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The recognition of prior learning (RPL) is an educational response to the need to widen participation in education and training for economic advancement and social inclusion. The social meanings of RPL have different configurations depending on historical, cultural, economic and political forces in different places. One constant is the reliance on the widely pervasive educational philosophies of experiential learning: constructivism and progressivism. This book challenges the orthodoxy of experiential learning and the particular readings of knowledge, pedagogy, learning, identity and power which it privileges. It does this by introducing different theoretical resources to RPL and drawing on experiences of RPL in the UK, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Canada and the USA. The book provides a range of re-conceptualisations of the relational terrain between adult experience and learning on the one hand, and specialist or academic knowledge on the other. The contents are: Introduction and overview of chapters / Judy Harris; Different faces and functions of RPL: an assessment perspective / Per Andersson; Questions of knowledge and curriculum in the recognition of prior learning / Judy Harris; A disciplinary-specific approach to the recognition of prior informal experience in adult pedagogy: ‘rpl as opposed to ‘RPL’ / Mignonne Breier; Portfolio-based assessment of prior learning: a cat and mouse chase after invisible criteria / Yael Shalem and Carola Steinberg; RPL and the disengaged learner: the need for new starting points / Roslyn Cameron; Beyond Galileo’s telescope: situated knowledge and the recognition of prior learning / Elana Michelson; Using critical discourse analysis to illuminate power and knowledge in RPL / Helen Peters; The politics of difference: non-recognition of the foreign credentials and prior work experience of immigrant professionals in Canada and Sweden / Shibao Guo and Per Andersson; RPL: an emerging and contested practice in South Africa / Ruksana Osman; ‘Tools of mediation’: an historical-cultural approach to RPL / Linda Cooper; Vocations, ‘graduateness’ and the recognition of prior learning / Leesa Wheelahan; Recognising prior learning: what do we know? / Helen Pokorny; Reconfiguring RPL and its assumptions: a complexified view / Tara Fenwick; Understanding the transformative dimension of RPL / Susan Whittaker, Ruth Whittaker and Paula Cleary; Endword / Michael Young.

Published summary with additional information reproduced by permission of the copyright owner.

Selected chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 86.366 to TD/TNC 86.373. Show less

A rapidly developing approach around the world, the recognition of prior learning (RPL) is the practice of acknowledging the knowledge and skills that people have acquired formally, non-formally and informally, through work and life experience, training programs, community activities as well as through unaccredited periods of formal learning. It is used in post-secondary education and training contexts for admissions and/or advanced standing, as well as in workforce development and for occupational and professional certification. Since the mid-1990s, many governments around the world have closely linked RPL with national qualification frameworks and lifelong learning policies. This volume is an authoritative, up-to-date overview of international research practice in RPL aimed at researchers, policy-makers, postgraduate students and practitioners in education and other professional fields, especially those concerned with access, widening participation and work-based learning. It provides a comprehensive account of current research in the UK, Canada, Sweden, Australia, South Africa, the USA and other EU and OECD countries. Scholars from each country or jurisdiction were invited to address key questions: Who is doing research? How are they doing it, and why? What questions are being asked? The book is designed to consolidate international approaches and identify research gaps, possibilities and emerging questions to support the development of innovative research and scholarship into the theory and practice of RPL over the next decade, this book lays the groundwork for the development of RPL as a community of scholarship.

Published summary.

The chapters are as follows: Introduction and overview of chapters / Judy Harris and Christine Wihak; Australia: an overview of 20 years of research into the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) / Roslyn Cameron; Canada: a typology of Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) research in context / Joy Van Kleef; Quebec: an overview of RAC/RPLC research since 2002 / Rachel Belisle; England: Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) research in higher education / Helen Pokorny; European Union: research and system building in the Validation of Non-formal and Informal Learning (VNFIL) / Judy Harris; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): research reveals ‘islands of good practice’ / Patrick Werquin and Christine Wihak; Scotland: Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) research within a national credit and qualifications framework / Ruth Whittaker; South Africa: research reflecting critically on Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) research and practice / Mignonne Breier; Sweden: the developing field of Validation research / Per Andersson and Andreas Fejes; United States of America: Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) research in colleges and universities / Nan L. Travers; Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) and the teaching-research nexus in universities / Angelina Wong; Research into Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) in university adult education programmes in Canada / Christine Wihak and Angelina Wong; Endword: reflections on research for an emergent field / Norm Friesen. Show less