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Lifelong Learning and ‘flexible provision’ within higher education: shifting paradigms. I. Shirley Walters Division for Lifelong Learning Acknowledgements to SAQA for funding support And UWC colleagues and students . Question.
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Lifelong Learning and ‘flexible provision’ within higher education: shifting paradigms I • Shirley Walters • Division for Lifelong Learning • Acknowledgements to SAQA for funding support • And UWC colleagues and students
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.
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
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