Individual Learning Needs and Designing Learning Programs

Abstract

Beliefs and practices of formal, non-formal and informal learning have undergone radical changes since the late nineteenth century, when didactic instruction gave way in many societies to learner-centred methods. From the late twentieth century, global competition and a shift to neoliberalism have informed the commodification of education. Data from three studies are used to explore the tension between heutagogical and meaning-centred education and government-controlled programs. The first focuses on language learning needs of refugees and migrants; the second on yoga teachers and the choices they make in constructing their yoga teacher training programmes; and the third considers a community who used backward mapping of child-emergent and playful learning to demonstrate that significant achievement in learning may occur independent of formal programming, testing and reporting.