Professional Development

I recently presented a workshop on Engaging the Adult Brain for graduate students in the Adult Education department of a Greek university.  It starts with a powerpoint about the implications of current brain research on how adults learn (or don’t). Then the fun begins—participants are given a task to work on in small groups and report their conclusions back to the larger group. 

My hosts warned me more than once that “Greek students are very passive” and were unlikely to participate in the workshop.   I admit to some concern, but it’s not in my DNA to stand there and lecture, so I was willing to take the chance.

As I suspected, after a few moments of discomfort (largely among the youngest of the students, based on the conversations I had as I walked around interacting with groups that were temporarily stuck), nearly everyone got into the task and a couple of groups (my impression again was that those groups had a higher proportion of more experienced, more mature members) really let their imagination and creativity loose.

Their presentations were lively, clever, informative, and engaging—pretty much as I expected.  A colleague who had warned me not to expect much from her students said, slightly abashed, “I could never have believed it.”  So we talked further about this interactive approach.  “But I am a very structured person,” she demurred, “I need to plan in advance what will happen.”   

I did not think to ask at the time, what part of the workshop seemed unstructured!?  I started with a detailed introduction to the content, then described clear and specific directions for the group task (and handed out  a one-sheet synopsis of the major points of the introductory powerpoint).  On reflection, I wondered whether “unstructured” to her meant I don’t know what the students will do or say.  And, perhaps more centrally: will they come away from this experience thinking what I want them to think?

Were I to return to that conversation now, I would ask, “how do you know what they think at the end of your usual lecture?  You know what you told them….but they are not computers recording data.  They are listening and interpreting through their own experiences." (Isn’t that precisely why students get different grades?) And I would also say, “A lot of advance work and planning goes into whatever activity I ask them to do. I structure their small-group experiences with an eye to carefully delineated learning outcomes." 

Though I was initially somewhat disheartened to realize that my well-meaning, sincere colleague is teaching the next generation of adult educators (!), she later asked where she could find articles or a course that would tell her how to do some of these “techniques.”  This was an opening for me to suggest that she and I stay in touch (via Skype, for example) about teaching strategies more attuned to adults’ learning needs--which we are planning to do. (And among the first things we're going to examine is whether simply adding to one's "tool kit" is sufficient to become a more effective adult educator.)  I look forward to the opportunity for further professional dialogue--it could be “the camel’s nose under the tent.”