An evening with Jane Vella

Last Tuesday I had the good fortune to attend a presentation (though that's not really the right word to describe it) by Jane Vella, a leading theorist and practioner in the field of adult education and training. Through the 90 minute interactive session she walked us through the finer points of the methodology she created, or as she would say "discovered" for educating adults. In a way Jane Vella is to adult education and training what Vivian Vasquez is to children's literacy education. Jane has worked with participants all over the world in vocational training, literacy training and training of trainers. She calls her method "Dialogue Education." Though she's not technically working on "critical literacy" as her topics vary, a cornerstone of her approach is to ensure that the material and language are accessible to all of the participants. In this way she hopes to mitigate the potential power imbalance between the "teacher" and the "learner." Another cornerstone of Vella's Dialogue Education, is input of the learners at every stage of the lesson, or learning program. This reflects the methodology of Vivian's critical literacy classroom as well as the methods suggested in "Teaching to the Fourth Power" where activities involving artistic and personal expression were used make the curriculum more culturally relevant for native Hawaiian students.
In general, Vella works within an experiential learning and dialogue structure to put the learners in the driver's seat. She also emphasises the evaluation step (which is necessary in adult education program, but approached differently in children's education) and the importance of putting the learners in the position to evaluate their own learning, instead of the typical way of having the learners complete an evaluation for use by the trainer to improve their own programs in the future. She outlines strategies for this type of evaluation in her book How Do They Know They Know? Though she may not be using contemporary texts, media and literature as a basis for her programs, her ideology and methods really aim at addressing power inequalities, challenging learners to critically examine their own experiences and accepted norms, and empowering learners to employ what they've learned. It's interesting to see the development of learner centered and critical pedagogy in adult education vs children's or formal education. In a way, adult educators have more freedom to enact new and often unorthodox methodology than teachers in the formal education system. More information about Jane's work, methodology and her books can be found at her website:http://www.globalearning.com/janevella.htm

On a separate note I came across some the Global Fund for Children 's website and saw they have some very interesting children's books as well as educational materials.