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, swalters@uwc.ac.za