Conclusion

It is obvious that in this research “ask” is the learning strategy participants used overwhelmingly. Significant use is also made of reading, observing or modeling, just doing it, and electronic technology. While attempting to identify and document the use of these strategies by adults with little formal education, numerous other significant issues were raised by the adults we interviewed. These issues were combined in the theme “life experiences.”

Life Experiences

When we asked adults with little formal education how they learned, they described different strategies they would use to learn different things. The strategies participants chose related to what they were learning, their skill level, their overall “comfort” with a strategy and their previous success with a particular strategy. As the participants talked they often told us stories related to learning and how their experiences related to how they learn now.

While these stories were interesting and often provided us with a more complete picture of the participants’ learning, at first we did not recognize what part they would play in the final project. Eventually, as the data analysis progressed, we understood that through their stories participants were identifying for us some issues related to their learning strategies, something we would need in order to fully describe how they learn. All of the interviews had some reference to life experiences. Some of the participants were consciously using these stories to analyse “why” they learn the way they do.

We called these references or stories “life experiences.” The majority of these life experiences fell in the pre-adult or “growing up years.” The growing up years’ experiences proved to have a powerful impact on learning in both negative and positive ways. Sometimes it was the family who made an impact in the lives and learning of participants and other times it was an outsider; an employer, teacher or stranger. The participants felt acknowledged, challenged, understood and appreciated by these individuals in the positive learning experiences and traumatized, intimidated or abused in the negative ones. Positive experiences were also referred to when we asked about the characteristics of a good teacher and negative experiences were often also brought up related to examples of what a good teacher should never do. Other experiences were not directly related to relationships, but rather to a place or time where the participants were allowed to learn on their own terms or, in the negative instances, were not challenged or given options to fully explore their learning and use the strategies that worked.

In considering the life experiences related to how participants learn, we identified four specific groupings:

• Stressors—events or conditions which created physical or emotional stress (traumas, abuse, poverty)
• Learning Culture of the Family, Community and School
• The Leaving School Experience—why they did not continue on to finish high school
• Work Experiences—the learning culture of the first few jobs and the importance of those jobs