Making it happen for mature students

Dr Mairtin O Fathaigh has recently been appointed associate professor of adult continuing education at UCC.

This is the first such appointment in the State and is one of a series of initiatives by UCC to encourage wider participation in university education and address issues of concern to marginalised communities, particularly in Cork city.

O Fathaigh was formerly a teacher in Colaiste Chriost Ri in Cork, which was followed by a six-year stint as a lecturer in education. "My new post is very much reflective of the importance that the institution is attaching to adult continuing education. It always had that but my job formalises it and ensures that the area has academic recognition."

In order to ease adult's access to education, UCC gives them a credit value for their prior learning. "Traditionally, for people who took diplomas, it was terminal learning. It was learning that didn't allow them to move on to something else. Now, for example, if people have taken diplomas and come into a first year BA evening class, they only have to do two subjects as opposed to three. This gesture recognises that people have been involved in substantial learning and it is reflected in their pathway."

Adult perceptions of the learning environment is one of the areas that O Fathaigh is interested in. "We have a reasonable number of publications on issues such as adults' learning styles - how they perceive the learning that takes place and how participative it is. We've had projects on empowerment of a community kind. "For example, we have two cycles of people - 500 in all - taking our diploma programmes. It's interesting to see the extent at a personal and community level, how empowered and assertive they become. They're more knowledgeable and are willing to read more. They have a higher level of interest - so there's a whole process of engagement with them."

Access to continuing education, he says, is another area of importance. "We would be trying to ensure that it's more than just providing opportunities for people who are already well-advantaged. How do you provide opportunities for people who are disadvantaged, excluded or marginalised? Those are the kind of issues we are looking at."

The "negotiated learning process" is something O Fathaigh is also interested in. "By that, I mean that we have as part of our rationale a model of development. It means engaging with professional and community groups and sharing with them what it is they would like to have. "So together, we negotiate content, curriculum, kinds of teaching methods and kinds of evaluation procedures, so that it is more than the university saying, `This is what we have for you, take it if you're interested.' Rather, we're saying to people that we're interested in sharing and negotiating with them to see what we can bring forward together which will meet the kinds of needs that are being expressed to us. "In that way, there's a very high degree of ownership of learning.

"For a traditional university, that is a very big step forward. A traditional university is more used to dealing with school-leavers who have no control, investment, nor role in the kind of learning that is imposed on them. With adult learning, it's very much an interactive process, a partnership process."

LAST YEAR, the centre for Adult Continuing Education had about 1,700 participants. "We've had people here who are retired from positions in life and come to take part in what they always wanted to do. "We go from adult community-type education to continuing professional development. Our 1,700 students last year were scattered around 67 different learning centres throughout Ireland and Britain. For example, we have a very fine diploma in credit union studies with centres in both places. "Students from Britain come here for a week-long summer school. The material for the course was written in-house. It's a partnership of development with the Irish League of Credit Unions.

"This year, we advertised three new diplomas: a diploma in personnel management, a diploma in safety, health and welfare at work and one in training and development. In some of those courses, we're over-subscribed by four to one. We have maybe 139 people applying for a diploma in safety, health and welfare at work. "If you offer places to all qualified candidates, you face the problem of quality in terms of the professional organisations that we're linked to. If you do personnel management for two years with us, you get graduate membership of the international Institute of Personnel and Development. We're very conscious of having to limit numbers because we want to ensure that what we're offering is consistent with the best standard as laid down for us."

O Fathaigh says "mature students, pro rata, are more successful than the traditional school-leavers in achieving honours degrees. This is because they can relate their learning to a set of life experiences, they can contextualise their learning and they're time-urgent. We have a substantial amount of female returners."

Of course, returning to the learning environment is not without its problems and, to this end, UCC provides a week-long programme for mature students at the start of term. "We have a set of six non-academic tutors. Many of the issues around the adult learner are non-academic such as writing essays and sitting at tutorials and taking notes. "If one has experienced failure in learning while young, it can almost act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your sense of worth can be threatened. We try to deal with all these issues."