Does the style of education at your workplace complement the new high-performance requirements?

An adult educator, working on a needs assessment in a high-performance company in transition, realizes that the young, inexperienced workforce is having trouble adjusting to the changes. Their own education and work experience have not provided the historical perspective and socioeconomic framework to understand the new workplace. Much of the training offered by the company uses traditional adult teaching methods that stand in stark contrast to the style of work that employees are now engaged in.

The educator proposes an introductory course that examines two issues fundamental to workplace education: understanding work — old and new contexts; and understanding education and learning — traditional schooling and participatory workplace education.

The course involves reading about, discussing, and writing about the transformation of work and approaches to adult learning in high-performance North American workplaces. The participants begin by examining the relationship between their own work experience and learning. What is the relationship between their education and their company's new model of work organization?

Participants are able to consider how a broad view of education rather than a narrowly focused training model relates to their new work style. The educator hopes that this form of inquiry opens the door to a different kind of learning in which the participants become engaged and actively participate for the rest of their lives.

Curriculum design embraces a variety of methods, and new models are developing as learning cultures become more common in the workplace. Needs assessments often reveal interest in different kinds of learning for both work and personal development. Your responsibility is to cater to as many needs as possible; one method might suit discrete task learning, while another works for critical inquiry. Both may occur repeatedly throughout a learning cycle. Furthermore, any group of adult learners will likely yield a variety of preferred learning styles. Varying your methods also gives those learners a range of opportunities.