CCL Home > Research Activities > Funded Research
February 2009
Executive Summary (PDF 25 KB)
Full Report (PDF in French only, 649 KB)
Adults’ skills and experiential learning are ignored and little valued in contemporary society, which is geared toward literacy, academic learning and degrees. Due to their precarious living conditions, their difficulty accessing the world of reading and writing and the lack of recognition for their experiential learning, adults without a high-school diploma (‘non-graduate adults’) are excluded from public decision-making and the resolution of problems experienced in their community. The purpose of the research was to identify and understand the skills and practices used by non-graduate adults in environmental problem-solving. We wanted to answer the following questions: What resources (e.g., cognitive, affective, and social) and practices are used by non-graduate adults in environmental problem-solving? Are non-graduate adults, despite their low degree of literacy, able to propose effective solutions to an environmental problem? The intervention and related research was conducted with two groups of non-graduate adults, one in south-eastern New Brunswick, and the other in Montréal. The intervention component involved a facilitated group activity during which each group of participants was invited to solve an environmental problem, i.e., propose and implement measures for adapting to local impacts of climate change. The research component involved observing the resources and practices used by each group of participants (as they solved the problem) and observing their skills.