adult education?

[lobelia321]

On another note (and you'll notice that I've chosen to theme each of my posts tonight and spam 'em rather than make one long big porridgy one with sub-headings):

Does anyone know anything about continuing education and adult education? I've got a job interview (111) in the continuing education sector coming up and am trying to bring myself up to speed really fast.

I am so depressed by my present job. I need to get out, even if it means commuting.

Comments

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

i'm sorry to hear about your current job totally sucking.

continuing education here in canada means the courses and diplomas one can take after one has got a degree or two. they could be things taken for fun, like computer or cooking or creative writing courses, or they can be professional, like magazine journalism or real estate law or graphic design, that sort of thing.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

My job has sucked for years. But it is coming to a head now. It's just getting me down too much. You changed jobs a while ago, I remember. What was that like?

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

the emphasis is on "access", as you can probably imagine. and also doing stuff that can be accredited so you get a nice shiny certificate and the place can get more funding. something else to bear in mind is that you may be teaching people who haven't studied for years. all pretty obvious stuff...but then this is probably far less of a jump for you than if you were a secondary school teacher, for example.

hello!

n.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The teaching doesn't bother me so much because our place has 1/3 to 2/3 mature students, as it is. And today, as I just told Natasha and Freyafloyd, I did about 1 hour's worth of research in t'reference library and found out tonnes of stuff, incl. many useful buzz words to weave effortlessly into my presentation: widening participation, lifelong learning, Tomlinson report, hah!

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Although I'm vastly underqualified, I'm looking into teaching continuing education as well.. Like you, I don't really know much about it and I don't know how much the differences are in our respesctive, but I'll keep you posted on anything I can find out. Good luck !

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Hey, we can be colleagues!!!!

Well, that is, if I get the job. And if, after having gone down and had a look round, I still want the job. As I just told Freyafloyd, I did 1 hours' worth of research in 't'reference library today and found out more than I ever thought I wanted to know about policies and statistics and challenges and funding. :-)

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

I did 1 hours' worth of research in 't'reference library today and found out more than I ever thought I wanted to know about policies and statistics and challenges and funding. :-)

Oh my. Maybe I'll just take the easy way out and work at Starbuck's!

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

As far as I understand it, continuing education is university undergraduate level work (4 now isn't it?) as opposed to further education (often level 3).

My experience of continuing education is that it was not of the standard that my proper degree was, despite claiming to be of the same level. I think it varies greatly from institution to institution. My experience of it has been that because it involves outreach and access, universities do it for the funding and drop the standards. The better courses allow people to go on to standard course alongside regular undergraduates, but just take one option from the degree.

It could be a great job to do, but it might involve a lot of office politics. Continuing education staff often seem to have less of an academic background. I can't imagine it would have the status of your current job. It seems an FEish environment - so bullying galore.

That was a personal opinion based purely on my own experience/listening to gossip etc and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I actually did 1 hour's research in t'reference library today and collected armfuls of info to weave into my presentation. But it's especially useful to have your personal eyewitness report, as it were. There's a lot of policy hype about education, I found.

Re the status thing: my present job has very low status. My present university is very low on the radar, and the place is depressing me. I am cautious about this job I'm going for and will ask careful questions when I'm there because it is, as you say, probably rather administrative. But we shall see.