Let’s stop treating adult students like children

FE professionals should be wary of condescending to the adults they teach and instead adopt an approach that takes into account students’ age and life experiences, says Sarah Simons
22nd March 2019, 12:03am
Put Away Childish Things

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Let’s stop treating adult students like children

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/lets-stop-treating-adult-students-children

The education system has historically been built on a model of control. At secondary school, pupils were traditionally told to sit down, be quiet and pay attention to what had been decreed that they would be studying that day. Even after students progressed into higher education, they attended lectures that followed a similar format and were often more likely to be endured than enjoyed.

Is such an approach detrimental to students? This is a question that is becoming more and more pertinent in the FE sector. Earlier this month, for example, Roshan Doug raised concerns about whether the spread of phonics from primary school to post-16 education could bring its own problems (“Is phonics for adults ‘infantilising’?”, 8 March).

Are students conditioned to behave like children long after they have moved into adulthood? And is it the approach taken by us teachers that is to blame?

It’s possible that we all submit to an element of learned helplessness in education, whether that presents as a rigid curriculum we are compelled to teach or organisational frameworks that dictate how students are expected to learn.

 

Guarding against condescension

But while stricter boundaries and instruction-based pedagogy may suit some younger children who are learning how to negotiate their ever-increasing independence, adults returning to education arrive with a range of existing skills and knowledge, meaning a different approach is required. So, when teaching adults, how do we ensure we create a secure learning structure that respects and guards against the condescension of adult learners?

One place to start, some believe, would be to refrain from referring to adults as just that: “learners”. Schoolchildren are “pupils”; those attending higher education are “students”. The term “learners”, co-opted by the further education sector to describe anyone of age 16-plus who signs up for a course, does not suggest scholarship, mastery or in-depth exploration. The connotations are instead of one-way travel, of the acquisition of basic skills and knowledge.

In many areas of adult education, it would be presumptuous to assume, as a default, that the teacher is “the smartest in the room”. I am not a specialist in teaching English for speakers of other languages (Esol) but have covered many Esol classes over the years and I often feel like the least accomplished person in the room, speaking only one language. Yet some students are defined in the education world, and in wider society, simply by their lack of fluency in the English language, rather than celebrated for their existing linguistic achievements. It is one of many examples where condescension creeps in.

Given the general shortage of up-to-date teaching and learning materials, particularly for teaching at entry level or lower, finding suitable, relevant and accessible texts at the appropriate literacy level can be a challenge. For this reason, some practitioners may be drawn towards primary-school-type resources, which do have the advantage of simple, accessible language. However, outside of specific settings - for example family literacy or language provision, where parents and children develop reading skills together - use of these resources risks reinforcing the notion of “back to school”, which, for many adults, is a barrier to participation in learning.

Alex Stevenson, head of English, maths and Esol at the Learning and Work Institute, says: “For an adult who has taken tentative steps back into learning, immediately presenting them with a children’s book is likely to be counterproductive, and possibly upsetting.”

Effective materials are often developed from texts that learners encounter in their everyday lives, such as official letters, notices and news stories. Stevenson explains: “It’s important that literacy and Esol practitioners are appropriately trained to identify and develop suitable resources, and there’s a case for more investment here - the government has recently committed to producing new materials for lower-level Esol provision, for example”.

 

‘Unstrung pearls’

Esol students are not the only ones likely to be infantilised in a college setting. Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are maybe the most likely to experience that fate. Although they may have a vast range of skills and talents, and make valuable contributions to their communities, they require the support of the FE college in areas connected in the heads of many with those that younger children commonly attain much earlier in life.

The infantilisation of adults with SEND can be a polarising debate and one that is fraught with assumption, even by people who are deeply connected to that area of education. I have been teaching adults with SEND for almost a decade and I still find myself questioning my own beliefs.

Crucially, expecting less of adults with SEND is a wider societal problem that is mirrored in education, rather than one that only exists in education circles.

One of my groups of adults recently spent an afternoon in the local pub with their support professionals. While some of the group members sat down, two students with Down’s syndrome, who had previously planned and practised the interactions involved in ordering drinks, set off to the bar to complete their task. Upon seeing these two capable men who work hard to develop their independence, a pub local assumed that they had “run off” and aggressively hustled them back to the table, admonishing the support workers for, as he saw it, their lack of supervision.

Last year, I wrote for Tes about my own conflict regarding an adult student who is an enthusiastic Bob the Builder fan - and encouraged in that enthusiasm by his environment. He carries a Bob the Builder lunchbox and occasionally wears a Bob T-shirt. I, however, was not sure that advocating that individual’s love of Bob was the most developmentally helpful thing to do. Just because an adult might have the cognitive abilities of a much younger person, it does not necessarily mean they should be encouraged to behave in childlike ways. My students are not children, nor are they defined by their disabilities.

My initial reaction of feeling uncomfortable when seeing adult students embrace child-like interests is based in my own instinct to protect them from projecting a false impression of simplicity. To guard against them having a singularly child-like identity projected on to them, which would therefore diminish all the other things that they are as unique individuals.

The most common trait that my adult students share is that they embrace their own individuality - and individuality is something that should be championed at every opportunity. With that in mind, if a 45-year-old man is a fan of Bob the Builder, should he not have absolute power to demonstrate that in the enthusiastic carrying of a lunchbox? After some reflection, I realised that, by questioning the validity of his choice, I was not just behaving pompously but I was undermining his agency. The protective intent that underpinned my instinct to guide him away from Bob was not relevant. His choice was really none of my business.

The idea that some knowledge, skills and tastes are more valuable than others is explored in Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal 1986 work Distinction. Dr Peter Shukie, an education studies lecturer in the University Centre at Blackburn College, explains this idea of cultural capital: “Bourdieu says that people who are autodidacts - you can take that to mean anybody who doesn’t learn in exactly the same way as the national curricula say you should - are just seen as ‘illegitimate extra-curricular culture’ or ‘a collection of unstrung pearls’.

“There’s a centre ground that knows what is right and everyone else is lesser. The closer to the centre you are, the more you are granted that sense of being powerful, and the further away you are, the more infant-like you are perceived as. It’s terrifying.”

Infantilisation can also present in the over-supporting of students. The clamour towards higher retention levels, higher attendance levels and higher achievement levels means that students are often given increased levels of help to ensure progression. Over-supporting teaches students to be helped rather than to learn. That learned helplessness can manifest as a deeper belief that they are not quite capable themselves.

 

‘A real opportunity for hope’

Last year, Tes reported on the significant recent increase in the number of specialist post-16 providers for students with SEND, which had increased by more than two-thirds over the past six years, with the number of funded providers having increased from 59 in 2012-13 to an estimated 100 last September.

The rationale from local authorities to set up centres was often that it would allow students to stay in their familiar school setting - despite the fact that they could well benefit from the challenge of moving on to the local FE provider.

Shukie says: “It says to the students that you are not enough as yourself but we, as teachers, as the adults, know what ‘enough’ is. ‘Your educator isn’t helpless, but you are. Lean enough on your educator and you can become acceptable and normalised and standardised’.”

In a prison environment, offenders are necessarily infantilised in order for the institution to retain regulation and keep the offender population safe. Prisoners are told when to wake, when to sleep, when to wash, what to eat, and exist within the limits of numerous other rules. The punitive consequences of crimes committed is that loss of liberty. However, engaging with education in prisons can offer the opportunity to claim some personal agency. The difficulty prison educators have is in easing the hostility many prisoners hold towards learning: around 42 per cent of prisoners have been permanently excluded from school.

Rod Clark, chief executive of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, says: “Prisoners take literacy and numeracy tests when they arrive in prison. Levels of literacy are a lot lower than in the general population - around half haven’t reached level 2. This is partly due to the high levels of school exclusion, but something like a third of prisoners have a learning difficulty or disability.”

It is the prisoners’ choice whether or not to get involved in education, though there is a high degree of encouragement. And evidence shows that participation in education has a positive impact: research by the Justice Data Lab in 2013 showed that the one-year proven reoffending rate for 3,085 offenders who received a grant through the Prisoners’ Education Trust was 19 per cent, compared with 26 per cent for a matched control group of similar offenders.

Clark continues: “That’s why it’s important to find activities that are engaging and that they are interested in. A lot of good work is done around sports and the arts. If prisoners can connect the learning with something that they see as their own ambitions, that is something they can take control of”.

With prisoners serving very long sentences, it is possible to embark on a learning journey of epic proportions, progressing from negligible prior attainment through to higher academic levels. The barriers to learning previously faced by a significant portion of prisoners were due to negative influences, or more urgent or complex circumstances, eclipsing the importance of education. In effect, the prison environment has enabled the removal of those distractions.

“If people have had very troubled childhoods,” Clark explains, “they might not have been in a position to take advantage of educational opportunities until they found themselves in this situation. But once [in prison], education can be a real lifeline out, and a real opportunity for hope in the future.”

He says that identity is a significant theme in desistance theory. “If somebody is turning their life around, they’ve got to start seeing themselves not simply in terms of their past, pertaining to criminal activity or rejection and failure in a formal context. They have to see themselves as people with something to offer, to have something they care about. Education is absolutely brilliant for that.”

And, with the right amount of support, we can help adult learners understand that education can be just as brilliant for them as it is for anyone else.

Sarah Simons works in colleges and adult community education in the East Midlands and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons

This article originally appeared in the 22 March 2019 issue under the headline “Put away childish things”

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