ALTERNATIVES
FOR ACCESS AND ACCREDITITATION: (APEL)
ASSESSMENT OF PRIOR EXPERIENTAL LEARNING/RECOGNITION
OF PRIOR LEARNING (RPL) CASE STUDIES
Mireille Pouget (University of Stirling, UK)
Introduction
Experiential learning: what is it?
“ Most people know more than they think
they know, if only they knew that they know it ”.
This was the simple idea promoting the beginnings
of the Learning from Experience Trust (LET) in
1986 in the UK (Evans 2000), following on from
the American model developed by the Council for
the Advancement of Experiential Learning (CAEL).
Giving value to any learning, not simply learning
situated in formal institutions, has almost become
a truism in European parlance. Indeed, the Memorandum
on Lifelong Learning (CE 2000, 2001) explicitly
state that, creating a learning-for-all-culture
(and not just for economic necessity but also
for nobler reasons such as “personal fulfilment,
active citizenship, social inclusion and employability/
adaptability” (EC 2001 p.9) should involve:
“ Valuing and rewarding learning, especially non-formal learning and informal
learning in all sectors, thereby recognising its intrinsic worth. Rewarding learning
can also encourage those who are most alienated to return to learning” (CE
2001 p.14).
The document includes suggestions of a focus
on the identification, assessment and recognition
of non-formal and informal learning and the development
of innovative pedagogy designed to address the “shift
from knowledge acquisition to competence development” (CE
2001 p.5) while in the same breath advocating,
naturally enough, robust quality assurance tools
for non-formal and informal learning.
This should serve as an introduction to the
work in progress on case studies on the recognition
of prior learning. It also represents an embodiment
of what is perceived as the fundamental paradoxes
faced by anyone in education wishing to do just
that: give value and recognise people’s
knowledge acquired through their experience.
However, these statements also serve to illustrate
how easily official documents use concepts loaded
with problematic meaning such as learning, recognition,
knowledge or competence, as if these concepts
were so universally understood as being undeserving
of clarification.
Much has been written about the Assessment or
Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning
(APEL) or Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL),
as a means to promote widening participation
and creating new routes into higher education
for a wider, ‘non-traditional’ adult
public (Johnson 2002, Bailey & O’Hagan
2000), concurring with Europe’s preoccupation
with combating social exclusion through, among
other solutions, its conflation with a new mass
higher education (Bourgeois & al 1999). However,
claims concerning APEL as a tool for social inclusion
or redress have not bee substantiated by research.
Moreover, in the last decade a substantial field
of critical writing has emerged unpacking such
concepts as experiential learning, although this
is not the purpose of this particular piece of
work to develop the argument further here.
In the UK context, the Accreditation of Prior
Learning (APL) refers to procedures where students
are awarded credit towards an award on the basis
of learning achieved prior to the point of registering
for that award. It usually refers to prior ‘certificated
learning’ as opposed to APEL, which refers
to the Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning.
APEL refers to a “process of assessing
and then credit-rating learning which has its
source in some experience which occurred prior
to the point of entering their current course,
but where that experience was not previously
formally assessed and credit rated at higher
education level” (Reeve and Smith 1996,
p.5).
In recent literature the word assessment replaces
accreditation (Evans (2000), and it is acknowledged
that APEL terminology is not easily accessible
to the world at large. However the semantic value
of the terminologies used in different countries1 , reflecting underpinning principles and value-based
decisions, is not to be ignored, but will also
not be developed here.
The idea that adults learn from their experience
and develop a growing reservoir of experiences
that becomes an increasing resource for learning
(Knowles 1970) has been the tenet of adult education
for the last thirty years in the UK. Learning
is literally ‘lifelong’, whether
at home ‘raising’ children or running
a company, or learning how to survive in the
Scottish wilderness in winter. The difference
that learning makes to adults is when it is recognised
for what it is and when it might even bring,
not just personal fulfilment, but recognition
from self and others. This initial process of
recognition, located at the individual level,
also involves a process of evaluation and identification
of personal and professional experience. It involves
a process of stocktaking of knowledge and aptitudes,
and a preparation to enter a process of change
(Feutrie 1996).
1 Recognition of prior learning (RPL) in Australia,
New Zealand, Ireland ands South Africa; prior
learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) in
Canada; and the validation des acquis professionnels
(VAP, or validation of professional learning)
and more recently renamed validation de l’expérience
(VE or validation of experience) in France. (Evans
2000)
