Lifelong Learning and ‘flexible provision’ within higher education: shifting paradigms
Shirley WaltersDivision for Lifelong Learning
Acknowledgements to SAQA for funding supportAnd UWC colleagues and students
I
Question
What conditions need to change in to enable working students access in order to achieve
success in Higher Education?
Institutional Scene - UWC
• 52 year tradition of providing access to learning for working people.
• Fundamental shifts due to different pressures;- Resource pressures- Increased numbers of young students- Issues relating to under-preparedness of
young students.• New thinking required to move away from
parallel systems of delivery.
Straddling a dual system: shifting paradigms
FLEXIBLE PROVISION
Research Approach Participatory &
Appreciative Action & Reflection
• Move away from ‘fixing’ things & deficit discourses towards appreciative insights, collective learning, acceptance of pluralistic ways of knowing
• Appreciative ‘gaze’ – reframing lived experience & building on practical wisdom
Community of Practice
3 sites: Fixing the wheel while the car is moving
Stages of adoption(acknowledgement to Vivienne Bozalek for slide)
Questions and issues: shifting paradigms
• Building capacities of staff, students, administrators in order to think and act differently about learning; managing expectations
• Interrupting policies / practices which inhibit particular conceptions of teaching and learning e.g. attendance, workloads / working hours
• Establishing new models and conditions for providing access and success for working students – ‘changing the wheel while moving’
• Developing core principles / guidelines for university and workplaces to take co-responsibility for worker/students
• Recognising and supporting action research to change institutional cultures within a lifelong learning framework
Support innovative action research to change institutional cultures
For further information, please contact Shirley Walters, [email protected]