Adults learn in a different manner than children. The science of educating children is pedagogy. Although children learn constantly, naturally and intuitively, they depend on teachers and society for what they need to learn in a structured way. According to pedagogical theory, education methods for children should follow their development stages. According to popular theory, children more or less follow similar stages of development, according to their ages. The education/school curricula are designed to be suitable for the majority of children at particular stages of age-related development.
Andragogy, a term coined by Malcolm Knowles (1980), is the scientific field of educating/training adults. Adult learners bring with them a wealth of experience. They ‘formulate’ their own learning needs, based on their own perception of what they need, and they have an innate desire to be independent (from a trainer) in doing so. The role of the trainer is to create awareness on certain gaps in knowledge A complex construction of information and individual experience with an interrelatedsocial and environmental dimension. (N.B. many different interpretations of knowledgeexist, and this is one preferred in this Toolkit) and skills, facilitate the verbalizing of the needs, bring structure in the training needs and provide information a source of data or sensory input, organized or arranged into a pattern which can be interpreted. on training possibilities. In mutual responsibility, trainer and trainee decide not only on the contents of a training programme, but also on how that content is taught. In other words, trainer and trainees are joint participants, but with different roles and responsibilities, in a learning process.
While learning, adults need to constantly refer back to their practical experiences and review how the newly acquired knowledge fits in. Training programmes for adults need to provide opportunities for this. The role of the trainer in adult education can be summarized as ‘helping the adult learner to learn’ (Knowles 1980), or to facilitate learning. We can think of learning as a change in behaviour, based on knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes). Careful planning is crucial for a successful adult education programme, in which assessment of training needs is a first and very important step The communication between trainer and trainee should be open and based on mutual respect. This is important because change is not always desirable. There are many unfortunate cases where powerful groups have decided to bring about change, which was not desired by other, less powerful groups and individuals. Understanding training needs, as we will see later, is of vital importance in the learning process.
In many training programmes for adults, the trainer decides on the contents, and the principal training method is lecturing, occasionally accompanied by a demonstration. This approach is based on the false belief that learners are rather like empty vessels, which need to be ‘filled up’ with knowledge.
Freire (1976) recognized the inadequacy of this approach and called it ‘banking’ of knowledge - storing up knowledge in the minds of learners for the future. It encourages learners to memorize facts and to learn information by rote. Unfortunately, this type of ‘learning’ is short-lived and the learner retains very little of the information. Learning has not really taken place at all.
Facilitating learning in adults requires much more from the trainer than being simply a source of information. An effective trainer of adults will have to develop a training programme and identify and use methods, which meet the specific needs of the learners. It is essential that the trainer is capable of doing the following things:
Absolutely master the content of the training (which is not always easy in a complex multidisciplinary field such as agroforestry).
Respond in a flexible way to specific questions/needs from the trainees.
Handle the programme in a creative and flexible way.
The advantage of this approach is that the training has a higher chance to be successful. The trainees feel respected, and are therefore more highly motivated. By adopting a participatory approach to the entire training process, through needs identification, planning, implementation and evaluation, the trainer enters into partnership with the trainees as well as with other stakeholders. The learners become owners of the learning process, and the training programme is adapted to their specific needs.