Making a case for community education

Posted on November 15, 2011 at 11:16 AM

Professor John Field on the challenge of measuring the value of community education.

Community based adult learning is paradoxical. Everyone commends it in principle, but in practice it always has to justify its place. This has been the case for all of my working life time, so the idea that we need to argue our corner is not new. What is new is that funding agencies now demand evidence of impact, a demand that can only grow as pressure on resources intensifies. And what is also new is that we can now marshall a very clear and powerful case for the positive impact of community based learning.

Learning works

In a recent overview report on community learning and development, the Scottish inspectorate stated its own view that learning works. As their report put it, 'Investing in formal education and non-formal learning can be one of the best means of combating poverty, improving overall health, and eliminating social exclusion'. While this judgement was informed by their experience, as well as a synthesis of 91 inspections across all Scotland's 32 councils, it is also based on robust research.

Research evidence on the benefits of adult learning has accumulated steadily in recent years. AONTAS' work on the benefits of community education is an important addition to this highly significant body of literature. As well as confirming other findings on the importance of adult learning to people's health, well-being, employability and civic engagement, it goes beyond existing studies to demonstrate the specific benefits of a social justice approach, with its focus on social outcomes of learning.
The AONTAS research also brings the ethos and style of education providers into the debate. Like the Learning Lives study that I was involved in, it provides evidence of the ways that tutors and others influence outcomes through the values they adopt and the relationships they build.

Unlikely learners

Of course, practitioners have always known that community education affects people's lives. Anyone who has worked in the field will have been stunned by the way that people visibly grow more confident, more outgoing, and more optimistic as they go through their learning journey. In community education, the most unlikely people discover (and show) that they are highly successful learners.

In my experience, this growth and change is often most radical for people who have enjoyed the least conventional academic success. Many leave school believing that education simply isn't for 'people like me'. Their greatest praise for community education is - and what an irony this is - that it 'isn't like school'. What this means to me is that far too many people were failed by their school, and it is the responsibility of community education to help transform lives through learning.

Measuring the impact of community education

Now, we are in a position to show that the gains of community learning are systematic and measurable. Don't get me wrong - I hope we will continue to value, and learn from, the stories of individual learners. Like many other adult educators, I can offer countless examples from personal experience of adults who have come through community education with transformed lives - and in many cases, their stories also show how their learning has helped them to advance the interests of their communities.

These are powerful stories, and we are right to celebrate them. But in present conditions, relying on what we have always known, as practitioners, is not enough. We now have some fantastic evidence at our disposal; the challenge and responsibility is how we use it.

Professor John Field will give a keynote address at the AONTAS conference 'Making a living, making a life' - at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Dublin on November 17th. This conference is now fully booked out, but you can read more about the conference here.

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