TITLE: Unlearning the Past NAME: Helen Bradbury (Brad) INSTITUTION: Dunedin College of Education INTRODUCTION As indicated in the abstract the topic of this presentation is mature students. But I want to narrow the focus and look at those mature students who enter our tertiary institutions with little background or experience of formal education. Mature students have not fared well as a result of the recent and rapid changes to the education system in New Zealand. In its 1987 Education Brief to the Incoming Government, Treasury said there was Ò ... concern at middle and upper class Pakeha ÔcaptureÕ of much educational assistance.Ó (Treasury, vol. 2, p. 6) There were groups of people identified as disadvantaged but mature students were not amongst them. Of course there would be many mature students who were not only mature but also fitted into one of the listed categories: - Those disadvantaged by socio-economic status; - Women; - People with disabilities and special needs; - People with literacy/learning needs; - People requiring specific learning assistance; - Rural groups; - Pacific Island groups; - Other ethnic groups specifically identified by the institution as disadvantaged; - Other groups identified as disadvantaged. Data available about people who enrol at University as mature students suggest they are (or were ) predominantly women who enroled after completing family and childcare responsibilities. Generally they have been financially independent i.e. their partner is employed and there is sufficient income to allow them to study full or part time. No doubt it was members of this group who Treasury claimed were responsible for some of the Ôcapture Ô of educational resources. Sir Robert Jones ( a prominent and well known property developer in New Zealand) in his weekly syndicated newspaper column wrote disparaging of such people last year. He implied that the universities were full of such people and that they were taking up valuable places and would be better off taking WEA courses or using their local libraries. He implied that universities were places for serious study. He did not take into consideration that for some of this group their study was very serious in that they were intending to use the qualification in order to seek employment. Self growth, it seems was a luxury that the universities should not offer such people. It is possible too that there is a message from the power base in society upholding the outdated concept of human development i.e., development ends at adolescence. From then we live on an even plateau until we die! I believe education should be available to everyone no matter what their age and stage in life. It has been my experience in tertiary education and I am sure many of you will agree that mature students bring an added and special dimension to courses. It enriches them and I believe the wider society. But what of the reality? Is it easy for these people to study? ACCESS Here I wish to look at access as an equity issue. Do governments provide for equity? Do they ensure equity issues are addressed? Do they see second chance education as an equity issue? I believe it is but I doubt whether Treasury do! If it is an equity issue then it is vital that mature students have easy access to second chance education. Providing more places as both the previous Labour Government and our present National claim to have done is too simplistic . The number of places may well have increased ( although there is some debate about this) but what the government have not addressed is the factors that prevent people taking up those places, particularly mature students. TreasuryÕs ideological position has become clear in recent educational policy. ÒIt is an agenda in which equity becomes redefined in individualistic consumerist terms (user-pays) ...Ó (Lauder, Middleton, Boston and Wylie, 1990, p. 25) It is apparent that education is a private goal, something from which the individual gains benefit and therefore something for which the individual should strive and pay. I feel there is no need for me to go into detail on the influence of the current New Right ideology and its impact on current education policy and practice as I am sure it is only too familiar to you. What does this mean for people wanting to improve themselves, do they get a second chance? Our government would say they do but what isnÕt acknowledged is that this second chance comes with a hefty price tag. TreasuryÕs ideology is writ large in practice. Those of you who are New Zealanders will be familiar with the financial aspects of tertiary study and the recent changes. Before this the outlook for mature students was much more promising. (Study Right is available only to those under the age of 25 and student loans are also only available to that same group.) So it could be argued that the greatest single barrier to access for mature students is a financial one. It is somewhat ironic that the recent policy of second chance will not affect mature students because they are already paying full fees! 1 My in-depth study of a particular group of mature students came about as a result of a policy in Learning for Life. In 1990 a contestable equity fund was made available and tertiary institutions were invited to submit proposals for a share of that funding. 2 The fund is no longer available and I would suggest along with its disappearance has also gone the incentive for tertiary institutions to offer places for mature students who need additional assistance. We are all familiar with the current economic climate and the effect that this is having on educational funding. In the institution I work in it appears that the only courses that will definitely be mounted in the future are the ones that are economically viable. However the College is obligated in terms of Charter provisions. We have a learning assistance programme which started in the latter half of 1991. This programme is available to all students not just the mature ones. Changes to the programme are planned for 1993. So I am suggesting that there will be fewer mature students at Colleges of Education, Polytechs and Universities from now on. There will be even fewer mature students who are also members of those disadvantaged groups I mentioned before. As I have already said I believe the institutions will be the poorer for their absence. They add a special dimension to individual courses and to the life of the College. At University I find them a delight to tutor and teach and I am sure that those of you who have taught mature students will agree with me. They have not only maturity and life experiences but enthusiasm and motivation as well. I should point out that I tend to be speaking in global terms and there is a danger that I may be making some sweeping generalisations. I know all too well that there are always exceptions to the rule! TARGETTING Because of their value and the need of our communities to train and teach such people I believe that there should be an effort made to recruit them into tertiary learning institutions. The actual ways and means of doing this I suggest could be a worthwhile project for someone to undertake, it is beyond the scope of this paper. EXPECTATIONS (a) Institutional It has been my experience that once mature students are admitted to courses the institution is likely to expect them to conform and participate in the same way as other students. Again I am speaking from the point of view of the College I work in. The group of mature students that were admitted to our College in June of 1990 were given special treatment and were part of a special course for only six months.3 On completion of the course they were admitted as full first year students and expected to participate and pass the first year courses just like the other students. Before the six month course ended questions were raised and there was considerable discussion about on-going support. But any help for the ten students concerned had to be given on an informal basis because the institution were not in a position to allocate any additional funding or staffing. Some support was available to the students in their first year but it very much depended on the classes they were in. We tried to place them in our tutorial groups for the compulsory University papers but because of timetable clashes this was not always possible. Also as the year progressed it became evident that some accessed help, others didnÕt. I guess you could say that they were beginning to take responsibility for their own learning. There is a dilemma - do we continue the support, do we continue to treat them differently, do they continue to be labelled Ôspecial needÕ? Or do we treat them exactly as their College peers and leave them to sink or swim? I have to say that that the latter did not happen. Many of the staff were committed to the individuals from the group and this was evident in the time they were happy to spend with them giving them extra help and support. The staffÕs expectations of the group was high and they supported the students in fulfilling these expectations. Generally though it seems that if change is required it has to be made by the student. Part of this is due to the constraints of the course approval process and what constitutes an official course. In the case of our college, at the pre-service level we are in the business of training students to teach in early childhood centres and primary schools. 4 Because of this many of the courses are prescribed and levels of competency set. For its credibility as a training institution the College requires minimum levels of competency and it is in the achievement of these levels that many of the problems and pitfalls arise for the mature students. Having undergone a successful period of training we guarantee that our students have achieved a prescribed level of competency and are qualified to teach in any childhood centre or primary school in New Zealand. As part of the course students are required to sit and pass three university education papers, two at the 100 level and one at the 200 level. In our experience this is a major hurdle for many of the mature students who have had little or no recent experience of secondary schooling. But the regulations are inflexible, without those papers it is not possible to gain a Diploma of Teaching from the College. It was possible to make some adjustments within the College (e.g., a reader/writer for the final exam for one student but it took much time and effort to achieve this.) I am sure many of you will be familiar with a relatively recent pneumonic that has surfaced on the educational horizon: RPL - Recognition of Prior Learning. Mature students bring many life skills and experiences to the tertiary learning situation and as yet there has been no formal recognition of this. Perhaps at the end of this presentation we might discuss this aspect because I am interested in finding out what is happening in other places. (b) Students Initially the Foundation Course people expected their course to be like school and some were concerned when it wasnÕt. They thought that they would be required to be there from 9 - 3, that they would sit at desks and that they would listen and be taught. It came as a surprise and was rather threatening for them to find that they would not be told what to do, say or think. They soon adjusted to this and in fact towards the end of the course some members of the group expressed a degree of frustration and dissatisfaction with their treatment as the following extract from my thesis illustrates. ÒDick felt their skills and experience were under-valued: I was under the understanding that we were accepted here because of our background, what we had done, what we are. We have both sides and now this is another bit we can add to it, but what we came in with is not valued. He thought that when dealing with adult students; What they should do is take a look when they are teaching adults and take a look at how they feel about things because not all people feel the same.Ó Some said that there were very conscious of the great gaps in their knowledge and that they were expecting to have these gaps filled. Here they were referring to factual knowledge, especially literacy and numeracy skills. As well as expecting their courses to be like school they also expected those that taught them to be like the teachers they had had at school. As their experiences of schooling ( especially secondary ) had been fairly negative IÕm happy to say they were pleasantly surprised! This applied to staff at both the College and the University. The following extract from my thesis relates to the reactions the group had on meeting some of the university education faculty staff. ÒKate felt there were benefits not only for the group but, I think it was a good idea because you can tell people over there [presumably she meant other students] that they are just normal people. ... It has made me more aware that just because someone is at the top they are no different than you. For Matuakore lecturers were taken down from their pedestals and became approachable. I have met different sort of people. The people I am so used to looking up to. I would still be looking at you as up here if I hadnÕt gone and done the course. I feel comfortable.Ó But at the same time as they wanted to be treated as adults and taught accordingly the most popular part of their six month course was when they took Subject Studies and were in ordinary college classes with other students. They referred to these as their mainstreaming sessions. They did not like being seen as being different, they felt they had been labelled, stereotyped and were a group with a stigma as the following extract from my thesis illustrates. ÒGrant said it (Subject Studies) was a feature of the course for him and it was he who first made the connection between Subject Studies and mainstreaming. Actually the one thing I do enjoy is my Subject Studies. We are just in there with everybody else and I am just participating like everyone else. I feel that parallel with Subject Studies and mainstreaming where we are in there and we are no different to anybody else there. If we weren't divided into F for Foundation Course, A3, A2 or A1 [the different codes for different years], you wouldnÕt know who was who. For the students felt that this was the time they got to mix with ÔrealÕ students and lecturers, they were treated as ÔnormalÕ College students, had the same expectations and were given the same treatment as other students. Davinia wondered about the fairness of the special treatment she felt they were receiving. The mainstreaming thing, we are the special class and and we feel very much like special class sometimes. Oh you are the Foundation Course, and I think it is great that we are getting this special treatment. We are meeting the lecturers and stuff like that but it worries me to a certain extent that we are getting that preferential treatment. There is a stigma attached to the label Ôspecial classÕ. DaviniaÕs feeling of unease was not only with the perception that they were receiving this special treatment but also that they were classified with this particular label. Dick said that the College was not putting theory into practice. I really enjoy my Subject Studies because you are part of the College. You are not just one group. What can I say? We have put it down as we have been mainstreamed. Labelled, with a sign, thatÕs the Foundation Course. We have been given our own classroom and the only time we get out of there is when we go to a couple of Subject Studies and we are back in that room again. You know we are in a College where we talk about mainstreaming and they set us aside, as something different.Ó This desire to be the same as others is a point I hope to elaborate on in a moment. (c) Family During my interviews with the students an interesting aspect emerged. It seems that various family members has expectations and believed that the course would have an effect on not only the participant but the family and family life as well. ÒMatuakore: When I first started I sort of thought I was alienated. I was pushed over here: my wife the teacher, my mother the teacher and everybody sort of, and when I spoke they sort of, yeah listen to that, listen to that, [at this point we both laughed] that educated person speaks. And yet I feel I havenÕt changed. I am the same person but it is sort of like a label. She is going to Teachers College, discussing brainy things and to them they sort of stand out, but yet to me I havenÕt changed. I mean I can still yell at them, ÒClean your bloody room up now otherwise I am going to throw all that stuff out!Ó You know. But I think now it has dawned on everybody that I am still Mum. Ani: To me I am not changed in how I feel about the family but I think they do because my husband says, ÒYou are so changed. You have changed so much since you go down to Teachers College.Ó And I say ÒHow?Õ and then he just sits there and says, ÒI donÕt know.Ó But to me I havenÕt changed a bit.Ó I would suggest that partners and other family members can exert a strong influence on the student. They are perceived as taking on a new role and it may be a role that the family do not approve of. I should say that in the case of the students in the Foundation Course this pressure was, in the main, on the female students. Families appeared concerned about domestic arrangements and the possibility of family routines and practices being disrupted. So this was a major area of unlearning, the taking on of a new role and sometimes the alteration or diminution of a previous one, that of unpaid domestic. UNLEARNING The title of this paper and the main focus of this presentation comes from a remark that one of the lecturers involved in teaching the Foundation Course made during one of the interviews. Ò. . . that adults take a lot longer. Well itÕs like unlearning I suppose.Ó It is something that I have given a great deal of thought to since she made it and is an area that I have discussed with both staff and students. What I have to say about the areas of unlearning will not be new or surprising to most of you. But they do raise serious concerns both for the mature student and the learning institutions and the staff in them. But first an interesting and somewhat light-hearted piece of unlearning that occurred fairly early on. The course had only been going for a month when the August holidays arrived. The lecturers assumed that the students would realise that this was a time when they were not required to attend classes but that work would continue. Not so for some! ÒJoe: The holiday stuffed me right up. I shouldnÕt have had that holiday. I had to get my work done but I was still doing things. I went and started doing things around the house, you know, that I had to catch up on.Ó And of course the issue was complicated further by the fact that they all had children and the school holidays did not coincide with the College and University holidays at all! It made me realise how locked into an academic world we are! The lack of self esteem and confidence in their own ability are major aspects that have to be ÔunlearntÕ. These are usually deeply ingrained attitudes that have been built up over a long period of time and in many cases continually reinforced over the years. BourdieuÕs theories are relevant, the cultural capital required by tertiary learning institutions differs greatly from these peoplesÕ backgrounds and life experiences. They have a different habitus. They have to learn that their beliefs, values and attitudes are important and worthwhile. They have to learn and gain practice in expressing their thoughts and opinions. I believe it is the responsibility of the institution to provide an audience, encourage and develop such skills and give positive and meaningful feedback (both of the written and spoken word), I would suggest that not all staff in our tertiary institutions have the ability to do this or if they have, donÕt choose to do it. Are remedial courses available for students? This goes back to the point I made earlier about minimum competencies. Not only do we guarantee to send our graduates out with certain skills and competencies but there is an assumption and indeed in many courses it is obligatory that students will enter with a minimum level of competence. It would seem that the onus and responsibility to meet the required standards rests with the student both before and after entry. (I could be open to persuasion on this point during discussion time.) There are snares in their so called lack of cultural capital. Time has shown that many mature students see their path to success lying in their being able to acquire the necessary and ÔappropriateÕ cultural capital ( including the Foundation Course students). This raises many questions. It is often stated that role models are a powerful force in education. But if students, by choice or force of circumstance buy into the dominant hegemony of the New Zealand education system can their acquisition of skills and further education be seen as being ÔsuccessfulÕ in terms of equity and the outcomes we are striving for? I mentioned before the desire of the students in the Foundation Course to be the same and how the Subject Studies options were the most popular part of the course. In order to achieve this sameness and conformity I have a concern that in the process they lose their differences, their uniqueness, the very qualities that we wanted them in the institution for in the first place. It seems to me that because of the inflexibility of tertiary institutions this is, and will continue to be, a major problem. Just how much unlearning do we want them to do and of what type? TIME A crucial aspect of the unlearning process is time. There has to be sufficient time for people to not only unlearn some of their past but time to take on board new concepts and ideas. They need time to practice and develop the skills they are gaining. To expect students who have had little formal education (and what little they had often negative) to take on board what is required for example of a course of teacher training in the required time is not practical. There is a real danger that we are setting the students up for failure. One way round this is for the student to take longer to complete their training and this is one positive change that is taking place in many institutions including ours. There are many students who will take longer than the three years to complete their Diploma of Teaching. There are however some cautions to be considered. If the students take some years to complete their training there is a possibility that the knowledge gained in some courses may be out of date by the time they graduate. Recent practical training is an important part of the diploma training and the logistics of stretching this over a number of years is a factor that would have to be considered. CASE STUDY I want now to talk about some of the personal experiences and outcomes of some of the 10 students from the ten original Foundation Course. Much of this is personal observation and for obvious reasons individual students will not be named or identified. Also this material will not be recorded, firstly because I do not feel that it is appropriate and secondly at the time of writing this paper the outcomes of their second year of study are not known. Students are in the process of completing courses and results will be known by the time the paper is presented. There are many positive aspects that I want to discuss in this section. CONCERNS My immediate concern is that we are no longer going to see the disadvantaged mature students, especially those from disadvantages groups, in our institutions. If they are too expensive then in this day and age no College, University or Polytech can ÔaffordÕ to have them. There is a very real danger that tertiary institutions will become even more elitist than they are now. Where are such students going to find the money to enable them to come? If they do enrol are there programmes and suitable staff ready and able to cope? Can staff cope? The sheer pressure of work could be a problem if inadequate time was not given. As I indicated earlier I would suggest that these people often need special and different treatment, they require specialised teaching. Teaching staff need training. What do they learn when they enrol and participate in courses in our institutions? Do they learn that in order to ÔsucceedÕ they have to abandon their own values and culture? In the case of the College are we giving them an expectation of future employment that is not there? (Although I believe that Maori and Pacific Island graduates may be Ôsnapped upÕ by their respective communities.) Will Boards of Trustees employ mature students? (It is our experience that they are not amongst the first people to win positions.) Another aspect is that most of these students are immobile and we all know how difficult it is to find jobs in cities, especially one like ours that has such a large student population. Equity is an expensive business both in terms of time and money! If the experiences we have had with the group of ten students we admitted to college in 1990 are anything to go by then I would say that this type of course and this type of student should be in out tertiary institutions in increasing numbers. Unfortunately because of economic and political factors the future does not look too bright. REFERENCES BOURDIEU, P. and PASSERON, J. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London, Sage. BRADBURY, H. (1991) Equity - who needs it? paper presented at NZARE Conference. BRADBURY, H. (1992) Contestable Equity Fund 1990. Policy to Reality: an account of the process, unpublished M Ed thesis, Victoria University of Wellington BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE TABLE (1988) Reforming Tertiary Education in New Zealand, Auckland. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (1988) Report of the Working Group on Post- Compulsory Education and Training, Wellington, Department of Education. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (1989a) Learning for Life, Wellington, Department of Education. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (1989b) Learning For Life Two, Wellington, Department of Education. GURI-ROZENBLIT, S. (1989) ÔProviding higher education to socially disadvantaged populationsÕ, Studies in Higher Education, Volume 14, No. 3, pp 321-329. LAUDER, H., MIDDLETON, S., BOSTON, J. and WYLIE, C. (1988) ÔThe third wave: A critique of the New Zealand TreasuryÕs report on education, part 1Õ, New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 23, pp. 15-33. MIDDLETON, S., CODD, J. and JONES, A. (Eds.) (1990) New Zealand Education Policy Today, Wellington, Allen and Unwin. THE TREASURY (1987) Government Management, Volume 11 : Education, Wellington, The Treasury. 1 Students who fail papers lose their allowances in the following year. They must complete a successful course of study to qualify for allowances. 2 For more details refer to Contestable Equity Fund 1990. Unpublished M Ed thesis, Victoria University, 1992. 3 They would not have been admitted to the usual training programme for they did meet the criteria for entry. 4 The college also offers secondary training but a degree is a pre-requisite and so mature students from disadvantaged groups do not meet the criteria