Professional learning isn’t a single event or workshop—it’s a mindset. It’s the ongoing process of exploring, reflecting, experimenting, and growing alongside our learners.
In community-based adult learning, professional learning often happens in quiet, everyday moments:
- A conversation with a colleague that sparks a new idea.
- Trying out a new strategy with a learner and reflecting on what worked.
- Exploring a new resource to see how it might fit within your teaching.
Each of these moments adds to our confidence and deepens our understanding of how adults learn best.
Professional Learning as a Practice, Not a Product
As CALP practitioners, we know learning isn’t linear—for our learners or for us. Professional growth doesn’t always come from formal training; it often grows through reflection, connection, and curiosity.
Trying something new—like exploring a digital tool, adapting an assessment, or rethinking how we engage a hesitant learner—is part of that growth. Sometimes it works perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t. But both outcomes move us forward.
That’s what makes professional learning a practice, not a product—it’s ongoing, flexible, and grounded in real experience.
Learning Through Exploration: Using FALP as a Professional Tool
The Foundational Adult Learning Portal (FALP) isn’t just for learners; it can also support practitioner learning.
Practitioners have used it to:
- Teach digital skills using the FALP website, assessments, modules, and surveys.
- Click here to access a ready-to-use digital skills activity task sheet.
- Build their own confidence in supporting learners in digital spaces.
- Experiment with blended approaches to bridge in-person and online learning.
By engaging with FALP’s tools and resources, practitioners can strengthen their digital facilitation skills, one of the key areas of professional growth in today’s adult education landscape.
Trying an online module or assessment firsthand helps practitioners empathize with learners’ experiences—where they might get stuck, and where they begin to gain confidence.
Try This!
Professional learning doesn’t always mean a workshop or course—it can start with curiosity and a small action.
This week, take a few minutes to visit an online learning platform (such as FALP) as if you were a learner.
- Notice what feels easy and what feels challenging.
- Reflect: What supports might your learners need to succeed online?
- Share what you discovered with a colleague or during your next team meeting.
Our growth as practitioners shapes the learning journeys of those we support.
Let’s keep learning forward—together.
Submitted by:
Jenna Poncsak, Online Foundational Learning Resource Creator
Pathways Adult Learning Foundations
Serving Medicine Hat, Cypress County, Brooks & County of 40 Mile
403-878-3563
