Data Analysis 1: How do Adults with Little Formal Education Learn?

This chapter presents an analysis of the data from the individual and group interviews with the research participants. After we had conducted all the interviews, each of us took rigorous notes from our tapes. These notes were circulated among the research team. At the subsequent face-to-face meeting, we identified the various themes that we saw emerging from the data. These themes were then combined and further analysed. Each of us then took responsibility for one of the themes that we were particularly interested in. We returned to our own communities throughout the province and began the next step of the data analysis. Each of us re-read all of the notes from all of the interviews, paying particular attention to the theme we had committed to analysing. The four themes that we investigated are:

1. Learning Strategies
2. Life Experiences
3. Agency
4. Emotions

The more we discussed and debated what each of us were discovering about our themes, the more we saw how interconnected each theme was. We discovered the rich and complex set of relationships among the four themes to be a useful set of tools for understanding how adults with little formal education learn.

The material in this chapter outlines what we learned about each of the four themes.

Learning Strategies

This section explores how the participants in this project told us they learn and the ways in which they most often chose to learn the things they have learned. The adults with little formal education whom we interviewed learn both new skills and new knowledge. They named five main strategies they use:

1. Ask
2. Read
3. Observe/Model
4. Just Do It
5. Use Technology