Are we teaching new Green Skills, or helping adults recognise skills they already have?

Ask a group of adult learners whether they have experience in resource efficiency, and the room may become quiet.

Ask whether they have ever planned carefully to avoid wasting food, repaired something instead of replacing it, reduced an electricity bill, reused materials or found a way to make limited supplies last longer, and the conversation changes.

The experience was there all along. What was missing was the language used to describe it.

This raises an important question for adult educators: when we teach green skills, are we always introducing something completely new? Or are we sometimes helping adults recognise, strengthen and communicate knowledge they already possess?

Adults do not enter education empty-handed

Adult learners bring years of experience into the learning environment. Some of it comes from previous employment, but much of it is also developed through family life, community participation, informal work and the everyday management of responsibilities.

A person may already know how to:

• plan purchases and avoid unnecessary consumption;

• store food or materials so they last longer;

• repair, reuse or adapt items;

• reduce water and electricity use;

• organise supplies to prevent duplication or expiry;

• identify when a routine wastes time or resources;

• persuade other people to change an inefficient habit.

These actions are rarely described as green skills in everyday life. People may call them being practical, careful, organised or resourceful. Nevertheless, they can form the foundations of competences that are increasingly relevant in the workplace.

This is particularly important when working with adults who have been outside formal education or employment for a long time. If green skills are introduced only through technical terminology, policy language or unfamiliar job titles, learners may assume that the subject belongs to someone else.

They may know how to prevent waste but not recognise the term resource efficiency. They may understand the value of repairing and reusing but never have encountered the term circular economy. They may have changed household routines to reduce energy costs without thinking of themselves as contributing to sustainability.

The gap is not always a lack of knowledge. Sometimes, it is a gap between lived experience and professional language.

Recognising experience is not the same as saying there is nothing left to learn

There is an important balance for adult educators to maintain.

We should not dismiss what learners already know. But neither should we assume that familiar experience automatically becomes workplace competence.

Knowing how to reduce waste at home is a valuable starting point. Applying that knowledge in a workplace may require additional abilities. A learner may need to record what is being wasted, identify the cause, understand safety or organisational procedures, compare possible solutions, calculate costs and explain a recommendation to colleagues or a supervisor.

For example, noticing that lights are frequently left on is an observation. Turning that observation into professional action may involve documenting when and where it happens, estimating the unnecessary consumption, considering why the routine continues and proposing a realistic change that does not disrupt work.

Similarly, avoiding food waste at home is not identical to developing a food-waste reduction strategy in a restaurant. However, the learner’s existing habits and understanding can provide a meaningful entry point.

Good adult education does not choose between recognising existing knowledge and teaching new competence. It connects the two.

Start with experience, then make the learning visible

A green-skills session does not always need to begin with a definition.

It might begin with a question:

Where have you seen something being wasted, at home, at work or in your community?

This immediately invites learners to contribute knowledge rather than wait for the educator to provide all the answers.

Their examples can then be examined more closely:

• What resource was being wasted?

• Why was it happening?

• Was it an isolated incident or a repeated routine?

• What were the financial, environmental or practical consequences?

• What could one person change?

• What would need to be reported or decided collectively?

• How could we know whether the improvement worked?

Through this process, an everyday observation becomes the starting point for systems thinking, problem-solving and workplace communication.

The role of the educator is not only to deliver information. It is to help learners examine their experience, question assumptions and transfer familiar knowledge into new contexts.

From everyday resourcefulness to workplace competence

GREEN4WORK, our Erasmus+ cooperation project focuses on green workplace competences for unemployed adults, has nearly finished developing a training programme around this principle of practical application.

The curriculum includes ten modules covering areas such as waste management, recycling, environmental surveys, energy consumption, resource efficiency, environmental protection and communication about sustainability.

The modules are designed for adults at EQF levels 3–4, so they do not require learners to become environmental engineers or sustainability specialists. Instead, learners work with observable situations and accessible tools.

They might conduct a simple workplace waste audit, record findings in a spreadsheet, photograph examples of inefficient resource use, calculate the energy cost of equipment left running or prepare a short proposal for improving a workplace routine.

These activities build on experiences that learners may already have, but they also add structure and depth.

The learner moves from:

• noticing to recording;

• assuming to measuring;

• following a habit to understanding its purpose;

• having an idea to presenting evidence;

• acting individually to involving others;

• possessing experience to being able to describe a competence.

That movement is where much of the learning happens.

The language we use can create access or distance

Terms such as green transition, environmental competence and sustainable resource management are useful. They connect learning with European frameworks, policy developments and changes in the labour market.

But professional terminology should help learners name their knowledge, not make that knowledge appear inaccessible.

If an educator begins with unfamiliar terminology and presents it as an entirely new field, some adults may conclude that they are already behind. If the educator begins with what learners have observed, managed and solved, the terminology can then provide a bridge to further learning.

The difference is subtle but important.

Instead of saying, “You do not have green skills, so we will give them to you,” we can say:

“You may already have experience that is relevant to sustainable work. Let us identify it, test it, strengthen it and learn how to use it professionally.”

This approach respects the learner without lowering expectations.

Making previously invisible competence visible to employers

Recognising existing knowledge is valuable, but learners must also be able to communicate it beyond the training room.

An employer is unlikely to be persuaded by a general statement such as “I am careful with resources.” A learner needs to explain what they can actually do.

For example:

• identify common sources of waste in a workplace;

• record resource use using a simple digital tool;

• calculate basic energy consumption;

• follow recycling and environmental procedures;

• propose realistic actions that reduce waste without affecting productivity;

• engage colleagues in more responsible workplace practices.

GREEN4WORK plans to connect this learning with micro-credentials. This can help turn specific achievements into evidence that learners can present through Europass, LinkedIn or other professional settings.

A micro-credential does not create experience that never existed. Its value is that it can help structure, verify and communicate what a learner has demonstrated.

For adults with limited formal qualifications or interrupted employment histories, this visibility can matter. A competence that remains unnamed is difficult to present. Once it is recognised and supported by evidence, it can become part of a person’s professional story.

Perhaps recognition is the first step towards learning

Green-skills education should prepare adults for changing workplace expectations. It should introduce new knowledge, develop digital abilities and help learners understand the wider environmental and economic context.

But it should not begin from the assumption that adults have nothing relevant to contribute.

People who have learned to manage limited resources, repair rather than replace, prevent waste and adapt everyday routines already possess experience that deserves attention. Adult education can help them understand where that experience is transferable, where it needs to be developed and how it can be made visible to an employer.

Perhaps the first green competence an adult educator needs is the ability to recognise resources.

Not only the energy, materials and time used in a workplace, but also the knowledge, experience and resourcefulness that learners bring with them.