ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the implications of learning to learn on the roles of learners and educators, drawing on two projects in the field of European non-formal educational programmes. Learners have to take new roles and develop new competences involving planning learning, learning with others, and reflection on the learning outcomes and process. This is a quite challenging step for many adult learners. Often their experience in traditional education leaves them with a negative perception of learning and a negative image of themselves as learners. To (re)gain the confidence in your own ability to become an independent learner takes time, reflection, and the support of others. The main challenge for educators is having the belief and trust that learners are best placed to know their own learning needs, and being able to facilitate the path that the learner has chosen. Creating a good social climate and the ability to support the individual learning process of learners are, among others, crucial roles for the ‘new’ facilitator. Still many new challenges are ahead of us when it comes to learning and supporting learners in the future. The real sea change will be the shift from an educational system that has as its main objective the transmission of knowledge and skills within a given time-frame into a system that is able to facilitate the generation and development of self-directed learners.
Learning to learn has profound implications for the role and competences of both learners and educators. This chapter focuses on the crucial aspects of this change of roles in which responsibility for what is learned and how it is learned is progressively handed over to the learner. It draws on two projects in the field of European non-formal educational programmes for adult education and youth work. A European network of seven organizations undertook the Learning to Learn research and practice project to collaborate, to develop, implement, and analyse innovative approaches to teaching and learning in the field of non-formal adult education to help support learners in planning, organizing, implementing, and assessing their own learning. The other project is the Training of Trainers for European Youth in Action Projects. The findings emerging from these projects identified four main fields of competence: Awareness of self as a learner, Organizing and planning ones learning, Learning with others, Reflection, reviewing, and self-assessment.
