DIVERSITY

Including Migrants through Organisational Development and Programme Planning in Adult Education

Ireland is no stranger to waves of migration, spanning 5,000 years, from the first documented migrants arriving on the shores of the North Mayo Ceide Fields to the recent wave of Ukranian refugees. Following the second world war in 1946, Operation Shamrock, in the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, (then an Army barracks) supported 500 traumatised children arriving from war torn Germany who were then hosted by families in country Wicklow and beyond. We welcomed migrants from Vietnam in the 1970’s and in the early 2000s refugees and asylum seekers from the continent of Africa arrived in numbers previously unforeseen, the impact of the Direct Provision system has yet to be fully appreciated or resolved.

Internal displacement has also been a recurring them on the island of Ireland. Displacement of western farming communities occurred through the Land Commission from its establishment in 1881 throughout the 1900s, as well as displacement of communities fleeing conflict across the border in the 1970s.  Describing the impact of displacement in The ‘Emerald Curtain’, it is estimated that 11,000 people were internally displaced as a result of partition of the island. RTE Archives documented the arrival of displaced people from Belfast to Gormanstown Army barracks in the 1970’s.  Fifty years later, we are considering using the same army buildings in Gormanstown to host Ukranian refugees, that were  used to host families fleeing the troubles in Northern Ireland. Global flows of migration continue to be topical issues for us.

Europe is currently experiencing the greatest number of economic and conflict migrants since the second world war. Modern society knows of internal displacement and external migration from African countries for some years but set it aside as a problem to be dealt with by the European Union. Few of us have had to actively deal with the issue until migrants began to arrive in significant numbers from war-torn Syria and economically and ecologically depressed North Africa.

As the numbers grew, emergency responses were adopted. Dedicated budgets were set aside, and willing educators were allocated to migrant groups primarily to teach English and assist them in their integration process. In many cases, “adult education for migrants” was subdivided into “adult education for refugees” and “adult education for other migrants”. Thus, migrants are considered as a “special” target group of adult education, with specifically tailored solutions. This approach may be appropriate in emergency response to a sudden migrant inflow, but long term it leaves migrants outside the mainstream adult education provision and contributes to isolation and ghettoization.

Now every statutory adult learning provider is required to meet the needs of the newly arrived migrants and refugees to a greater or lesser extent. We now realise what we have been doing  is not an adequate or sustainable response.

The Erasmus + funded DIVERSITY project seeks to facilitate a policy and practice shift across Europe from focusing on migrants as distinct group requiring preparation for integration into the society around them, to including migrants in adult learning providers’ regular programs as equals.  The adult education ethos, principles and practices can actively and directly fosters diversity and inclusion in society.

The Diversity Project-Including Migrants through Organisational Development and Programme Planning in Adult Education, emerged from the desire of European Adult Education providers to welcome refugees, and provide needs based appropriate adult education. It aims to support adult education management, programme planning and executive staff to assess their current practices for implicit barriers and to develop appropriate modes of inclusion for migrants in adult education.

The DIVERSITY Project is situated within the context of European emergency response mechanisms. It is focused primarily on supporting Adult Education managers, planners and providers to embrace and include migrants through organisational development and programme planning in Adult Education spaces. DIVERSITY project partners have developed several resources including country gap analysis reports, a training curriculum designed to address the specific requirements for this organisational shift and a policy recommendations and action plan report. To achieve good policy recommendations that reflect the needs of diverse migrant and refugee groups of adult learners, consultation with member organisations and representative groups is vital. Such an approach will ensure that policy is grounded in practice and is cognisant of experiential knowledge. The engagement of adult education actors in the Diversity Project to date suggests that having a genuine interest in people, their culture, traditions and language is important to facilitate inclusion. It is also important for adult education  organisations, staff and students to be aware of the semantics, the wording and labelling of people as ‘other’ creates barriers to integration and inclusion and can create miscommunication.

While most adult education providers would agree that a diverse learning community is a desirable goal, most are also less clear on how to create this respectful, caring, supportive, appreciative, mutually beneficial reality. Changing organisations is notoriously difficult and while agreement on the overall vision is crucial, identifying manageable, specific steps to take in the workplace can eventually make a bigger difference.  We have developed resources which we hope will be of use to adult education providers.

The Diversity Gap Analysis Report consolidates the current state of play in migrant related AE provision in each partner country and across Europe. The report profiles the readiness of adult education systems in Europe to develop more sustainable approaches towards managing diversity. It provides a review of relevant policy and practice documents along with interviews, surveys and focus groups involving managers, planners and learners (both migrants and non-migrants) as immediate target groups.

The Diversity Curriculum is aimed at management, programme planning and executive staff with the modular curriculum allows providers to a) assess their current practices for implicit barriers to migrant participation, and to b) develop appropriate avenues of evolution to realise their full potential. The curriculum modules can be turned into tailor-made trainings.

The modules follow the mix-and-match approach – participants can pick only one, a couple or complete all of them, depending on their organisations’ needs. This offers the greatest possible degree of applicability. This curriculum is not a self-study course; it serves as the basis upon which trainers will build their trainings. The curriculum is available for free on https://www.aewb-nds.de/themen/eu-programme/diversity/and comes in five languages.

The Diversity Policy Recommendations and Action Plan recognises that the inclusion of migrants into the wider planning strategies of adult education requires European policymakers to align their regional AE strategies. Adult education providers are important stakeholders in facilitating these changes. Therefore the Diversity project prepared a set of policy recommendations aiming at enhancing inclusion in Adult Education.

Michael Kenny is a lecturer in the Department  of Adult and Community Education. He is co director of the Higher Diploma in Further Education (HDFE), and the director of the post graduate Certificate in Programme Design and Validation (PCPDV). Michael is interested in formal and non-formal education in voluntary rural and urban organisations.  He is currently the Principal Investigator on 6 Erasmus+ Projects, including the Diversity project. 

Margaret Nugent is an associate academic,  researcher and lecturer with Department  of Adult and Community Education. Margaret is research associate on the Diversity and several European projects. She is a specialist in engaged methodologies, conflict intervention and peace pedagogies.