Many factors make a successful adult education program. Find out below what those factors are and how you can adapt them for your community and learners.
| Factor |
How the factor can be adapted to the local situation |
| Community-based learning |
- Be accountable to the community
- Get the community involved in the program
- Use local resources
- Make concrete contributions to the community
- Use the issues and problems of the community as a basis for study
- Have a school without walls where learning activities occur in the context of the community
|
| Learner-centred curriculum |
- Develop a curriculum that uses the experiences, backgrounds, values, strengths, and interests of the learners. This could involve language experience, projects, newspapers, learner-initiated exchanges
|
| Aboriginal culture built into the curriculum |
- Use aboriginal culture (contemporary and traditional) and reality at the center of all subjects and activities
- Include local cultural studies and a local language component
- Discuss local issues (e.g. land claims)
|
| Activity-oriented learning |
- Use experiential learning such as field trips, speakers, simulation games, structured experiences, and community projects
|
| "Dialogical" relationship between learner and instructor |
- The instructor becomes more of a facilitator and co-learner
|
| Aboriginal personnel and involvement |
- Invite local elders, band councilors, and administrators to speak
- Arrange "apprentice" positions with the band staff and workers
- Invite local hunters, carvers, and other artisans to speak and/or give demonstrations
|
| Maximum learner input and choice |
- Have the class structure and operation negotiated between the instructor and the learners
- Stress group interaction
- Use a flexible, largely learner-determined timetable
- Use learner -initiated, designed and conducted projects, field trips, activities, etc.
- Have management problems dealt with by the group
- Give learners a choice of materials and components
- Have a learner advisory council
- Have learners contribute their experiences
- Have learners contribute various cultural materials and perspectives
|
| Relevant Materials and Content |
- In all subject areas, select materials to be relevant to learners' experiences, background, and concerns.
- Use activities designed to permit learners to become involved in learning that has meaning to them.
|
| Recognition of Adult Roles |
- Understand learners' time demands
- Recognize family responsibilities and complications
- Use research on adult learners
- Recognize and use learners' life experience
- Hold family gatherings and do family literacy activities such as reading circles, rhyming programs and book clubs
|
| De-emphasis on academic stratification and competition |
- Evaluate on the basis of non-verbal evidence of competence as well as verbal and written
- Emphasize process over product through group projects and activities
- Individualize expectations
- Make continuous progress
|
| Use research on effective teaching and learning styles |
- Show personal warmth
- Show sensitivity to culturally-based communication and interaction patterns
- Develop a classroom "culture" through dialogue and consensus
- Show sensitivity to cultural differences that might intervene in the classroom
|
| "Informal" instructional approach |
- The teacher becomes a facilitator and co-learner
- Use peer-teaching methods
- Accept your role as a counselor as well as an instructor
- Make use of activities, games, projects, etc.
|
Top of Page