Focus groups in IPAL research

Insights from adult education providers and adult trainers

The first step for developing the IPAL scorecards, consists in realizing national focus groups to check that the general ideas for each scorecard is pertinent, realistic, strategic and appropriate for the projects stakeholders. This activity is followed by concept revision or
refinement as necessary, and it’s key for assuring the quality in our procedures.

We organized the first Focus groups in 2021, in winter, while developing the structures for IPAL IO1, that is about adult educators professional development.

We are now organizing the second round of Focus group, about the relevance of the adult education provision. The scorecard will cover indicative areas of institutional performance with regards to learners’ satisfaction and disposition towards learning, such as:
– developing programs that encourage learner responsibility and autonomy;
– introducing active learning methods into training and teaching;
– focusing on creativity in adult learning; using digital and ICT tools in the context of adult learning; application of innovative pedagogies in the learning process;
– adopted strategies to support the holistic development and wellbeing of learners;
– enabling access to adult learning by adults who do little or no learning;
– ensuring the availability of a skilled training and teaching workforce
– Relevance of adult learning to the needs of individual learners and to the needs of the economy and society

Each partner is consulting the concept of the scorecard with 20 key stakeholders (10 adult education providers and 10 adult education trainers). Most of the interviews are carried on in a virtual mode, thus assuring each professional to take the right time to answer our questions. This also allow us to cover the whole country, being able to collect contributions from different regions from the one we are set in.
Each organization is involving training center in adult education, some of them are publics, other private, involved in formal and informal education. All of them share a genuine interest in improving quality in adult education.

The national reports will be soon ready and made available on the IPAL project website!