A Place to Learn and Work: Yuendumu Learning Centre

In recent years, Community Learning Centres have emerged as a new community partnership model providing adult education in remote Indigenous communities in Australia, and in four Warlpiri Communities, funded locally by the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust. They are showing success by meeting local individual and community adult learning aspirations, and pathways to employment. This paper presents a reflective case-study of one such centre, the Warlpiri Triangle College Adult Learning Centre at Yuendumu in Central Australia. The study draws on an account of learning that is broad, diverse and situated in meaningful activity, which is responsive to the social, economic and learning needs of remote settings like Yuendumu. It draws out key elements operating at the Learning Centre in Yuendumu that allow for responsive and sustainable learning and training, with important implications for policy development in community development, education, training and employment in remote Australia. Introduction: Adult learning in Australian remote Indigenous communities & the Yuendumu Learning Centre A significant body of qualitative research has identified non-formal learning and informal learning1 as important means to engage or re-engage learners with poor literacy and numeracy skills, negative experiences of schooling and/or little confidence in, or little need for formal learning, and serve a number of community and individual goals, such as pathways into employment (Adult Learning Australia, 2014, pp. 4-5; Beddie & Halliday-Wynes, 2009; Birch, Kenyon, Koshy, & Wills-Johnson, 2003; Clemans, 2010; Kral & Schwab, 2012). In remote Indigenous contexts in the Northern Territory, secondary education completion rates are low, as are post-primary academic achievement rates (Wilson, 2013, p. 22 and p. 139). While formal training suits the employment and learning needs of some adults in these communities, non-formal learning programs for young people and adults emerge as both important and effective in a number of recent studies (Guenther, McRae-Williams, & Kilgariff, 2014; Kral & Heath, 2013; Kral & Schwab, 2012; Kral & Schwab, to appear; Shaw, 2015). A common thread through the literature is their scope to offer meaningful and responsive models of learning, education and training that resonate with local realities and meet local aspirations. 1. We use non-formal learning to refer to any intentional unaccredited learning, broadly following Adult Learning Australia (2014, p. 5). Learning Communities | Special Issue: Synthesis & Integration | Number 19 – April 2016