Life commitments 

With adult learners, it is important to acknowledge and accommodate their other life commitments if you want students to be able to engage and feel seen and fulfilled on the course. See the section on Finances (link to Finance section) for one such example of this. Awareness of the gendered aspects of how these commitments impact students in the program’s particular context is crucial. People often have commitments to employers, families and communities that it is unrealistic to expect them to shed for the duration of an extended educational programme; people will still need to earn money and to look after the families. Even pragmatically, they will not be able to focus properly on their studies if either of these is seriously threatened or suffering as a result of the programme. Certain groups, for example working age men with large numbers of dependents, also may not enrol on the programme if they feel like there is no way within the design of the programme to accommodate their needs. As a coordinator at PADILEIA stated, ‘most of our students are females; few of them are males. And this is…especially for the Syrians, the man will work more than the woman so he is responsible for supporting his family. Yes, men have the interest in entering into higher education. They would love to but they have less opportunity and less time to do it so most of our students are females. I think this year I have 80 percent of my students being females and 20 percent males.”

Teaching must therefore be delivered in a way that is sympathetic towards and inclusive of other life commitments. This may mean clustering teaching into a few days a week, or only mornings, so that students have flexible study time during which they can either do further study, paid employment, or fulfil domestic duties such as cleaning, cooking, and caring for children or siblings. Finding ways to connect the curriculum to students’ daily lives and communities is also essential, such as identifying the ways that they use maths outside of class or connecting language learning to employment skills.  PADILEIA curriculum included a personal photo essay in the English course; and the Science course included a survey of local vegetation; both assignments were popular with students. 

Students should be reassured that life commitments are legitimate, and will be taken seriously in the classroom; that it is better that teaching staff know people’s situation and can begin to find ways to support them than that individual’s studies are being slowly undermined and there are no systems being put in place to support them. 

With displaced populations, there is always the possibility that individuals will be resettled during any programme, or that they will choose or be forced back to their country of origin/another country of asylum. This is a condition of being in exile. It may be possible to continue to provide remote tuition to refugees who have to temporarily return to their country of origin, or to offer them an opportunity to resume their studies the following year if the programme is running again. 

If attendance of students is likely to be very erratic due to diverse commitments and the instability of the learning environment, it might be worth considering a curriculum with discrete topics rather than a progressive structure. This means that if students miss a week, they will still be able to fully engage with the next.

Making PADILEA work for students A key role that the PADILEIA student coordinator played was individually coaching students on managing their time and juggling their multiple commitments as well as ensuring that teaching staff were aware of challenges specific students were facing. Furthermore, hosting open houses or other community events that welcome students’ families can help students to gain crucial support from partners, children, siblings and/or parents.