Becoming A More Critical, Autonomous, Reflective Learner

PRILHE Project - Lecturer’s Toolkit
Introduction
This toolkit has been produced as part of a SOCRATES Grundtvig Adult Education project entitled ‘ Promoting Reflective
Independent Learning in Higher Education (PRILHE)’ – 113869-CP-1-2004-1-UK-GRUNDTVIG-G1.
The aims and objectives of the project were to:
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identify the learning processes which enable (non-traditional) adult students in higher education to become critical,
autonomous and reflective learners
• identify how this process could be better supported before, within and at the end of study
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examine the interface between learning from experience and academic learning – the overlaps and conjunctions – and
how experience may help academic learning and future learning, including in the workplace
• identify models of good practice in higher education institutions across Europe
• produce resource materials for both adult students and lecturers.
The project focused on ‘non-traditional adult students’. By this we mean: ‘A new mature student entrant (by age in respective
countries) with no previous HE qualifications whose participation in HE is constrained by structural factors additional to age’.
During the process of the research we changed our focus from reflective independent learning to critical autonomous reflective
learning (CARL) as we felt that this more accurately reflects what we are concerned with. We have defined CARL as follows:
Critical Autonomous Reflective Learning is:
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critical in its awareness of the wider social conditions of learning
autonomous in its understanding of the inter-relationship between learner dependency (on the one hand) and the
potential for independent individual and group learning and action (on the other)
• reflective in the way it looks, from a certain distance, both at the learning process and the assumptions that underpin it
Critical Autonomous Reflective Learning thus links individual and social learning, seeing it as a transformative process which has
the potential to change both individuals and social structures. This understanding seems to be particularly appropriate for the
learning practices of non-traditional adult students in HE.
The project involved the following partners;
• University of Barcelona, (CREA), Spain
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• Universidade Nova de Lisboa, (ISEGI), Portugal
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University of Goettingen, (Education Department), Germany
University of Lower Silesia, (Department of Education), Poland
University of Stockholm, (Department of Education), Sweden
University of Turku, (Centre for Extension Studies), Finland
University of Warwick, (Centre for Lifelong Learning), UK
Becoming A More Critical, Autonomous, Reflective Learner