Soon after I had established myself in St. Lucia, I entered the public arena by walking and hanging around in streets, local rum shops, at corners, piers and popular
shadow places. At all these “hangout” places I talked to people and started to gather information about everything I needed to live in the community. After some time the
“tourist jumpers” backed off and I met others who had heard about me and were curious about my appearance.
At the same time I realized the dimensions of my original research project, and began a wide search around the field of education. Through this search I found different types of information that pointed to a new concept. At the same time I established contact with schools and the local library, which gave friendly assistance and advice.
Through the library I located an educational statistical digest, St. Lucia (2002), which gave me all the statistical background material I needed regarding school enrollment, dropout rates, gender, population, structure of the education system, etc. I also found some interesting figures and numbers about NELP, which led to several informative conversations with a coordinator and an earlier facilitator in the town of Soufrière.
This new information, together with an earlier interest for learning theories and adult education made me curious about NELP and their courses. Later, I went to their main office in the capital where I talked to a facilitator and a coordinator about my research and NELP.
An intense period of preparations followed, according to a possible new topic and a presentation at the National Enrichment and Learning Unit (NELU). Without any hesitation they gave me admission to all the courses whenever I wanted and the Unit assisted me when I asked for material and help. But the courses did not start when they were supposed to, and after continual delays I had to move from Soufrière to the capital Castries where I followed two level one courses. One Basic literacy course (English and Mathematics) and one technical course (Garment construction). At the
same time I spent long hours at the immigration office arguing for an extension of my stay. NELU provided me with a recommendation and together with my papers from the institute5 I finally succeeded in my task. When I moved to Castries, I had already spent much time in the area and I was familiar with both the city and the people.
I found myself sitting in the classroom and writing all that my senses observed. I was not sure what and how to do things at first, so I did too much and the lenses became rather blurry. Little by little my understanding improved. After every lesson I worked with my notes, and slowly I started to see habits and patterns, and later, questions presented themselves. This was a frustrating and exciting period, which prepared me for the coming interviews with the learners and the facilitators. At the same time as my stay in St. Lucia was nearing its end, the level of my knowledge about my subject matter was rising. I was putting the last polish on the interviews when I suddenly became a St. Lucian. Meaning, I got the “red eye”, which is an eye disease that is common for the St. Lucians. This prevented me from being out in public and I lost valuable time in the field. But my biggest concern was to bring the interviews to a close. I had been at the schools for a period of four weeks and the intention was to interview both classes (approximately 25 learners) and their facilitators by the end of my stay. Now I realized that I was in serious trouble and since the situation was far from ideal I had to improvise. Having made the decision to use a qualitative research design, this enabled me to be flexible and adjust in accordance to the situation.
Therefore, I ended up making a questionnaire which I presented to all the learners (48 learners) and the facilitators (5 facilitators) of the technical courses, and at the end of my stay I managed to interview 5 of 8 regular learners at the Basic literacy course, the facilitator and the adult educational officer.
4 Describing pictures
4.1 ”A learning situation”
The purpose of this study is to describe ”a learning situation” at NELP, St. Lucia, with the main focus on the interaction between adult learners and facilitators. The
interaction has been defined to be how learners and facilitators talk to each other and work together in order to learn and teach. I have followed two different courses at NELP, where one is a technical and the other is an academic course. The academic course was a combined Basic English and Mathematics course, and the technical course was a Garment construction course.
During my period of time observing these courses, I have gathered information about the interaction between learners and facilitators in ”a learning situation”. ”A learning situation” is not only what happens when participants are at school, but also what they bring with them when entering the class. How they interact in the classroom can be observed, but why they do what they do when interacting is harder to understand.
”A learning situation” is not a definite setting or pattern with well-defined limits, but a dynamic phenomenon where the interaction between participants set one of the premises for learning and teaching. It is a construct containing a vast amount of information, and I am going to uncover what I found to be of relevance to my study by using observations, a questionnaire and interviews. Examples of some of the
questions asked are:
• How are the classrooms organised?
• Do the learners help each other?
• Are the facilitators strict?
• Do the learners find the facilitators to be good teachers?
What I have recorded from the classroom is what I believe reflects the interaction between learners and facilitators. The information has been sorted and coded before being put into categories. I have developed three main categories and named them
prerequisites. I see these categories as important prerequisites in order to understand the interaction between the participants. The prerequisites I have emphasized are: Predetermined assumptions, Distractions, and Interaction.
Each condition is further divided into elements, which gives me a possibility to decode the information gathered through observations, the questionnaire and
interviews. The elements of Predetermined assumptions are: Attitude and Motivation.
The elements of Distractions are: Outside commitment, Teaching facilities and Disturbance. The elements of Interaction are: Interaction during class and Response to interaction.
These are all elements of ”a learning situation” and together they form the foundation for learning and teaching at an adult learning course in St. Lucia.