During the last two decades, adults in Latvia engage actively in learning to improve their life quality and self-affirm creatively in the chosen field of life activity. The beginning of the 21st century is characteristic with wide opportunities to access information by using high technologies. However, skills to use, analyse and utilize this information develop insufficiently. More and more essential is a question about skills to learn and develop oneself by using available information or obtaining knowledge through innovative learning process. Possibility to learn and develop human potential and skills should be provided to every member of the society in particular and to the society in general. Since regaining independence entrepreneurship in Latvia possesses especially significant role in the society growth. However, its development is hindered not only by absence of enterprising activities, but also by lack of experience and knowledge. The community development situation in Latvia, in the 90-ies of the 20th century, required changing education paradigm from the authoritarian to the humanistic cooperation one. Thus the character of pedagogic activity in adult education changed: mission of a teacher was to inspire, encourage, support and help a person in the process of acquiring competences and self-experience. It means that activity position of teachers and participants of the adult courses changed to shared responsibility and self-support in the learning process that provided mutual learning, trust and respect.
1. Self-experience essence
The term “experience” is widely used in both theory and pedagogical practice. “Despite the fact that since ancient times experience is a kind of comprehension category, the united experience theory that is not restricted by separate ideas or would represent grounds of learning practice oriented towards experience, still does not exist in contemporary learning process.” [1, p. 69]
According to Hegel, experience dialectics through historical view should be understood as a structural correlation with person’s self or as self-experience. Efficiency of the dialectic process depends on how the subject internally participates in it with all the personality. “The principle of experience contains a very important condition: in order to perceive and acknowledge some kind of content, a person’s participation is needed or rather it is necessary that the person would consider such content as harmonious and connected with his/her self-assurance.” [2, p. 50] According to Hegel’s cognition personal involvement means more than personal presence. It is an “initial interest” into the subject. Thus we can understand Hegel’s cognition about experience as grounds for learning. He considers experience as the first and central knowledge about something providing comprehension of it. Experience is a fundamental intertwining and internal inclusion into cases of the person obtaining self-experience. Thus we can follow Hegel’s thought about forming self-experience.
So in pedagogics, especially in the adult learning process, understanding experience dialectics as self-experience is important. The pedagogical quality of the dialectic process depends on how much a subject is internally involved in it with all the personality. [1, p. 74] It means that experience represents both grounds of learning or a significant pedagogical tool and its result. “Learning is an integral part of experience. It is an immanent consequence (compliance to internal system, purposefulness). Experience that remains without consequences, from which nothing has been learnt, is not experience.” [3, p. 15] It indicates a special role of experience in both the learning process and its result. Grounding on experience and its expansion is especially important during the adult learning process. Experience is a huge source of any kind of knowledge. Self-experience is divided into the primary and the secondary one.
Primary (lat. primarius – one of the first) – initial, the one representing grounds. [4, p. 601] Secondary (lat. secundarius) – something that has occurred as consequences of the previous; in the course of time following the earlier. [4, p. 693]
German scientist Gunther Buck integrates experience category into the cognitive process. Unknown is cognized only when it is within the context of experience which allows certain, prior knowledge. Otherwise it would be complicated to perceive and understand the unknown. Such an approach to the theory certifies the special significance of experience in pedagogical organizing of educational process and in personality’s learning process. [3, p. 62]
If an adult has chosen voluntarily to get involved into studies for acquiring new knowledge and improving self-experience, the teacher can be more purposeful within the cooperation process to unleash the conscious use of the primary self-experience for obtaining new knowledge and forming the secondary self-experience. Conscious learning motives in further education facilitate development of cooperation, purposefulness and creativity. Nowadays it plays especially significant role. A. Spona has defined the essence of creative self-experience: “Creative self-experience represents knowledge, skills and attitudes that have been acquired and evaluated through life activities and become values of personal significance, and are being used in various life situations.” [5, p. 161] It is important to acquire creative self-experience that is characteristic with possibility of transfer from one kind of activity to another during school years. For example, pupils can use the acquired creative self-experience of learning in studies or professional activities.
2. Cooperation principle in learning
In humanistic pedagogy cooperation between teacher and student takes place in mutual respect towards each other values and experience. It is grounded on respect towards individual’s autonomy, initiative, self-control and self-esteem. In addition, orientation towards procedural approach, such as common solving of problems, research work in projects, reflective thinking, independent forming of new knowledge and using self-experience in various situations, is important. Procedural approach of humanistic pedagogy is grounded on cognitions of humanistic psychology related to the process of perception and mastering human world that is important in research from the aspect of lifelong learning. Cooperation in the process of adult learning is the first innovative feature between a pedagogue and participants of the learning process. It is characterized by changing positions from both sides – pedagogues and participants of the process. Illustrative, explanatory educational process, where teacher teaches and adults learn, is still topical in adult learning. It is characteristic that such a position is presented in all cases where adults do not have freedom of choice either in content or form. In many cases such organization of learning exists in both universities and adult further education. This tradition has been preserved from the 19th and 20th centuries, when teacher was responsible for learning results of pupils, students and also adults. which were reflected in many exams on all the levels of education. Cooperative pedagogy is grounded on theoretical cognitions of humanistic pedagogy, where possibility to realize equality between both a pedagogue and participants of learning process and among participants of learning process themselves.
Cooperation is a human idea of children and adult teamwork on development that is strengthened by mutual relations, spiritual understanding and collective analysis of the work course and results. Cooperation is based on the idea about pupil’s cognitive interest stimulated and directed by the pedagogue. Cooperation in the learning process represents topical problem in pedagogics: it is being researched; experiments are being carried out; and new theories occur in many countries of the world. One of the important cognitions in cooperative pedagogy is that the learning is not only a rational process, but it is also connected with evaluating information, and the latter is linked to innovations. [6, p. 199, 204]
Only active and independent student or adult can participate – cooperate in different forms of learning. In order to realize cooperation, no matter what the case is, and self-support of an adult personality in the cognitive activity, setting a subjective and individual goal is an important condition. Objective circumstances are grounds for acknowledging a subjective goal. It is a contradiction between existing self-experience and new needs in activity. Solving this contradiction starts with analysis of self-experience and setting goals for activity that answer a question: “What do I want to achieve in the process of solving contradiction?”
Cooperation in adult learning possesses a function of a basic requirement or principle. The above-mentioned principle demands, first of all, drawing closer goals of teacher and adult learner during activities and reaching tools to achieve it. Through a pedagogical experiment drawing closer the goal of the pedagogue and the one of each participant of the process should be provided: a pedagogue clearly knows what and how should be learnt together and offers options, but the participants of the process choose and agree upon the content of the learning process and how to organize it. Thus a requirement of the cooperation principle – to coordinate educational materials, can be implemented.
Secondly, the cooperation principle requires the use of knowledge obtained during the learning process (forming skills) and acknowledging its significance. It means that comprehension of newly acquired information and its usefulness in forming skills for a new professional activity is being coordinated constantly within the organization of learning process.
Thirdly, the cooperation principle requires also organizing systematic learning process and self-evaluation of its results, analysing how much it matches with evaluation of the teacher and other listeners of the course.
The above-mentioned three requirements of the cooperation principle were purposefully realized during the process of the learning experiment.
3. Experimental learning process of nascent entrepreneurs
A person grounds learning on experience and skills to obtain new experience, reflects it, conceptualizes and experiments. Skills are particularly connected with interaction between abstract and reflective thinking that depends on learning style of an individual.
Adult learning is a social phenomenon. It is a cooperative teamwork, creative cognitive process through collaboration, where two or more adults form united, cognitive product – values with a new quality that can be used in practice, using mutually completing experience.
For clarifying how values influence human behaviour and how person acts facing existential changes, the American scientist Don Beck had been working on development of psychological values system since 1975. In cooperation with Clare W. Graves and grounding on his concept of biopsychosocial systems, in the period 1996–2001, Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDI) for mastering values was elaborated. [7] Continued research proved a necessity of united biological, psychical and social development factors or the system for forming human values. The concept is related to future oriented activities of a person, organization and society, which are significant in entrepreneurship, politics and education, and provides tools (methods) to start implementing ideas in the respective field and provide development.
Spiral Dynamics allows forming new methods in both academic environment and business area and currently has become the 21st century’s structural component in learning.
Grounding on this concept, the author formed an experimental process of self-experience development, which integrates biological, psychological and social processes into the united pedagogical process.
On the basis of this concept, through experimental process, a “rainbow” cycle spiral of the learning process, which is grounded on theoretical cognitions of the biopsychosocial system concept, was formed (Fig. 1). The cycle starts with actualized and defined primary experience which develops further alongside with a formation of new needs. The process begins with perceiving new phenomena (biological, physiological), comprehending them and the emotional experience (psychological) that is followed by the use of new knowledge and its evaluation (social). New, improved experience, which has been formed into the secondary self-experience, occurs and in further process it turns into the primary self-experience again. The research demonstrates that in the adult learning the unity of biological, psychical and social development forms a methodological approach to self-experience developing process in life activity.
Fig. 1 Biopsychosocial cycle of acquiring new experience through learning or rainbow cycle spiral
Learning starts with an actualization of self-experience and clarifying what kind of knowledge and skills are available for processing new information. Actualization of self-experience – knowledge, skills and attitudes (competences) is complicated for adults in the learning process as not always they possess skills for such self-analysis. Therefore, a consultation and support of the pedagogue is important for forming the learning goal of everyone involved. The goal represents subjective component of the activity, which mobilizes physical and spiritual forces of a human being in order to achieve it. A clear goal in learning facilitates freely acknowledged activity, where self-experience is a significant source of any kind of knowledge.
In the structural analysis of self-experience, internal structure of activity by psychologist A. Leontiev is of considerable significance. He characterizes human needs as an internal condition for activity; as a motif, which directs and regulates an action. Needs motivating subject to act are obtained from experience. According to A. Leontiev, relations between the activity’s motif and goal possess personal meaning. It motivates a person to perform cognitive action, fulfilling the purport, i.e., achieving goal and satisfying motif. A purport of the action changes along with an alteration of the motif. An activity can remain the same due to its content, but psychologically it changes and obtains different motif. Such an action gives other result and possesses different role in the life activity. [8, p. 134]
Clear perception provides formation of understanding grounded on feelings and notions. Without the above-mentioned cognitive component, understanding of the object of cognition and its purport is impossible. “Comprehension should be understood as a part of purport process.” [9, p. 276] Comprehension is a disclosure of knowledge content purport of a particular subject. In such learning a pedagogue and adults equally share responsibility for the process and its results. It is determined by purposeful learning, freedom of choice and acquires self-esteem.
Life self-experience of every person forms a conviction. Conviction is needed to everyone, but it is deeply individual and cannot be compared to others. During the process of emotional feelings, conviction of Self turns into self-experience, “where a person internally feels as a being”. [10, p. 157] Essence of changes in the learning process is a person’s comprehension about his/her balanced physical, psychical and social development; and the learning process is grounded on logics of development. Therefore, cognizing and managing personal development becomes a life learning component. Notions related to individual experience are always connected with emotional attitude and understanding. Cooperation in using new experience is different in various age and social groups. In order a pedagogue and the adult, who tries to develop self-experience in learning, would check the efficiency of the process, reciprocal self-reflection, where both the learning process and its result should be evaluated, is needed. Self-reflection on human grounds was acquired in an experimental learning process with a purpose to improve self-experience for both a pedagogue and each participant of the learning process. Each stage of the educational process and its results was evaluated and self-assessed during the reflection process. Self-reflection function in learning means that a teacher involves self-experience in the professional activity by reflexive evaluating and constructing fragments and organizing life experience exchange in communication with adults.
Thus self-experience in learning forms within a dialogue, where individual roles are being performed freely. Development of competences has become the highest purpose in lifelong education of the 21st century. A need for constant development of competences is determined by contemporary, changing environment and more and more new requirements of labour market. Also the leading institutions of the European Union have defined the life-long development of human resources as a keystone of Europe’s development.
American scientist David Berliner [11, p. 47] understands competences as a quality of particular professional development level.
Competence as an ideal of education is an individual combination of abilities and experience grounded on opportunities to obtain experience, where from the procedural viewpoint this combination is being completed constantly.
To evaluate restructuring of the secondary self-experience into the primary one through the empiric research, where the above-mentioned process in fact is a formation of a new self-experience, because “the primary and secondary self-experiences do not exist simultaneously” [12, p. 13], evaluation criteria had been created and the basis of the research chosen. The research basis was formed of adults, who had expressed their wish to learn and obtain new knowledge to satisfy needs of their life activity and develop self-experience, as well as to prepare for starting business that could be implemented through the modular learning program for nascent entrepreneurs according to the regulations No. 293 of the Cabinet of Ministers on “The Support for Self-Employment and Starting Business”. People had a voluntary choice to change their occupation, apply for studies in the Mortgage Bank Start Program and start their business after learning. 1717 participants of the program were included into the research. According to the elaborated criteria, self-experience analysis of 209 nascent entrepreneurs was made before and after the learning. Development of self-experience indicators of the programme participants in the course of time is proved by differences in these indicators before starting the learning process (2011) and after finishing it (2012). Methods of mathematical statistics were used to verify reliability of the research results. As in this particular case the same group of participants was tested repeatedly (n = 209), the survey data was processed using non-parametric statistics methods – Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and matrix of Spearman indicators’ correlation coefficient.
The obtained results testify the fact that for the majority of participants, self-experience indicators in 2012 present statistically significant or essential differences if compared with the indicators identified in 2011. They are as follows:
- interest about self-cognition;
- a need to communicate with a professional team;
- a need to communicate with the family;
- goal awareness;
- participation in choosing/ using learning methods;
- seeing the life activity perspectives;
- emotional experience within the learning process;
- talking skills;
- actualization of the primary self-experience.
At the same time statistically significant differences were not found in the evaluation of the following self-experience indicators: following innovations in the professional activity; a need to communicate with social groups (groups of individual interests); emotional experience of learning achievements; listening skills; and reading skills. In general the research work revealed that the most important components of the productive learning process were goal awareness, knowledge application and acquirement of self-evaluation skills. Purposeful activities in entrepreneurship are especially significant, and they are connected to assertive self-education and the use of knowledge during the learning process. During the year the number of starting businessmen, who intentionally set their learning goal, had increased from 63 % to 78 %; and the number of people who did not always set their learning goal intentionally had decreased from 34 % to 20 %; however, 2 % still did not do that. High goal awareness percentage was among employees (81%) and business starters in periphery (91%). Acquiring purposefulness through learning, entrepreneurs can use it skilfully in daily organization of the work.
The research showed that the process of acquiring experience should be interpreted as an author’s activity. Learning in this process is a very important component. It provides a person with awareness of joy for learning experience and achievements. The learning is one of the main components in developing self-experience. During the research it was clarified that organization of adult learning depends on the wish of participants involved in the process to cooperate and acquire new experience. In order to form free and creative collaboration, participants and the tutor choose the form of cooperation together. The most widely used forms in learning are the experimental ones: lectures – discussions; seminars; work in groups; individual work and tasks; home works; interactive consultations. The applied method facilitates formation of skills to use new knowledge, achieves the goal and provides to participants of the course knowledge and also skills necessary for successful starting of business by using any forms of learning. The participants’ skills to actualize their primary experience during the learning process had developed considerably. They evaluated lecturer’s work style and relations which had formed in the group. Adults’ personal feelings related to the unity of the learning process and self-management of it was not developed completely. During the adult training, where the main issue was the content of the entrepreneurship, understanding of the learning process unity was formed. 25 % out of all the course participants had chosen to learn within the module of business fundamentals; 10 % –management fundamentals; 7 % – legal regulation of business; 23 % – financial management of an enterprise; 24 % – accountancy of economic activities and taxation; 11 % – marketing fundamentals. Especially significant was the participants’ evaluation of the subject’s position in the learning process. It was characterized by answers to few specific questions. It was clarified that 55 % of the course participants from the periphery always felt themselves as participants of a dialogue, 36% – often and only 7% – rarely, but 2% – did not have such a chance. 59 % of participants admitted that they always had a possibility to express their opinion, 34% – often, 7% – rarely. None of the experiment participants were unable to express an opinion. Almost 100% of participants of all the courses pointed out that there was a possibility to ask questions. During the learning process participants’ subject position is especially significant, because it allows feeling free, equal and belonging, as well as satisfies self-actualization needs. Survey data measurements, using the Spearman correlation coefficient, demonstrated that by increasing interest in self-actualization, also evaluation of other self-experience indicators increases. Reliable research results on theoretical rainbow cycle model as basis for organization of the learning process have been obtained. Nascent entrepreneurs have improved their self-experience purposefully through the interaction of all the components (new needs, actualization of the primary self-experience, learning, understanding, creative thinking, knowledge application, reflection, and self-evaluation). The objective learning result can be observed in changes of employees and employers legal status (see Fig. 2). During the learning process, respondents’ legal status indicators of labour relations changed. Number of self-employed persons increased from 12% to 15%, but number of employers – from 14% to 38%.
Fig. 2 Labour relations legal status
The research results demonstrate the following:
1) The learning starts with actualization of self-experience, i.e. knowledge, skills and attitudes. Alongside with significant changes in self-experience, human values change as well. The research work proves that necessity for conscious learning facilitates cooperation and purposefulness in adult learning. The learning is an individual process that has to be realized personally. It grounds on self-support, responsibility and free choice. Motivation of the personality, purposeful learning, goal and self-esteem – these are the terms of humanistic pedagogy expressing respect towards person’s autonomy during the learning process.
2) Cooperation possesses a subjective and individual goal. Objective circumstances are the grounds of acknowledging a subjective goal – contradiction between existing self-experience and activities necessary for new needs. During the experimental process and in its result, the listeners formed new goals for their activity and changed attitude towards themselves: everyone felt valuable and wanted to realize self-support in the real life activity. One of the proofs to that is a skill to evaluate the obtained new, secondary self-experience in learning. During the year, all the listeners have developed skills of self-evaluation related to the obtained, new knowledge; understanding; skills to learn; and changes in attitude towards the learning.
3) Skills of experience self-analysis have provided to the participants a possibility to understand forming of a new, secondary self-experience and compare experience in entrepreneurship before and after the studies. New needs for learning, which are being strengthened during the learning process by interactive consultations and where the business content possesses the leading role, are one of the main indicators.
4) Carrying out the empiric research and analysing the adult learning process and its results, the learning cycle spiral was activated by setting forward three innovative components of the learning purport: 1) a goal that is a fundament of all the learning process; 2) the use of knowledge that provides implementing goals and skills to apply knowledge; 3) self-esteem, which approves to everyone needs to satisfy new knowledge, understanding and applying it for achieving the goal. Learning of nascent entrepreneurs in the courses obtained purport and significance.
5) The research work proved that the essence of life activities is a continuous process of satisfying needs; and changes take place, when the unity of society’s goal and process of satisfying needs of each individual has been formed. Individual changes in life activity depend not only on a person him/herself, but also on the environment and society in general where he/she can or cannot realize Self, his/her knowledge and competences, and satisfy needs obtaining new self-experience for self-development.
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