Front-Line Facilitating: Negotiating Adventurous Learning within Workplace Programs

Autor/in	Smith, Robert L.
Titel	Front-Line Facilitating: Negotiating Adventurous Learning within Workplace Programs
Quelle	In: Adult Learning, 22 (2011) 1, S.18-22 (5 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1045-1595
Schlagwörter	Adult Educators; Teacher Attitudes; Industrial Training; Career Development; Industry; Metallurgy; Workplace Learning + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Adult education teacher; Adult education; Adult training; Teacher; Teachers; Adult educator; Erwachsenenbildner; Erwachsenenbildung; Lehrer; Lehrerin; Lehrende; Lehrerverhalten; Betriebliche Berufsausbildung; Gewerblich-industrielle Ausbildung; Industriebetriebslehre; Berufsentwicklung; Industrie; Hüttenwesen
Abstract	Instructors are the front line of educational programs. They are the personnel, along with the learners, who enact the educational mission. Since educators work in relative isolation, studying their views is necessary to understand their professional actions. This is a study of the professional experiences of instructors within steel-mill learning centers called Career Development Programs (CDP). How these facilitators describe the learning outcomes they are charged with creating reveals much about how they regard their own careers and abilities. Deciding what and how to teach is a negotiated process with the learners who derive great voice in the educational centers through instructors' need to impact and retain the voluntary participants. The CDP educators' job security is based on their ability to satisfy learners directly, rather than upon fulfilling job-specific training goals of managers. The overarching purpose of these instructors' work is "to empower learners to access learning opportunities and realize individual goals." To fail to attract participants and then supply them with satisfying growth ends paid work for facilitators. There is no tenure, ongoing contract, or guarantees of future teaching assignments. Because of the pressure to successfully facilitate learning, CDP instructors' views of the learning being accomplished are key to their professional identities. From recorded and transcribed interviews, three themes were developed that indicate some of the major components of the instructors' perceptions about the learning they facilitate: (1) Learners develop themselves in ways that often cause joyful disbelief of their own accomplishments; (2) Facilitators, to function as successful and enduring learning catalysts, must pay very close attention to the affective domain; and (3) Adventurous learning trumps book learning in an industrial workplace learning program. As the study participants reflected on the learning outcomes, they revealed their own professional identities as front-line facilitators. Their instruction must blend real experience ("adventurous learning") with academic learning while simultaneously and skillfully merging their prescriptions for learning with participants' felt needs. Since there is strong preference for non-book approaches, facilitators learn to instruct actively with few or no printed materials. Careful attention to workers' feelings and self-perceptions enable veteran facilitators to help learners nurture themselves in many ways and discover joyful disbelief via their hands-on accomplishments. (Contains 1 figure.) (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. 10111 Martin Luther King Jr. Highway Suite 200C, Bowie, MD 20720. Tel: 301-459-6261; Fax: 301-459-6241; e-mail: aaace10@aol.com; Web site: http://www.aaace.org/publications/index.html
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10