Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults

Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach is designed to demonstrate the power and value of dialogue over monologue, and active over passive learning when it comes to educating adults. Vella demonstrates through real life examples how her twelve transcendent principles flesh out in a variety of specific contexts all around the world. This book is designed to help all adult educators embody and model a more effective way to facilitate actual learning. Not only does the book clearly explain and illustrate the twelve principles, but it also calls us to engage and analyze the principles along the way. This book demonstrates what active learning is all about. A quick summary of the principles for effective adult learning: 1. Needs Assessment: The First Step in Dialogue It is important to have a need-oriented approach to learning, where the scratch meets the itch by asking the www (political) question - "Who needs what as defined by whom?" 2. Safety: Creating a Safe Environment for Learning Creating an atmosphere where learners feel safe: where they can trust in the feasibility, relevance and sequence of the learning objectives; where the learners can be both "creative and critical" in their response to the program in an affirming environment. 3. Sound Relationships: The Power of Friendship and Respect The relationship between the teacher and student is vital. The more that the teacher can formally and informally create a relationship of mutual respect, the greater the motivation and learning potential of the adult learner. 4. Sequence and Reinforcement: Knowing Where and How to Begin Based upon the needs assessment, the teacher designs an appropriate sequence of lessons moving from simple to complex and from group supported to mastering the lessons alone, in a way the reinforces the learning outcomes. The Seven Steps of Planning: Who, Why, When, Where, What For, What and How help design and reinforce the achievement-based objectives. 5. Praxis: Action with Reflection Praxis is practice in dynamic relation with thought, where the learner engages in the practice of a new skill, attitude or concept - then immediately reflects on what they just did. The process of action and reflection, practice and thought is repeated in a cyclical process, each informing the other. 6. Respect for Learners: Learners as Subjects of Their Own Learning In as far as it is possible, allow adult learners to determine what occurs in a learning event, based on their need assessment and the seven steps of planning. 7. Learning with Ideas, Feelings and Actions Active learning is more effective than passive learning and requires learning objectives that help people think, feel and do. 8. Immediacy: Teaching What is Really Useful Inviting people to immediately use a skill and see its benefit, gives them motivation to continue to learn more of the skills set out in the learning sequence. 9. Clear Roles: Reinforcement of Human Equity between Teacher and Student The goal

Jane Vella's, Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults challenged me to intentionally adopt several principles in my ministry to university students. I'm convinced these principles are useful for church ministries as well. That is why I recommend this book to you. Jane Vella educates adults in many cultures and for many different groups, mostly community development projects. I'm very familiar with this kind of work and many of the places and people she writes about. One of the goals I have set for the summer teams of student interns serving in community development projects is for the students to have the best learning experience of their lives. Vella refers to this learning as the `quantum' concept, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I need to encourage my staff to participate in the process of writing their own job descriptions. I need to be more effective at listening and giving open questions, especially in the teachings I give. Those open questions need to be put to the `safe' environment of small groups. I have practiced this sort of thing at some level, but I see I need to be more intentional. For example, I have asked the question, "What was your best learning experience?" Sometimes, but not always, I send the participants to small group to discuss the question. I need to be more effective at defining learning tasks and follow through on them so that the participants truly participate in the learning process. 1. How can I adopt principles of Vella's dialogue education and quantum thinking? Vella's key assessment principle, `Who needs What and defined by Whom' or `WWW', is what we will adopt in all of our student ministry programs. To do that, I need to keep a journal. As I pray for individuals in my team and network around the world, I am writing a WWW assessment for YWAM Campus Ministries staff and their projects. 2. Which of the quantum thinking principles have I already practiced and how can I improve on them? The Field Ministry Internship programme is a serving/learning outreach project for university student teams integrating their field of study with ministries cross-culturally. Vella's book referred to so many things that I have been attempting to do since 1989. For example, to help students feel `safe' we form small teams of 4 to 7. During the first few days in the host country, we typically send small teams out on a `scavenger hunt' in order to learn how to get around with some measure of independence within the safety of their small group. We send small teams to integrate well as a short-term team on a long-term field project. In this way, the students also gain a greater level of participation in the serving/learning process. The students design their own field projects on site as they assess the needs of the long-term personnel and projects they are serving. I can see how we practice a learning needs assessment, but we do not involve the students enough. We

I was expecting the usual with this book - a little dry, one or two ideas I could apply to my work, maybe an anecdote. I had never read Jane Vella before! A Maryknoll sister and longtime worker for Save the Children, Vella has taught in 48 countries and for over 45 years doing community development work in incredibly varied and diverse situations. You don't have to be interested in community development though, to get the point of this book. While her stories are riveting (you constantly grip the book asking, "And then what happened?!"), her message is consistent - she maps out how she plans, teaches, listens, and reflects on all her teaching/learning experiences. I particularly appreciated her honest approach (she tells you stories of when things didn't go well) and her egalitarian approach to equalizing power in the classroom (she calls it "the death of the professor"). This would also be an excellent volume for anyone working with a culture not their own - Vella models how to truly listen to people's needs in their education experience and not impose what you think they need.

This book demonstrates how to apply the principles of adult learning theory when teaching groups of adults. Even adults of cultures very different from your own. My favorite line: "Teachers do not empower adult learners; they encourage the use of the power that learners were born with." (page 8)

I read this book as part of my master's degree program and have come to respect Jane Vella tremendously. She has a way of explaining, in simple yet powerful terms, complex concepts that are often ignored in training and adult education in simple yet powerful terms. Her practical examples help drive home the importance of her principles and by doing so, she is teaching by example. I also suggest you read other works by her, including "Training Through Dialogue." --Anthony Jones