Training Through Dialogue: Promoting Effective Learning and Change with Adults (Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education

by Jane Vella

A lively, step-by-step approach to training the trainers of adults. Using numerous examples from a variety of settings, author Jane Vella compels instructors to critically examine their old teaching model and discover a new experience in education.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 1995

About the author

JANE VELLA is adjunct professor at the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also CEO of Global Learning Partners, a consulting and training company that has grown out of JUBILEE Popular Education Center.

Reviews

[Cameron · Rating 1 out of 5]

Adult education has been my profession for the past seven years, so I was interested to read this and other books by Jane Vella, highly-recommended by my colleagues. I was quite disappointed: the book is long on theory and short on practical advice. It is also heavily padded with Vella's self-promoting anecdotes in which she overcomes insurmountable problems through her own wit and genius. Within about ten pages I was already annoyed and bored, but I slogged through it because my colleagues had touted Vella as one of the greatest teachers in history. A lot of the theory was interesting but hard to see how practical it would be to actually teach this way: she recommends, a la Paulo Freire, that you vet every lesson with your students to be sure it's what they really want. Sounds time-consuming to me, and I know that many of my students would say, "You're the teacher, you decide!" I do listen to my students' preferences, but for the sake of getting things done, I also make some decisions in the classroom. I don't buy Vella's philosophy that the students must decide everything, although this might work well in some settings.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Vella was recommended to me by someone whom I hold in high esteem, and I picked this book up somewhat randomly. She presents a model for adult education trainings that is interesting and very clearly based on the work of Paolo Freire. She goes over in some detail the components of the training, and yet leaves some important details out, and references exercises and principles that she's written about elsewhere. The problem is that if you don't have those other writings, one is left unable to design a workshop following her model. Its a little frustrating - thus only three stars.