report. The issues that
have been researched in the course of this project, the theoretical under-pinnings and the
‘Framework for ACE’ pedagogy have created a high level of interest amongst participants and others.
We therefore propose that the research team, including some of the participant teacher researchers,
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offer a series of professional development workshops as a follow-up to this research. The aim would
be to embed the ideas and pedagogies of generic skills development in the discourse of the field of
practice and to further develop ‘good practice’ pedagogical and management skills. Each workshop
would consist of two half-day sessions approximately a month apart so that the ideas and frameworks
introduced in the first workshop could be followed by a period of reflection and documentation by
individual participants. The final session would include collective reflections and consideration of
current practice in the light of Framework for ACE Pedagogy and other findings of this report. In this
way a participatory process of action and reflection would be built into the workshops.
4. That in addition, individual ACE providers or clusters consider conducting similar
participatory action research projects as a powerful means of professional development. As in
this project, the teacher-researchers would be central in planning, producing reflective reports and
developing and giving feedback on the findings. Such participatory action research projects have the
potential for strengthening the sector through developing research and writing skills at the grass roots
level, and training a new generation of practitioners who may take on leadership, advocacy and
research training roles themselves. Funding could be attracted from the‘Reframing the Future’
program to support such projects.
5. That Victoria University investigate the possibility of developing partnerships for
postgraduate study with ACE. There is a need, identified by the participants in this project, for
postgraduate study programs in adult education and in ACE to be made accessible for ACE teachers,
coordinators and managers. Access to such programs would provide accreditation as well as exposure
to a broader spectrum of educational and policy knowledge and knowledge of ACE. An appropriate
course work subject could be negotiated within the context of current postgraduate courses such as
the Master of Experiential Learning. ACFE personnel may assist in developing a specialist subject
about the history, policies, funding and administration of the ACE sector.
6. That ACFEB and Victoria University collaborate to submit for an Australian Research
Council Linkage Grant for further research into the nexus between teaching, learning and
communities of practice in ACE. This report demonstrates what is unique about the ACE sector:
how the development of generic skills is fostered through the interaction of pedagogy and context –
the pedagogy of plACE. We now need to understand more about how ACE centres operate as
‘communities of practice’ and what is meant by the term ‘community of practice’ in the ACE context.
What are the essential linkages and relationships in ‘communities of practice? What are the shared
beliefs, practices and value bases? How does the acquisition of generic skills in classroom activities
flow into the informal learning that takes place within the wider community of practice? What do
ACE practitioners and planners need to do, in order to cultivate and sustain their centres as
communities of practice? In what ways is learning in ACE an individual activity, and in what ways is it
a collective, social process, and what does this mean for our pedagogy? Such knowledge could be fed
into popular discourse in ACE to bring about more conscious and theoretically informed approaches
to furthering ACE’s unique contribution to people, education and communities. We therefore
recommend that the Victoria University School of Education continue its collaboration with ACFEB
in developing a proposal to seek ARC funding for a further research project that would build on the
findings of this project. Two additional partners would also be sought to make financial and in-kind
contributions to support the ARC submission from Victoria University.
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