Opening the door to opportunity:adult guidance holds the key

Opening the door to 0opportunity: adult guidance holds the key
JONATHAN BROWN
The Open University in the North
ABSTRACT
This paper is based on a keynote talk given at the Conference of the Adult Educational Guidance Association of Ireland in October 2003. The title of the conference at Waterford – Opening the Door to Opportunity: Adult Guidance in Ireland –came as a happy coincidence in that I had just completed a editing a version of a 1986 report on adult guidance The Challenge of Change (Brown, 2003; UDACE, 1986).The 1986 report had been published with a newly designed logo which represented an opening door, so the task so recently completed resonated with the theme of the
conference. The current paper retains the original image and reflects on the role of adult guidance in the arena of widening participation. The 2003 version of The Challenge of Change was published in the same month (December) as the English Department for Education and Skills released a policy paper on Information, Advice and Guidance for Adults (DfES, 2003). This coincidence in publication explains the postscript to allow comment on this development. In preparing this paper much of the flavour of the spoken original has been retained.
The paper considers three questions:
● What is the distinctive nature of work with adults in the arena of education, training and work?
● What are the barriers to participation for adults in transition?
● What is the nature of guidance?
This is followed by a postscript on the English Policy Framework and Action Plan for Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG).
KEYWORDS
Access, adult guidance, educational guidance, guidance,information advice and guidance, lifelong learning, widening participation
Introduction
In the middle 1980s, when I was still very young, I was involved in the work
of a quango in England called the Unit for the Development of Adult
Continuing Education. UDACE, as we called it, was created by the Secretary
of State for Education and Science in 1984. (For the work of UDACE see
McNair, 2002.) UDACE examined areas of possible development in education
for adults, and recommended strategies for development. The first and most
significant work it undertook was that on adult guidance. For the major
report on adult guidance in 1986 UDACE commissioned a logo which, it
argued, would give the public an immediate way of identifying a service or
an institution which offered guidance. Our chief officer (Stephen McNair)
worked hard on this logo, and when it was unveiled it looked like this:
It was, of course, we all agreed, the opening door
which would give access to adults who wished to
return to education, training and work. Adult guidance,
we were certain, was the key to all the doors, which
would then open to allow adults to overcome the many
barriers that had previously stood in their way. The
opening door logo would become as well known as
other such logos which indicated information points,
CABs or legal aid. It was the answer. We hoped that it
would be adopted by all services, institutions and
adorn our publications and guides.
Well, I have to report that the strategy failed. The logo was not universally
adopted, though it did appear on most UDACE publications on guidance up
to the early 1990s. Why did it fail? Well it is a case of the half empty/half-full
glass. It’s all a matter of perception – what do you really see when you look at
the logo? Although the designers and commissioning group saw it as the
opening door, other equally perceptive colleagues saw it as the closing door. So
there it is on the page – is the door opening or is it closing?
I must admit that I always saw it as opening (but then I always see the
glass as half full!) and still feel that our collective failure in 1986 to establish a
logo for guidance for adults was a noble failure. Moreover those involved in
this work today still lack an accepted logo or branding. Also I do like the
opening-door metaphor for our work, so I am entirely comfortable with the
title I have been given today.
The report that launched the opening door logo was The Challenge of
Change: Developing Educational Guidance for Adults (UDACE, 1986). It proved
to be a significant, almost seminal, document. It made a lasting impact on the
development and practice of adult guidance not only in England but also far
beyond. It has also been used to analyse guidance in settings other than for
adults. It is still widely cited by colleagues writing and speaking about
guidance. In particular the seven activities of guidance are in current usage in
most services providing guidance for adults. Even in those services where
only some of the seven activities are currently available, the terminology and
concepts are used as a way of understanding and evaluating practice. The
Challenge of Change has long been out of print, but, as it happens, an edited
version of the central chapters of the report was published in December 2003
by NAEGA, the National Association for Educational Guidance for Adults
(Brown, 2003). As I edited this new edition I will specifically draw on The
Challenge of Change in part of my talk today. In particular I will use it when
looking at the nature of guidance for adults. I do so because I think that the
message from 1986 is still, with minor modification, relevant to the task of
‘Opening the Door to Opportunity’ and the further development of educational
guidance for adults.
But before moving to the nature of guidance, I wish to look at the
distinctive nature of working with adults, and at the barriers that still exist for
the adult in transition in terms of education, training and work. So my talk
will address three questions:
● What is the distinctive nature of work with adults in the arena of
education, training and work?
● What are the barriers to participation for adults in transition?
● What is the nature of guidance?
Discussion of these three questions is followed by a short postscript on the
policy framework and action plan for IAG in England.
What is the distinctive nature of work with adults in the arena
of education, training and work?
Those working with adults in terms of guidance or education or training
know that the position of their clients is very different from that of young
people. Young people at some stage between 16 and 19 leave the world
of schooling in a transition to FE, HE, training, work and indeed the rest of
life. Their transition is expected, planned and shared with their peers. It is a
transition anticipated by their families and their teachers. The routes are well
known and anticipated. In contrast, adults in transition are already well into
the ‘rest of their life’, which is littered with experiences and responsibilities to
which the young could not aspire. Put simply, the adult client is not just a
chronologically older version of a young person. We adults face responsibilities
both in the personal and financial domains which tend to grow as we age. We
acquire responsibilities at work, within the family (partners, children and
parents) and in the wider community. Some of these responsibilities are
financial. Thus the relatively easy transition of the young person moving
from school to work or training, from school to HE is in stark contrast to the
serial (and often overlapping) transitions of the adult client/student/worker.
An adult who is moving between education, training, non-working (including
retirement), voluntary activities and leisure does so amidst the messy
reality of a life cluttered with responsibilities to and for people, homes, benefits
and taxation. The transitions faced by our adult clients are complicated
with multi-faceted challenges. Moreover, our work in adult guidance
encompasses work with all adults of almost every age, economic status and
aspiration, and involves the clarification of options at all educational levels
and modes of study.
What are the barriers to adult participation for adults in
transition?
Access to learning, training and to work has been a central issue for adult
guidance workers for a very long time (I almost said from the start of time!).
However, in the UK until relatively recently access was conceived as being
about access to HE. (This was particularly noticeable in the development of
access courses during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.) But I believe
that this notion is unhelpful: access is about entry to all levels of learning and
training. Where the client is identifying (in whatever words) difficulties with
basic skills, the concept of access as only being about HE entry is singularly
unhelpful: access must be about overcoming barriers to learning and participation
at all levels.
In looking at access for adults it is helpful to identify the barriers to participation
in learning. These barriers are complex, and I have found the approach
taken by Liz Thomas in her recent book (2001) to be useful in dealing with
this complexity. (This despite the fact that she is talking about widening
participation to HE!) Thomas views the triggers for and barriers to participation
as being in four categories:
● the impact of the education system;
● the impact of the labour market;
● social and cultural norms;
● individual issues.
Each of these categories contains both triggers and barriers.
The impact of the education system includes factors such as:
● Gaining/failing to gain qualifications from compulsory schooling.
● ‘Good’ qualifications being a ‘passport’ to further study (the concept here
is of qualifications being a sort of ‘ladder’ or high jump competition where
you go on till you knock off the bar! To continue the sporting analogy, it
would be much better if we moved to the concept of the marathon, where
every participant is deserving of applause).
● Disposition towards learning – ‘negative attitudes are difficult to challenge
and reverse’ (Thomas, 2001, p 82).
● Reinforcement of social and economic advantage/disadvantage at school.
● Costs in FE and HE often borne by student and/or family.
● Competition for places in HE (with the wondrous exception of the OU).
● Inappropriate support services for adult returners.
● Distance.
● Inflexibility in delivery.
● The culture of institutions (some institutions are just not adult environments).
The impact of the labour market includes factors such as:
● The view taken of the advantage of study in terms of future employment
and wages. (In England and Wales there have been numerous wideranging
political assertions about the benefits of a university education in
terms of an increment to lifetime earnings. A figure of £400,000 for the
average graduate has been mooted!)
[NB Ted Wragg on this assertion: ‘...the biggest confidence trick of all was
the announcement that graduates must pay for their studies because they
will earn £400,000 extra as a result of getting a degree. This is complete
and utter cobblers. They will do nothing of the kind. This highly suspect
figure of £400,000 was estimated on the beneficiaries of a system when
only 4 or 5 per cent went to university... It is no basis for a system where
half the population might graduate. (Wragg, 2003)]
● The attitude of employers to further education and training.
● Differential expenditure on work-based training by employment status.
Social and cultural norms factors:
● View that learning is not for ‘people like me’.
● View that learning has little or no value to me.
● An assumption of automatic progression to HE.
Individual issues
● Low aspirations or awareness.
● Complexities of life and existing responsibilities.
● You have to change to meet the norms/rules of the institution.
● I am the problem.
● How to meet my special needs.
● Age (‘I’m too old to learn’).
So I see access for adults as being ways of entry and re-entry to learning programmes
for education, training and work (including formal and informal
learning) which cross all such barriers. Ways and methods of access which
treat learners as equal irrespective of background in terms of age, financial or
benefit position, nationality, religion, politics, gender and special needs. Abig
agenda with guidance at its heart. At its heart not only when contemplating
entry to learning (pre-entry) but also when joining a learning or training programme
(at entry), during the learning experience (on programme) and when
completing a particular course or module (and because of other responsibilities
this should include the premature exit) (at exit). (UDACE, 1986; Sadler
and Atkinson, 1998; Brown, 2003.)
What is the nature of adult guidance?
For practitioners and their managers the seven activities of guidance are the
starting point. This formulation is what is best remembered from The
Challenge of Change, the 1986 report which I mentioned earlier. There, the
seven are given as:
● Informing
● Advising
● Counselling
● Assessing
● Enabling
● Advocating
● Feeding back
(UDACE, 1986, pp 24–5; Brown, 2003, pp 4–5)
I wish to say a little about each of these linked activities in turn, but before
doing this let me draw attention to two important features in this formulation.
Guidance is an umbrella term covering a mixture of all seven activities. There
is, however, increasing concern about official (DfES and LSC) use in England
of ‘Information, Advice and Guidance’ (IAG) as if guidance were not an
umbrella term. Indeed, Watts and Hawthorn see this in relation to the
recently published IAG policy framework (DfES, 2003) as:
Serving to compound rather than resolve the previous conceptual confusion. The
opportunity to confine the term ‘guidance’ to its generic usage has been lost by the
retention of ‘IAG’. This leaves England out of line with other countries and international
organisations, where ‘guidance’ (EC; Ireland), ‘ career guidance’ (OECD;
Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) or ‘career development’ (World Bank; Australia,
Canada) are now used as the portmanteau terms. Adhering to ‘IAG’ – insider
jargon which means nothing to outsiders – even after the ‘G’ has effectively been
lopped off, seems particularly perverse (Watts and Hawthorn, 2004).
All activities are in the dynamic ‘-ing’ format. This is particularly imporant
in the case of information, which, I think, is a product or commodity with
which we are awash. You can have information at the touch of a button and
still not be informed. Informing is an activity or process of engaging with
information: it does not necessarily take place (only) at the start of the
guidance process as it underpins the other six activities. [This is particularly
important in England where government seems addicted to what is now
called Information, Advice and Guidance. (IAG) But this formulation of IAG
does not describe what is involved. Information is a mere commodity and is,
by itself, static. Further, I am not clear what guidance is when separated from
the seven activities.] (See discussion of this in Brown, 1999.)
Turning to the seven activities:
Informing
Providing information is a step towards informing, and it underpins all the other
six activities. Also, as the 1986 report reminds us, information may need interpretation
as ‘most published educational information is produced for promotional
purposes, “pure” information is rare’ (UDACE, 1986, p 24; Brown, 2003, p 4).
Advising is about helping clients to undertake that interpretation of information
and to choose ‘the most appropriate option’ (UDACE, 1986, p 24; Brown,
2003, p 4).
Counselling. Since the Challenge of Change was published in 1986, there has
been much discussion of the use of counselling as one of the seven activities
of guidance. There are several problems here: some are over the meanings of
the words we use, whilst others are about practice and training. Since 1986,
counselling has becoming increasingly professionalised, with the advent of
programmes of appropriate and professional training of the counsellor. There
is no doubt, however, that the effective guidance worker has to use skills from
counselling practice. The guidance worker requires defined capability in the
areas of attending, responding, and understanding.
If the Challenge of Change were being drafted today it is likely that the
counselling activity would be reformulated as ‘Using Counselling Skills’. In
Ireland there may be other issues that arise, as the use of ‘counselling’ in
schools and other environments for the guidance role (or what I would
identify from English experience as the guidance role) may mean that counselling
as originally formulated in 1986 is still appropriate.
Assessing was seen in 1986 as ‘Helping clients, by formal or informal means,
to obtain an adequate understanding of their personal, educational and
vocational development’ (UDACE, 1986, p 24; UDACE 2003, p 5). Helpfully,
in later work by UDACE the assessing activity was further examined by
Jennifer Kidd. She stresses that assessing is an inevitable informal process in
guidance work (Kidd, 1988) and that in particular:
Assessment is not labelling. . . assessment is not some form of treatment , . . .
mechanically applied. Rather it should provide a means of helping clients
themselves gather and make use of information....
Assessment is not simply ‘testing’. . . We all form impressions of others by
just being with them, though in everyday life we do not call these impressions
assessments. Impressions arise out of our perceptions of appearance, behaviour
and speech... [in our work we gather these impressions for two purposes]...
to help people themselves make decisions about their lives, or. . . to help others
make decisions about them. We are concerned here with assessment in guidance,
not as part of any selection process.
The varied nature of practice A notable feature of the work of many of the
practitioners I talked to was the diversity of assessment techniques used... A
mixture of techniques was often found most useful and the tools chosen vary
according to the particular client, and his or her specific needs, and the resources
available (Kidd, 1988, pp 3–4)
Enabling was seen as helping clients to deal with third parties, and perhaps
the gaining of study skills. Working at much the same time as the UDACE
Development Group, Diane Bailey used a different term for the ‘enabling’
activity. She used ‘coaching,’ which was defined as ‘Creating or structuring a
learning experience so that the individual can practise and gain new knowledge,
skills or perceptions’ (Bailey, 1987, p 90)
Advocating was seen as advocacy on behalf of a client by ‘negotiating directly
with institutions or agencies on behalf of individuals or groups for whom
there may be additional barriers to access or to learning’ (Brown, 2003, p 5;
UDACE, 1986, p 24).
Feeding back was seen as a critical activity in drawing attention to unmet or
inappropriately met needs. It was informing the education and training
system of what more was needed.
So there you have the seven activities which allow practitioners and their
managers to define and understand their role. But what about the clients?
What do they do? (I am very grateful to Richard Edwards for developing an
analysis of guidance through an examination of the discourse used. See, in
particular, Edwards, 1998.) The position of the client in the guidance process
is that they are:
● our focus,
● they make the decisions from among the options discovered, and
● they do the interpreting, self-exploration, planning and review.
I will go back yet again to The Challenge of Change which asserts that the
‘central focus of any guidance process is the individual’ (UDACE, 1986, p 19;
Brown, 2003, p 2). Within this focus it is the individual who make the
decisions. Here the later words of Stephen McNair are instructive: ‘[guidance]
is a process of helping individuals to take control of their own decisions and
to make decisions wisely’ (McNair, 1996, p 12). So it is about autonomy for
our clients. And the process used by the client is that of:
● evaluation,
● identification,
● planning, and
● review.
Or as the 1986 report puts it:
Acomprehensive service of educational guidance for adults will be able to
assist all adults to:
● Evaluate their own personal, educational, and vocational development,
possibly assisted by a guidance worker and/or formal assessment techniques.
● Identify their learning needs and choose the most appropriate ways of
meeting them, bearing in mind constraints of personal circumstances,
costs, and availability of opportunities.
● Pursue and complete a programme of learning as effectively as possible
(this might include learning through a formal course, an open learning
programme, a self-help group or self-directed private study).
● Review and assess the learning achieved and identify future goals
(Brown, 2003, p 4; UDACE, 1986, p 22).
The final contribution to our understanding of adult guidance is to relate to
education and training. How does the guidance process link to learning?
Here, the answer given by The Challenge of Change is authoritative: ‘Guidance
is that essential component of education and training which focuses on the
individual’s personal relationship with what is to be learned’ (Brown, 2003,
p 3; UDACE, 1986, p 20).
I find this passage beguilingly direct and apposite. For in emphasising this
relationship between learner and what is to be learned, there is the possibility
that there will be a better match between the needs and aspirations of the
adult client and the opportunities available to them.
So the message is that guidance for adults is a process which is:
● dynamic,
● helping,
● empowering,
● linking individuals to learning.
Postscript: a policy framework and action plan for IAG in
England
The latest of several policy developments in England since 1986 is IAG with a
national coverage of guidance partnerships. The DfES (2003) policy framework
and action plan is the first major government document specifically
related to adult guidance (Dent, 2004). The intention is that:
Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) services have a pivotal role to play in
delivering the Skills Strategy. They promote the benefits of learning, help individuals
to address and overcome the barriers to learning and support them in making
realistic and well informed choices.’ (Ministerial Foreword by Ivan Lewis,
DfES, 2003)
This sounds very similar to the language of the UDACE report. However, when
you turn to the document itself (as opposed to the Foreword), there are, as Watts
and Hawthorn (2004) point out, ‘a number of significant ambiguities and limitations’
(p 3). The policy framework promises integration between a range of guidance
providers in the workplace, colleges and elsewhere in the networks which
have been developed. There is also a firmer relationship between the telephone
facilities offered by ‘learndirect advice’ and face-to-face services. The action plan
also sets firm targets in terms of clients: a full service will give ‘particular priority
to those people without a first full Level 2 qualification’ (DfES, 2003, p 12). This
has created concern about how far such a service can be universal and equitable
within such firm targets. Indeed, the Level 2 target ‘avoids spelling out that
rationing – of a rather crude sort – is what is proposed’ (Bailey, 2004). However,
such target setting is a part of the access and social inclusion agenda and as such
is a further move forward to opening the door to learning.
Opening the door to opportunity: is adult guidance the key?
Having attempted answers to my three questions, and having given a short
postscript, can I say where our doorway to opportunity stands? Is it half-open
or half-closed? I suggest that with a comprehensive service of guidance for
adults it is more likely to be at least halfway open. I believe it is the key to
developing a system of lifelong learning which is genuinely and equally
accessible to all citizens at all stages of their journey through the serial transitions
that are a part of life, learning, work and leisure. What is needed is a
service which is an ‘integral component’ (Brown, 2003, p 9; UDACE, 1986, p
11) of our education and training provision. I hope that the development of
service in very different formats in the four parts of the UK, and, indeed, in
the Republic of Ireland, will move forward in line with such a vision. (For
another view on development of guidance for adults since 1986 see Rivis,
2004.)
Perhaps that should be my last word. Indeed, I do not readily or usually
exit from a paper (or a lecture) with a quotation. However in this case I do so
willingly by recalling wise words from Professor Tony Watts. His words
remind the reader of the difficulties encountered not from practice or theory
but from placing the guidance agenda in the wider societal frame. [Such a
framework is necessary to have a full appreciation of the English IAG
document which is so briefly discussed in the postscript].
Guidance is a profoundly political process. It operates at the interface between the
individual and society, between self and opportunity, between aspiration and
realism. It facilitates the allocation of life chances. Within a society in which life
chances are unequally distributed, it faces the issue of whether it serves to
reinforce such inequalities or reduce them’ (Watts, 1996, p 351).
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