Working with Adults

The purpose of this article is not to present another in-service training course. There are different traditions of professional development in different countries. Rather, I would like to invite the journal readers to join the discussion among three colleagues from Russia about the principles and pitfalls of working with adults. Professional development for adults has become an increasingly significant component of, and contributor to, lifelong learning. However, teaching adults presents its own particular rewards and challenges.

In-service training as a burden

When your students are not simply adults, but teachers and faculty, you can be forgiven for feeling a little anxiety, as most of these people have great experience and a solid stock of theoretical knowledge. However, thousands of educators attend in-service training courses and seminars or retrain for new professions every year. It is much more difficult to teach such people as compared to representatives of non-pedagogical spheres. You are well aware that results of your work will be "retranslated" by teachers for schoolchildren and by faculty for university students. Therefore, the responsibility carried by those working in educational in-service training systems is very high.

As a rule it is easy enough to make up a group portrait of those whom we teach. Among those who come to improve their qualification there are people with lots of pedagogical experience, and their professional record allows them to feel quite confident of themselves-they are sure they will hardly learn anything new here. Our course for them is an opportunity to get a little rest from daily school routine, to chat with colleagues. They won't hesitate to express their doubts aloud or even to correct the facilitator.

Those who have started their teaching careers quite recently are also part of your audience. These people are education novices. Such teachers feel comfortable neither among colleagues, nor with students in class. Another special category is made up of school administrators. Finding themselves among teachers, many try to look independent and emphasize their status. They usually refrain from speaking much.

However, the main part of the group at in-service training courses typically consists of teachers with considerable pedagogical experience (5-15 years), the so-called "class-masters" (i.e., teachers officially responsible for a particular class and for monitoring their students' academic achievement and behavior). They are still looking forward to learning something new. Diligently, like schoolchildren, they write down everything the instructor says and ask for it to be repeated if they miss something they suspect to be valuable. This group is mainly composed of women who are rather tired enough of the daily school routine and have rather high professional self-esteem.

What can the existing in-service training system offer these people?

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