Learning Task #5: What Do Our Clients/Constituents Think?

(Interview/survey clients/constituents for their perceptions about what they need to learn from you, their service providers, in the near future.)

I have learned from my experience working in staff development that asking people what they need usually builds walls instead of bridges. It doesn't engage them to think critically about themselves, or the assumptions they hold about what they need. If the goal of adult learning truly is to foster emancipatory learning as our reading suggests, we are not doing our jobs if we simply ask people what they need.

For example, one year we asked a group of staff to meet with us to tell us what they needed regarding their staff development. We had a brainstorming session that produced lists and lists of things they wanted and needed. We categorized the list into several groups and then asked for volunteers to work with us in these areas. I think we probably offered workshops for a few of them and hired consultants to teach the workshops. I realized there was a problem even before the workshops took place when very few people signed up to attend. During the workshop, the participants seemed to be listening intently, but did not seem engaged. Afterwards, staff expressed their dissatisfaction with what "we" had done for them.

The next year I learned a different way to work with staff. We asked people who were interested in staff development to meet with us. Instead of asking them what they wanted, we asked them to reflect on their most meaningful learning experiences and what made them so special. We recorded common themes and facilitated a discussion that helped them understand how they learn best and why. We talked about their work and what they needed to learn to do their job. The energy in the room was wonderful and everyone in the group went on to plan a staff development retreat that was very successful. Cranton, in her book, "Professional Development as Transformative Learning," talks about emancipatory learning as a process of "sharing the discovery." This group truly shared a discovery process that gave staff the opportunity to critically reflect on their own learning and helped them see new and different options.

Brookfield says the trouble with meeting others' needs is that it can set up an unattainable standard and that students often take a "dangerously narrow view of their needs." Especially when students define their needs as keeping within a comfortable framework of thinking, acting and learning.

Transformative learning occurs when people reflect on their assumptions or expectations about what will occur, and have found these assumptions to be at fault and revise them. This is the process for emancipatory learning-to be freed from ideas or thinking that limits our options. Therefore, instead of asking people what they need, I support the idea of engaging them in a dialogue about their underlying assumptions and expectations.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 1999