Our last section summarizes some of the principles we've been talking about, but it's important to recognize that the learning and training, methods we're talking about are based in concepts of adult education. We're not talking about primary school, we're talking about experienced people who are coming into a learning situation with several years of work on the job, work as volunteers in the community, work in running their own families and so all of this is as important as we said, learning resource.

There are various assumptions underlying adult learning. And, we want to contrast this with pedagogy, teaching children, or teacher-directed learning versus adult education, or self directed learning. When we're concerned about the concept of the learner, our philosophy and perception about how the learner functions under pedagogy or teacher-directed, we assume that the person is a dependent personality waiting for the teacher to give direction. In an adult education setting, such as the training programs we hope to organize, we recognize that the learner is increasingly self-directed, self-actualizing, taking responsibility, for the learning process. So we've mentioned before, we're concerned about the role of the learner's experience in the learning process. In pedagogy, we take a sequential step. The person has learned to add, then they learn the multiplication tables, then they learn division, so we build step by step.

When we're concerned about an adult learning experience, recognizing that people have passed through these stages, they have much experience, and we need to draw on all the different resources and experiences that people have, and share these among the different learners, so they can learn from each other, and use that as important components of the learning process. Another assumption about learning relates to how ready people are to learn; how ready they are to change their behavior. In a pedagogical approach, there is all this concern about maturity, and people will be ready, you know, at different stages of their life. As they grow older, they, they will be more ready to learn, but in an adult education perspective, we're concerned that the experiences that life throws at you, the tasks that you have to do on the job, the realities of your life, are what stimulate you to want to learn. So when you're faced with problems, you'll want to try to figure out solutions, and that means that you are, are ready to learn. So we need to ensure that, again, training and learning experiences are actually meeting, percep-, perceived needs that, that people have, so that they are ready and wanting to learn. Orientation to learning, our assumptions about that, under a pedagogical approach focus on specific subjects, whether it's, anatomy, whether it's mathematics. Whereas in adult education, we're concerned about tasks and problems. How do we ensure that we get better immunization coverage? How can we get community members to take responsibility for their own onchocerciasis control distribution? In terms of motivation, we've talked about this, and the pedagogical approach assumes that you can inject people with motivation by rewarding them or punishing them. Giving them gifts, giving them gold stars, giving them grades. These are all forms of rewards and punishment, whereas in an adult learning situation we recognize that motivation comes from within. People have a desire to learn because of the problems they've experienced on the job, because they recognize that they will be better workers, that they will have a new capacity, curiosity. All of these come from within.

Adult learning elements are outlined here, such as climate, planning, diagnosis of needs. How do we set a learning climate? In a teacher-directed approach the learning climate is formal, authority-oriented, competitive, judgmental. We try in a self-directed or an adult learning situation to make the learning environment more informal. Mutually respective. Respecting, the trainees, by the trainer, and vice versa, but also respect among the trainees, among the learners. We try to come to decisions about action and activities in a consensual manner, emphasizing collaboration, among the trainees and trainers, trying to set up a supportive environment for people to try new skills, non-threatening environment. Who does the planning under each of these approaches? In a teacher-directed approach, just by implication, of course, the primary planner is the teacher; setting up the curriculum, setting up the lesson plans. Ideally, if we have adult education, we have a participatory approach. As we mentioned before, it would be ideal to set up planning committees that include trainers, supervisors, and trainees themselves, so that the training is, is relevant to their needs and fits into their time and schedule.

Who diagnoses, or finds out, the needs of the trainer?

The teacher, in, pedagogical approach, is the primary one, to, either administer standardized tests or whatever, to, gather information. Whereas in a self-directed, or adult education approach, the learners also contribute information, seek out information, try to find out, you know, question themselves, self examination, what do we need to learn?

Based on the training needs, the diagnosis of needs, how are training or learning goals set? In a pedagogical approach, again, the teacher sets these. This is somewhat obvious. In a, an adult education setting. We hope that together, the trainers and trainees sit down and say, what is feasible? What can we accomplish? What do we need? Trainees clearly have goals for learning, because they are working on the job, they know if they want to improve their work situation. They should be able to articulate goals on how to do that.

The other activities of course whether it's designing the plan, determining the activities, evaluating in an adult learning situation. The trainees and the learners need to be involved as much as possible to ensure that the learning methods are practical, are experiential, are responsive to their needs, are organized in a way that helps them inquire, carry out projects, respond to their curiosity. Let them try things through independent study or group projects. be experimental and then ultimately when training is evaluated in an adult learning context, it's important for, not just for the trainers to test the trainees, but also for the trainees to assess themselves, either through tests that they designed, through observation of their own performance, through discussions where they interact and question each other about what they have learned.

Finally, from what we've been talking about, there are implications of, learning methods, learning processes. And, what we see, in the graph here represents those learning experiences, that help adults retain, new knowledge and skills the best. As you can see, lectures, including ones you're listening to right now are probably the least effective, in terms of retention, but at least with this one, the principle of, repetition and redundancy can set in. Because, at least you can play this back many times. readings, self-directed readings. Again, you can gain more from that because you can go back over and over the material again. Audio-visual materials stimulate more senses, and so those enable retention, that's why we've tried to include pictures on our various slides. Demonstration is important because it allows people to visualize how new skills are carried out.

Discussions help people internalize, challenge values, internalize new ideas.

Practice, again you can have a demonstration without a return demonstration, people need to practice the new skills by manipulating the equipment, by practicing a counseling session, by designing your own educational materials. All of these practical things let people master the motor skills necessary. Let them through trial and error, get things right, give them confidence. And so again people having done it can retain more, and finally, teaching others. Adults teaching others

will help people retain new information even more.

So we will go into more details in subsequent lessons about specific learning methods, training methods that embody these principles of adult learning.

So we have mentioned, in principle, a variety of training and learning methods in the chart ranging from lecture, through practice, giving people a greater opportunity to internalize and retain the knowledge and skill. This theory that we are mentioning now in subsequent lectures will form the bases for our choice of specific training methods and we will be describing those in detail, how to organize them and they're also available in your course notes. So, hopefully, we will build on this idea of adult learning to formulate our training programs.

So, in closing, we just want to apply everything we've been talking about, to our village volunteers, our volunteer community health workers. We've been talking about approaches to training and learning with adults, and clearly, the volunteers that we will be working with are adults. They come to us with a variety of experiences, and the community members they'll be working with, the community leaders, will all themselves, have important health and community development experiences that we'll need to draw on. So what we want to do is recognize that the volunteers and the community members are a rich resource for enhancing the learning experience, drawing on their experiences, to help advance our training programs. So this is the important thing to recognize, that they have experience, not just in understanding their culture, but also in communicating one of the best ways of passing on the knowledge and skills that they learned in training, to their community members. [MUSIC]

Lecture 1C: Adult Education Approaches

Training and Learning Programs for Volunteer Community Health Workers

Meet the Instructors