Introduction

Educational guidance and learner support, in common with notions of key/core skills and culturally/socially relevant curriculum, is open to multiple interpretations and consequently the subject of considerable debate amongst practitioners and policy makers. This chapter outlines common guidance activities, underpinning principles and recent developments relating to guidance and learner support. It examines the rhetoric and realities of the community tutors' beliefs about educational guidance. The chapter utilizes tutors' accounts of their practice to discuss how guidance was incorporated within the teaching and learning process and consider the benefits of this holistic approach as a strategy for tackling educational exclusion and engendering independent learners and citizens. It concludes that many adults, especially those without recent positive experiences of education, often benefit from a more informal learner-centred approach. This kind of guidance potentially contributes to their development as autonomous learners and active citizens.