Inspiring learning for all

This article is from the April 2004 issue of Update.

I remember, when I was studying to be a librarian, writing essays about the purpose of the public library — educational, recreational, informational or cultural? Discussions prompted by Framework for the Future1 have returned to this question, focusing on the concept of national offers. What is it that public libraries should offer the public? What is it we all do and what is required of us? And, by implication, what should we stop doing?

On 2 March the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) launches Inspiring Learning for All (ILA)2 and the discussion takes an important step forward. The project identifies an outcome, rather than an activity, uniting museums, libraries and archives. Learning as personal and social progression, enrichment and development is identified as the sector’s primary contribution. ILA builds on best practice in this area and offers a national framework for developing better learning services.

Online resource
Inspiring Learning for All is an online resource for museums, libraries and archives, which has been developed over three years, in consultation with more than 500 professionals. It contains:

• activities to encourage organisations to explore what learning is;
• a framework to enable the sector to assess the quality of its learning activities and to plan improvements to them;
• a radical new way of measuring impact on learning;
• advocacy materials to help organisations win acceptance for the developments required to improve learning outcomes;
• support for shifting the organisational focus to learning.

MLA believes that these five strategies will improve the quality of learning in the domains, establish an understanding of their unique and powerful contribution to the learning community and empower the sector to talk with authority about its impact on learners.

The assessment framework sits at the heart of these resources. It is built solidly on evidence — research and good practice — and is focused on four principles:

• People — providing effective learning opportunities which genuinely respond to need;
• Places — creating an inspiring and learning environment that supports learning;
• Policies, plans, performances — ensuring that the organisation has learning at its heart;
• Partnerships — working creatively with others to provide learning and access opportunities.

New understanding of learning
New understanding of how the brain works and develops is becoming an increasingly important factor in education and social policy: awareness of the importance and speed of early brain development has underpinned the £1bn Sure Start programme; and new initiatives based on ‘brain-friendly learning’, such as the University of the First Age, are transforming our schools and community-based learning. Libraries need to respond to this challenge.

ILA addresses the challenge of this research and development in other sectors, and uses it as the basis of its approach to promoting learning. Varied learning patterns, developed in theories such as Gardener’s ‘multiple intelligences’, unlock new and richer learning services, more responsive to the individual’s needs. To demonstrate this approach, the homepage of the ILA website opens with a quiz based on Gardener’s theory which helps you discover why particular library, museum or archive environments and services are more stimulating to your learning than others.

MLA has used the Campaign for Learning’s3 definition of learning as the base for describing the learning which it seeks to promote in ILA:

‘Learning is a process of active engagement with experience. It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve the development or deepening of skills, knowledge, understanding, awareness, values, ideas and feelings, or an increase in the capacity to reflect. Effective learning leads to change, development and the desire to learn more.’

This definition, and an organisational focus on learning, in no way limits or undermines the important cultural, artistic or informative work of libraries. But it talks about the way these activities change people’s lives.

Measuring learning
A major theme of ILA is that the contribution of the sector to learning must not be constrained by a definition that links it exclusively to its impact on attainment in formal learning. The project’s challenge is to celebrate and measure our impact on informal learning. Projects such as the DfES’s Evaluation of the Impact of Study Support4 have demonstrated the relationship between engagement in informal learning and achievement in formal learning. ILA goes one step further and encourages the sector to talk about the informal learning outcomes as being important in themselves.

The University of Leicester led the important research project that has enabled ILA to develop a methodology which allows museums, libraries and archives to identify and quantify learning described in users’ feedback. The work, led by a team of experts in learning from all three domains, identified learners’ progression in five areas:

• knowledge and understanding;
• skills;
• values and attitudes;
• enjoyment, inspiration and creativity;
• activity, behaviour and progression.

These five ‘generic learning outcomes’ (GLOs) provide museums, libraries and archives with a common language to talk about their impact on the learner. They have been piloted extensively and are now being applied to the evaluation of major learning initiatives. The evaluation of the annual Summer Reading Challenge using the GLO methodology demonstrated that:

• 95 per cent of the children wanted to read lots more books;
• 45 per cent read a book they wouldn’t have wanted to before;
• 65 per cent would tell their friends to read a book they’d enjoyed;
• 92 per cent of the books were new to the Summer Reading Challenge children;
• 68 per cent said they liked to write or draw or play games about a book;
• 59 per cent said they found out something from a book they didn’t know before.

ILA seeks to promote collaborative learning. This means that developing socially inclusive services and addressing access are crucial themes for organisations working through the website.

The framework encourages libraries to develop learning services in partnership with local communities, addressing genuine need. Stock and activities need to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion through representation. Opening times and physical access should be reviewed and barriers removed. The framework also focuses on organisational policy needed to promote inclusion.

To complement and support the launch of ILA and stress the importance of ‘… for All’, MLA is publishing on its website5 a range of toolkits, aligned with the framework, encouraging services to address social inclusion, to become collaborative and inclusive learning organisations. The first of these, Access for All, helps an organisation plan to audit itself against the headings of the ILA framework to address inclusion. Specialist toolkits for addressing cultural diversity and disability access have been produced to support the work of the sector.

A central message of ILA is that to deliver effective learning, organisations must address social inclusion.

Piloting
The development of ILA has embodied the collaborative approach to learning which the framework seeks to promote. A cross-domain steering think-tank has been meeting regularly to advise the project for three years. CILIP has been a key member. Consultation sessions have been held in every region, and national consultation events have been held with sectors with a particular focus on learning — for instance HE and school librarians. Piloting has occurred in more than 30 organisations across the country. And consultation and piloting have radically changed the content and approach of the project, which three years ago set out to be a simple standard for learning across the domains.

Piloting has demonstrated how ILA can support library development. Essex Libraries tackled accessibility, attracting new audiences, signing, the e-environment and provision of alternative formats. Poole Library used the framework as a design specification for a new library. Warwickshire Libraries used ILA to develop significant advocacy opportunities, demonstrating to councillors and other stakeholders its contribution to lifelong learning. The website talks about how the resources have already been used and includes comments from professionals involved in the piloting: ‘Inspiring Learning for All has created learning advocates within the service and made us want to review how we measure our performance in future’ (Sue Hughes, Knowsley Borough Libraries and Museums).

The wider library agenda
MLA is working to ensure that ILA supports and informs the important national programmes supporting libraries’ development. In particular:

• Libraries in formal learning institutions (schools, FE, HE) have been engaged in developing and piloting the framework. Discussions with the Adult Learning Inspectorate and Ofsted are examining how ILA can be used in inspection.
• Routes to Knowledge6 — major themes in the WILIP report on the concerns of the wider library community are included in ILA, particularly relating to impact indicators, quality frameworks and effective advocacy.
• Framework for the Future — the learning and reading programmes are discussing how ILA can be a common theme for the national offers, allowing them to deliver high-quality services and demonstrate impact.
• Start with the Child7 called for an overarching quality framework for library services for children and young people — projects like Their Reading Futures are using the ILA framework to develop this.

Refocusing services
Following piloting, the framework and the supporting materials have been transformed into an e-learning activity, published on the ILA website. It is also available as a CD-Rom from MLA and the regional agencies.

The website leads an organisation through key action points which will support them in renewing and refocusing their services on users and their learning needs. It challenges libraries to:

1. Form a team to take forward ILA in the library service with representation from senior management and frontline staff;
2. Encourage the team to explore learning and the ways in which libraries stimulate learning, by using resources on the ILA website;
3. Work through the framework — assessing the library’s contribution to learning;
4. Use the Access for All and related toolkits to audit the library’s commitment to socially inclusive opportunities for learning;
5. Use the generic learning outcomes to assess the learning outcomes experienced by users;
6. Formulate an action plan to improve the quality of learning in the library, developed from the findings of the self-assessment activities;
7. Win support for the action plan and for learning, using the advocacy materials provided on the website;
8. Enact improvement and re-evaluate the impact of the service on learning using the framework.

Each of the nine regional agencies in England for the sector8 is committed to rolling out ILA and supporting the sector in using the framework. There will be a launch of the project in each region. And each regional Learning and Access Team has formulated a strategy to promote ILA, responding to regional priorities: in the East Midlands a ‘learning advocates’ programme is equipping leaders in the sector to promote ILA.

ILA is a direct answer to the question ‘What is the primary purpose of library services?’ It offers a framework for achieving a clear vision of the outcomes library services should be aiming for and how those outcomes can be identified.

It aims to raise the quality of learning experiences for everyone who uses museums, libraries and archives by encouraging organisations to focus on users and learning outcomes.

ILA gives libraries the opportunity to develop and reform services in the context of contemporary thinking about learning and within a framework of best practice. Three years ago Empowering the Learning Community9 presented a vision of libraries working together to deliver high-quality learning services focused on users’ needs. Inspiring Learning for All is an important step forward in realising that vision.

References
1 Framework for the Future. DCMS, 2003.
2 Inspiring Learning for All (www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk).
3 www.campaignforlearning.org.uk
4 The Impact of Study Support. Department for Education and Skills, 2001.
5 www.mla.gov.uk
6 Full Report of the WILIP Consultation Exercise. Resource, 2003 (www.resource.gov.uk/action/wilip/wilip.asp).
7 Start with the Child. CILIP, 2002.
8 A full list of contacts for the museum, library and archive regional agencies is available on www.mla.gov.uk
9 Empowering the Learning Community. Library and Information Services Commission, 2000.

Jonathan Douglas (jonathan.douglas@mla.gov.uk) is Head of Learning & Access at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).