IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. How to meet the needs of the learners? How to engage participants in learning? The first Cluster Exchange meeting on ImplOED organized in Italy discussed these issues and more on March 26th 2018 in Modena. The meeting was organized by Solidarci in collaboration with Centro culturale Francesco Luigi Ferrari and the coop. Aretés of Modena.
The meeting was attended by the CPIA of Modena, the Municipality of Modena and the Center for Employment, the professional training center MoFORM, the editorial staff of the ‘Ero Straniero’ newspaper, the InFormedia center, CSV Modena, Coop. Caleids, Coop. Nonsoloanziani.
Through a World Café activity, the participants engaged in a discussion on how to meet the needs of the learners, how to make training proposals attractive for learners and on adult education strategies to improve the sector’s ability to work with disadvantaged groups.
The ideas gathered from the discussions were summarized and listed based on the questions under discussion.
Question A. How do you meet the training needs of the adults you meet in your education and learning activities with their strengths?
- through the knowledge of the training needs
- activating courses that include moments of socialization and targeted advice
- through dialogue, mediation, collaboration
- providing information on training and / or work-related proposals supporting the person in the choice
- implementing orientation paths so that the adult can reflect on skills acquired
QUESTION B. How do you make the training proposal for adults attractive and engaging?
- proposing experiential paths
- supporting trainers and operators through continuous training
- improving the overall (Italian and European) system of certification of skills learned by adults in formal, non-formal and informal contexts
- proposing online or blended courses
- promoting a collaborative and cooperative atmosphere in learning groups to lower the affective filter
- making personal experience a source for learning
- linking what has been learned to the activities carried out in real life
- recognizing and enhancing the adult in its specificity (tailor-made training / education paths)
- providing, where possible, a small financial contribution from adults to the activities carried out to make them more involved in the choice of the training path
QUESTION C. What are the strategies that can best realize adult education?
- to propose non-fragmented paths
- to promote strategies of tutoring to support the adult in the lifelong learning paths
- to develop flexible and diversified training proposals
- to increase formal and non-formal places of knowledge
- to identify, at legislative level, the body that can make a technical coordination of the network of public and private subjects engaged in adult education (at regional and national level).
Text: Giovanna Maciariello, Paola Maciariello, Valeria Ferrarini