THE ROLE OF ADULT EDUCATORS IN FOSTERING INFORMAL LEARNING IN THE COMMUNITY

Leonida Brezovec’s paper ‘Young people in the prison of lifelong learning. Presentation of results on how young adults experience requirements of lifelong learning’ analyses the role of neoliberal policy and its effect on the need for constant learning in young people who are already in employment or still looking for it. She offers an analysis of the current state of the Slovenian labour market and employers who keep pressuring young people with their various demands. The author’s qualitative research investigates the opinions of young people and finds that the employers’ requirements fit the neoliberal policy of flex-ibility, adaptability, and permanent learning. Young people feel this as constant pressure, a tendency to keep learning and adapting.

To me, activity of adults in the community means a radical and critical practice striving for greater social justice, inclusion and greater equality for different groups, with a view to everyone contributing their share in the way they can. This is about solving everyday inequities, injustices and the lack of accounting for the needs of community residents, showing concern for those who are excluded, fostering women's rights movements, the rights of disadvantaged and disenfranchised workers, the rights of migrants. Often it is about new forms of community democracy introducing public discussion about local problems and participatory democracy as a form of deciding community matters, but it can also include resistance against established conservative practices and stereotypes spread by the powers that be. It is about the pressure of community residents regarding new activities, spatial planning, the desire for new decision-making options; it is about acting in the public space, which at the same time becomes a forum for social and personal change and a 'transitional space' (Bourgeois, 2002;Wildemersch, 2012), and about a system of relations built on acting, speaking and learning. As Torres (2013, p. 62) states, people act in the public space as they struggle for recognition, the spirit of solidarity, and the principle of citizen education and learning instead of the principle of consumerism.
But the current conditions are not favourable to acting in this vein. We live in an era when we are led and directed by the society which determines which knowledge is important and how we should acquire it. Our activity might lean either towards social regulation or towards social emancipation, but the former dominates over the latter (Santos, 2014, p. V). The two forms of knowledge being produced are 'knowledge as emancipation' and 'knowledge as regulation' (control), where knowledge as emancipation vacillates between colonialism (state of ignorance) and solidarity (state of knowledge), while knowledge as regulation is constituted between chaos (state of ignorance) and order (state of knowledge). The power of order-oriented knowledge 'feeds' the power of solidarity knowledge, and vice versa. In the Western civilization we saw for the first time the cannibalization of social liberation leading to a crisis of emancipation and regulation with the result that knowledge as regulation has prevailed. The two forms of knowledge strive towards dynamic equilibrium, however, and in time they have reached an equilibrium where social emancipation has been 'silenced' by social regulation (Santos, 2014, p. V); order has become the hegemonic manner of knowledge, and chaos has become the hegemonic manner of ignorance. According to Santos, obtaining liberating knowledge is almost impossible today, and solidarity is something that cannot even be imagined, it is unnecessary and dangerous. Santos therefore encourages us -will we think in an emancipatory way or will we let ourselves be 'caught up' in procedures that will act to enslave us in time? Oliviera (2017) adds that although we can see norms and rules in every social model and underlying it, the social practices that develop in various interactive spaces nevertheless have liberating dimensions; and that is precisely why there are possibilities of choice! Today we can witness many discussions on the significance of critical pedagogy and andragogy, yet it seems this is only a theoretical debate on how to define things and present an appearance of resistance. Already thirty years ago, Apple (1986) talked about similar issues as Santos today: that education was technically oriented and very remote from education about freedom. Education has become education for work, a marketplace for those who adjust to the given requirements to prosper. What Santos says today, is therefore true, but it puts forth new questions in need of answers: what can we infer from the North-South divide, the differences between colonialists and native populations, between the educated and the uneducated, between the rich and the poor, those with power and those without it? How do we stand up to these differences, this silencing of rights? Everybody plays an important role in this process, and even more so intellectuals, whose behaviour enables some basic human rights to be suspended (Gregorčič, 2017, p. 24). By theorizing they do not touch the injustices, do not interfere, but instead only judge from a distance and let destruction take its course. Yet it is individuals today who are easily regulated and controlled (Santos, 2014, p. V); it is teachers and others involved in the process of education who can do the most in terms of realizing these issues. This leads us to think that all of this can only be resolved in the community, outside of educational institutions, outside of organized and goal-oriented education, which often renders people small and powerless. The kind of learning meant here takes place informally while other issues are being solved, in an unplanned and uncontrolled manner.
Learning taking place in such a space is unintentional and often unconscious, encouraging the growth of tacit knowledge. This knowledge is very important, even crucial, in the struggle for rights, personal and community growth and development. What is at stake is surmounting politically imposed knowledge to rethink critically the neoliberal pressures and errors as well as the consequences they have for our everyday lives. Informal learning in the community is neither formal nor informal education, it can also take place in educational institutions but then outside of the official curriculum as this is mostly about resisting the imposition of knowledge as regulation (publicly certified knowledge). Schugurensky (2000) defines informal learning as learning that leads to understanding, knowledge and skills, but since it is not intentional and is often not conscious, it remains unidentified. Nonetheless informal learning can be intentional and conscious (self-directed learning); it can be unintentional and conscious (incidental learning); or unintentional and unconscious (socialization) (Mündel & Schugurensky, 2008, p. 50). Despite the fact that this is mostly invisible learning involving tacit knowledge, this learning is at the same time very important and takes place during everyday actions of individuals who want to influence the quality of their lives, democratic practices, their own personal and possibly also professional lives. Learning is always composed of two integral processes -interaction and internalization; at the same time, learning comprises cognitive, emotional and social components (Illeris, 2002, p. 19). Informal learning includes all three components and simultaneously opens the door to real, active knowledge that connects individuals to the topical problems in the society, the people solving them, to willpower and passion. Such learning mostly happens while participating in volunteer organizations, community and political organizations, intergenerational groups in libraries and other public spaces, in activities taking place in the public space, in the street; it happens in organized and unorganized activities, in a planned or uncontrolled manner, with a purpose or without it. That such learning really does happen is shown also by the study of participatory democracy in Maribor Jelenc Krašovec & Gregorčič, in press). From the point of view of adult educators, this kind of tacit knowledge is an activity that needs to be brought to awareness, discussed and encouraged.
What could therefore be the role of adult educators in fostering learning in the public space? Are we talking about the public andragogue? Some authors define the public activity of similar profiles; Biesta (2012) believes that the public pedagogue neither teaches nor encourages political activism but instead opens up the possibility for cooperation, for 'human togetherness' which makes it possible for freedom of action to appear (Biesta, 2012). In this way, the public pedagogue helps make spaces public, open and accessible; it is precisely that "[b]eing seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position. This is the meaning of public life" (Arendt, 1996, p. 59). The importance of the appearance of the public pedagogue is instigated precisely by the privatization and depoliticization of public spaces as well as the concurrent lasting privatization of education; after all, education is supposed to be a collective and political 'project' and not a matter of private gain (Biesta, 2012, p. 684). On the other hand, Burawoy (2013) establishes the field of public sociology as a link between sociology and the public that defines its position through public performances, engaged actions and community practices. In doing so, he points out a problem -when sociology becomes too closely connected to life, is this not simply a case of 'common sense'? The author rejects this and claims that public sociology is research-based, linked to policy sociology and critical sociology, but nevertheless a sociologist becomes a public sociologist by switching from writing for experts to writing for the public, the people and their needs. It is about fighting for the rights of native populations, the Roma, about fighting against semitism, racism and terrorism, about fighting against colonialism and for solidarity (Burawoy, 2013). There is only a minor difference between public sociology and political activism, since public sociology operates in the sphere of sociology while political activism operates in the sphere of politics. Burawoy (2013, p. 297) says that "public sociology is a form of 'teaching' in which common sense is cultivated and society itself becomes a classroom, a classroom for developing a critical social consciousness." If we now try to define the role of the 'public andragogue', this is to be a person who speaks and listens but at the same time also learns and writes about the importance of keeping the public and learning through public communication and acting. They are to keep their distance to the market and the state, and ought to maintain a critical stance in relation to political and economic influences as that lies at the core of their integrity. As suggested by Torres (2013, p. 79), moral responsibility and political dedication to creating space for public discussion is also crucial. These ideas come close to theories of the public intellectual in terms of fostering learning in public movements which advocate autonomous learning, self-organisation of learning (bottom-up) and open learning (Hall, 2012, p. 134). As somebody who encourages or initiates learning, they should be aware that mutual learning among different social groups -intergenerational, intercultural, interracial, in some parts also a defence of native populations -is of absolute necessity. Besides organized and structured educational and learning activities taking place in the community, we also need an open arena to fight for justice in the public space, to build a broad spectrum of experience and memories from various biographies, as well as for hopes and expectations for the future, as suggested by Harvey (2011). This requires us to remain open to the diversity of people and ideas, regardless of age, social inclusion, socioeconomic status, education, regardless of skin colour, ethnicity and origin. The public andragogue should stand up for the importance of public versus private, open versus closed, unstructured versus structured, and informal versus formal. Wilhelmson (2002, p. 192) advocates the central role adult educators have in changing public views, fostering discussion through "social interaction where participants create new knowledge going beyond the individual perspective of each person." This leads to the conclusion that the public andragogue is somebody who fosters learning and brings it to awareness, verbalizes its effects, points them out and at the same time encourages their development. As a part of a knowledge network or knowledge embedded in a network, as part of our own interpersonal network, we can hope to succeed in exploiting the possibility of choice (Olivera, 2017) in different structural social spaces (in the community, on the market, at home, as citizens, as producers, as members of the world), and learning do not only take place in educational institutions but on every level of social life, in every fibre of our existence, in our everyday activities, permanently and dynamically. This is our goal and our task.
In this issue, the relevance of adult educators in the community intertwines with their significance in organized forms of education, which brings to light the diversity of roles, meanings and modes of acting of adult educators in their various guises. Stuart Moir and Jim Crowther from the University of Edinburgh write about the radicalization of citizenship education and find that such education is disappearing, at least in the sense of ascribing radical meaning to the role of active citizens in the community in terms of collective decision-making. They find that education has been fully subjugated by the market, aligning itself in particular with the minimalist paradigm of citizenship and putting particular emphasis on individual responsibility. Young people are understood as homo apoliticus, homo sociologicus in the sense of people marked by non-thinking and non-decision. Where can then space be found for political literacy, critical autonomy, active inclusion?
In her paper entitled 'Participation of older adults in communities of practice and practices of community', Marta Gregorčič provides an analysis of the current state of the situation and learning possibilities of older men in the municipality of Ajdovščina. She presents her analysis of a focus group with representatives of the municipality and non-governmental organizations, where she shows the role of the elderly (men) in the community, where they meet, which activities they participate in, etc. She finds cohesion among the community members is improving but it took people some time to stand on their own feet and start looking for options to face their issues. The community is close-knit but there are almost no active older men as they are caught up in self-marginalization. The author offers some ideas on how to resolve this situation.
The following paper entitled 'Initiatives of community members in public open spaces: Two case studies from Slovenia', which talks about the activity and learning of adults in open public space, is the result of a learning process linking the university and the community. Students Željka Bosanac, Sara Dalila Hočevar, Neža Vrhovec, and Nuša Zankolič, advised by two university teachers, Sabina Jelenc Krašovec and Sonja Kump, analysed public space and its creation by citizens and community organizations. They found that there is a difference depending on who the idea for an activity comes from and what role adult community members play in it. This is namely a combination of two approaches, 'top-down' and 'bottom-up', which use different formulae and consequently produce different effects.
In their paper 'Education as habilitation: Empirical examples from adjusted education in Sweden for students associated with high-functioning autism', Martin Hugo and Joel Hedegaard write about the importance of a somewhat different kind of education for people with autism, specifically people with Asperger syndrome in Sweden. They find that it is precisely the role of the adult educator that is crucial to the programme, as it needs to be essentially different from the classic role of a teacher of adult groups and at the same time significantly more flexible, open and malleable. The adult educator must strike a happy medium between distance and engagement to foster activity in adults with autism and at the same time to motivate them for self-initiated activity. The research participants also stressed the need of many in adult education for a different approach that would mean less educational failure.
Joanna Malinowska presents a part of her research on teacher education in Poland in her paper 'Change of Students' Activities in the Process of Becoming a Teacher'. Her focus is on the analysis of an epistemological barrier impeding cooperation creation important to the success of teacher education. Using critical discourse analysis, she examines the role of the institution where teacher education takes place; she uses a post-task student discussion to provide tentative recommendations for future teachers' successful work and education. Interestingly, this contribution also shows the transfer of the control function from the educational institution to those learning, which is reflected in the students' resistance against such measures. Leonida Brezovec's paper 'Young people in the prison of lifelong learning. Presentation of results on how young adults experience requirements of lifelong learning' analyses the role of neoliberal policy and its effect on the need for constant learning in young people who are already in employment or still looking for it. She offers an analysis of the current state of the Slovenian labour market and employers who keep pressuring young people with their various demands. The author's qualitative research investigates the opinions of young people and finds that the employers' requirements fit the neoliberal policy of flexibility, adaptability, and permanent learning. Young people feel this as constant pressure, a tendency to keep learning and adapting.
'Language courses for adult immigrants: The example of the French non-governmental sector' by Vesna Gorenc discusses the significance of a project for the education of immigrants called 'language education for adult immigrants'. It addresses a diverse group of migrants entering the country with different goals and intentions, different levels of previous knowledge, and different language uses. The author presents the method of sociolinguistic workshops dedicated to adult language acquisition which strive to present language as actively as possible in relation to everyday life. There are many dilemmas present, most importantly the question of adequately qualified staff working with migrants as -aside from other factors -the right approach is crucial for success.
The present issue also includes an interview with Prof. Barry Golding on the role of workshops for men (Men's Sheds) in the community, showing how important this alternative form and movement is for bringing together and promoting activity among men in Australia.