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Intercultural group 1 - Outi Aitio (SF), Adelina Garcia (E), Anne Mariën (B), Liesbet Wouters (B) Qui connaît la route ? General introduction The end of the program Adult Education in Europe 1999 has come. The program started in February and we have been studying during three months at University Paul Valery in Montpellier, France. The participants of the AEE-program were composed of seven different European countries: Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The program consisted of six modules that deal with the various fields of adult education from different perspectives. The modules were organized and guided by professors from every represented country. The students were supposed to write a paper that is the result of the working and learning process of every module. Paper-writing was organized in intercultural groups of students, which stuck together during all modules. The weekly assignment was to write a critical report of each module. At the end of the program we put all the reports together in a general framework. After hard, but rewarding paper writing, we are proud to present you our paper. Our paper consists of every modules report, so in other words in this paper are the main ideas, conceptions and opinions which have arisen from the courses, the texts and from our group-discussions concerning the modules. At the beginning of each report we have written a summary of the fundamental issues in that part. In the chapter 'General reflection and conclusions' we develop a general idea recognizable throughout all the reports. Of course we could not write down all we have learned in this paper, because of the time, but in general we could say that the paper looks a lot like us. Our group Our intercultural group consists of four students from three different countries. Anne Mariën and Liesbet Wouters, from Belgium, are studying their fifth and last year at the University of Leuven. They will graduate this summer in the field of social pedagogics. Outi Aitio, from Finland, Helsinki University, is a third year student in the science of adult education. She will graduate in two or three years, and is still considering her career. Adelina Garcia, from Spain, Barcelona University (UAB), is studying her fourth year in the field of labor pedagogy and will graduate next year. We organized our groupwork at the beginning of the program. Our plan was having a meeting every Wednesday and/or Thursday, discussing about the going on module and then two of us would write our weekly report on Friday. The plan proved to be effective, because our papers were mostly done before deadline, and all of them were almost finished. In general our groupwork was pleasant and enjoyable but, as usual in international co-operation, we had some difficulties and problems too. The prime mover causing the problems was the motivation and language. We all wanted to make this paper as good as possible. But for some of us this program is very important and has a remarkable effect for their graduation, while for others it is only extra study without any special mark. It means that not everybody of our group had the same goals writing this paper and therefore especially the students from Belgium took a part on lectures more than others of this group. Because of the different goals it is understandable and we did not have many disagreements on it. Also the language skills were quite different which caused that sometimes patience was needed to understand each other. Coming from a different countries and fields, it was also sometimes difficult to truly comprehend each others ideas. But we managed and learned a lot about adult education, different countries, each other and last, but not least about ourselves. And in our opinion as future adult educators that is the most important, having a good learning experience. Towards individualised Report 1 for the module on Information Technology and Training Given by Prof. Thomas and Prof. Mahous February 1999 - Montpellier Summary Starting from the question ‘What is learning?’, we were confronted with individualised and self-directed learning. We comment on these concepts from the point of new technology. Can they be reached and only be reached by new technologies? 1. Individualised and self-directed learning Reading the received texts and following the different courses during the module, we came to the fundamental question: "What is meant by learning in adult education?" We heard a lot about themes as interactive learning, participation, active thinking, distance education, intellectual engagement, controlling the learning process, etc. It seemed as if the final purpose of all these terms wasn’t clearly expressed. We lost the true meaning of these methods and use of new technologies. Especially the constructivism gave us a satisfying answer. They say that learning is building knowledge in an active way. This is done by the learner himself. The learner takes the responsibility to construct meaning actively. This definition of learning explains that people differ from each other with regard to their learning-styles. Everyone has his own way of thinking and identifies himself more easily with one or more learning-strategies. Someone feels himself more comfortable learning from a book, while another person prefers an interactive medium like for example CD-ROM. This theory of the constructivists also makes it clear that people have personal aims that they want to reach through learning. According to this, we feel the need for the pedagogical system to connect with these ideas. Our intercultural group therefore stresses the attitudes represented by individualised and self-directed learning. We think that they should be more implemented and given more attention in adult education. Let us, first of all, explain what these concepts exactly mean for us. By individualised learning we refer to the educational settings in which the characteristics of the learners are taken into account. Different media and strategies are used, according to the preferences of the participants. Self-directed learning consists of two steps. The first one is defining your own learning needs. The second step involves the actual learning. On the one hand the learner resolves the existing need by for example following a program. On the other hand he gets to know the most sufficient way for him to learn things. Neither of these two is a goal in itself. They both are a tool towards more productive and deeper learning. That’s why we call them attitudes that should be at the base of the adult educational system. These two attitudes can exist separate from each other. One may for example be very autonomous in choosing his goals, but not be aware of the best fitting pedagogical strategy. It may be clear that these attitudes both cover a wide range of degrees of fulfilment. Different skills are required to obtain a certain level. It isn’t necessary for everyone though to reach the highest possible level in the range. Not everybody possesses and should possess the necessary abilities to reach a higher level. It’s up to the teacher to get to know the level of the learner and to take it into account. The teacher should adapt his involvement to the abilities of the learner so that it facilitates his or her learning process. He plays the role of being their guide, not being the all-knowing expert. To clarify the difference with the common meaning of teacher, we therefore suggest the term of mentor. This mentor must stimulate the participants to search for and to define their needs. He helps the adults to find the best way to fulfil their needs, based upon their personal characteristics. By doing this, the assistant tries to make himself as much superfluous as possible and as wanted by the adults. Prof. Nurmi (Nurmi, 1999) agrees with the importance of a mentor, when he says that learners need tutoring or mentoring by a competent teacher to foster critical reflection. This mentor or coach can catalyse us to go on with training and not to be satisfied with less than we are able to achieve. We see this concept of learning and the two involved attitudes expressed in the idea of the learning organisation. It’s very difficult to define this concept, but generally following key-features appear: creating a shared vision for the future to guide and even inspire, developing an organisation capacity for renewal and self-transformation, encouraging and sustaining the learning of all the members of the organisation and finally creating organisations that provide increasing satisfaction and fulfilment to all the stakeholders. In this kind of organisation the training-manager fulfils the role of mentor. The strategy of teamwork is stressed in these organisations, as well as the horizontal structure in decision-making. According to us, this concept is an ideal one for the reality reveals often another picture, as the field-visit in France Telecom showed us. We thought that the concept ‘learning organisation’ was used to show off. Only the training managers told their experiences, but no employee could be heard. Can’t we, in a learning organisation, learn from ‘all’ the employees? It’s obvious that in this case practice lag behind theory. This isn’t hard to understand, because you don’t only need structural and technical changes to become a learning organisation. You, especially, have to create a new culture, a new way of thinking and organising, which takes some time and a lot of effort. The same can be said for the pedagogical system. Everybody talks about flexibility, participation, interactive learning, etc. But the necessary conditions to truly fulfil these desires aren’t present yet, as we will explain later on. 2. What about new technologies? As mentioned above, new technologies are easily linked with the terms participation, interactive learning, active thinking, etc. These are also the characteristics of the two attitudes. But can this individualised and self-directed learning be reached and only be reached by new technologies? With new technologies we mean making use of Internet, keyboard colleges, online chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards, tele- and audio-conferencing, CD-ROM, distance learning, etc. At the contrary of this (computer) mediated learning, we put the ‘old fashioned’, presential learning in classrooms by books. With address to the question, we believe that these new media can realise learning like the constructivism defined it. But a few comments have to be made. These media are only an extension of the older, well-known strategies and resources. We want to stress that we don’t prefer one medium over the other. The choice of medium is dependent on what you teach, your goals and the public you teach. This is represented in the idea of individualised training. The second comment we want to make refers to the application of these technologies. If you just put them into practice into the existing system, nothing will change. Everything depends on the attitude you start with. The whole educational setting should be adapted to this new conception of education and to the new concept of the role of the participants in it. Furthermore it’s important to realise that not everybody has access to this new media and technologies. We must pay attention to the danger of a dual society with two speeds and evolution. Our last comment concerns the fast development of these new technologies. We must not forget that they are still in their childhood: often people have problems with surfing on the Internet, training-sessions are confronted with occurring technical problems, etc. There still has to be spent a lot of time and thinking on designing pedagogical well built programs. Teachers these days still need to make a lot of preparation without being able to consult serious background and studies for it. Educational technologies shouldn’t be judged by the results they obtain. Since these results should be seen on the one hand as connected to the participant and his personal aims and needs. So this is highly connected with a good implementation of individualised and self-directed learning. On the other hand the technologies must be seen in the light of the whole educational system. New technologies won’t for example change the fact that groups of learners are too big and that there are too few teachers to guide them. We should reflect on the principles underlying and organising adult education and the consequences following out of it. Do we truly want adults to be more interactive, to be more participatory and what should change then in the pedagogical settings and methods used? Until now we only talked about our comments on these new technologies. This doesn’t mean we can’t see the advantages hidden in them. We realise they are a tool to get our hands on a lot of information, all over the world. Communication between people all over the world is now possible much faster and more vivid than ever. Maybe the greatest advantage is the fact that this new media can simulate all the other media. We remember from previous classes that studies have proven learning to be more deep when using different media. It’s a great opportunity to broaden the range of possible pedagogical methods and therefore to respond better to the individual needs of the participants. It’s a good tool to help realise individualised learning. The possibility of using these new technologies, if related with our concept of learning, could be an extra-motivation for some learners. We stress the fact though that the student should learn out of his free will. Nowadays it often appears that for example employees are obliged to follow certain courses if they want to keep their job. It’s clear that we can’t speak of individualised and self-directed learning then. 3. Conclusion Our intercultural group acknowledges the possibilities of the new existing technologies. We hope the disadvantages will be solved, but always in the light of efficient learning. In our opinion this should all the time be the goal. We admit living in a knowledge society where the importance of knowledge and learning how to have access to it, can’t be put aside. We therefore welcome the new technologies, realising at the same time that it’s still a challenge to implement it successfully.
Towards an equal multicultural society
Report 2 for the module on Learning in a multicultural society Given by Prof. van der Veen, Prof. Spintourakis and Prof. Schäffter February 1999 - Montpellier
Summary In this paper we focus on the fundamental question: "How can adult education help to deal with problems of a multicultural society?" We divided this question into four topics, namely multicultural society, the problems in this society, the way to achieve an equal multicultural society and the role of adult education in this society. The following reflections are based upon the lectures, the received articles and on our own experiences.
1. Multicultural society We start with the basic question: "What is culture?" We had a long and multifaceted discussion about different cultures in our own countries: Belgium, Finland and Spain. It seems very obvious that we have different opinions of what culture is or what it means to us. Some defined culture with words as language, religion and history, while others preferred the word lifestyle, habits and identity. But not for everyone it means a high national feeling. Some prefer to be a part of Europe rather than of their own country. One of us said: "For me, as a Finnish person, it is a big surprise. To me being Finnish is a very important and clear thing. Of course it depends on the person and not all Finnish have such a high national feeling, but in general I would claim so." We were also discussing that it depends on the place and time how you describe culture. For example if we go to America, we all feel very European. Finally we agreed that it is a kind of ‘feeling’ inside you. This feeling is different for everyone. The second question we want to state is: "What is multiculturalism?" With regard to it, Nathan Glazer writes in his book ‘We are all multiculturalist now’ that "multiculturalism is just the latest in a sequence of terms describing how American society, particularly American education, should respond to its diversity." (Appiah K. A., 1997) It isn’t certain that this statement can be generalised to the European situation. However this isn’t the issue here. One likes to talk about cultural diversity as being the cause and reason for the actual problems. But following Glazer, we focused ourselves on the diversity of identities instead of on the cultural diversity. Is there a connection between identity and culture? Prof. Schäffter explained us the theory of selfhood and strangeness. This theory claims that culture is only one part of identity. A person has different levels of identity, starting by the deepest level they are : organism, psychic system, person, family, social group, organisation, milieu/lifestyle, ethnic group, nation/people and culture. According to Prof. Schäffter culture refers more or less to the different continents of the world. One can speak of an European culture, an Asian culture, etc. This theory of identity levels gives us an answer for our different feelings of culture as we met before in our group discussion. We all have a different background. Following Schäffter this is not a cultural difference, since we are all Europeans. We all though have another family, belong to different social groups, etc. Our identity has in each level an individual history. Therefore our experience of life and outlook on life is deviant from others. We want to put attention on the fact that we define culture in our paper as a feeling inside of us. This feeling combines different levels of identity. Another element of the theory stresses on the connection between selfhood and strangeness. Selfhood means the way you define yourself and the experience of the way you are and want to be seen by others. It’s the consciousness you have of yourself. This also contains experiences of strangeness. But it seems very evident that no matter how hard we try to get to know the human mind by conquering strangeness, there will always be something unknown. This unknown part of ourselves and of the outside world is called unknown strangeness. These notions can be very helpful in dealing with a multicultural society. Not only do you achieve knowledge about other cultures, but, in doing this, you also improve the knowledge about yourself. We agreed that the value of the theory explained by Prof. Schäffter consists of opening our point of view on the problems in a multicultural society. All the levels of identity have an equal meaning in the construction of your selfhood. Culture is only one of them.
2. Which are the problems in a multicultural society? By asking ourselves what we see as the most important problems in this society, we came up with several problems that we could put into the three basic categories mentioned by Prof. van der Veen. (van der Veen, 1999) We realise these and our explanation of them are only the tip of the iceberg.
Because of these problems, we can’t speak of an equal multicultural society. Citizens today don’t have the same human basic rights and chances. For us this means that migrants should be able to maintain their own identity, while having a meaningful place in society. But we should ask the question if it is possible to have the same rights without imposing the lifestyle, the habits, the values, etc. of the majority?
3. How to achieve an equal multicultural society? Is it true that your nationality or culture defines for example if you are a good worker? Or do you have to live according to the habits of the majority if you belong to the minority? Our group had a long discussion on this subject. We agreed on the universal human rights, but we had a little disagreement on the strategies used to put into practice an equal society. Prof. van der Veen explained us different strategies to deal with multiculturalism. These strategies are: positive discrimination, equality of opportunities, cultural encounter and pride in culture or cultural self-organisation . Our group stresses on positive discrimination as a starting point. Positive discrimination is a tool to give the minority the same rights and possibilities as the majority has. For example some organisations want to employ a certain amount of migrants even if there are unemployed persons in their own nationality. But to some positive discrimination is still discrimination. So do we think, but because there aren’t equal rights or opportunities it has to be done. It is a way to achieve an equal starting point. When this is realised, you can make use of the more interesting strategy of equality of opportunities. The state can offer everybody for example basic education, counselling at the job and other information to give everyone equal possibilities to develop himself. One reaches an educational- or working level by proving his own abilities. When migrants have the same chances to develop their abilities, prove them and get them recognised by society, there is no need any more for positive discrimination. We see the third and fourth strategy as supporting the achievement of equality of opportunities. Cultural encounter gives you a possibility to get to know the people around you better and understand more of their behaviour and habits. While facing different cultures you are challenged to face your own strangeness. We think that this is very important, because facing strangeness also means facing your identity. It is the way to get to know yourself better too. We had disagreement about the fourth strategy: cultural self organisation or pride in culture. Some of us would like to stress on that because everyone should have the right to present his own lifestyle, no matter where they live. Others saw the topic differently and can’t accept that for example gypsies get money from the state without clear willingness to look for a job because it doesn’t fit into their lifestyle to stay in the same place a long time. Are we only envious for their lifestyle? Some think so, others don’t. But of course we have to see both the positive and the negative side of self organisation, as in all these strategies. We find support for this in the article of Appiah (Appiah, K. A., 1997). He makes a distinction between two kinds of multiculturalism. On the one hand there is a liberal form which means everybody is open-minded and related to other cultures. The learning-process in this form can be seen as bi-directional. On the other hand there is an illiberal form of multiculturalism where you also learn about other cultures, but where you don’t put your own culture into question. These two forms of multiculturalism are seen by us as two sides of one continual line of multiculturalism and could be taken into account for the four strategies. Each of them can be applied in a more liberal and illiberal way.
4. Education and multiculturalism Prof. van der Veen said: "Education is deeply involved in the debate about cultural diversity." We think that by educating people we can show them all kinds of possibilities. They should learn that life is not just coloured in black or white. Education can help people face the strangeness represented in cultural diversity. Van der Veen continues that: "There are in education, also in adult and continuing education, quite different approaches. Some approaches concentrate on economic discrimination, some on moral and personal issues. Some defend forms of positive discrimination. Some, particular state officials, stress multicultural and intercultural approaches. Others, particular monocultural organisations, stress the education in their own language, religion and traditions." Our group discussed on the methods of teaching in multicultural society. We want to return to individualised and self-directed learning as we discussed in our first paper. To make these two attitudes possible, you need a teacher who gives an answer to the high expectations and demands. As a teacher, or we prefer the words ’tutor’ or ’mentor’, you should be aware of all the diversities of identity and the specialities each of your students has. This might be especially important in multicultural education, because the participants have totally different backgrounds. Also in the courses given by Dr. Spintourakis we were reminded to the differences in gestures, proxemics, eye contact, etc. between different groups. Referring to the interesting point Prof. Schäffter made though, we feel the need not to exaggerate the meaning of the participants being multicultural. There are many levels of identity constructing your selfhood besides culture which are just as important. It’s only another element that the mentor has to take into consideration. But it must be clear that this isn’t an easy job. The mentor has to try to understand people starting from the theory of levels of identity. In most cases the participants can’t be bothered with describing themselves on these levels. The mentor has to take in consideration these determining levels. Although adult education should stimulate learners to achieve more and/or a higher level of knowledge, you must be aware that these levels also set boundaries to the abilities and expectations of the participant. This opinion harmonises with the idea that these two attitudes aren’t a goal on themselves. They can also exist separate from each other. They can both cover a wide range of degrees of fulfilment. It isn’t necessary for someone to reach the highest possible level in the range. It should therefor not be forgotten that the two attitudes pose requirements for the learner. Focused on multicultural education, it’s important that the learner has knowledge of his own identity and especially, in meeting other cultures, dares to ask questions about himself. We already mentioned that this is easier said than done. Again the teacher has an important role to diminish or help people conquer their fear and anxiety for everything that is new, so that an efficient learning process can take place.
5. Conclusion Finally we want to state that the role of adult education in the evolution towards an equal multicultural society is very important. However we have to take more factors in consideration like economy and policy. Adult education is just one tool because for people it is a way to learn things, to have more knowledge and fears for the unknown will be smaller.
Towards a participating community of students
Report 3 for the module on Community Education Given by Prof. Baert and Prof. Jansen March 1999 - Montpellier
Summary After exploring and commenting on the seen theories, we try to apply them to ourselves. We took the community of students in our countries as a casestudy. This means that we examined ourselves, searched for existing problems and tried to find solutions for them within community education.
1. Comments on the concept of community In our lectures we discussed individualism and collectivism. According to Beck we are now in a reflexive modernisation. It means that the development of industrial society has become problematic in itself. That’s what Beck (1992) calls a ‘risk society’. The fundamental question in reflexive modernisation is the one of individualisation. This process may seem to be a great opportunity to finally be free and to plan your biography. But it’s also a huge challenge to mankind, because it has many pitfalls. One of the fundamental problems concerns values. Traditional social relations and values disappear, but they will probably be replaced by another kind of values. In opinion of individualistic persons, being individualised means freedom and liberty. But when an individual person is only responsible for himself, no matter what is going on, don’t there exist situations which you didn’t expect and for which you are not prepared? According to Prof. Jansen, individualism then doesn’t mean liberation at all, but humiliation. Thinking positively, those humiliating situations could be seen as learning-situations. The fact is that people have to give meaning to their life to have a rich and valuable one. When this becomes more private, doubts about the right directions arise. Individualisation means that there are less given solutions for daily problems. Lifechoices become more troublesome and long-term. The last problem mentioned here refers to the question of social equality. Doesn’t the quality for example in labour market mean an equal opportunity for everyone without regard to sex, race, age, etc? Individualisation means a much harder competition between people and it emphasises the intellectual skills, training, etc. It classifies people to different classes based on their capacity to compete. Before we talk about our casestudy, we want to make clear the importance to define the kind of community we are talking about. The five perspectives proposed by Clark (Clark, 1987) indeed form a way out of this problem. It’s nevertheless important to state that the significance of communities and the sort of community someone is talking about, can only be defined by the individual itself. The way a person experiences the community can be very different in comparison with another member of the same community. Communities are indeed ‘experienced’ realities. The same argument can be used when you make a difference between communities. You will act and feel differently in the community of your family, than in your neighbourhood. This refers to the experiential context, seen in class. Our last remark concerns a more tight interpretation of community. We want to make a more comprehensible distinction between existing communities as groups of people, which can be defined by the five perspectives, and the sense of solidarity that you have for people all over the world. We find it difficult to define this last concept by these perspectives. We can’t find a perfectly fitting English word for it, so we first want to describe it. We are talking about the kind of feeling you have towards people you don’t have a connection with, but who you nevertheless respect and whom you want to give the same basic human rights as everyone else. It’s not because they belong to a certain community, unless the community of the human kind who lives on the territory of the world. It’s for example the fact that you feel sorry for the people in Kosovo right now. You care for them who have to live in war. We weren’t comfortable defining this broad sense by the five perspectives. From now on, we will call this feeling the broad sense of community feeling. We all agreed that education should also pay attention to this broad sense of community feeling. In community education the stress is often put on disadvantaged people living in neighbourhoods with problems. Community education wants to reinforce them by giving them more possibilities and skills, so they can function better in society. Working this way, you implicitly blame these people though. You really say that they haven’t got enough skills to defend themselves, to fight for their rights, etc. Instead of pointing them with the finger, instead of trying to give them more weapons to compete in the fight with society, it might be a good idea to try to make sure there’s no longer a fight. It would be interesting to work with the people ‘on the other side’. Let’s take Princeton as an example. How can the council neglect one of his districts? How is it possible that they don’t react to the problems in River District? The same can be said of the inhabitants of Princeton, who stand by and watch one part of their city to become a ghetto. Shouldn’t all these people be made aware of their selective community feeling and the consequences of that? Putting a mirror in front of the people who are living well, might be not so bad. We believe that there isn’t necessarily a bigger community feeling in neighbourhoods who are doing well than in problem-areas. Probably problems don’t arise there, because the inhabitants are individualised very well and have learned how to save themselves. It’s also likely that in these ‘normal’ neighbourhoods you find the people with the ability and the power to fundamentally change something. It would therefore be interesting to make these people see the unjust situation in their city. If they grow a stronger feeling of community, maybe they can make sure that there are no longer neighbourhoods with a lot of problems like River District. You can also talk about primary prevention. We believe that concern for the other which you don’t personally know, should be improved by community education. This counts especially for the people who are doing well on their own. Make them realise the importance of the other and of strangeness for themselves, as explained by Prof. Schäffter (See report 2). The world would be better if more people took into account the consequences of their actions for others.
2. The community of students a) Presentation of the community of students We decided to take the students of our different countries as a community. We came to this idea through the lectures that made us start thinking about ourselves. Being raised in this risk society, we are probably individualistic. We wanted to examine how individualistic we are, if it’s a problem and what we could do about it. We especially didn’t want to focus on an area with problems. We wanted to try to work on the broad sense of community feeling, which we feel is very important. At the same time, we thought it would be more interesting to take ourselves as the subject. This way we thought it wouldn’t be so difficult neither to find the problems we experience, nor to find solutions for it. So we took all persons who study at a university in our three countries as members of this community. We started with thinking about the question: "Are we individualistic persons?" On the one hand, we realise we have a lot of freedom to make all sorts of choices. We can decide who we want to be, what we want to do and how we want to do it. This seems very normal to us. At the same time we feel the restrictions of our freedom. Globalisation is a first limitation. We can for example try to recycle as much as possible at home, but we know that it’s only a little part of the ecological problem. We can say the same thing about politics. Students may feel the ability to change something locally, but we feel we can’t change the real problems that are situated on a higher level. We therefore feel powerless and we are discouraged. We can refer to Bauman (1991), who also talks about this negative side of individualisation. We realise we aren’t free at all. But we are almost used to it. We accept it, we conform to it. At least if we feel bad, this doesn’t result in action. Next to globalisation, we also realise that there are still a lot of people who haven’t got as many chances as we do. In most European countries almost everybody can continue studying, because the government helps them financially. Still we realise that there are youngsters with a difficult background, for instance coming from a family with problems, who can’t go to university. They don’t experience the positive side of individualisation yet. Getting to the negative side of individualisation, we want to make a difference between this broad sense of community feeling as we explained before and social cohesion. We interpret this last term as the result of the combination between feeling and action. Sometimes we feel solidarity towards others, but we don’t react. We feel sorry for example for a poor man going through the rubbish to find something to eat, but we don’t give him something to eat. We think that the community of students has this broad feeling, but in most cases they don’t act to improve social cohesion. Probably because they think their action would have too little result. We want to remark though that there’s a difference for us in being selfish and in being individualistic. We immediately associate negative characteristics with selfishness. This doesn’t have to be the case with the word ‘individualistic’. An individualistic person can be selfish, but he isn’t necessarily so. We feel an individualistic person can also have enough social feelings and attitudes. The next important question that has to be answered, is if we as students feel as a community. We can respond positively. We do feel that we are a community. Our common characteristic is that we study, so education is very important in this community. In Belgium and Spain it seems to be that we still have a lot of required subjects that everybody has to follow. It’s therefore probably quite easy to feel connected with your fellow students, especially with those who are in the same course and year as you. It’s different for students in for example Germany and Finland, because students there have a lot more freedom to choose subjects. They consequently don’t form groups on the base of their year or their field, but they work more on an individual basis. They do feel like a community within their faculty. This isn’t the only possible difference in communities of students. We all know that with new technology it’s not necessary anymore to be in the same classroom, to meet and see each other or the professor personally. In both these cases though, we think that there still exists a community based on shared activities and based on a common characteristic, studying. We also suppose that they also form a community based on sentiments. We can ask ourselves how it would be in individualised learning. The positive point of this pedagogical method is the possibility for students to be selfreflective. You are free to make decisions about the organisation of your education, you develop skills to think about your life and yourself. By doing this you gain confidence in yourself. So individualised learning helps people to cope in general with the self-reflexive society of today. We don’t see any problems in the fact that learning would become more flexible. Because this doesn’t necessary imply that you don’t belong to a group. And the same as with new technology, a student still has the activity of studying in common with his fellowstudents, which makes them feel in connection with each other.
b) Existing problems in our community of students After identifying our feelings of individualism and our community and, the time is right to talk about the problems and needs, felt in our community of students. The first problem that spontaneously arose is our fear to find a decent job, according to our diploma. There’s a lot of competition going on. As we saw in the field-visit with Anne Bernard from L’Observatoir, the employers always ask more qualifications and more skills in order to get a job. Nowadays employers often demand more skills than needed for the job. There are more candidates than jobs, which makes it hard to be chosen. Adult education has an important role to play, because it’s the institution that can help adults to get more and useful qualifications. It’s important though to moderate this by remarking that candidates with a degree of a higher education outside the university are sometimes consciously chosen instead of those with a university degree, because the employer has to pay them less. This is certainly the case in Spain and Belgium. We secondly feel threatened because we have too many choices to make. As a student, we have to decide what we will study, which isn’t easy. The university and the high schools sometimes don’t provide enough information. But especially in your own life, choices have to be made. Where will I live, what do I want from my life, etc? In this self-reflective society youngsters get rather early independent from their parents on a personal level. But on an economic level, it is much harder to leave the house. In Finland the situation is a bit different. Students receive help from the government to live on their own and for them it’s possible to combine a part-time job with their studies. This has as a consequence that they not only are independent rather quickly, but they also study much longer than average. A third problem we recognised, was the lack of interest in policymaking and politics, although this only is the case in Belgium and Spain. In Finland most of the students are interested and are also active, mostly in regional student clubs. They are also existing in the other two countries, but they only reach few people. We think, as we said before, that students don’t feel as if they have the power to change anything. We as students feel powerless and discouraged. Furthermore we thought about the future of the civil society. Are a lot of youngsters still organised? We follow the definition of a given society by Eyerman and Jamison (Eyerman, R. & Jamison, A. , 1991): ‘Temporally public spaces and moments of collective creation that provide society with new ideas, new identities and new ideals.’ Furthermore they stress the necessity of appearance of three dimensions before one can speak of a social movement namely the cosmological, the organisational and the technical dimension. There used to be a great impact of and involvement in social movements. Nowadays we see, after a diminished interest in it, a stabilising situation. We think this is an overall feature of our society and that this counts for youngsters as well as for others. We want to specify this though for the different countries of our intercultural group. We think that in Spain the participation in these movements is again increasing, though it might only be a fashion and thus a quickly fading trend. The situation in Belgium and Finland doesn’t seem to be the same. Especially in Finland, students are very aware of the problems, but don’t organise themselves to act. The four of us don’t feel like being a member of a group, as to feel identified with one organisation or something. We don’t want to be involved during a long time in one organisation. Based on our feelings and experiences, we conclude that the future may be in the hands of action-groups. They are based on one topic and they work on a freer basis: people can participate in just one activity organised by an association and leave it at that. They don’t ask a long and intensive engagement. The last problem we found is that we see the world from the point of view of a consumer. We take in for example religion, values, etc. only the things we agree with, and leave the rest. We have so many choices and so much knowledge about alternatives nowadays, that we mix the best of all of them. We have basic rights, but people don’t have clear values anymore. Everybody chooses his own values, depending on his own thinking and arguments. The influence of post-modernism can also be recognised in the community of students.
c) Searching for solutions After identifying the problems, we started thinking about possible strategies to resolve our problems. We thought about a centre for students where they can meet and find information, about organisations for students, etc. But in the end, we concluded that all our proposals already exist. We thought for example of student-associations, political movements for youngsters, setting up an information centre, etc. We realised that we don’t use them. Why? We see the problems and we know that we have to do something. But we don’t do much because we feel powerless, we are sceptic about the possibility to change the society. Some of us think that we, especially being students of social sciences, are aware of these problems. Not only are we throughout our study confronted with them, but we are also stimulated to think and discuss about them. All the time we are learnt to be critical and to ask questions. We are taught to be open-minded, but we have doubts if this can be said for the other students and certainly for the other people in our society. Some of us are a bit sceptical about the possibility to change attitudes, while others are more optimistic. It depends of course on the kind of attitudes you are talking about. We all agree that people can be stimulated to be open-minded, to be creative, to think critically, to reflect your way of life, etc. In accordance with Schäffter, we believe it’s important to develop a critical mind. It’s another topic though if you talk about more global problems like the economical injustice between the north and the south, the environmental problems, demography, politics, etc. Not everybody believes that our little, concrete effort can change these fundamental problems. Making this paper, we held a mirror in front of us. This made us realise how difficult it is to get people participating and believing that something can change. It’s not easy to change the attitudes. Nevertheless we think it must be possible in certain situations. Especially adult education can be an important tool to change society, namely in stimulating the participants to develop a critic spirit. Maybe we were a bit too ambitious making this paper. Because we looked for problems that all students in our three countries experience, we formulated general problems. Our belief in the saying that you have to think globally, but act on a local level, is rather poor. Students can put pressure on the university to change certain things that concern students. But can students find a way to resolve more general problems? It’s possible we can, looking back at the movement of 1968. Also in Belgium and Spain students have a history in fighting for the Flemish and Catalan language. Maybe our biggest problem is our lack of faith and confidence that we can actually change anything. Maybe we are too conformist. Or maybe we are so critical and focused on the problems, we can’t see a way out anymore. We truly can’t find a way to resolve the problems mentioned. Don’t people in community education already have a realistic goal in mind before they start to work with people? Maybe we didn’t define our goals well. It could be that we first of all should have set realistic goals for ourselves. Maybe then we could have find ways to reach them. Another cause of our failing to find a solution, might be that we aren’t creative enough. We are in touch with the community, because we are part of it, but we don’t see new channels to resolve our worries. We haven’t got any bright ideas to strengthen the community of students so that they can help themselves. We haven’t got any experience in it either. On the other hand, it may very well be possible that we are too much in touch with it. Maybe we lack enough distance to see our problems and the solutions objectively. This also explains our lack of confidence, which isn’t a good motivation to work on it. Another element working against us, is the fact that this group of students isn’t a stable one. You are only a student for a few years. Maybe you leave university at the very moment that you finally have the time and maturity to truly think and act on these problems. We furthermore all study different things, which makes it impossible to say that we are a coherent group. Yes, we are a community, but are we strong enough to take action, to gather behind common problems and goals? Apparently we aren’t.
3. Conclusion We realise it’s very difficult to get people active. How do you get people interested and motivated in participating? It isn’t an easy question, even or maybe especially when it’s ourselves who we want to get participated. We ended up with more questions than we started with. Questions that we can’t answer right now. They need time and thinking.
Towards a learning organisation in Sabena Catering?
Report 4a for the module on Organisation and Management Given by Prof. Bouwen April 1999 - Montpellier
Summary We present a case-study to explain our thoughts and ideas and to work on seen theories. By doing this we make use of the forces presented by Mintzberg and the profile derived from the questionnaire VOKIPO. We also discuss and question some possible changes from the path of the learning organisation. 1. Casestudy
For our case-study we have chosen the national airport of Belgium: Sabena in Brussels. Sabena consists of several departments with a growing degree of autonomy. Each department has its own budget, often its own training-manager and specific defined goals. Some of these departments are Ground Handling, Technics, Security, Cargo, Flight Operations, Catering, Commercial and a central department for Recruitment and Training. (See picture 1) We only deal with the situation within the department of Sabena Catering, because someone of us did her apprenticeship in this department for the duration of three months. More specifically, it took place in the section of Personnel Management Catering involved with the recruitment and training within the department.
Picture 1: Organisational structure of Sabena This department is responsible for the food-production served during the flights of about 40 companies. To deal with this task the Catering employs about a thousand people. Several divisions are set up namely Finance and Cost Control, Personnel Management Catering, Quality, Sales, In-flight Equipment and maybe the most important the Catering Operations. (See picture 1) The majority of employees are working in this last section. The food-production itself, the tray setting, the delivery of the products to the plains by the drivers, the dishwashing of used Catering material and storing of Bars and Duty Free products, etc. are the most important tasks exercised in this division. This last division is the one we refer to when we are talking about the employees. Within this division several managers are responsible for the specific tasks.
2. Forces of Mintzberg and Sabena Catering To describe the organisation to the members of our intercultural group, we made use of the seven forces presented by Mintzberg (Mintzberg, 1991). We will do the same here, starting from the mission and goals of Sabena Catering. The organisation presents the mission that it wants to become a learning organisation. (See also report 1 for a description about a learning organisation) It is very difficult to define this concept, but generally following key-features appear: creating a shared vision for the future to guide and even inspire, developing an organisational capacity for renewal and self-transformation, encouraging and sustaining the learning of all members of the organisation and finally creating organisations that provide increasing satisfaction and fulfilment to all the stakeholders (Mulrooney and Pearn, 1997). We keep these features in mind when discussing about the mission of Sabena. To realise it five goals are defined namely efficiency, cost and gains, right on time delivery of products, communication and quality. We make comments according to these principles throughout the description. Is the mission realised? In the Catering the work is standardised and everybody has a clear task to work on. This is the reason we can’t speak of mutual adjustment. Consequently, there is much horizontal and vertical specialisation. Employees dealing with the same task are grouped together, which makes the grouping functional. Therefore a much-elaborated division of functions around different tasks and within these tasks is recognised throughout the company. All these divisions have a certain degree of autonomy and are led by a manager. Each manager is responsible for the quality of the execution of the tasks. Because of the division of the workplace in different sections there are few liaison devices. Boundaries between the different levels in the organisation still exist, although there is a theoretical possibility for communication and dialogue. But between managers of the Catering department itself and other departments, meetings regularly have place. From our point of view the horizontal specialisation is an important feature of a learning organisation, but the vertical structure is put down. This flat structure isn’t recognisable in the Sabena Catering. But may we put attention to the fact that Sabena Catering is already an old and also a very large company. Because of this large size and the obliging of rules from the top to the bottom, one can speak of much formalisation and bureaucracy. Another aspect of this formalisation and bureaucracy is the fact that the fulfilment of the tasks is tied to the schedules of arrivals and departures of the planes. Consequently a constant pressure of time is a part of the labour. The explained aspects until now give a clear idea of the importance of the hierarchy in the organisation. Therefore it’s not surprising that there is a wide bottom and a small top in the Catering. Actions are also planned by the top and have to be implied at the bottom. This is especially true for future actions. For example next year the construction of a new workplace will start. This idea comes from the top and is communicated to the bottom afterwards. Although the workplace will have a more open structure connected with the idea of the learning organisation, the communication about the plans is one-sided. The employees are left out. Where in the previous the autonomy of the workers is limited, sometimes, if the plane-schedules change, flexibility is asked and working in group is very important to fulfil the tasks. In these few cases they have to be able to take decisions quickly (together or individually). Linked to the aspect of flexibility we can ask the question: "Is it maybe the size of the company, which generally hinders quick change and flexibility?" The organisation is featured by a regulating technical system, which is nearly automated. Only the tray-setting is limited automated. According to this, the system is not complex. Due to the few innovations in the daily running of the organisation, we can speak of a stable environment. An adhocracy, which has mainly features of a learning organisation, deals with much training. The functions require highly specialised members of the organisation. In contrast with this, the Catering works especially with moderate to low qualified people. This is because of the content of the functions. There are many less specialised jobs. So most of these jobs demand no highly qualified skills to execute them. Therefore a little degree of training and indoctrination is noticed. Though the amount of training is increasing, it is still not a common practice. Training takes place as a result of a yearly evaluation or when a need is felt, when someone enters the organisation and when general training sessions are set up for everyone in the organisation. The growth of training should also be linked to the mission of the organisation: the concept of a learning organisation and the importance of an equal communication. The topic of training in the Catering will be more fully explained in the next paper. Within one section, the structure is simple, but because of the size of the Catering, the whole is more complex. The very elaborated hierarchical system is connected with the structure of the company and has consequences for the power, which is defined by technocratic and external control. For example the ISO-9002 quality-system is used, external flying-companies are controlling their products and the direction of Sabena verifies the products. However, as we already mentioned, the elements of innovation and training are barely present. Therefore, we can say also the changes and trends of the organisational theories are not put into practice although sometimes the top would want to. So the force of the machine-bureaucracy is the most dominant one in Sabena Catering. Though the Catering wants to become and even already presents itself as a learning organisation. It is difficult to agree with this last point at this stage of development. Even further the concept of the learning organisation recognised in the force of adhocracy of Mintzberg and the main force of the Catering are almost the opposite. The concept of the learning organisation is very popular nowadays and has an important impact to today’s organisational contexts. Maybe that is the reason why Sabena Catering wants to present itself into these terms. But Sabena Catering isn’t the only organisation who does this. In report 1 we already made comparable comments on the presentation of France Telecom as a learning organisation.
3. The questionnaire VOKIPO and Sabena Catering
Picture 2: Profile of the organisational climate The profile resulting from the answers on the VOKIPO questionnaire, which gives an idea of the organisational climate, shows a few remarkable features (See picture 2). A strong tendency to respect of rules is found. This is very clear in answers as ‘imposed rules and regulations are generally important here’, ‘not living up to the rules is always penalised’, ‘everyone can find in the regulations what he has to do’. The aspect of innovation forms the opposite of the respect for rules. Out of the picture emerges a negative score on innovation in questions like ‘not thinking ahead is seen by some here to be a serious defect’, ‘some in the management attach a great deal of importance to the results of scientific research’. Though a remark could be made here: with respect to this topic of innovation, a difference between the top and the bottom was noticed while filling in the questionnaire. On the one hand the top is urged to think ahead, to survive and to compete with especially other flying-companies and airports. Therefore organisational theories are taken into account. This aspect has become really important for Sabena since it turned into a private organisation a few years ago. The main reason for it is formed by the losses Sabena made as a governmental organisation. Right now making profit is the main goal and fashionable theories as the one of the learning organisation have a great influence. On the other hand the employees only imply the decisions made by the top and they don’t participate in management and planning meetings. The results on the second dimension of the questionnaire are not that extreme. A moderate goal oriented information flow is recognisable in for example the following answers: ‘the work is always well organised here’, ‘decisions from above are passed on to everyone so that they can easily adapt them to their work’, ‘before beginning a job, people here never think first about how it most be done’. With regard to the last answer the people working on the bottom are taking into account. We already mentioned they have less specialised functions with a repetitive character. The fourth aspect refers to the support given within and by the company to the employees. Helping others with problems is permitted, but often a lack of time hinders the action. Though almost always a willing person is found if someone wants to change his working-schedule. Many feel they belong to the group, but the association between people from different levels is never congenial. However it is too generalised to say the association between levels is never congenial, because the possibility to communicate exists, but it is not common practice. We want to remark that this picture is based on the experiences of someone who did her apprenticeship in this organisation for the duration of three months. This period is a relatively short to get a thorough view of such a big company. Furthermore the picture resulting out of this questionnaire is normally a mean of several employees of a company. Here the profile of the organisation is based on the answers of only one person.
4. The Sabena Catering and the learning organisation
Some employees and especially managers, of the organisation probably won’t be so happy with the emerging profile, because they like to call it a learning organisation. This concept is very fashionable nowadays in organisational theories. With the given description of Sabena Catering, one can easily put some questions to the mission. We already mentioned key-features of a learning organisation and from our point of view we want to add some connectable elements to reach this kind of organisation. We focus on aspects as innovation, flexibility, horizontal structure, open communication, teamwork often around specific projects, etc. We don’t want to say none of these aspects are realised in the Catering. They are working on some of them, but it is still the initial stage. To become a learning organisation there is more needed than an open workplace, as it will be constructed in the future in the Catering, and than stress on the improvement of the quality of the delivered products. First of all, the horizontal structure should be put into practice. To realise this the management at the top has to start by changing their attitudes and acting as an example. As long as the hierarchical structure exists, change can hardly be obtained. Furthermore the open and two-sided communication, which is only a theoretical possibility now, will stay so if the flat structure is just an idea. The company has to keep that in mind. Such a change in organisational culture takes time and needs more than saying what you want to become. Therefore, we think it is not right to call the Catering at the moment a learning organisation. However, is it possible for the organisation to become a learning organisation and is it even desirable to change into it? In current organisational approaches, this concept is thought of as the ideal one. However, is this true for all kind of organisations? First we deal with the question of desirability. Is it necessary for an organisation with minor changes in the contents of the tasks to be a learning organisation? Is this ideal favourable for an organisation as Sabena Catering? The Catering in our opinion doesn’t ask for much training and continuous education, because of the kind of tasks, which have to be fulfilled. So we don’t stress on the aspect of the sustaining of the learning of the members of the organisation and the capacity for renewal and transformation of the company. Furthermore the Catering isn’t a ‘normal’ organisation with working hours between 7 and 6. Whole day long, everyday of the year the company works and different workgroups are set up to realise this. So employees are not always working together with the same people. Therefore we thought it would be more interesting to change the culture of working. So don’t stress on the quantity of training, but for example on the open and two-sided communication, the same working clothes within the company to express the satisfaction between all the employees, etc. We focus on some features of the learning organisation namely the shared vision and the increasing satisfaction and fulfilment to all the stakeholders, instead of every aspect of an learning organisation. To realise this suggestion the adult educator can fulfil an important role. He can do this as an external consultant or as a training-responsible within the company. To comment on the question of possibility, we want to refer to the organisation of the field-visit. The little software company could be seen as a learning organisation. We recognise characteristics of it in the fact that almost all employees are highly qualified. They have to follow up all changes in the field of high-technology. The mission is defined in collaboration with all the employees and the clients. The bookkeeping is open to every employee. All the gains are equally divided over the employees. So it is not impossible to realise a learning organisation, but this software company differs on several aspects from the Sabena Catering. The Catering employs especially moderate to low-qualified people mostly persons with a secondary high school degree. Though often the idea of a learning organisation is applied to an example of a company with highly specialised functions. In the world of technology the tasks are subjects to change, but within the Catering tasks mostly have the feature of repetition in. The work-fields strongly differ from each other. A third element we can mention in this regard, is the size of the organisation. This software company gives work to 50 people. This makes a great difference with the 1000 people working in the Catering. Maybe it are these differences who make it possible to develop into a learning organisation for example because highly qualified people have often specifically learned to communicate their point of views to others, while low-qualified people are often used to follow up orders. Other elements are the openness of the top to listen to what the workers have to say and think, to realise this, communication-channels have to be present. To put the mission in practice something has to be changed and again the role of the adult educator comes to the forefront. From our point of view he should be an intermediary between the management and the employees. The adult educator deals with different people and he should foresee their possible resistance to change. His main task is to stimulate them to act in actual and new situations. This also counts for the Personnel Manager and recruitment and Training Officer in Sabena Catering.
5. Conclusions
We can’t answer the question: "Should the Catering change into a learning organisation?" But if they truly want to, they should first of all work on the culture of the organisation. In today’s society the aspect of communication and the way of decision-making is very important and this also counts for the organisations within it. As we already said to describe a mission and afterwards to realise it, takes time. In the software company of the field-visit it took one year and a half to define their mission. Instead of calling themselves already a learning organisation, the Catering should first work on realising it. What an organisation really looks like still is more important than the way they nominate themselves. It’s not possible to hold up a presentation of oneself if it doesn’t fit to reality. Still much work has to be done and with regard to the culture we think it should be done. At the end it all stays the same, the final goal will always be to make as much profit as possible. This counts also for Sabena in general. Will Sabena Catering succeed to realise their mission? It is an open question and the answer can only be found in the future.
Towards an excellent training-process in Sabena Catering?
Report 4b for the module on Labour Management and Organisation Given by Prof. Pineda and Prof. Hebrard April 1999 - Montpellier
Summary The aspects related to the training-process, the planning of training and the conception and policy of training are again described and commented by using the case-study of Sabena Catering.
1. Introduction Nowadays the labour-world changes fast. The organisational way of doing has changed more in the last fifteen years than during the last centuries. The most important reason for this has been the ‘Boom’ of new technology. As a result of this, organisational culture has to change too. Another influencing aspect is the globalisation, which can be recognised for example in the economical borders between countries becoming more open. On the other hand within companies the structure becomes more decentralised and the importance to invest in the workers grows. Because of that, only the companies who can adapt to these changes and who can almost predict them will survive. High quality has to be delivered and therefore several exigencies and ideas of efficiency are taken into account. Training is a relevant tool to respond that goal and to be competitive and innovative. This increases the importance of the role of the adult educator. To make this clear we develop the case-study of Sabena Catering further in this paper.
2. The training process in Sabena Catering Sabena Catering employs one thousand people. The organising of training is a task of the Personnel Management Division. The final decision to set up training is taken by the Personnel Manager and realised by the Training and Recruitment Officer. He is the only person who is really involved in training. This person communicates regularly with every division manager and the employees. In the following we present all possible reasons to set up training and link it to the situation in the Catering. In Sabena Catering only employees are recruited who fulfil the required standards for the future function. Some of these standards are experiences out of future jobs, knowledge of foreign languages and the medical examination. This means no people are hired if they need extra training before they can start to work. This is understandable because almost all these functions are low qualified ones. With regard to the recruitment, we remark that people have a probation time of two weeks at the start of their career: within this period the worker or the manager can end the contract at any moment. Often three to four temporary contracts (each time of three months) are given to the employees before they receive a contract for an undefined period of time. The reason for this is the high amount of coming and going of people connected with the increasing production at certain moments of the year. If necessary during their career, training is organised by the Personnel Management Division of the Catering. Reasons to set up or follow training are the identified needs, the personal wish to promote, technological and structural changes. Needs are identified within the evaluation interviews e.g. a lack of communication skills for the dispatchers who have to receive and answer telephone-calls about flight-schedules. Such an interview takes place on a yearly basis or every time a temporary contract can be prolonged. Promotion can also be a reason to follow training. But the employee, who wants to promote, has to take up some courses and fulfil the required standards on his own responsibility. The organisation normally doesn’t interfere in these cases. Another reason to start training is formed by a change in technology, but during the apprenticeship no such changes came up. Though we can imagine training will be organised in the involved division when for example a new industrial dishwasher is introduced. Because of unforeseen events, the planned structural changes to construct a new, more openly organised building especially for the Catering Operation Division, did not go through. Nevertheless information sessions and training are planned.
3. Planning of training In this paragraph we will first talk about the close connection between the concepts of organisational culture, organisational strategic plan, training-plan and cost effectiveness. We use the scheme as presented in class. We already explained some of the organisational culture within Sabena Catering in the previous paper. This concept is about the values, ideas, beliefs, etc. of the company. The main mission of the company is to develop towards a learning organisation. Though it already wants to present itself as one, they are not a learning organisation yet. A few reasons for this could be the size of the company, the elaborated hierarchical structure of the department, the mainly one-sided communication in important decisions, the high amount of low-qualified functions and the frequent coming and going of people. The organisational culture and the aspect of organisational strategic plan determinate each other. The organisational strategic plan is formed by five goals symbolised by a hand: efficiency, costs and gains, communication, right on time delivery of products and quality. These aims aren’t common knowledge among the employees. Only at the first contact with the company, these aims are rapidly mentioned. On the one hand the training-plan is used as a tool to achieve these goals and on the other hand the organisational culture and the training plan are influencing each other. The main question with regard to this influence is the following: "Is training only about spending money or is it seen as a way to achieve more success?" The designing of the training-plan is the responsibility of the Training and Recruitment Officer. We explain this concept of the training-plan more deeply later on. The fourth concept that can be connected with the previous ones is the cost effectiveness. Every company has a final direction towards benefits. As we already said Sabena has become a private organisation and since that making profit is even more important. (See report 4a) The organisational culture and the organisational strategic plan are tending to or should tend to this aspect of cost effectiveness, while the training-plan is used as an important instrument to gain this profit. All the presented concepts have an important influence on the development of the training-plan. But before one can design it several steps have to be gone through. First of all, to set up a training-plan one has to know the needs of the employees. Therefore a yearly interview by questionnaire takes place. Every manager uses the questionnaire to interview the workers and together with them come up with training-needs. But it is also possible that the workers or the managers by themselves notice problems in the workplace. The employee and each manager define together the training-needs. The communication between the top and the bottom is mostly one-sided, but they try to be more two-sided. The evaluation of the training-needs is one example of it and also the decision of the training-aims as an answer to the needs. If the manager and the employee don’t agree about the course he has to follow or they just don’t find an appropriate one, they can ask for help to Personnel Management Division who has the last word. The Personnel Manager has to give his agree for the course before it can be organised. When reached this phase the Personnel Management Division can start to construct the yearly training-plan. During the year many training courses can be added, though. In that way, we can say that the system is quite flexible. Ones the training-plan is clear, one can go on to really plan the training activities. This isn’t too difficult, because most training courses are very short, from one hour to two days. For example when people are recruited a video of one hour with all the information about the company is shown to them. Another one is the fact that when people are hired, they receive an explanation of some general security principles. To evaluate each course all the participating employees have to fill in an evaluation questionnaire about the course. The questions are very general: how they liked the course, if it answered their needs, if it dealt with their expectations, if they liked the way of doing of the trainers, etc. There is also a continuous evaluation of the training-process done by the Personnel Management Division. In that way a post-evaluation to search for remaining problems takes place, but in an informal manner. This can be noticed in the fact the Training and Recruitment Officer is always reachable for employees and managers and he walks regularly through the workplace to increase the personal contact.
To analyse the kind of training Sabena Catering is doing, we will follow the theory given in class about the four paradigms that show you how the company sees training. The first one ‘competence development’ sees training as an investment and as a development. This is the best one to use if your goal is to innovate and to be competitive. Before a need is defined, you do training to develop. Training is used in a proactive way. In Sabena Catering only managers receive this kind of training e.g. the structural changes within the organisation, like some aspects of the realisation of the mission to become a learning organisation, are only thoroughly discussed amongst them and afterwards communicated to the employees. The second one ‘improvement’ sees training as an expense and as a development. All employees participate to this kind of training, but not everybody needs it. That’s why this paradigm is a cost. In Sabena Catering they have for instance the back-protection-project. All the workers have to take part in the course, even if they don’t have any complaints about aches in their back. For them this course could be seen as a prevention and therefore as a type of competence development. Although this doesn’t fit with the main reason to start the program which were the high degree of absence because of back-problems and the complaints about it. ‘Adaptation to the job’ explains training as an expense and as an adaptation to the job. This kind of training is organised after a change and has the purpose to put a solution to a problem. It is seen as the worst conception of training, because it works in a reactive way. In Sabena Catering this is the one that is used the most. For example the yearly evaluation interviews ask for experienced needs as language problems, lack of computer-using-skills, etc. and only when these kind of needs are defined, training is organised. The fourth one ‘promotion’ talks about training as an investment and as an adaptation and has as main goal to receive promotion at your work place. The Catering doesn’t have this kind of training. If an employee wants to get promoted, he has to achieve the required standards for the desired function himself. Even in case the company is willing to pay for it, this training doesn’t take place during working hours. For example to become a foreman one has to be able to communicate in Dutch, French and sometimes English. Language-courses are not organised within the company and so one has to look for it in an external organisation. We may conclude Sabena Catering wants to see training as a development and investment in accordance with the mission of becoming a learning organisation. Though they still use most of the organised training as an expense and an adaptation. For further comments on the desirability and possibility for the company to become a learning organisation we refer to the previous paper.
5. Conclusion Sabena Catering and training was the central topic of this paper. We made some comments to the training process within the company. Maybe most of them can be explained by the lack of staff. One person who is responsible for the recruitment and training of one thousand people is too little. This is for sure when we take into account the increasing importance of training in overall society and also in the Catering. A few months ago a new Personnel Manager was appointed and maybe things will change for the good in the near future.
Towards a new social policy model Report 5 for the module on Policy of Adult Education Given by Prof. Lima and Prof. Wildemeersch April 1999 - Montpellier Summary After giving our view on the two policy-models, we take the original concept of Faure of lifelong education as a start point to search for contradictions with them in actual policies. We end with giving our view on future social policy.
1. The two policy-models The two models of social policy have been the main topic of this module. We saw many descriptions and we often worked with them. Therefore we want to describe the image of these models as we developed them during these four days of class. We connect the social democratic model to the building of the welfare state after WWII. It’s a product of modern times in which policymakers believed that the state had an important role to play in preventing any further wars and in rebuilding the country by emancipating the people. The social democratic model is based on the idea that the state has to intervene. It has to build structures so that her citizens have equal opportunities to make use of the provision of formal education. Griffin (Griffin) calls this model reductionist, mostly because the concept of ‘learning’ is seen in a narrow way, namely as learning in educational settings. This means that the state has to take responsibility for these educational settings and that they have to control them. They believe that learning this way can be measured. Griffin proves this by referring to their concept of the learning society. This is for social democratics shown in ‘mathematical’ studies about adult participation. They don’t interpret the data, but they only look at the numbers which can, according to Griffin, only indicate if a society is better educated and trained or not. The neo-liberal model is put at the opposite side of the social democratic model. We feel that it’s born more out of today’s post-modern society with concerns as globalisation, individualisation and the economical market that rules everything. This model stresses the individual freedom and the competitiveness that they see as essential in today’s market ruled world. They therefore ask a much more permissive role of the state. It’s up to the individual to prove himself and to make something of his life. People have to get used to learning as a part of their life and their fulfilment. It’s not the state who has to control and regulate this. They talk about learning as an important individual and social function, which you don’t necessarily reach through organised education. Let the market organise learning and the people to consume out of the offerings. These consumers have the most important role to play in choosing certain courses, in integrating the learning and in giving meaning to it. The state has its duty to fulfil in stimulating people and realising the necessary conditions for the market to play. Although we here stress the differences between these two models, we experienced that they also have common grounds. Reflecting about discourse and practice, we immediately felt the vague borders between them. Thinking for example about politics in our countries, we noticed that the different government-parties move towards each other. Also in having to defend or chose a certain model, we felt the importance of power. In order to have power and to change something, politicians turn themselves very easily towards the opinion of their voters. And since the economy plays such an important role today, social democratics have to move towards a more liberal point of view. The liberals from their side have to present less radical statements, or the voters won’t trust them. Social security is still a right in most European countries, which can’t be touched easily.
2. Paradoxes and contradictions Global economy, changes within technology, competition and qualifications influence the social policy in adult education. The principle of the human capital theory is often followed. (Soobryan, B.) This theory claims that if one stresses on high skills, the productivity will increase and furthermore the economical growth will be greater. Finally the entire population will profit from it. By using this principle, the basic ideas of Faure (Boshier, R.) are easily forgotten and put aside. His idea to realise a learning society connects three concepts, namely vertical and horizontal integration and democratisation. Though these concepts are used to speak about lifelong education, we want to see them in a broader way. With the framework, we refer to lifelong learning. The first concept deals with vertical integration and refers to the life-span aspect of learning. Learning throughout your life is the aim. Horizontal integration stresses the need to learn in in-formal, non-formal and formal settings. What counts is what is learned, not where it was learned. Though to realise the principle of a learning society, it's also important to work on the democratisation. Everybody should have the possibility to learn and learners should be involved in designing and managing their learning process. We want to examine some actual policies from the point of Faures original concept of lifelong education. In South Africa (Soobryan, B.) one stresses on lifelong learning to solve racism and differences in social class, but a few comments could be made on it. The formal education is very important, so we can conclude that only one aspect of the horizontal integration is practised. Disadvantaged persons and people who are not participating in this system are forgotten, so the aim of democratisation isn't reached. Learning throughout life is for these reasons only possible for high-qualified or privileged persons. Another example we want to describe, is the commonly used concept of the learning organisation. From the point of the individual employee, learning hasn't always the same meaning (Hake, B. J.). It makes a difference if you belong to the core of a company or if you are just a temporarily employee who's specialised in a certain topic. Organisations with high-skilled employees expect these flexible workers to be experts in their field, without having to invest time and money in training for them. So they can't follow training during working-hours, although learning is an essential element for their job. The horizontal integration therefore isn't fully realised. With regard to the concept of democratisation, we can criticise the fact that not everybody can enter the company. If you don't fulfil the required qualifications or the ability to learn, access is denied. These examples show that education is often used to reach many purposes, like improving the socio-economic situation. Doing this, they often change the meaning of the concept as meant by Faure. They also teach us though that education isn't enough to resolve these problems. We need a broader conceptualisation of learning within this post-modern society. Learning has to be considered as a part of individual and social life. Therefore values, attitudes and habits have to change. We recognise a gap between the discourse stressing the wellbeing of humans and the implementation in daily life. In the end coping with competition and being effective seems to be the main goal.
3. The future We don't think either one of the presented models is appropriate, but we find a possible solution with Collin Griffin (Griffin). The model that stresses learning, instead of education, which can be a subject of social policy seems to be the most challenging one. Within this model, the individual has enough freedom and independence to learn. The model therefore is adapted to the post-modern society in which individuals have to take responsibility for their lives. At the same time, the state can develop a policy in protecting the consumers, while still giving the opportunity to the market to play its role. It's up to the state to make sure that all citizens have the same chances to learn and to stimulate people to use them. This model can easily be connected to individualised and self-directed learning. These two attitudes give enough freedom to the individual, while the state can play an important role in providing enough possibilities for them. She can for example organise the mentorship, especially for disadvantaged groups.
4. Conclusion At the end, we question though what changes policy. Are it the politicians, the voters, the market, certain events or a combination of these forces? Different people are involved with their own point of view. And of course another problem emerges when these bright ideas have to be put in practice. We can refer here to the Belgian Prof. Delmartino, who once said that the process of a policy-proposition becoming a law, can be compared to a sheep turning into a camel.
Towards qualitative adult education
Report 6 for the module on the Foundations of Adult Education Given by Prof. Nurmi and Prof. Mulder April 1999 - Montpellier Summary We focused on the theme of quality assessment. We approached it by the common module of agogical action and the discussion about ethical code. 1. Introduction Nowadays quality is a fashionable and important concept in our society. Every process and every delivered product has to require certain standards. This counts also for the field of adult education. When can we say something is high quality? Which standards should be fulfilled? How can the idea of a quality-system be realised in practice? There exist already different quality-systems such as ISO-9000 and CEDEO-EFQM. It is not clear if we can use one of these in the field of adult education. Instead of using such a general quality-system, we refer to the common model of agogical action. We also examine the possibility to set up an ethical code as another tool to improve quality in adult education.
2. Common model of agogical action A first method to try and define quality in adult education, is given by the common model of agogical action. Prof. Mulder (Mulder, 1999) states that this model can be used as a framework to reflect on the quality of the agogical practice. One can examine if the three dimensions are recognised. This means that the concrete problem of the clients must not only be solved, but in the mean time the clients should also build up competencies to act. The third dimension concerns the societal conditions and processes. Prof. Mulder stresses this last dimension, because influencing the broader environment is often forgotten, he says. This is nevertheless exactly the specific characteristic of agogical action, in comparison with for example giving a course to learn the mechanisms of an engine. We wanted to examine if this model can be used in every field of adult education. Isn’t it too broad? We tried it out on two different practices of adult education. We spontaneously felt that community work could be the field of adult education that fits best with the given agogical model. A community worker helps a group of people to define their collective needs and to collectively search for solutions. He guides them towards this solution, which means that by working on the needs, he learns them skills like communicating in a meeting, searching for strategies, making contact with the authorities, etc. It is the main goal to learn people how to help themselves. Returning to our model of agogical action, we can say that it’s obvious that a community worker indeed works on the solving of a concrete problem and that his clients build competencies to act. It’s also an explicit goal of this field of adult education to end up with durable results, which may be a new service to improve the communication between the public services and this collective. It’s important for them to create a link between their clients and the authorities. They certainly want to influence societal conditions and processes. By doing this, certain measurements were realised and even institutionalised on a national level. On a superficial level, the quality of community work therefore can be measured through this model. But isn’t this model too general? Since these three dimensions can also be seen as the characteristics of community work. Probably every project contains these three dimensions. There may be a difference though in the divisions of these dimensions while the model expects them to be equally present. But even so, there are more important questions to ask if you want to examine the quality. It’s for example important to examine who defined the problem and the solution. Is the focused problem really the collective problem this group experiences most? It may very well be possible that the community worker pushed them in a certain direction, because this sounded best in the ears of the subsidising government. Especially concerning the obtained solutions, it’s very important to ask the participants for their opinion. If it was their problem, it should be subject of research if this is for them a satisfying solution. It is nevertheless possible that it isn’t the solution they originally wanted, but that they had to compromise. Community work, as every agogical action, is depending on the social context it is living in. It’s not only their task to influence societal conditions, but they are at the same time a result of these conditions. How can you take this into account? The model therefore is, in the way it is presented to us, quite vague. Who uses this model to reflect on quality? It may be an instrument for a yearly evaluation of the project in the organisation itself. Colleagues know the context and they have a chance to know the opinion of the clients. They can honestly fill in the three dimensions. It’s not so easy for the government though. This model, in this presented way, is too broad to put a true light on a project. More information is needed to truly get a good picture of the three dimensions. How this can be done, is another, difficult question. How can you for example know the opinion of all the clients? We took a totally different field as a second case: labour management. Could we use this model to reflect on the work of the adult educator responsible for training in a company? We can see that it’s theoretically possible to have those three dimensions. The manager for training and development meets employees who have a certain learning-need. He helps them defining their needs and searching for the appropriate training. While doing this, he learns them developing the capacity to think about their training-needs and to define them correctly. Within the company, the adult educator can raise attention for existing conditions and processes that influence the employees. He can for example make the culture of the company explicit, so managers can work consciously on it. But also outside the company, the adult educator can for example raise awareness of the working conditions. In general we therefore believe that these three dimensions can be recognised also in the agogical action in labour organisations. Though we have again difficulties with the broad examining. Especially for this field, it’s important to question the influence of the management. Being an employee himself, it’s not so easy for the adult educator to find a good position between the management and the employees. It may be difficult to say who defines the training-needs and certainly the capacities built up. Does the employee himself define his learning-needs or his foreman or the management for all the company? It’s not quite clear. The solution given is as logically as vague. For who is this training a solution? How will this be measured? Can you just look at the different behaviour of the employee or must his feeling be taken into account or both of them? The same problems arise concerning the adequate competencies that the clients have to build up. It’s for example not evident that every management wants to give their personnel the time and the room to develop these skills to define their own training-needs. As in community work, we therefore have to say that agogical action has to take into account his environment. Is it really poor agogical action, if the management doesn’t give enough time or enough staff to fully train the workers? If you from the beginning refuse working in situations where you can not accomplish these three dimensions, don’t you miss out on a lot of people? So we can’t fully agree with Prof. Mulder that agogical action is logically poor, if it doesn’t work on the societal conditions. We believe that you also have to consider the context. The model of agogical action does offer a framework for quality measurement. But it’s only a framework that has to be made more concrete, according to the field and the context. We especially think that in every reflection on quality, the opinion of the participants is the most important one. Reality shows however that they are the most forgotten. This is understandable, because it’s not easy to truly have a good evaluation from the participants.
3. The possibility of an ethical code In the light of quality, we examine if setting up an ethical code for adult educators would be helpful. An important question concerns the form of this ethical code. The ethical code has to be broad enough so that it gives enough freedom to the educators. The code has to be adaptable to all sorts of situations. It can’t be senseless though. It can not be used for the wrong purposes. This ethical code must consist of the main idea of the profession. It may for example state that adult education has to help people to realise themselves. Besides a global idea, some more concrete remarks have to be made for example concerning the relation of trust between the adult educator and the client. We don’t believe a code must be like some sort of job-description. A code shouldn’t give a list of the things an adult educator has to do, but should focus more on the manner in which he should do them. An adult educator should for example work from the attitudes of self-directed and individualised learning. An ethical code has to reflect on the responsibilities and on the basic values and norms for all adult educators. At the same time, it should also declare their rights. That way, it’s possible that the core of the ethical code would be the same in the European countries. The concrete remarks may differ though, since the boundaries of adult education are quite different in each country. Formulating an ethical code may be useful, since almost everybody from all kind of profession can be an adult educator these days. In the better cases they need to do a short training-course. An ethical code can help to define our profession. People then may realise that they need more skills and training to become an adult educator. On the other hand, it can in the profession itself be used as a tool. Colleagues, organisations and the government can use to refer to it. It may not though become a sort of excuse. It should give a basic idea of quality. Defining quality is extremely difficult especially if you are confronted with complex situations in which a lot of people are involved. They all have their own ideas and interests at heart. It’s therefore necessary that this ethical code is the result of a dialogue between government, researchers, practitioners and learners depending on their field and profession. We all know it is not easy to define this ethical code and it isn’t going to be ready in one month, but we think that it is possible with the co-operation of all the partners implicated and with dialogue. Finally we want to add that we stress the point of redefinition. There has to be the possibility to discuss this code over again and adapt it to new situations. It is crucial to update the code regularly. It can not be like in e.g. medicine, where the code lag behind practice.
4. Conclusion Talking about quality and ethical codes, we notice that these ideas are not so easily transferable to the practice. Questions as: "What is quality?" and "What should be the content of an ethical code?" receive different answers depending on who is responding. Answers should result out of a dialogue between several concerned groups as there are the adult educators themselves, the participants of their programs, the involved organisations and the government. Each of them represents another point of view and acts out of his own relationships with the other parties. We can never exclude the human and interpersonal aspect out of this discussion. It will always interfere, if we want it or not. Furthermore we have doubts making use of quantitative measures as in ISO-9000 in human resources. We tend to refer to feelings of satisfaction of those involved. We realise how hard is to define the quality of adult education. We shouldn’t forget though that it’s a human resource. People are from start to finish involved in this process. The norm ‘high quality’ should therefore serve the life of people first. In the end, quality must only be a tool of adult education in their aiming for more important goals.
General reflections and conclusions
Reflection on the content of the Program of Adult Education in Europe Summary We present two main ideas in our conclusion. We reflect on the relevance of adult education in lifelong learning. Secondly our critical attitude towards adult education and how to deal with this is spoken. We end this paper with each writing a personnel reflection. Qui connaît la route… Looking back on our reports, we notice we often start reflecting from the point of the participant. This is especially expressed in our concern for the two attitudes of individualised and self-directed learning. We believe that these attitudes should be stimulated more in every field of adult education. Since the learner is the one who has the responsibility to construct his own learning-process, it’s clear that he has to be motivated and willing. Learning can only be effective, when you can give meaning to it. We therefore consider it a very important task of adult education to help people realising themselves. Especially nowadays when lifelong learning becomes more important, adult education has to take the participants as a reference. Everybody will be confronted with the aspect of learning throughout his life and his occupations. Probably people will change jobs quite often, while on the other hand the relevance of leisure time will increase. Within the actual process of individualisation, adult education should support the unique path of each person by among others fulfilling the role of a mentor. This may sound as if we forget the social aspect in adult education. But of course we know the individual lives in a society, which influences him strongly. The human kind is a social being who only exists in terms of its relationships with others. We agree with Prof. Nurmi (Nurmi, 1999) when he states: « If we accept the social nature of human beings, the concept of self-realisation will include a social context: the realisation of ourselves in a society with culture held together by joint values or value-expressions. » We consider the social connections as another point of reference within adult education. Its role should be stimulating people to broaden their views and ideas. This is in accordance with the theory of Prof. Schäffter (Schäffter, 1999) who claims that people have to conquer strangeness, in the sense of getting in touch with a variety of persons and knowledge. A second purpose of adult education in the social context is the societal balance. Helping to avoid a dual society is very essential, especially with regard to lifelong learning. It’s imaginable that there will grow a gap between those groups who have knowledge, who are willing and able to learn, who have enough possibilities and those who lack these characteristics. Adult education has to give special attention to this last group of disadvantaged people. Adult educators not only have to help them directly, but also put the topic on the political agenda, as Prof. Mulder (Mulder, 1999) stresses. We also see the urgent need to take these disadvantaged persons into account in labour organisations. Often high-qualified workers in management functions are focused in labour organisation and training. Though we shouldn’t forget that the majority doesn’t belong to these two extremes. We also want to remark the difference between reaching employees and forcing them. The adult educator in labour organisations can be an interesting link between the management and the employees. By always taking the last ones as a reference, adult educators can tune the wishes and exigencies of the management to the possibilities and needs of the employees. Though we realise being an intermediary isn’t evident. Working with persons who have different interests, complicates the situation. That’s why it’s hard to define when high quality is delivered. Every party has its own point of view and this influences the evaluation. In the future the aspect of quality will become more important. Especially as the actual trend of examining what subsidies are used for, will continue. We think though that the quality of adult education can only be discussed in a dialogue between the involved parties. In the end we believe that every evaluation should start from the benefits for and seen by the participants. Nevertheless we stress that the core of adult education, and so the quality of it, can’t only be judged by the participants. The whole of aspects as the individual and social reference, the concept of lifelong learning, etc. must be taken into account. The discussion about the determining elements is still going on. What exactly is adult education? It first of all depends on the situation and context. The degree of motivation of the participants makes for example a difference. Also amongst educators themselves, different opinions exist. Working in various fields, adult educators can give a different meaning to it. Further there’s no correspondence between countries about adult education, as we noticed in this program. It’s urgent to clarify the concept, without resulting in a strict definition. As we explained in our report on the foundations, we prefer a global frame. This can be used to differentiate us from other professions. Everyone can actually call himself an adult educator. Therefore it isn’t surprising that the outer world hasn’t got a clear idea of our study and profession. We as students have a clear view on the content of our study. But the profession itself raises also with us many questions. We experience a gap between our theoretical study and concrete situations that have to be dealt with in practice. Confronted with realistic problems, we need to get more knowledge and background on the specific topic, before approaching it with the seen frameworks. This has to result in achievable and fitting solutions. At this moment though we still fulfil the role of being students. This allows us to ask questions and to be critical. Nothing has to be taken for granted and no professional choices have to be made. This can be recognised in our reports, where we often ended up with more questions than we started with. We ourselves were surprised of the pessimistic and mistrusting attitude sounding trough our thoughts and words. We even felt uncomfortable with it, because it doesn’t really express who we are and what we feel. Because of our lack in practical experience, we are uncertain to decide what is good and bad in a given situation. Nevertheless this doesn’t mean that we fear being an adult educator. We not only believe in the support of our future colleagues, but mainly in ourselves and in the relevance of our study. Maybe this attitude is a result of the post-modern times we are living in. But it doesn’t hinder us to take action and to realise ourselves. Finally we see this as the main goal of adult education: helping people to realise themselves within the basic human rights. It’s a challenge for every adult educator to respect the wishes of the involved people, while stimulating them to overcome more parts of strangeness. Nobody knows what future has to offer though. It’s uncertain what society will ask of our field and what we are prepared to give. Also adult education has to realise itself. So again we are asking: ‘Qui connaît la route…’
Personal reflection on the program Outi Aitio For me the future is still behind a closed door. Like this paper of our group also my head is full of questions. I have been studying the science of adult education since three years now. I have also some studies from the fields of social psychology, work psychology, education and political science. And I’m still willing to study philosophy. Why so many subjects? Why not just graduate as quickly as possible and start to work and earn money and so on? For me these studies are a way to grow up and have recourses to control life, not only a way to have a good job. Rich life-experiences gathered during studies are at least as important as reading books, for me. I believe that this is the best way for me to find the answers. This AEE-program is a good example. It has given me more answers than I could have believed. I realise how different aspects adult education includes and what are the possibilities from an international perspective. I got some ideas for my Master’s thesis and now I can concentrate on it in my studies. I’m again one step closer up the futures door. Now it is easier to see myself as an adult educator. An adult educator who is still considering her career…
Adelina Garcia From my point of view I think it is a great experience being in this program. For me working in intercultural groups have been one of the most important experiences in this program because it gives you the opportunity to really know different points of view from students of different countries. We could talk, think, discuss and reflect together. We have learned a lot from each other. Now we have new colleagues to work with in the future. We were so much pessimistic when we discuss about how to change attitudes and how to make people more participants in the society. We felt powerless. However it is necessary to believe that we can achieve it. We arrived to the conclusion it is only possible to act in a local level and you can not work globally. Nevertheless for me this is a starting point. It is important to have a general knowledge, but you have to work in a local level. Now, for instance, in Spain we have a problem. Services in our University are becoming private that means for us the beginning of privatising the Public University. I can see students reacting to this. They fight for their rights, because they are motivated to do it. Maybe some actions are not correct enough, but they participate to change things, they don't conform. Innovation can go from the bottom to the top and not only from the top to the bottom. Some social movements like ecologist movements started from the bottom and change the way of thinking of the society. We have to believe in a utopia, it has to be our goal. It is possible that we never achieve it, but all the way we walk is better than nothing is. We are the future, we are a part of this society and I am sure that we can change things. As well I know it is not easy and it takes time and thinking. Also considering we need more knowledge and experience. But we have the energy to achieve it. "Think globally, act locally".
Anne Mariën Graduating in a few months, I think this program is a perfect ending of my study of social pedagogics. I’m quite pleased to say I wasn’t confronted with many new thoughts and theories during these courses. This just means to me that I built up a sound, basic knowledge. The program was nevertheless interesting because we not only reviewed the different fields and aspects of adult education, but we got a chance to truly reflect on the different topics. It was quite a challenge to process each module and to critically reflect on it. Handing in an interesting report on Friday was often hard and stressing. I had of course the support of my team-mates. Working with students from different countries who have their own habits, experiences and points of view was just like driving a car in France: surprising. I feel ready to go home now and to move on. For me that means continue studying, criminology. I hope it will be as fulfilling as studying social pedagogics. I hope to realise another part of myself, though with this pedagogical study as a filled backpack, supporting and providing me.
Liesbet Wouters Together with the termination of the program of Adult Education in Europe comes my study of Social Pedagogics to an end. During my study I was confronted with many theories and also the AEE-program contained some topics I didn’t know much about. For example the module on community education and on policy of adult education. Though others weren’t really new to me such as the one on labour and education, on organisation and management and on communication and new technologies. The main reason for this is the fact that during my study some courses already dealt with them, but also because my apprenticeship took place in a profit organisation. The program experimented this year with another kind of assessment. The way of working within the intercultural groups set up in this regard, wasn’t new to me. In Leuven I already have been a member of two projectgroups. Though the innovative aspect now was the co-operation between students from different countries. I especially have learnt something about the way things are working in these countries and which specific topics are stressed. But because of the different language-skills, the communication was often hindered. Next to this the working-proces was sometimes hard due to the difference in critical thinking. Though I have learnt to combine divers points of view and to be patient from time to time. I look back with a feeling of contentedness to this program. On the one hand, because our paper is almost finished and I know the result contains our ideas and insights. It isn’t a summary of what we have seen in classes. On the other hand, when everything goes according to my wishes I will graduate in September. And although I can’t call myself a proficient adult educator, especially within the importance of lifelong learning nowadays, I look forward to take the step into practice. I want to realise myself as an adult educator and as a person. All paths are open to me and professionally spoken the one into the vocational field looks the most attractive. But we will see what life has to offer with all its secrets and possibilities. Qui connaît la route… The definitions of keywords Individualisation This is the process that on the one hand liberates people from the traditional social bonds of family, class, neighborhood, church, etc. and gives them greater freedom of choice for the organisation of their own life history. Individual biographies become more self-reflexive. On the other hand, processes of individualisation go together with growing socio-economic interdependencies and a standardising of life conditions. Individuals are now held responsible for their own life course that are largely beyond their influence. (Jansen, T. & van der Veen, R., 1997) Individualised learning Educational setting in which the characteristics of the learner are taken into account. Different media and strategies are used, according to the preferences of the participants. Learning organisation It is difficult to define this concept, but generally following key-features appear: creating a shared vision for the future to guide and inspire, developing an organisational capacity for renewal and self-transformation, encouraging and sustaining the learning of all members of the organisation and finally creating organisations that provide increasing satisfaction and fulfilment to all the stakeholders. (Mulrooney, C. & Pearn, M., 1997) Mentor In the learning-process the mentor plays the role of being a guide instead of being the all knowing expert. The mentor has to stimulate the participants to search for and define their needs. He helps people to find the best way to realise themselves, based upon their personal characteristics.
Self-directed learning Self-directed learning consists of two steps. The first one is defining the learners own learning-needs. The second step involves the actual learning. On the one hand the learner resolves the existing need by for example following a program. On the other hand he gets to know the most sufficient way for him to learn things.
Strangeness On the one hand you have known-strangeness. It is something we are aware of and what we try to convert into something you’re acquainted with. On the other hand unknown-strangeness exists, which is the unknown part of ourselves and of the outside world. You have to accept it’s impossible to overcome this. (Schäffter, 1999) References - Appiah, K. A. (1997). The multiculturalist misunderstanding. The New York Review of Books, 1-12. - Bauman, Z. (1991). Modernity and ambivalence. Cambridge. - Beck,U. (1992). Risk Society: towards a new modernity. London: Sage Publications. - Boshier, R. (?) Edgar Faure after 25 years: down but not out. In Jarvis, P. , ? (Eds.), International perspectives on lifelong learning (pp. 3-20 ). ? - Clarke, D. (1987). The concept of community education. In G. Allen, J. Bastiani, I. Martin, & J. L. Richards (Eds.) , Community education an agenda for educational reform. Philadelphia: Milton Keynes. - Griffin, C. (?) Two models of lifelong learning. In Jarvis, P. , ? (Eds.), International perspectives on lifelong learning (pp. 32-43). ? - Hake, B. J. (?) Lifelong learning and the European Union: a critique from a risk society perspective. In Jarvis, P. , ? (Eds.), International perspectives on lifelong learning (pp. - ). ? - Jansen, T., & Veen, R. van der (1992). Reflexive modernity, self-reflexive biographies, adult education in the light of risk society. Internation Journal of Lifelong Education, 11, 275-286. - LiHarmattan Eyerman, R. & Jamison, A. (1991). Social movements: a cognitive approach (Special issue). Social Reserach,52(4). - Mintzberg, ( ?) Organisation design. - Mulrooney, C., & Pearn, M. (1997). The chicken and the egg : Lifelong learnin |
