Inclusive Adult Education for Reskilling in the IT Sector

The concepts of upskilling and reskilling are catching on lately in the digital society we live in, as new technologies are rapidly emerging. However, while the former implies building up talent by expanding previous knowledge on a linear path, the latter implies building up talent outside previous knowledge through a lateral movement. Hence, reskilling usually requires a greater effort, which becomes even more challenging when it involves adults with special needs. Such additional difficulties are common among members of the IDEA framework, which stands for inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. The inspiration behind the IDEA framework is to help guide purposeful action to address inequalities across different populations. However, there is limited research on reskilling associated with the IDEA framework. In this chapter, we present an inclusive adult education scheme aimed at reskilling a group of adults with special needs in the IT sector, specifically in the coding field. Hence, this piece of research may serve as a valuable addition to the IDEA framework. The training was delivered to enable participants to acquire basic coding skills in Python and JavaScript at an entry level. The training was attended by 20 candidates, and the final results indicate that 60% of the participants completed the entire training, while 30% were officially certified in at least one programming language, and 20% were officially certified in both programming languages.