ADULT LEARNING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION - A CASE STUDY FROM EDUCATION FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WORKERS.

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1 ADULT LEARNING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION - A CASE STUDY FROM EDUCATION FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WORKERS. by Professor Alan Rogers, Education for Development. February 1998 This paper argues that in the application of any form of technology to distance education, the basic principles of adult learning need to be observed; the promotion of learning is the priority in any project. While IT makes its own demands on the users, the way in which IT for educational purposes is used will depend on the attitudes of the educational programme planners. THE BACKGROUND This paper arose from a project which Education for Development undertook in Namibia during It will be as well to set out the situation from which this arose. The new government of Namibia was faced with a difficult situation in terms of agricultural extension, a situation which was typical of many other areas of governmental activities in Namibia at that time. The new government inherited from the previous South American regime with its apartheid policies thirteen different groups of agricultural extension workers in the various 'homelands' and in the remainder of the country. There were language differences between these groups. There had been different recruitment policies, including the base-level qualifications of new entrants to the extension cadre; there had been different forms of initial training and very little in-service training. The problem they faced was how to create a national agricultural extension service out of such disparate groups 1. The EU had agreed to provide funding for a major programme of training for the existing agricultural extension staff The issue which arose was what format such training should take. It could take the form of short residential workshops scattered throughout the year; or longer residential workshops (a summer university school, for example). It could take the form of distance learning programmes. Or it could be a mixture of all of these. Education for Development was asked to advise on this, and included in its remit was a request to consider the use of distance learning as an option. PRINCIPLES OF ADULT LEARNING Education for Development (EdDev) is an organisation which is committed to exploring the specific ways in which adults learn as distinct from the learning processes of younger persons. Most people agree that adults learn in different ways from children, but the implications of this for the training programmes for adults in developing societies are rarely followed through into practice. EdDev thus works in development programmes including health, literacy, farmer training, income-generation programmes etc. in developing societies. In examining the Namibian issue, EdDev sought to isolate the specific characteristics of adult learning which might apply to this distance learning programme. We took three such principles of adult learning 2 : a) much adult learning is voluntary and related to felt needs; b) adults usually learn through 'doing for real' rather than on the model of Ôlearn first and apply laterõ; and c) adults have built up over the years different preferred learning styles, especially through critical reflection on experience more than through the transfer of knowledge. VOLUNTARY NEEDS-BASED LEARNING One basic tenet of all adult education programmes is to start where they are'. Adults come to learning programmes with a very wide variety of prior educational experiences and expertise. They are not all the same. This means that we were unable to assume that all of those who 1

2 came to this programme had the same educational levels. We had to enable them to use and build on their experiences and competencies rather than develop the experiences and competencies which educationalists felt would be necessary. At the same time, adults will learn effectively what they feel they need to accomplish some task they have set for themselves. Adults are highly motivated to learn what they feel they need. They are frequently not motivated to learn what we may wish them to learn, but when situations arise in the course of their lives which call upon them to learn new things to survive, they will learn fast enough. Learning is an essential process by which adults cope with and adapt to changing situations. So the first principle on which we built our programmes was to start where they were, with their very varied motivations, with their individual immediate concerns. We had to allow for many different starting points. A single universal course would not meet their individual needs. One extension worker would feel strongly that he/she had to learn about dehorning cattle; another about sorghum pests; a third about how to approach villagers through their existing leaders; a fourth about how to cope with the constant demands being made on them from the Ministry (these are real topics which the agricultural extension workers in our case study raised). A survey conducted in a participatory way with some 35 agricultural extension field staff 3 identified three main strands of learning which they felt they needed to do: a) to learn more about the technical aspects of their trade, i.e. agriculture - livestock and crop growing, soils, water and natural resource management, farming systems etc; b) to start learning in an area which we had not originally included but which emerged from the discussions as one of the major interests of this group, an area which we called 'Organisations and Society' - issues like 'what is development?', how do communities work? management and personal relations, national concerns, gender constructs in society etc; and thirdly, c) to develop further their understanding and practice of extension methods and to understand more about the role of the extension worker - how to communicate, how to relate to people, how to continue to develop their own learning skills etc. In passing, we might notice how often these workers expressed their approach to fields of study in terms of questions rather than topics: it was not 'development' they wanted to study as an academic topic but how does their work actually fit into or contribute to development? However, having identified these three broad areas of study, we came to realise that the points of departure for structured learning in agricultural extension of workers already engaged in the field would be very varied indeed. So our problem was: how could we reconcile the various starting points of the extension learners with the need for a structured programme? Clearly a single linear approach would not suffice. LEARNING THROUGH DOING FOR REAL Most adults learn, not through formal training programmes of an academic nature but through working out their own problems. Sir Charles Handy 4 has expressed this most clearly in his statement: "learning is not finding out what other people already know but solving our own problems for our own purposes by questioning, thinking and testing until the solution is part of our life". The way in which these agricultural extension workers were already learning was through coping with immediate situations, trying to deal with issues and to solve problems as they arose. The most effective ways of adult learning is not through artificially constructed role plays in the classroom but through dealing with real situations. So we had to try to find a way 2

3 in which the extension learners could use their own real experience as the basis for learning - ways in which they could use the textbooks to meet their needs rather than allow it to dominate their thinking and subsequent activities. Learning through action had to be a major part of the learning programme if we were to take adult learning principles seriously in this programme. CRITICAL REFLECTION ON EXPERIENCE We now know a lot more about adult learning styles than we did fifteen years ago; and what we know stresses the differences between the learners in their own preferred learning styles. In particular, modern studies of adult learning have stressed the active nature of learning rather than the passive receipt of new knowledge. Some statements have expressed this clearly: the development worker Md Anisur Rahman in particular 5 : "Development is not possible with somebody else's thinking and knowledge... Knowledge cannot be transferred - it can be memorised for mechanical application, but learning is always an act of self-search and discovery, In this search and discovery, one may be stimulated and assisted but cannot be taught". He goes on to suggest that those who try to teach through the transfer of knowledge not only are less effective (except in the mechanical application of knowledge) but actually do damage to the learners, for such an approach kills what he calls Òthe ability that is in every healthy individual to actively search for and create knowledgeó. In particular, writers such as Donald Schon 6 have demonstrated the role that critical reflection on experience plays in promoting effective learning - learning that carries through into behavioural practices (Fig 1 7 ). Critical reflection encourages the learner to judge one's experience in the light of existing and/or new knowledge and insights, to assess how far it could be changed. The learner engages in a process of searching for new knowledge and skills, in selecting what is appropriate and what is not appropriate from his/her own experience and understandings, and from the experience and understandings of others. The application of the new insights gained through critical reflection on experience leads to action which tests the new insights, trying out their validity. Our learning programme for these agricultural extension workers needed to encourage them to work things out for themselves if they were to become more independent in their own continuing learning rather than being dependent on others for new knowledge and insights. There are of course other basic principles of adult learning such as the lifelong nature of learning which means that the programme we planned could have no real end but would continue throughout these workers' lives; such as the fact that adults have different priorities in terms of further structured learning than younger learners have, and so on. But the three I have identified in this paper formed the basis of the learning programme we developed. THE PROGRAMME We therefore found ourselves with three main principles in developing the distance learning programme for agricultural extension workers - a) to allow for various different starting points and therefore for various different routes through the teaching-learning materials rather than a uniform programme in a single sequence; b) to help the participants to use their own experience as the basis for the learning programme rather than pre-set textbooks; the textbooks should be used after experience rather than experience following the textbooks which is the more normal approach; and c) to encourage the learners to use their own preferred learning styles in conducting their own search (under guidance) for the new material which they feel they need in order to help them to solve their own problems rather than reading passages set by the educators. 3

4 Distance learning lends itself to this model most easily, some of the newer IT methodologies such as web sites in particular. Residential workshops of long duration would not allow for this kind of approach, for they would have to be structured without reference to the very different motivations of the participants. Residential workshops of shorter duration would have many values and would allow the participants to apply their new learning very quickly, but they would tend to separate the learners from their own experience. Distance learning would enable the participants to work from their experience, and the provision of supporting group meetings would help them to capitalise on their own learning by sharing with others. The programme we devised resulted in a series of concentric circles of modules (see Fig). The outer circle consisted of the technical aspects of agriculture - livestock, crops, resources, farm management etc. The middle circle consisted of that strand we called Organisations and Society - topics such as management, gender, group dynamics etc. The innermost circle was the personal growth and extension methods part of the programme. UE = Understanding Extension AS = Analysing the Situation PP = Planning & Implementing Programme PL = Promoting Effective Learning SD = Society and Development HR = Human Relations WD = Women and Development UO = Understanding Organisations AR = Adaptive Research AN = Agriculture in Namibia AE = Agricultural Economics AEg = Agricultural Engineering FM = Farm Management CS = Crops and Soils L = Livestock D = Diversification Diagram to show relationship of the modules Participants would be encouraged to start with any unit they felt they wished or needed to study, in whatever circle. They could take the programme in any order. But the units would be written in such a way as to direct attention to different circles - the outermost circle would be drawn into the centre by cross questioning (when dealing with livestock diseases, for example, the agricultural extension worker would be asked to work out how to teach this to their own farmers' groups, thus drawing their attention to the units in the extension methods circle), while the inner circles would be directed outwards towards the more technical subjects. The participants would need to use their own existing practices for the basis of the study: for example, taking any recent extension activity such as a Farmers' Day event which they had conducted and to analyse its strengths and weaknesses, and how it could be improved in the light of their study of a wider range of extension methods; or to assess the gender components of a current situation which they face in the light of a number of readings on gender issues; or to assess the contents of what they taught in one extension activity in the light of more recent technical knowledge on that subject, and so on. [This approach has been used very successfully in at least one distance learning programme which I have experienced 8 ]. 4

5 PROBLEMS There are of course problems with this approach to distance learning. The biggest problem we discovered is that such an approach requires enough modules and units to be produced from the start in each of the circles to enable the participants to feel that they can address their own concerns in this course rather than wait for some more appropriate unit to come along later. The more normal approach in a linear programme is for the providing agency to produce the distance learning materials needed for the first part of the programme and then to prepare the later modules while these first modules are being used. This would not be appropriate in this case, for this would deny to the trainees any meaningful choice of starting where they are, with their immediate concerns. We needed to have a significant number of modules in each of the three circles before staring the programme. This was we feel the main reason why the distance learning approach we advocated was not in the event adopted - the Ministry turned to long-term residential 'summer university' training, taking the participants out of their own working environments and giving them pre-prepared and pre-structured training programmes, adapting the learners to the course rather than the course to the learners. A second major problem lay with the trainers we proposed to use. They needed to learn how to assess the analysis of experiential learning which in each case would be very different. They were more accustomed to marking essays which contained (or which they felt should contain) a set amount of knowledge; the skills they assessed were the skills of writing and constructing an argument on paper. They did not feel that attitudinal development should form a major part of their training programmes and evaluation I still believe that such an approach to distance learning in which one can encourage the learners to learn through circuitous routes rather than through a pre-set sequential approach, by which the learners can work things out in reality rather than in textbooks and essays or even group discussions, and in which they can be helped to search for themselves in finding the answers to problems which they have set can be developed. But in today's climate, it will be a brave educational administrator who backed such a proposal. The danger of much modern educational technology is that it tends to encourage the one-way transfer of information (it is not for nothing that it is usually called information technology). Even when it is interactive, this normally takes the form of the students asking questions and the teacher answering these; there is no two-way learning which is one of the hallmarks of true adult education. A learner-centred approach which allows the student to determine the sequence and the learning activities is often opposed because it would put too much power into the hands of the learners rather than the educators; and there would be few if any universal standards by which the final work could be judged. But there is a role for the teacher - to help the students to systematise their studies, to make sure that all parts of the field are in the end examined in some depth. If such an interactive approach were adopted, it is the contention of this paper that the learners would be better extension workers, more professional and more effective - surely the key aims of any educational programme. NOTES 1. See The Continuing Education and Training of Agricultural Extension Staff in Namibia with special reference to Distance Learning: an exercise in participatory curriculum development, Reading, Education for Development, See Alan Rogers, Teaching Adults, second edition, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, Alan Rogers, Participatory Curriculum Development: a case study in agricultural extension, Convergence, xxvi, no.2, 1993, pp

6 4. Charles Handy, cited in C Ball, Learning Pays: the role of post-compulsory education and training, Royal Society of Arts Md Anisur Rahman, PeopleÕs Self-Development: perspectives on participatory action research, London, Zed Books 1993 p Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: how professionals think in action, New York, Basic Books 1983; Educating the Reflective Practitioner, San Francisco, Jossey Bass D A Kolb, Learning Style Inventory, Boston, McBer The University of Surrey Department of Educational Studies has a distance learning programme leading to a MasterÕs degree in adult education which uses experiential approaches successfully. 6