Becca Dawson

CAE 213 Intro to Adult Ed.

April 9, 2012
JANE VELLA
Jane Vella: Early Life
Born in 1931 in New York
City
Daughter of Italian
Immigrants
Raised Catholic
Became a Maryknoll
sister in 1950
The globetrotting
nuns

Maryknoll Sisters
Originally known as the Foreign
Missions Sisters of St. Dominic
A group of nuns dedicated to
service overseas
Today, has about 500 members
serving in medicine,
communications, education,
agriculture, social services, and
spiritual formation
Currently in 25 countries around
the world.
Jane Vellas Work as a Maryknoll Sister
1956: Vella goes to
Tanzania
Teaches there for the next
21 years
These are her formative
years in education
1968-1973: taught at the
Institute of Education at
the University of Dar es
Salaam
In Tanzania, she learned:
Adult learning and teaching is
Political has power
Problem-posing evokes responses
Part of a whole must have follow-up
Participative everyone has a chance
Person-centered develop all involved
Prepared designed for a particular group, using
Seven Steps of Design: Who, why, when, where,
what, what for, how
Returning to the United States
1977: Vella returns to the United States from
Tanzania
Earns Doctorate in Adult Ed from the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst
Researched Community Education for
Development
Taught at North Carolina State University in
Raleigh
1981: Begins working at Jubilee Popular
Education Center
Dialogue Education
Used her experience and a study
of formal and participatory
education to create a series of
training courses.
Came up with Dialogue Education
Began offering these training
courses to produce master
teachers
In 1998 Jubilee Popular Education
Center became Global Learning
Partners
What is Dialogue Education?
Too often in meetings, classrooms, and workshops, the main voice
we hear is that of the trainer, teacher, or expert.

Most people who work with adult learners know that the best way
to generate energy is to invite discussion and participation.

Dialogue Education [is] a middle ground where participation creates
engagement and learning that is accountable to everyones needs.

Main Principles of Dialogue Education
1. Dialogue. Any adult has enough experience to converse with any
teacher on any subject. Learners learn best when content relates
to their experience.
2. Learners as subjects or decision makers. Dont ever do what the
learner can do. Dont ever decide what the learner can decide.
(Vella, 2002)
3. Achievement-based objectives. Described using action verbs
based on Blooms Taxonomy.
4. Learning Tasks. Open Questions with no right answers, so as
to invite learners to interact with the content.
Jane Vella was not the first person to identify
these principles Freire, Knowles, and others
wrote about them decades ago and many of us
have tried to incorporate them into our own
teaching but we believe that Janes unique
contribution has been to synthesize these ideas
into a framework of practices that can help an
instructor translate these ideas into action and
results.
12 Principles for Effective Adult Learning
(According to Jane Vella)
Needs assessment
Safety of environment
Sound learner-teacher/learner-learner relationships
Content sequence
Praxis
Respect for learners as decision makers
Ideas, feelings, and actions cognitive, affective, and psychomotor
aspects of learning
Immediacy of the learning
Clear roles, clear development
Teamwork and use of small groups
Engagement of learners in their learning
Accountability
Jane Vella Today
Retired
81 +/- years old
Has a cocker spaniel named Dandy
Enjoys playing piano
Loves to kayak (on quiet lakes!)
Enthusiastic opera fan
Publishes bi-monthly articles on
education, music, friendship, and
life in a journal on her website,
www.globalearning.com.

Her favorite authors include:
Yeats
T.S. Eliot
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Carl Jung
Agatha Christie
Margaret Wheatley
She has written:
1995 Training Through Dialogue:
Promoting Effective Learning and
Change with Adults
1997 How Do They Know?
Evaluating Adult Learning
2000 Taking Learning to Task:
Creative Strategies for Teaching
Adults
2002 Learning to Listen Learning
to Teach: the Power of Dialogue in
Educating Adults
2004 Dialogue Education at Work:
Case Studies
2007 On Teaching and Learning:
Putting the Principles and Practices
of Dialogue Education into Action
In Summary:
Her contributions:

Gave us Dialogue learning, which seeks to reconcile pedagogy and
andragogy by using strengths of both
Dialogue Education also seeks to actively involve the learner in all
aspects of learning while not pushing full responsibility on learner
Dialogue education is a more holistic approach to adult education
It seeks to reconcile several approaches to teaching to produce a
unified yet eclectic style
It showcases importance of learner participation in learning
process without making facilitators presence irrelevant ALL
share in learning process equally

Resources
http://www.globalearning.com/dialogue-education.htm
http://www.globalearning.com/janevellaprofile.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31317521/Twelve-principles-for-effective-
Adult-Learning-Jane-Vella
http://www.globalearning.com/resources.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
http://www.globalearning.com/jane-vella.htm
http://participactioninc.com/downloads/drysubject.pdf
http://www.maryknollsisters.org/catholic-mission/