[MUSIC] Hello, this is Bill Brieger, and want to take this opportunity to welcome you to our course. Training and learning programs for volunteer community health workers. We hope that you enjoy this and can apply this in your work. we're going to be talking today about approaches to training and learning in adult education. So we can see in the second slide that this lecture looks at two broad issues. First we're going to examine principles of learning and secondly we're going to look at adult education approaches to learning. Our first section explores some of the principles of learning. Learning is an internal process within the person him or herself. This is an important issue for those of you that may have done teaching before, there is a question of whether one actually teaches Or whether people learn and learning itself is something that occurs inside the person, no matter how much teaching, talking you do. Learning is a discovery process, each person attaches meaning to what they are learning based on their own experiences. So learning is a consequence of a persons experience. Both in a formal learning or classroom setting, but particularly on the job, out in the community in real life. Learning is not something done by one person, by a teacher, by a trainer, but it's a cooperative process. A collaboration between learners, between trainers, between in our health services, between providers and consumers of services. So people learn from each other. Learning is also an evolutionary process. It's slow. Those of you that are taking the MPH course on the internet know that it's going to to take you about three years. But I bet that in that process you're probably picking up the information and digesting it much more thoroughly. Than people who are taking the on campus MPH and are crowding everything into five terms and can not catch their breath. So, I think this is an important process of learning that you take it at your pace and things become meaningful over time. The sixth principal of learning is that behavior change. And again, learning is evidenced by people's change in behavior that learning and behavior change can be painful. Adopting new things may be difficult. Getting up on the bike and trying to get after you fall off. Important thing that you all need to recognize, of course, is as learners, you are you're primary learning resource. To enrich resource for your own learning, your own experiences. Your own perceptions form the foundation upon which you learn additional skills and knowledge. Learning is not just an academic or intellectual exercise, it's also emotional. We need to address people problems, as they say, people interacting in a training session, for example. The group dynamics, particular needs and paces of each learner may be different. People have their own desires for self esteem and self recognition, actualization. So all of this must be addressed in the learning process, not just the academic content. And finally, an important principal is that each person does have a unique learning style. the fact that you are taking Internet courses implies that part of your learning style hopefully, is that you have some self-directed learning ambitions that you're able to manage and control your time. also people some people learn better visually. Some people are better by listening. Some people learn better by practicing. And so we have to recognize that a good training program, for example, should provide all these different training approaches and methods. So that each person's learning style can be addressed in a program. We will look in more detail at each of these principles. Principle one, again, learning is an experience that occurs inside the person. Learning is activated by the learner or people interacting with an environment. When they have a chance to practice they go out into the field They're counseling patients, they're doing environmental inspection. They see things and the aha principal occurs, when people all at once realize that they have picked up a new piece of knowledge, a new skill. It's just like the issue of motivation Many times when people are talking about training or behavior change communication. They say, oh we're going to motivate people to change their behavior. Motivation is not something like immunization. You can't inject people with motivation, like you can give them a flu vaccine or measles vaccine. You cannot give a motivation vaccine. Motivation has to come from inside the person. And so, the learning process is primarily controlled by the learner. What has meaning for the learner at the pace, at the time, that he or she is ready to take in new information and ideas. Again, the changes, learning is change in perception, it's also a change in behavior. And again, this as anthropologists will tell you, the people attach meaning to the experiences around them based on their own experiences. Based on things that have seen in life before. So, again, the process of learning is interpreted through that lens of people's experience over time, their perceptions. And as we can see in the slide with a health worker being supervised in terms of her record keeping in antenatal clinic. When she's doing something, something happens unique inside her to experience this, to understand what's going on. It becomes meaningful to her. And then learning has actually occurred. In this context of recognizing learning as an internal process, we can see that teaching, or training in our case, is a facilitating process. The facilitator, the trainer, helps people explore and discover the personal meaning. The trainer doesn't say, this is what's such and such means. This is the value of keeping good records in the clinic. This is the importance of demonstrating, making oral rehydration a solution to a mother. The trainer can organize those learning activities. But it is the trainee, the learner who will give meaning to that by practicing, trying it out, getting feedback. By practicing the skills successfully, getting feedback by delivering the service well to the clients. So that; that therefore, the trainer is not teaching but helping the person learn. So no one directly teaches anyone anything of significance. You can lead the horse to water but the horse has to do the drinking. Looking again at the second learning principle. Learning is a discovery process. Again people giving personal meaning and relevance to the ideas that may be presented during a training program. people more readily internalize and implement concepts that are relevant to them. The picture we see here is a patent medicine vendor in Nigeria. They, day in and day out, are selling drugs for malaria in this case, or headaches or cough whatever. And when a program was offered to improve their skills, in terms of their ability to treat malaria correctly with new prepackaged medicines. They could see that as something that tied directly into their job, and they were excited about it. Traditionally we have found that medicine vendors basically operate as sales people. You ask for a product and they sell it to you. There was very little interaction with their customers. But after this new training and a new drug was introduced, they became excited about it. They saw that they had an important role to play. And they started communicating the value of these new prepackaged drugs to their patients, which was something additional. But they internalize it. It fit into their experience, it made them feel more important. Learning requires exploration of ideas in relation to the self and the community. It's important that the learners determine what their learning needs are. What goals they would like to set. What issues they would like to discuss. What content they would like to learn. In order to actualize this, it's important for example to establish training, planning committees. And involve potential trainees in this planning process. So that it's insured that the training program will be relevant to people. That they'll be buying into it. That they'll want to participate. That the actual issues that are presented will be things that they want to learn. In terms of the third principle of learning, you can see that learning again, learning is evidenced by behavior change. That learning is a consequence of experience. One has to try out new behaviors in order to become proficient in them and to internalize them. It's important therefore that people are given responsibility, that they assume responsibility for their own learning. That they have some degree of independence where they can set, as we mentioned before, their goals for learning. And that they also need to experience success. That, when we are facilitating the learning process, the training process. We need to make sure, as we will be talking later, that we present tasks in a way that are built on each other. That are easy for people to master step-by-step as they go along. In terms of learning, again people will feel important if they themselves are important to someone. Just as we were talking about the medicine vendors. They realize through the training that with these new drugs. If they can get the right drug to the child with malaria, they will be saving children's lives. So that makes them feel important, they internalize the learning of new skills more. Again, as we said it's not a question of people changing their behavior or through training process. Learning and practicing new skills simply because someone tells them it's a good thing to do. We can advise people all we want but they have to see the meaning for this, the value of it in there work. Therefore just giving information about the importance of the new skills is not enough. People have to see the importance of it, have to internalize it, have to feel that they are valued for what they are doing. So again, when people become responsible and independent learners, they don't need to have other people tell them what they should do. They are able to motivate themselves to take on new job roles and responsibilities. It's a challenge during training, because people, training is often relatively short-term activity. Although there are some in-service courses that last for several months. But the, the issue of making sure that people have the opportunity to practise new skills. To be recognized as independent and responsible learners, is important. So, we need to be sure that when we're establishing learning experiences. That there are opportunities for practical work where people can try out on their own the new skills, and that will reinforce their learning. One of the examples various research training activities that we've done is encouraging people not only to come with the data entered. But, but actually try to analyze their own data, their own information, try to come up with conclusions themselves. Try out their new computer skills, try out their new software skills, so that they believe that the data is really theirs. This is important for young researchers. Otherwise they will simply contract out the data entry and analysis to a third party. Somebody who's just doing it for the business, they won't see any meaning for it, and the next time a grant comes along. They won't have the skills to write the grant, to propose how the grant will analy, analyse the data. So this way, they'll have a sense of ownership. So, it's important to build these kinds of things where people have the chance to practise the skills, make decisions, use the information The fourth learning principle stresses the importance of cooperation and collaboration in the learning process. Learning is not something that one does all alone. Learning is not something that the teacher does, or the trainer does, all alone. And simply put, it's based on the principle two heads are better than one. And although we talked about the importance of the learner having independence. Having a sense of personal motivation, sense of being given responsibility for learning and for carrying out new role functions. It's also important that people learn to function inter dependently so that they can gain knowledge and skills from each other. So training and learning need to be an interactive process because people will stimulate each others curiosity and creativity. Cooperative approaches enable people to develop new skills. By interacting with each other during the learning process, people get new ideas. They redefine their goals They draw on each other for group problem-solving. So group activities during training programs are quite important as we can see in the picture. Interestingly enough, when people do work together in groups They can also develop a stronger sense of their own identity, their own contributions, their own role. They begin to realize that they count, they're important, they have something to contribute to the group. Through the interactive process people can be challenged to stretch their knowledge. Come up with more creative solutions. People bounce ideas off of each other, become more creative. We'll resume with the remaining principles of learning in the next the section.
