These questions are even more compelling in these first critical years of the new millennium than they were when this book was written in 1994. They and their students wrote to me that this book was one of the keys to unlocking the discipline of adult education for them.
Scope of This Book
He offers a taste of principles and practices in Training through dialogue (1996), models of evaluation in How do they know that they know? (1998) and the latest research on learning tasks in Learning to Task (2000). All principles and practices are actually means to fill this gap and develop this dialogue.
Intended Audience
Potential of the Book
The simplicity of the principles and practices indicates that they can be productively applied in educational enterprises everywhere. It then points to immediate indicators for assessing learning, as well as longer-term indicators set to examine the transfer of skills and knowledge and impact: the implication of that learning for life and work.
Overview of the Contents
Chapter eleven takes place in El Salvador, where the principle of immediacy appears in all aspects of the event. It was a critical time in the history of the community development program and, indeed, of the country.
Acknowledgments
The Author
A Process That Works and Why
Twelve Principles for Effective Adult Learning
Needs Assessment
Thomas Hutchinson (1978) of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, offers a useful question for assessing needs: Who needs what as determined by whom. When adult learners are bored or indifferent, it means that their topics have been neglected in the course design.
Safety
First, trust in the competence of the design and the teacher enables students to feel safe. A "plop" destroys the safety not only of the person who spoke, but of everyone in the room.
Sound Relationships
In the situation in Tanzania (Chapter Five), we see how security was essential for a gifted Muslim teacher to work with a Christian community. Margie Ahnan from Indonesia shows how powerful a healthy relationship can be in getting a mature learner to reach beyond himself and grow in the knowledge, skills and attitudes he needs.
Sequence and Reinforcement
Nothing can diminish the importance of the teacher-student relationship for learning. In adult learning situations—in industry, community, family, or personal development classes—the teacher is responsible for a design that works for students there and then.
Praxis
We use it all the time in our daily lives as we do something, reflect on its implications and change. Their learning was not only the result of their actions in the villages, but also of silence and reflection after those actions.
Respect for Learners as Decision Makers
As we will see when we explore the principle of involvement, the learning is in the doing and deciding. It can lead to radical changes in the effect of teaching: less dropout, for example, because students feel respected and important decision makers in their own learning process.
Ideas, Feelings, Actions
This can mean more measurable results of the learning process, as students know that they know because they have chosen to do what they are learning. Joye Norris, a master of dialogue teaching, talks about the powerful results she has seen when students are invited to "raise their own voices" and hear themselves, often for the first time.
Immediacy
The principle of immediacy helped the teacher decide how to organize the sessions in this short course. The simple principle of directness guides us in designing this course.
Clear Roles
As we develop skills in the use of all the principles and practices of dialogue teaching, we will see how deeply intertwined they are. This story tells how they found new meaning in the concept of dia+ logos, "the word or relationship between us", as they found new roles and new relationships with their graduate students and with each other in dialogue teaching.
Teamwork
However, teams explore another new potential in the learning situation, as different people learn how to work together generously and efficiently. We need time at the beginning of a course to invite students to consider their roles in the team.
Engagement
Constructive competition is structured in such a way that teams work together in the learning process, manifesting their learning with a certain pride in their performance as a team, in a win-win situation. Before the literacy program, these young men and women had been members of military units of the guerrilla army that fought for Zimbabwe's independence.
Accountability
This hierarchy was substantiated by a world view of the universe and everything in it as a great machine. I have always tried to be accountable to learners through careful design and using the principles of dialogue teaching.
Quantum Thinking and Dialogue Education
In this chapter, I will show some connections between the principles of dialogue teaching and selected concepts from quantum thinking. Many of the principles and practices of dialogic teaching are designed to raise and maintain student energy.
Principles and Practices and Quantum Concepts
The respect for the coherence of everything within that content will enable you to offer parts of the content with an eye on the whole. When we can respect students as subjects of their own life learning and turn them to learning tasks that invite their creation of viable theory, we are congruent with a number of the selected quantum concepts.
The Whole Picture
In Vella (2000) you will find a detailed description of the seven steps and further opportunities to practice their use. Our use of the seven steps of design—who, why, when, where, for what, what, and how—honors our respect for students as decision makers.
How the Principles Inform Course Design
Why. Current Position: The position requiring this training course is obvious - these graduates will soon be teaching hundreds of young civil service employees how to work productively with small rural communities. Where. The training takes place at a community education center near a small farming town in rural Missouri.
The Principles in Practice
Surveys, site visits, informal sessions such as dinners and telephone or email interviews can be used with a cross-section of the learning group to get a sense of the real situation of the students. Notice how the LNRA in this particular case emerged with the participants during the first few days of the training session.
Learning Needs and Resources Assessment
How do you do it under intense time pressure, with over half a million lives depending on the knowledge and skills of young staff. How do you ensure responsibility and quality in the efforts of the young staff.
The Situation
It was a great temptation to begin designing a plan for training in the familiar forms of the agency's development programs. Why. The current situation (why) was of course the drought, which required relief operations at intense levels and teams of skilled workers to manage a relief and development program that was underway.
The Learners
It was translated for me into English: "When these problems are over, I will invite you to our Afar camp in the mountains. Without it, there is no honest definition of learning needs, no dialogue, no listening: the key is the respectful relationship between student and teacher.
The Program and the Process
Finally, the learning needs – the skills, knowledge and attitudes these young people needed to do the job – were defined by the programme's directors. What did Fatuma and the young men and women want from this training course and the program.
Who Needs What as Defined by Whom?
We decided something early on: all sixteen young people and Fatuma will be able to perform all the tasks from the protocol. My job was to somehow incorporate this into the overall set of training goals.
Teamwork
There was no other evidence of the outbreak of seriousness in the room, but her rifle was on the front table every day. When doing a needs assessment, you have to constantly listen to diverse and sometimes conflicting statements about the needs that a program fulfills.
Design Challenges
Confidence in the competence of the design and the skills of the teacher enables learners to feel safe. Confidence in the feasibility of the goals and the relevance of these goals also makes them feel safe.
Safety
You read in Chapter 1 about the principle of safety that guides the teacher through planning, learning needs and resource assessment and the first moments of the course. We examine a community education program in Musoma near Lake Victoria and the role of one of the principals, Auni Makame.
The Problem and the Setting
The director of the Makoko Family Center saw CED as a means to monitor the progress of the Makoko families. CUSO was also one of the first funders of CED and of the Makoko Center.
Six Considerations
Participatory – meaning that everyone involved has time to speak, listen and be actively involved in the learning process. Person-oriented – that is to say: the goal is the development of all people involved.
Community Theme: Listening to One Another
She was quite worried and asked to meet all the women in the middle of the room. Hear Margaret Wheatley: “In the quantum world, relation is the ultimate determinant of everything.
Sound Relationships
In chapter one you explored the power of healthy relationships in increasing adults' learning potential. The quantum concepts of energy and the interconnectedness of all things are at work here.
The Situation and the Setting
But there was no gap in the acceptance of the learning potential of this experience for both of us. The modeling of the professor can establish an ethical standard in the group, which will be valid throughout the course.
The Learning Moment
It is useful to pose such a question to the group through what I call a provocative question. “Before I answer, what do you think of Mary's question?” This continues essential peer learning while giving you time to respond fully. Ahnan and I enjoy that quality of silence as we sat together on the back porch.
Evaluation: Learning, Transfer, Impact
I know that moment by the quality of the silence that permeates the room, whether it's filled with a thousand, a hundred, ten adults, or just two of us. When you as a teacher see fear, confusion or reluctance to try in the learner, it is time to test the order of the learning tasks.
Sequence and Reinforcement
In the orientation we heard all the history and legal aspects of the migrant situation. We spent a lot of time on the back porch beating the time out of the phrases and sentences they learned.
Evaluation
I'm sure there are so many times I need to hear or do something before I know that I know. Two principles that emerge in this story of a migrant labor camp in North Carolina are humor and rhythm.
Praxis
All group discussions during the workshop would be in Divehi, the language of the Maldives. These goals are set in light of learning needs and resource assessment.
Learners as Decision Makers
For me, this was one of the most useful learning tasks in the entire workshop. The affirmation they heard in the barn became a function of the new culture of this organization.
Evaluation: Transfer Is Immediate
In all the activities of the workshop, the principle of respecting the participants as subjects worked. Since this group of personnel represented only a quarter of the entire field staff of the Nepal office, it was also necessary for them to prepare to teach their colleagues in Kathmandu what they were learning.
Longitudinal Evaluation: Impact
Reflections: Subjects in a Participatory World
How can you celebrate such new ways of behaving towards the content, towards you as a teacher and towards each other. By using the principle that there are three aspects of learning—ideas (cognitive), feelings (affective) and actions (psychomotor)—we can ensure the engagement of learners.
Learning with Ideas, Feelings, and Actions
When teaching a concept, consider how the learning task can also evoke students' feelings about the concept. Through an integrated learning task, the learner can understand the meaning of the concept or the skill being learned.
The Story and the Setting
After a quarter of an hour, I went up to the group and told an Irish priest that Mary Anne was not "in" the group. I think now is the time for that." The affective communication was profound.
Reflection
We often use published curriculum materials without adapting them to the culture of the group. As part of our preparation, we can examine printed materials in terms of who: the students.
Immediacy
I was hoping we could get one or two field staff to work with us on this program. What were the skills, knowledge and attitudes that we thought would meet the immediate needs and wants of the field workers.
Immediacy in Danger
