Adult Learners Are Engaged
Michael Kenny (NUI Maynooth)
Abstract
Adult learners are becoming increasingly quantitatively and qualitatively important within higher education. Their engagement with higher education institutions brings an experience and a perspective that is not the same as that of the traditional student. This paper will explore the concept of civic engagement and service learning as it is applied to higher education institutions from an adult education perspective.
While service learning and civic engagement are about exposing the learner to interaction with society and particularly communities and sections of society that they may not otherwise experience, the adult learner brings the experience of societal engagement with them when they come into the higher education learning environment. They have particular experience that is their learning and deserves to be accredited as relevant learning. Campus engagement needs to recognise the community engagement knowledge and skills adults learners bring with them. If higher education institutions are seeking ways to accredit younger students for engaging with society, then the higher education institutions also needs to find appropriate ways to credit the learning that adult learners already have.
This paper will explore these important issues in a modernising learning environment and in a society experiencing unprecedented change.
The author is a lecturer in the Department of Adult and Community Education and has extensive experience of in-reach and out-reach higher education work. The author also has a long interest in service learning and civic engagement and is a promoter of this engagement in learning at third and fourth level.
