Ross Woods, 2019
Our organization set up a training program for a network of people in a remote rural area when it found that most of them needed a formal qualification but had not finished college. Every month, they hold a two-day intensive course in one of their locations. Between intensives, an experienced senior staff person visits them to see how they are going. He gives support and advice as needed.
I have plenty of reasons for putting the principles into writing. I’ve recently had to explain them to others again and again. Moreover, a colleague described what we do as a secret formula
. Others wanted to copy the program, seeing it as having more gravitas than regular campus programs. They saw that our students are sincere and highly motivated, and they saw the results in changes in students’ organizations and in new locations being established.
We needed a burning vision to enthuse supporters, to select prospective students, to choose the units to teach and how to teach them, and to set a measuring rod for success. We also set goals to establish more locations through our students.
We admit only committed students who are ready. In most cases, they are already established in their role. We expel students who don’t show that kind of commitment. To stay in the program, students must attend every course and we allow absences only in extenuating circumstances.
We select units according to the purpose of the whole program. Most units offer some kind of direct benefit in the field, but this requirement often needs to be interpreted in the brief for tutors. It might sound obvious, but it’s not. It is easy to study the same units for quite valid but mainly theoretical purposes that don’t relate to local needs on the ground. For example, some topics are easy to slant toward either strictly academic purposes or toward usefulness in the field.
Some academically respectable topics are of little or no practical use to people in the field no matter how we could interpret them. Field workers, however, have little real need of them and in any case, it would take sustained effort to get any benefit at all.
Even after we selected topics, we slanted each unit to the purpose of the program. When our program director invites someone to teach, he makes the purpose of the program and the course clear. Whatever unit it is, it will look like our program and be practical in some way. We don’t waste time with subjects that provide nice information but go nowhere.
We keep group sessions alive to avoid the usual deadening effects of monologue lectures. We plan for discussion and welcome comments. I always like questions and usually like interjections.
Interactive teaching keeps everyone tightly focussed, and I can easily see how people are responding. I can challenge people with new ideas and see how they handle them.
Even more importantly, we find out the real topics that face students, not just those that we thought they needed when we prepared the unit. Students ask questions and present problems from the real world where we can’t hide behind a pile of textbooks.
My task is then to lead the discussion to explore their problems and look for solutions. We don’t always find answers, and it’s healthy to learn to say I don’t know.
Tackling real problems provides real more value and benefit to students than preparation based on I thought this would be good for you.
This kind of student generally doesn't want to sit at a desk. They want to get out there and do things with people. They are all good speakers and will do very well when assessed through oral presentations. After each presentation, I first let the other students provide comments and critique, and I only step in if they are unfair. I then give my comments. One advantage of this is that I’m finished when the course finishes, so it gets me off the hook of grading essays later on.
We require students to stay overnight, and it’s not just for the practical purpose of being able to meet at one location. Good groups tend to bond as they come to trust each other. This creates a better class atmosphere and more enriching discussion.
Practicum has another benefit. As we don’t have very long in class, we need practicum to be a valid part of the unit requirements. This only works because all units are focussed on delivering actual benefits i the field. (In contrast, if a unit is presented as purely academic with no practical purpose, then the amount of class time is deficient for giving credit.)
Our students come from a widespread network. We have a policy of meeting in one of them each time.
I questioned the effort in time, energy, and funds committed to travelling. But our director pointed out two main advantages. First, our small country locations feel very isolated. Having guests come is a huge encouragement for them. Second, students get to visit most of the other students’ locations. When they talk about what they do and solve problems in class, they can talk about real locations that they have visited.
So there are the ten educational principles. They aren’t the exclusive property of any one field of study and I could have written them with examples from many different industries.
Travelling. I still wonder about the time and effort invested in traveling. We’ve thought about splitting our whole area into an eastern and a western region, but recruiting twice as many instructors would be more difficult.
Reading and writing. We give students books to read and assignments to write and it’s a valid part of getting a qualification. Our students are very sharp when it comes to processing and evaluating new ideas orally. However, they don’t enjoy sitting at their desks with bits of paper. Most are not good writers, hand assignments in late, and tend not to do well in them. \
A project? In a similar kind of program elsewhere, students propose, plan and deliver a major project that is of specific benefit to the organization. It works well, and is ideal at final year undergraduate level and at graduate level. As for our students, I’m fairly sure that they would do the actual project well, but would detest writing it up as a formal report and would have trouble with any deadlines. But it might be just the right thing in another context.
Reproducibility. How reproducible is this kind of program? Good description doesn’t always make good prescription. In other words, the description of a successful program isn’t necessarily a "follow-the-steps" recipe to copy it elsewhere. It’s easy to train people to do tasks and follow methods, but it’s not easy to replicate the ethos. Much of this approach was elaborated in detail in the 1970s. However, replicating methods without the ethos probably contributes to long-term decline.
The approach depends on having instructors, practicum supervisors, and students who all grasp the vision and understand how it works. Besides, program directors can’t foresee or determine how well a group of students will gel together. It’s easy to recruit academics who think that they’re relevant when they’re not. It’s hard to recruit staff who are good field practitioners but can also teach. It’s easy to recruit applicants who want to get an education and maintain the status quo. It’s not so easy to recruit people who have potential.
To apply the approach in other contexts, I’d try to maintain the basic principles and ethos because I don’t see any need to change them. However, I wonder what adjustments I’d need to make. In any case, people will ony understand the vision by actually implementing it.