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

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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.

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

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 is to do whatever is necessary to foster honest dialogue, so that adults can learn together - while at the same time clarifying who has a deliberate voice and who has a consultative voice.
10. Teamwork: How People Learn Together
By using small groups in healthy competition with each other, the learners are able to provide reinforcement and constructive feedback with each other, enabling effective learning.
11. Engagement: Learning As an Active Process
The goal is not to cover a set of materials, but to allow the learner to engage in an active process of learning by doing.
12. Accountability: Success Is in the Eyes of the Learner
In the end, the educator wants to understand if the learner has actually learned the achievement-based outcomes. The best way to determine if someone has learned is to see if the learner is able to put into action what they have learned and if they have confidence that they "know that they know".

This is a great book to help teachers engage their students in active learning.

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 as part of my Master's program and found it to be helpful overall. Vella explained many concepts that most might find difficult or intimidating through good examples of teaching. While I enjoyed her refreshing honesty at flubs and not-so-great experiences, I did not find her hearts and flowers emotionalism and pomp as exciting or stimulating.

Her writing style varied greatly within examples from over-blown academic writing to the best of simplistic styling. But it became too much to handle and made for slow reading.

Additionally, although I enjoyed the varied and multi-cultural feel of most of her examples, many in my class did not. They felt (wrongly, in my opinion) that those examples did not apply to them in any way because the examples were so far removed from the US.

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 are concerned for safety in the learning process, but I can see that some additional structure and demonstration of concern for the students learning process will raise the energy level and create an environment where learning can take place even when there is much uncertainty. We have structured the outreach program with four phases: Orientation to Cultural Awareness to Ministry to Debriefing. I have learned that we need to add a fifth phase, an Assessment Phase, before the Ministry phase. To date it has been assumed by the leadership, but students have had little understanding of that important phase. To show more respect for the students, we need to document the Assessment phase. By doing so we will be showing more respect to the students giving them more opportunity to participate and take responsibility to decide.

This book is providing a guideline for a full team leader training program. I am very excited about the potential increase in skills that our team leaders can develop through a week-long seminar for FMI team leadership.

Summary

I have created a matrix grid in my journal with Vella's 7 steps for course design for follow up. The key words, RESPECT and ENERGY, are at the top of the list to encourage me to focus my attention on these key values for the adult learners. I have placed a column on the page for each of the 10 different student internship and YWAM leadership training programs I am leading or developing. For each of the seven steps I am considering the different approaches for each of the different programs, depending on the participants, the outcomes, the context, the content, and how learning can be measured and sequenced for greatest effectiveness. I'm expecting quantum changes in all of our programs.

Jane Vella is arguably the world's leading exponent of modern methods of adult learning. The thrust of the book is that one needs to work with adult personality and psychology in order for teaching to be effective. More than anything else, this involves "dialogue" - between learner and teacher, and learner and learner. One of the core criteria by which Vella gauges the success of adult learning is whether "energy rises" during the process. Contrast this with so much adult learning, where the onus is on the learner to maintain the energy required to stay the course. This book has aroused a good deal of interest in the Church. In fact if one should wish to know what is happening in theological education today, it is a must read.

Twelve principles are outlined in the book to "begin, maintain, and nurture the dialogue". Here are just three: 1. An adult learner comes to the learning process with considerable personal experience and knowledge, and this may be employed to great effect. It becomes a vital learning resource. 2. The readiness of adults to learn is linked to the developmental tasks of their social role. Therefore the learning is designed to be immediately applicable to their daily working environment. And 3. It need hardly be said that an adult learner frequently re-enters the learning process after a leave of absence of many years. Therefore confidence-building is built into the learning, and its difficulty is gradually increased.

I had a few broader reservations about the book, which cannot be dealt with adequately in such a short review. One relates to the book's emphasis on the PROCESS of adult learning - the suggestion being that the method in itself is the key to adult learning. Vella writes, "Our job [...] is not to cover a set of course materials." Does this do justice to the adult learner, and how would it prevent imbalances in the process? A further reservation relates to Vella's suggestion that positive "political" change is an integral part of her method. To Vella, this means the vigorous rejection of "ancient hierarchical relationships". Having lived in "primitive" society myself, I felt uncomfortable with her apparent disdain for cultural norms which are not in keeping with her own.

The 12 Principals of Adult Education set forth in this book will inspire any Adult Educator. They are followed up with relevant case studies from small places in far off corners to college professors. This is a great book for anyone interested in designing adult education programs.

Jane Vella, in her work Learning to Listen Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults, presents 10 issues for effective teaching. Due to the brevity of this critical review, in order to provide depth of content three issues are addressed: needs assessment, safety, and sound relationships.

Needs Assessment

With needs assessment, Vella states regarding her philosophy, "They [learners] will vote with their feet if the course does not meet their needs. They will simply walk out. As a teacher, I need to discover what they already know and what they think they need or want to know...when adult learners are bored or indifferent, it means their themes have been neglected in the design of the course" (p. 6).

In response to the philosophy of Vella's needs assessment, first she makes very good points in that professors can often neglect to present relevant content students are interested in, and her procedure of contacting learners prior to the first session of a course, to investigate the learning objectives of students, is a good one--and one that could improve course design.

The problem with Vella's model is that it assumes learners (or potential learners) always know what it is they most want to know, or need to know. This simply is not the case. It is very possible there are areas of knowledge the teacher is aware of--that students would want to learn--but do not even know exist (this is especially probable when the teacher is an expert in the content area to be taught).
For example, in one doctoral level course in pedagogy, students were asked what they wished to learn over the course's term. Consequently, students volunteered their suggestions for content, such that they believe would be most helpful in their teaching professions. However, throughout the course the professor offhand mentioned a pedagogy related discipline of "instructional design" which dealt in course design, and which turned out to be significantly more helpful for students than the agenda they has chosen to set for the course. Being that the course was nearing its end, there was no time to investigate this topic--subject matter the professor would have taught initially if the students "knew" that is what they wanted to know, and suggested it.

Another problem with Vella's process of needs assessment is that she assumes that if information is helpful for students, they are always going to be passionate about the information. This is too is inaccurate. For example, doctoral students preparing to write a dissertation on a topic that interests them must be taught significant amounts of content in statistics to achieve their research goals, though the topic of statistic may be the epitome of tediousness for the students.

Further, though it may be true that students will "vote with their feet" or walk out on a course if it does not meet the needs of the students, Vella misidentifies needs as student enjoyment with course content. Though there is sometimes room in education for a professor to tailor course material to the likings of students, this is not always so for--to site one example--academic programs have required courses that are uninteresting but provide a necessary background to equip learners to understand what they need later: a dry intro to psychology course, or a course on psychotherapy theory (which may be uninteresting to students), provides a necessary backdrop before students can be taught more interesting "hands-on" counseling techniques in a later course. Likewise, Vella neglects the idea that for the accreditation of academic programs learners may need to learn subject matter that does not interest them, in order to obtain a degree. English majors need to take collegiate math and a foreign language to earn a Bachelors degree, for example.

Safety

Vella considers safety as an important characteristic for creating an effective learning environment. Though this may or may not be true, it is interesting what Vella perceives to be synonymous with the concept of "safety." For example, at one point it is written "the design of learning tasks, the atmosphere in the room, and the very design of small groups and materials convey to the adult learners that this experience will work for them. The context is safe." Present here is a convolution, for the issues of whether the materials and content of the course will "work for" the learners has nothing to do with safety.

Vella continues on to state a learner's confidence in his/her instructor's knowledge and competence helps the learner to feel safe, stating that students must feel "safe and confident in their teacher" (p. 9).. However, I cannot see why this is necessarily true. First, a teacher's competency does not seem to be a "safety" issue: If the learner is in some situation where a teacher's incompetence could cause him/her grave harm, then perhaps (I would feel safer with an experienced skydiving instructor, for example). However, as for a history professor, whether the professor is knowledgeable or not, such does not affect my perception of "safety." Confidence in one's teacher is not a safety issue. In fact, a teacher that knows a great deal about a subject matter could make one feel less safe, for a learners may have the stress that he/she must master the knowledge course content much faster to keep up with the teacher's ideas.

Vella continues, stating "trust in the feasibility and relevance of the objectives makes learners feel safe" (p. 9). This too is unrelated to real safety.

In an extreme declaration, Vella at one point declares that the size of groups and the size of a table that promotes the most safety, stating "four learners at a table large enough for their materials, small enough for them to feel included, provides psychical and social safety for learners" (p. 9). With this Vella presents no research to back up this strange claim, and does not address issues of gender, race, or culture which would dramatically alter students' feelings of "safety" in close confinement with one another.

In other criteria, Vella states that trust in the sequence of activities promotes safety and as well as does starting with easier tasks and progressively making them more challenging. Though this may be true, it facilitates the question: "why is safety the best approach for learning?" for example, if one knows the sequence of activities, that student may feel safe to only learn part of the material for the course--for the person knows what knowledge is required to successfully complete the course, and what material the student is able to neglect. Students, even "good" students, are not always as motivated to learn as Vella assumes and having a class set up in a way where students do not know when they will be tested, or do not know what part of the course material they will be required to have mastery of, could promote additional learning through a students sense of vulnerability: the student knowing he/she may be asked to provide insight on any of the course material at any time. This is present in the Socratic method of teaching, and often part of law school education, which has been time-tested to be an effective educational system. Fear is a great motivator.

Sound Relationships

In addressing sound relationships, Vella speaks about welcoming the "death" of the teacher. With this, Vella sees the student and the teacher as mutual learners, as close friends, and sees a need for the "teacher" to often display negative assertion, which means the teacher will allow the student to learn without the teacher's interruption or input. Further, Vella states teachers should be available to the students outside of class: by phone, email, etc. Lastly, Vella states that a teacher must provide emotional support and must encourage learners at all times. In this same sentiment Vella states a teacher must never judge a student, even when the student is perceivable wrong.

In review of these ideas, I believe the concept of the teacher being an equal to his/her learner is fallacious, for I cannot believe that the teachers and students are to learn equal amounts from each other. Granted, teachers should learn from their students' experiences and insights--and I truly believe one can learn something from anyone--however, the suggestion that the exchange of information be "equal" seems unfounded.

In addition, the idea of negative capability, where the teacher (present in class) will sit in a corner and let students to teach themselves, available to students only when they have a question, seems problematic. Though this may be effective at times when students have been given a great deal of information and need to reflect on it, or partake in some sort of praxis, Vella should make more of an effort to note that teacher absence is usually not the ideal situation for learning. It is a logically flawed theory that teachers can learn from their students' active behaviors (participation), and students learn most from teachers' passive behaviors (lack of participation).

In review of Vella's position that teachers must be available to learners outside of class, thought this may be a beneficial process--and I believe it is, for it gives students the ability to ask questions or receive clarification when the need arises--Vella does not attempt to provide any guidelines for limitations of student interaction with the professor. I believe this lack of boundaries does not provide suitable respect for the teacher's schedule, personal life, or time. Teachers should be able to have a life "outside" of their teaching responsibilities, though Vella denies attention to this idea.

Vella states that teachers should provide emotional support to their learners, making teachers both the provider of information, and the learners' personal counselor. Though this may be effective to some degree, it is not necessary. Learners are responsible for obtaining social and emotional support outside of their educational endeavors. In addition, the counselor-teacher relationship is conceivably not a healthy one--due to the dual roles--and it is one that is discouraged in many counseling codes of ethics.

Lastly, Vella states in her book that her students are strong enough to know what they want to study, and what works for them. It is an interesting duality (almost a paradox) that Vella sees her learners as so weak in that they need constant encouragement in their academic pursuits (which are supposed to be intrinsically helpful and useful to them). In addition, I completely disagree with the concept of never passing judgment, and believe the idea that Vella never passes judgment to be dangerous, if not blatantly untrue. When students are graded, they are being judged. Also, some dangerous ideas presented by students need to be at least challenged, if not judged.

Discussion

The following document was a reaction and critical review of the text, Learning to Listen Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults, by Jane Vella. It was found that Vella's interpretation and integration regarding the issues of needs assessment, safety, and sound relationships, though helpful in some instances, possess some logical inconsistencies and pragmatic difficulties when integrated into some teaching situations.

Final Note: Telephone and Online Counseling may be a good way to help struggling teachers and students. To learn how to provide telephone and online counseling, try this excellent book: The Therapist's Clinical Guide to Online Counseling and Telephone Counseling: The Definitive Training Guide for Clinical Practice

This is the second time I had trouble with a book order... I wish i had gone a different route.