Learning to Learn

For 17 years I was allowed to call myself a “lecturer” which I could have included in my Sceptic’s Glossary as “someone who spouts words”. It was patently a higher status (and rewarded) job than “teacher” who is expected to work with pupils (with at least a year’s full-time training for that task) and to produce results (however questionably measured).

In the 1970s a Lecturer had a lot of freedom – in terms of both choice and scale of holidays (3 months’ summer vacation for example)

Initially, I enjoyed that freedom…..although not so much with engineering students who took an understandably dubious attitude to the “liberal studies” programme in which I was initially employed - beautifully skewered in the Wilt series of novels by Tom Sharpe.

The work I particularly enjoyed was that with “mature students” - whether at the “adult education” classes of the Workers’ Educational Association; or in the Open University where I was a part-time tutor in its opening period….

In the 1970s, planning students at the famous Glasgow School of Art also proved to be a captive audience for musings about my practical experience as a reforming politician in a bureaucracy. Those were the days of Norman Dennis…..

I may not have helped them in their examinations – but at least I gave them a foretaste (and forewarning) of the games they would face in their future careers.

But my enjoyment faded as the academic Degree Machine cranked up its requirements and I found myself suddenly having to prepare course structures into which lectures and seminars fitted logically and seamlessly – without any special help being on offer. It was simply assumed that, having learned my subject, I would have the relevant skills to design course programmes, deliver lectures and organise seminars to ensure that students would read the relevant material and get through examinations successfully.

It took universities until the 1990s to wake up and make sure that lecturers were properly trained in these skills.

I had been winging my way for too long to be able to submit to the new requirements; got utterly depressed; and, after 3 years of winter misery, resigned in 1985….

Clearly, most teachers know how to teach kids – although I don’t quite know where the balance of argument currently lies between those who advocate “top-down” learning and those who favour a child-centred approach.

But adult learners clearly need a different approach – one that helps them discover things for themselves…as is expressed so well in this video – “10 things polyglots do differently”. 

It was 2005 before I got the opportunity to learn about the very different world of training adults – first in Kyrgyzstan where I was leader for two years of an EC-funded programme of capacity development for local government; and then in Bulgaria where I also led a programme to help prepare regional staff to comply with the requirements of EU membership.

I learned a lot from both experiences – starting with an intensive attempt to understand the needs of those in charge of the new municipalities of the small central Asian state and to provide relevant support. One of the results was this Roadmap for Local Government in Kyrgyzstan which I very much enjoyed preparing – as you will see from the way I pulled out the metaphor in the title (see the diagram at pages 76-77)

And I was able to use that in the very next project – benefitting from the insights of a Polish trainer in my team to produce one of my best papers - Training that works! How do we build training systems which actually improve the performance of state bodies?

So who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks??