ICT for Adult Educators
Adult Education (AE), sometimes also referred to as ‘ALE’ (Adult Learning and Education), is a very broad field. AE can be formal or non-formal (and anything in between), and it stretches across many professional domains but also covers a wide range of personal issues. On top of that, “adults” are not all of the same age – the term refers (depending on the context) to young adults (aged 16 or older) as well as to seniors well beyond the age of retirement.
The United Nations, in their 2015 policy document frame ALE as follows: “All people, irrespective of sex, age, race, ethnicity, and persons with disabilities, migrants, indigenous peoples, children and youth, especially those in vulnerable situations, should have access to lifelong learning opportunities that help them acquire the knowledge and skills needed to exploit opportunities and to participate fully in society.”
Over and over again, participants in ALE confirm that competent trainers matter and make a real difference. But what makes for a competent educator in ALE? The field will be hard-pressed to come up with a generic set of competencies applying to all while at the same time sufficiently different from profiles of educators in other contexts.
