Laboratorio di

Ambito

CAPABILITIES E PROCESSI DI TRASFORMAZIONE DEL LAVORO FORMATIVO

Una strategia europea per l’implementazione di spazi

di apprendimento informale per gli adulti: il caso del progetto ALICE «Adults

Learning For Intergenerational Creative

Experiences»

Juliana RaffaghelliCISRE Centro Internazionale di Studi sulla Ricerca Educativa e la Formazione Avanzata

Questioni iniziali

• In a context of discussion of Amartya Sen’s theory:• Which are the connections with pedagogical practices?• What are the contributions of pedagogical thinking to the

capabilities approach, if any?• How the capabilities approach should guide our educational

practices and research?

• My starting point: a case study• The focus: training the trainers to achieve

educational innovations that go in the sense of practices beyond being educated as part of a state of welfare…

• …But being educated for a learnfare (Margiotta, 2011)

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Capabilities are the alternative combinations of functionings a person is feasibly able to achieve.

• Pedagogy work on that space of feasibility, by reading the several combinations from the individual to the group to the social fabric.

• The trainer/educator’s aim is to prepare hence opportunities to promote adults’ agency.

• The trainer/educator is him/herself engaged in functionings that put him/her in the condition of generating those spaces

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

Adults Learning for Intergenerational Creative Experiences

Il caso di Studio ALICE

Follow us at www.alice-llp.eu

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Learning and Educating in times of crisis (LLP presentation 2012)

• Complex social tissue, where cohesion depends on the interdependences and differences (EU2020)

• Intergenerational learning (IL) bring to the fore the question of “differences” that enrich (ET2020)

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Developing the adult learning sector – currently the weakest link in the LLL chain

• Renewed focus on increasing participation, especially of those furthest from learning

• Reinforcing the role of adults’ learning institutions

• Qualifying Trainers of Adults

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Lifelong learning and learning mobility

• Improved quality and efficiency of provision and outcomes

• Promote equity, social cohesion, active citizenship

• Enhance innovation and creativity including entrepreneurship

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Second chance opportunities aimed at:• Improving adults’ literacy, numeracy

and digital skills• Acquiring new forms of basic skills for

active participation in modern life and society

• Strengthening social inclusion & Active community participation through adult learning

• Improving access to learning for migrants, Roma, disadvantaged groups

• Active ageing: learning opportunities for olfer adults

• Responding to the learning needs of people with disabilities or in specific situations of exclusion

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Development of adult learning practices

• Testing, innovation and quality for AL prvision in formal and non-formal learning across Europe

• Development of teaching and learning methods and materials

• Development of European dimension of AL providing opportunities for transnational cooperation

• Development of innovative ways to enhance learning opportunities for marginalised adults

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

IL can be a twofold purpose process, that improve dialogue among generations through civic participation in common social and institutional spaces,

while at the same time enacts processes of informal learning towards the achievement, both by adults and children, of key competences for lifelong learning

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• To help adults, senior citizen and volunteers to reflect and acquire competences necessary to become effective educators, and the impact their actions can have on future learning of children.

• To provide adults, senior citizen and volunteers with creative languages to generate “zones of proximal development” for intergenerational learning;

• To train adult's trainers to adopt ALICE methodological approach, becoming aware of the role that adult's as educator can have on social cohesion, and hence, re-considering the value of adult's training institutions.

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• To improve knowledge on cultural diversity and values of European patrimony, as the base of creative languages, with impact on adult's acquisition of Key competence (KC) 8 “cultural awareness and expression” .

To favour sharing of creative experiences among generations, as spaces of reflection, awareness and learning on otherness towards commitment and solidarity, with impact on adult's acquisition of “social and citizenship KC6”

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• To develop knowledge and skills for using art as creative language to dialogue with children with impact on adult's the acquisition of KC 5 (learning to learn), KC7 (sense of initiative and entrepreneurship) e KC8

• To develop knowledge and skills for using storytelling as creative language to dialogue with children with impact on adult's the acquisition of KC 5 (learning to learn), KC7 e KC8

• To develop knowledge and skills for using games and social media as creative language to dialogue with children with impact on adult's the acquisition of KC 4 (digital competence) and KC5

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• To empower alliances among local government, school, elder people centers, cultural associations, private sector, University, as spaces of implementation of creative experiences for intergenerational learning

• To improve the perspective of interdependence between adult as educator and adult as lifelong learner, improving the participation of adults to lifelong learning.

• To contrast processes of exclusion and marginalization of adults-children at risk because of the low competences of the former in caring/educating the latter.

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• European and non-European cultural heritage: • art (music/paintings/theatre); • elder people stories; • children's literature;

• Social media to promote sharing of learning results -digitalization of contents created above-

• Games, according to children ages, to stimulate problem solving, creativity, entrepreneurship.

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

Adults Learning for Intergenerational Creative Experiences

WP1: Project Management: 24 month

WP2: Quality Assurance: 21 month

WP3: TRAINING OF TRAINERS8 month

WP3: TRAINING OF TRAINERS8 month

WP4: ADULTS’ LEARNING PILOT PROGRAMMES

6 month

WP4: ADULTS’ LEARNING PILOT PROGRAMMES

6 month

WP5 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH AND PARTICIPATORY TESTING

12 month

WP5 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH AND PARTICIPATORY TESTING

12 month

WP7: DISSEMINATION – 21month

WP8: EXPLOITATION – 10 month

• Adults’ trainers must be able of understanding the value of informal learning situations, developing skills to promote events with strategic impact on key competences.

• It is not enough to promote cultural events: trainers, as scaffolders of generational dialogue are called to be aware of the educational impacts of their informal activities as a way to engage adults that are normally far from formal (University, Further training) and/or non-formal (training on the job) in lifelong learning trajectories

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

Unit 7: Project Work (AL Design)

Pilot ImplementationEuropean Value

Local Coaching

European, Shared Learning EnvironmentTransmedia: building an enlarged cultural context of learning

Promoting Trainers Agency through engagement in the European spaceSIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012

Laboratorio di Ambito III

• The Project’s Virtual Architecture: transmedia and expression towards a shared, European narrative

• Production of Specific Modules on Creative Languages (CL) by Partners

• Selection of trainers tightly connected with realities of adults’ education

• Training of Trainers to CL• Trainers produce a “project work” : at least six

adults’ learning events as informal education activities

• Trainers, supported by partners, implement their PW• Trainers reflection on professional practices and

competences achieved• Adults reflection on learning and competences

achievedSIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012

Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Aim: Improving education to support parents from the very early stages of life (pre-natal)

• Method: introducing innovative activities in ongoing courses by trained trainers

• CL: Music, Digital Storytelling

• ALICE’s target group: at least 30% monoparental families, migrant families

• Children aged -0 / 1

The Network for Hyp A

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Aim: create intergenerational learning opportunities with impact on Seniors quality of life as well as pedagogical innovation

• Method: school learning unit that introduces contact among Seniors and children

• CL: Social Media and Games

• ALICE’s target group: at least 30% migrant children, Seniors

• Children aged 10-12

The Network for Hyp B

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Aim: Implementing activities of training for volunteers that work with children at risk

• Method: course for volunteers associated to activities on the territory

• CL: intercultural children’s literature, digital storytelling

• ALICE’s target group: at least 30% families at risk, migrant families

• Children aged 2-5

The Network for Hyp C

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

• Intergenerational dialogue as a process of contact with otherness (generational differences constituting strong cultural and social diversity),

• Conflict among participants. Adults values and beliefs are already consolidated though the cultural context they developed in, as individuals. Instead, kids’ values and beliefs are being formed through ongoing interactions, and the own need of being protagonists of change for their own cultural contexts of life, as human need of expression.

• For this intergenerational learning can have place, in a socio-constructivist approach, it seems necessary to adopt symbolic tools that work as means for interaction and dialogue, as the base of satisfactory exchanges that fulfill both children and adult’s needs, through a joint process of meaning making, of exploring and building new worlds.

To understand this perspective, we can bring James Wertsch’s words:

Instead of acting in a direct, unmediated way in the social and physical world, our contact with the world is indirect or mediated by signs (…)Vygotskij harnessed a developmental, or “genetic”, method when analyzing mediation (…). From this perspective, the inclusion of signs into human action does not simply lead to quantitative improvements in terms of speed or efficiency. Instead the focus is on how the inclusion of tools and signs leads to qualitative transformation…(Wertsch, 2007:179)SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012

Laboratorio di Ambito III

• The adult as educator is trasmitting the own willing of being in a society, and taking part of his/her own time.

• The trainer must enable adults to become aware of parental models and of the own role as educator

• Not only reflexiveness, but also a political positioning about the own role in-between institutions that take care of the child

• The trainer must recognize the own model of parenting and being a child-carer, because that of the vulnerable, excluded adults, could be very different

As Paulo Freire puts it:

No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54)

From a pedagogy of the oppressed to a pedagogy of Hope

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

Initial Assumptions• Capabilities are the

alternative combinations of functionings a person is feasibly able to achieve.

• Pedagogy works on that space of feasibility, by reading the several combinations from the individual to the group to the social fabric.

• The trainer’s aim is to prepare hence opportunities to promote adults’ agency.

• The trainer is him/herself engaged in functionings that put him/her in the condition of generating those spaces

Conclusions• …So we need a dynamic

representation of them, and there is where LLL becomes crucial.

• A pedagogy for the learnfare is already being created on the basis of concepts and tools to interpret and recognize learning across lifespan and in different situations. Yet there’s a long way to go!!!!

• The trainer must be supported (scaffolded)) to recognize social contexts and to critically deconstruct them in order to empower adults, making their voice emerge.

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

SIREF SUMMER SCHOOL 2012Laboratorio di Ambito III

Juliana Raffaghellij.raffaghelli@unive.it