No-shows are also a source of personal frustration for the teachers. For example, one teacher being observed was scheduled to have three learners between 9 am and noon. Of the three, only one learner turned up, he was 40 minutes late and only stayed for 33 minutes of teaching. This learner had only been for one session previously and the teacher was anxious that he made sufficient progress to whet his appetite to return for further sessions. As an experienced teacher, she chose an activity that would fit into the limited time available and also provide him with a sense of accomplishment – as this teacher said in her interview, “It’s always about how I can make it meaningful for them.”
While this incident was due to the learner having transport difficulties, in other cases the no-shows are due to factors over which neither the teacher nor the learner had much control. In workplace programmes for example, peak production periods mean that learners are often unable to attend sessions because of the increased work demands. At one site, the teacher had to ring through to different parts of the factory for four different learners before she was able to locate one who was available following the no-show of a scheduled learner who was needed to cope with an unexpected work demand. This teacher’s intimate knowledge of the factory, its work schedules and the circumstances of each worker meant that she was able to minimise this issue.
It should also be noted that in the case of a few 1:1 teachers, no-shows mean that the teachers would not be paid for their time even though they are present at their workplace, as their pay is dependent on actual completion of teaching sessions. With their poor professional status and matching pay-rates, no-shows are simply another factor that frustrate these teachers and encourage them to look elsewhere for more secure employment.
Originally we had anticipated that the prime focus of our observations would be on the teaching activities around the particular needs of the learners in relation to LNL – how reading was taught, how LNL was integrated into vocational programmes and so forth. However early on in our observations, it became clear that we had under-estimated the centrality and importance of the more generic aspects of teaching (that are common to any form of adult education) and how influential these components are in shaping what happened between teachers and learners. For this reason, we have included a separate section on a number of generic factors that we see as pivotal.
In some small groups and classes, there was a wide variation in the amount of participation in activities (especially in response to non-directed questions and discussions) among the learners. For example, in one small group of three learners, one learner probably generated at least 70% of the responses, the second learner approximately 20% and the third learner only about 10%. When the first learner left the session early, the other learners then became more involved in the discussion, although the split was still about 70/30. The teachers were aware of this issue, explaining afterward that this person usually worked 1:1 and was not used to working in groups.