The course, Processes of Adult and Continuing Education (ADE 5380), was created to teach us about the concepts and procedures of programming and programs; working with people; and change strategies. This section of the Cheat Sheet is not even going to attempt to cover all of the stuff we learned in ADE 5380, but it will cover these main points:

 Houle states that his review of credos and systems is, "not a way of sorting everybody in the field into neat categories based on dominant conceptions of practice but a summary of widely held views from which a given individual may shift back and forth as necessity dictates" (5-6). The following information from Houle can be found in: Houle, C. (1996). The Design of Education (2^nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1-39.

1. Adult education should be a movement unified by a common effort to achieve a single, all-encompassing goal…it has been argued that if all people who consider themselves adult educators believe deeply in the same broad mission, they will create a movement built on its achievement.
2. Since men and women are mature and know what they need to learn, the task of the educator of adults is to discover what that is and provide it for them.
3. Educators of adults should adapt the aims and methods of other forms of schooling to fit the requirements of men and women.
4. Adult education emphasizes the importance of powerful and creative leaders in various roles.
5. Adult education believes in the improvement of generalized institutional processes.
6. There is an impetus within the field to subvert formalism so that energies may be creatively released.

Houle finds these systems essential in understanding how we go about defining and shaping adult education. Not all of the systems listed above were originally intended for adult education, but they were influential and they work, so Houle includes them.

Dewey and Tyler, for example, both were concerned with children and schooling, but their ideas have had far-reaching effects. One of Dewey's beliefs was that education had to be related to the experience of the learner in order to be a successful learning event. Tyler echoes this idea and provides a very practical set of questions for creating an educational program. His questions were aimed at schools, but they can be adapted to many kinds of learning situations. What is perhaps most important about these two systems is that learning has to be "real" for the learner--it has to be interesting (fun, even!)--and it has to be something that the learner can use in his or her life and relate to.

The ideas of Kurt Lewin are also to be noted. Lewin's ideas eventually came to be organized into what we now call group dynamics (sensitivity training and human relations) and change theory. These ideas have had a profound impact on the way educators think about groups and about change (and their role as change agents). Group dynamics took the focus off of individual learning and shifted it toward groups: How do people behave and react in groups while they're learning and in order to learn? Change theory is a theory that states that in order to bring about change, a situation or person must be "unfrozen" and changed by increasing forces to do so or decreasing forces which hinder change. Finally, "refreezing" is needed to maintain the new status.

Systems analysis is yet another system that Houle mentions. This system tries to create models of various theories by breaking down their components as much as possible in order to better understand theories behind systems of programming. This method is very abstract and tends to be most useful for administrative purposes--it's also a technical system.

Community Development is a system that is related to Dewey's beliefs and also to some of Lewin's ideas. The purpose of this system is to get a community to be its own helper so that innovation comes from within the community, is organized and supported, and then maintained and perpetuated by the community.

The last of Houle's six main systems is that of Andragogy as suggested by Knowles. Knowles' beliefs are specifically related to adults and draw on many of the other concepts and beliefs already mentioned. Knowles also maintains that learning is influenced by the situation in which it happens. He distinguishes among the needs and goals of the individual, institution, and society.

1. Any episode of learning occurs in a specific situation and is profoundly influenced by that fact.
2. The analysis or planning of educational activities must be based on the realities of human experience and upon their constant change.
3. Education is a practical art.
4. Education is a cooperative rather than an operative art.
5. The planning or analysis of an educational activity is usually undertaken in terms of some period that the mind abstracts for analytical purposes from complicated reality.
6. The planning or analysis of an educational activity may be undertaken by an educator, a learner, an independent analyst, or some combination of the three.
7. Any design of education can best be understood as a complex of interacting elements, not as a sequence of events.
8. A generalized educational design should be used to strengthen (not replace) the values that arise from profound belief, dedication, or creativeness.
9. A program design should be based on decision points, not prescriptions.

Found in: Houle, C. (1996). The Design of Education (2^nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 41-73.

Very briefly, here are five points (in his book, they're listed as questions) that Tyler proposes for developing programs:

1. Define the purpose(s) of a program by considering studies of the learners, contemporary life studies, and/or the suggestions of subject specialists, etc.
2. Screen the findings of these studies to produce specific objectives to guide instruction.
3. State the objectives in a way that is useful to selecting learning experiences and guiding teachers.
4. Learning experiences should be chosen to conform to different goals in order to produce the desired results.
5. An evaluation of the program should measure how well the goals have been achieved and results can be used in future planning.

In Schein's Process Consultation Vol. I, he spends lots of time discussing human processes. Naturally, understanding how people communicate with one another and how they organize themselves is very important for change agents before creating a learning program. Schein is primarily concerned with change agents who act as consultants. He lists three models of consultation: Puchase of Expertise, Doctor-Patient, and Process, and he focuses on the last model.

Process Consultation: Is a set of activities on the part of the consultant that help the client to perceive, understand, and act upon the process events that occur in the client's environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client.

To learn more about communication within a group, Schein asks these questions and considers these points:

Schein also looks at how groups are built and maintained. He sees group building as a two-phase process: 1) Entering the new group and 2) Development of task and group maintenance functions. In Phase 1 he identifies four problems:

• Identity: Who am I to be?
• Control and Influence: Will I be able to control and influence others?
• Needs and Goals: Will the group goals include my own needs?
• Acceptance and Intimacy: Will I be liked and accepted by the group? How close a group will we be?

Once the group is ready to start problem-solving activities, it will have to start carrying out certain kinds of functions. Two sets of functions, Task Functions and Maintenance Functions, are behaviors that occur to some degree within the group. Boundary Maintenance Functions helps the group maintain itself within its environment.

Schein believes that group problem solving happens in two cycles:

1. Problem formulation
2. Generating proposals for action
3. Forecasting consequences of proposed solutions or testing proposed solutions and evaluating them conceptually before committing to final action.

Cycle 2

1. Action planning
2. Action steps
3. Evaluation of the outcomes of the action steps, often leading back to the first cycle with problem redefinition

Keep in mind that as a group grows and develops it will develop its own norms and culture. Norms are a set of assumptions or expectations held by the members of a group or organization concerning what kind of behavior is right or wrong, good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, allowed or not allowed.

Knowing how groups form and develop is not enough--you've got to know how they're influenced, too. Schein asks the question: "When A influences B, what it is the real reason that B was influenced?" (p.88) He answers this by listing the possibilities:

• Coercion, Nonlegitimate Influence
• Tradition
• Legitimate Authority
• Derivative Authority
• Expertise
• Personality or Charisma

"…leading and managing both involve influence, but...leadership implies influencing ultimate goals, mission, and culture, while management implies influencing how things are implemented and carried out" (p. 92).

Y'all took this course (ADE 5380), so you know that there's a lot more to Schein's ideas than what you see here! All of the above information can be found in chapters 1-7 of: Schein, E. (1988). Process Consultation Vol. I. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing.

Below I have created a table which compares five notions of programming. Using a table makes it easier to compare and contrast various assumptions about programming. Unfortunately, the table also makes things appear more static than they really are--most of the experts here note in their writing that the steps in program planning are quite flexible, so keep this in mind while reading. For specific information on each program model, you'll have to break out the books--references are listed below the table. Also check out Cervero and Wilson's work Planning Responsibly for Adult Education: A Guide to Negotiating Power and Interests (1994) which examines program development as a social practice.

Here are some questions to ask yourself while analyzing the table:

• What kind of learner is being addressed in each program? (kids, adults, learners, clients?)
• Do each of the notions assume that programming is necessary to begin with?
• Is it important to include a step for the administrative/financial side of programming? Why or why not?
• Does everyone include a step for program implementation--what's the rationale for including or excluding this step?
• Boyle and Caffarella include a step for the continued marketing of a program--why is this? Why don't the others do this?
• Are there certain steps that all five have in common?
• If you had to create your own notion of programming what would it look like? Which components would you include or exclude and why?

The following model was developed by Kolb and Boyatzis and is a good starting point for analyzing helping relationships because it is rather open to interpretation. Be sure to note what Kolb and Boyatzis see as the major components of the helping relationship--this will help you in applying this model to other kinds of helping situations. For instance, in the study that Kolb and Boyatzis carried out, they focused on the role of the helper and they looked at the helping relationship between individuals. What would happen if you applied this model to groups, institutions or masses? From: Kolb, D. & Boyatzis, R. (1970). "On the Dynamics of the Helping Relationship." The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 6, 267-289.