Non-formal adult education in Denmark has a strong focus on the learning environment. This also has a positive effect regarding the field of guidance. Education and guidance are closely interrelated and the whole life situation of the participant is taken into consideration.

Respect, equality, independence, transparency and trust. Those are the five principles of guidance, defined by the National Association of Career and Guidance Counsellors. Exactly the same principles are characteristics of the non formal adult education. That was one of the conclusions of a project report from 2007 that looked into the approach of day folk high schools (non-residential) regarding guidance.

Day folk high schools offer programs with an educative or job-promoting aim for adults with little formal education and people in a personally or socially vulnerable situation.

Like a home

Especially for people with little or no formal education guidance is of great importance. And motivating them for formal education is a difficult task.

“They know that they need more education to get a job, to improve their financial situation or to be able to help their children. But they do not feel like it – because they have extremely bad experiences with education,“ now retired professor Knud Illeriis said in an interview in 2006.

According to the 2007 report the participants feel that the environment in day folk high schools is their own, almost like a home. They are treated as adults – not children – in a friendly way and with respect. This is an essential starting point for guidance.

The focus on recognition of prior learning helps participants realize their potentials and enhances their self confidence and motivation. This facilitates suggesting new ways forward, and the participants can actually make a choice.

The connector

The teachers of the day folk high schools are informal “every day guides”. They practise what you may call learning based guidance, and they don’t focus only on the next step in the educational system. They take all the social and personal aspects into consideration, a kind of life guidance.

Some of these schools also use group based guidance, generating mutual inspiration by sharing experiences, problems, anger and happiness. According to the report this de-individualises the problems. These are seen as general and related to social systems – not as personal defeats.

The de-individualisation of problems, created by group based guidance, is also a central point in the PhD theses (2009) by assistant professor Rie Thomsen based on research both in workplaces and in the residential folk high schools. “Guidance becomes part of praxis communities,” she writes in an introduction article.

Based on her research Rie Thomsen defines the role of the guide as “The Connector” who must

-          Offer guidance in already existing communities

-          Create networks between people in different communities

-          Create opportunities for participation and clarification in communities

Between existential reflections and job possibilities

Guidance in some folk high schools is carried out by special teachers, called mentors. According to an evaluation report on the mentor-program (2009), written by associate professor Ulla Højmark Jensen, the students feet that the mentors respected them and that the mentors do not try to force them into a specific educational program or a job.

Ulla Højmark Jensen also noted that some mentors focus very much on the personal development, the maturing of the students and existential reflections, while others focus on the actual next step, the choice of education or job.

She recommended folk high school teachers and mentors to be explicit on this, and she suggested that the students need one kind of guidance at one time of the course and another kind of guidance at another time.

Recommendations

The 2007-report about day folk high schools included a set of recommendations for good guidance. Among them were:

- Create synergy between informal and formal guidance

- Combine group based and one-to-one guidance

- High-life progression in the process

- Give the participant ownership of the learning environment

- Integrate systematically recognition of prior learning

- Focus on “bridging” and follow-up

“These recommendations have been widely circulated among our schools, and they are having an important impact on their way of guiding the participants today,” says Randi Jensen, director of the National Association of Day Folk High Schools.

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