Training Through Dialogue

A lively, step-by-step approach to training the trainers of adults. Using numerous examples from a variety of settings, author Jane Vella compels instructors to critically examine their old teaching model and discover a new experience in education. Part One: Training That Respects the Learner.

1. Teaching Adults: Insights from Popular Education.

2. Training Trainers in the Popular Education Approach: One Model.

Part Two: Lessons Learned from Practice.

3. Group Size and the Role of the "Professor": Training Trainers in Community Health.

4. The Importance of Dialogue: Training in Nonprofit Organizations.

5. Honoring the Role of the Learner: Training with Health Professionals.

6. Transforming the Culture of Teaching: Training in Literacy Programs.

7. Rebuilding Faith in Teaching: Training in a Substance Abuse Program.

8. Making Time for Training: A Community Development Bank Invests in Learning.

Part Three: Applying the Approach.

9. The Challenge of Design: Developing a Program for Community Volunteers.

10. Supporting Newly Trained Trainers: Strategies for Continuing Dialogue.

11. Evaluation: Beginning to Assess the Results.

Resource: Glossary of Popular Education Terms. "Jane Vella extAnds her previous work to bring us the sounds, smells, laughter, and images of 'train-the-trainer' workshops in popular education. Through living examples of workshops on health, literacy, and exconomic development in Chile, Haiti, Arkansas, and New England, we see how theory is translated into practice. Kudos for this hands-on application of popular education." (Nina B. Wallerstein, associate professor, Department of Family Community Medicine, University of New Mexico)

"Read this book if yu are serious about making a difference...a difference in the way you train trainers, facilitate training, and affect the lives of your participants." (Paula K. Berardinelli, president, Center for Organizational Research and Education, Inc.)

"A marvelous guide for all of us struggling to understand how adults learn, how we can teach in ways that respect and build on the needs and experiences of adults, and how we can help others learn the principles of popular education." (Richard Schramm, director, Goddard Business Institute, Goddard College) JANE VELLA is president of Jubilee Popular Education Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, and adjunct professor at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach (Jossey-Bass, 1994). Vella has designed and led community education and staff development programs in more than forty countries around the world. In her well-received 1994 book, Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach, Jane Vella showed how adult education could be structured around adult learners' needs. Now, building on that work, Vella offers a lively, step-by-step approach to training the trainers of adults--showing them how to cultivate an entirely new set of skills for interacting with learners.Through numerous examples in a variety of settings, Vella illustrates the effectiveness of her train the trainer program: in Chile with community health educators, in rural Arkansas with small business developers, in rural Vermont with trainers from diverse nonprofit organizations, in Syracuse, New York, with literacy professionals, in a southern U.S. veterans hospital with professionals teaching about substance abuse, and in Haiti with community AIDS educators. Each chapter example Ands with a summary that invites critique and suggestions and presents indicators of changed behavior from individuals who took part in that particular program.Training Through Dialogue will compel teachers of adults to critically examine the philosophical assumptions, principles, and practices of their old, familiar model of teaching and open up to a new experience of education. The author reveals twelve basic principles of adult learning that transcAnd cultural differences. She draws on a wealth of rich personal experiences--from a graduate school in New York, to the mountains of Nepal, to the drought parched fields of Ethiopia.