Peace Education Through Popular Education

Applying Vella's Twelve Principles in Training Refugees in India

by Ashok Gladston Xavier

Abstract:
With the current cease fire in their homeland, Sri Lankan refugees in India are eager to return, but socio-economic, security and lasting peace remain concerns. Given the volatile situation of peace, the refugees expressed a keen need to learn how to participate in the peace process as one of its key stakeholders. In response, we created a specially-designed training based on the Dialogue Education model popularized by Dr. Jane Vella. The emphasis of this model was to create an active-experiential learning space through Achievement-Based Objectives. Because the experiment involved the stakeholders in every stage of the process, one significant outcome was that they began to own the process along with the content that was delivered. Through this process, the learners were prepared to become trainers.

A. Context:
Sri Lankan refugees have lived in Tamil Nadu since 1983, but they have always wanted to go home. The 2002 cease fire (CFA) brought a ray of hope of returning. Some immediately packed their belongings and were ready to leave. However, the peace process proved more difficult. Not only did it proceed slowly, but it lacked transparency. After six rounds of talks only the bare minimum of details came out into the open, and the people were kept in the dark about key decisions, agreements and transactions.

In March 2003, to mark the first anniversary of the CFA, the refugees came out with the Nallayan Declaration. It outlined the refugees' demands to return to the Island. Following this the refugees felt that they have a role to play in the rebuilding the nation upon their return. This could be done only if peace returns and if it can be sustained.

Now after three years of living in uncertainty the refugees have started to explore if they could contribute anything to this process. The refugees felt that though a policy may initiate peace, it is the people who need to sustain it.

In this context, we were asked to conduct a peace building training to facilitate the refugees' participation in peace building efforts. The objective of the program was to introduce the participants to the fundamental concepts of peace building and to evolve strategies to deal with conflict situations. The workshops were held during the last week of April 2005. The participants were refugees from the camps aged 25 to 55 with various academic backgrounds ranging from primary education to college graduates. Almost all the participants had at least 5 years of field experience working with the refugees as counselors, camp leaders, student leaders, health workers, and sector coordinators.

The workshop were designed and implemented using the 12 Principles of Adult Learning, as described by Dr. Jane Vella in her work on Dialogue Education. According to Malcolm Knowles "Adults have enough life experience to be in dialogue with any teacher, about any subject, and will learn new knowledge or attitudes or skills best in relation to that life experience." This system of dialogue also complements Paulo Freire's non-banking educational system. The twelve principles are:

1. Learning Needs and Resources Assessment: Participation of the learners in determining what is to be learnt
2. Safety in the environment and the process
3. A sound relationship between the teacher and the learner for learning and development
4. Careful attention to sequence and of content and reinforcement
5. Praxis: Action and reflection or learning by doing
6. Respect for learners as subjects of their own learning
7. Cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects: Ideas feelings and actions
8. Immediacy for the learning
9. Clear roles and role development
10. Teamwork: using small groups
11. Engagement of the learners in what they are learning
12. Accountability: How do they know they know?

Below we will describe each adult learning principle in more detail, and describe its implementation in the workshop and the issues that came up in the process.

1. Learning Needs and Resources Assessment: Participation of the learners in what is to be learned
   
   The first step in designing the course was to learn and understand what the participants really expected from this program. Thomas Hutchinson's axiom, "Who needs what as defined by whom," was a helpful guide for our process.
   
   Implementation: Prior to the workshop, we consulted with the participants to decide the content and the methodology. It became apparent that most of the participants knew what peace building was but did not really understand the concepts. Their need was to gain an understanding of the basics of peace building. As a result of this exercise and as part of the capacity building process, a few participants were involved in preparing the agenda, hand outs and other materials.
   
   
   Issues We Encountered:
   - The concepts of peace building are all in English finding equivalent vernacular terms
   - They had a limited understanding of the term peace building
   - Participants wanted to do something to improve the situation in Sri Lanka, but were not sure what to do. They wanted to be agents of social transformation and hoped to get adequate aid from this training.
   
   This consultation process helped the trainer to clarify what the learners already knew, and how deeply, and what they prioritized as their learning needs, as opposed to just assuming that the trainer knew what was most important. Placing these opposites was a constant debate in every session. This process also took the trainer through what Paulo Freire called "thematic analysis" (Freire 1970, Vella 1994 p3) or identifying what the key themes of the learners are.
   
   
2. Safety in the environment and the process.
   
   Vella talks about safety being the key to any learning process. Safety means to provide a safe environment, creating an enabling atmosphere to make the learners feel that the process will work. This is seen the preparation of the workshop, use of small groups and involving the participants right from the planning stage. Vella (1994) outlines five points that could create safety.
   
   1. Trust in the competence of the design as well as the teacher enables the participants to feel safe.
   2. Trust in the feasibility of the objectives and their relevance.
   3. Allowing small groups to find their voices enhances the possibility of safety.
   4. Trust in the sequence of activities.
   5. Realization that the environment is non-judgmental
   
   Implementation: From the beginning of the process, the participant's representatives were involved in developing the course curriculum. In each part the trainer would go back and forth to ensure that the content was relevant to the context. In order to ensure safety of the participants the dynamics of the workshop were altered to suit their needs and demands.
   
   At the outset a few ground rules were laid out to ensure respect to come to a common understanding of the exercise. Confidentiality, acceptance, non-judgmental positions, and delivering and taking criticism were some key points in the ground rules. One of the first activities was a trust building exercise in order to create a learning community. This ensured a safe space and enabled people to identify the sensitive or "Ouch" Zones of others. At every point the participants related to their previous experience of being on the Island and were able to reflect on past experiences. This ensured the relevance of the content to their reality.
   
   Work in small groups and flexible thematic discussions facilitated more involvement in the process. In one instance when the issue of oppression was being discussed, many clearly identified the oppressor and the oppressed. This lead to a debate and the group wanted to discuss how the oppressed sometimes in turn oppressed others. By far these were the most productive sessions of all. Here was a chance for the participants to find their own voice and express without fear what they felt despite the fact that there were people who were from the oppressor's faction. This faction was open to what was happening as the expressions and criticisms were clearly not addressed to individuals, but to communities. Providing a safe zone for dialogue was invaluable for the participants.
   
   Issues: Providing safety was priority. Doing it with a lot of flexibility and creating an openness was key to carry this out. As adult learners come with a lot of previous concrete experiences, there were a lot a fixations. Breaking these fixations was a challenge. The workshop norms of trust, safe space and non judgment had to be constantly reinforced.
   
   Trainer Notes: There was an initial hesitation on how to handle completely contradictory world views. Using an elicitive model with communities in conflict always runs the risk of an out of control situation. And providing a safe space can bring out a lot of deeply buried trauma: one participant who had been through a number of other workshops previously expressed his horrible traumatic experience for the first time.
   
   
3. Sound Relationships
   
   Building a good relationship with the learning community is vital in popular education. This means respecting the learners' need, providing a space for interaction, and determining the learning objectives together. As Vella says, "the initial meeting of the teacher and learner has to demonstrate a sense of inquiry and curiosity felt by the teacher". This starts from identifying the need of the participants through an involved learning needs and resources assessment, being flexible to amend the teaching objectives and honoring the need of the participants. Further Vella says, "This relationship should transcend personal likes and dislikes".

   Implementation: Since the training was dealing with peace education, building sound relationships was very important. Learners objectives were discussed upfront at the planning level and further in the beginning of the workshop as the learners discussed and clarified what they wanted to take back home. Sharing of personal stories and experiences facilitated a good peer group dialogue that enabled the participants to understand each other's past experiences. The shared life experience of the trainer gave an identity to the trainer and facilitated greater interaction
   
   

   Trainer notes: It was not entirely possible to meet with or personally communicate with all of the participants due to limited time. However, half of the opening day of the workshop was used to help clarify, amend and create a learning agenda. This was one of the most useful exercises for building a sound relationship.
   
   
4. Sequence and Reinforcement
   
   As Vella describes:

   
   

   Sequence means the programming of knowledge, skills and attitudes in an order that goes from simple to complex and from group supported to solo efforts - the manifestations of safety, enthusiasm and readiness to achieve indicate that sequence is being honored. When you, as a teacher see fear, confusion, reluctance to try in the learner, test the sequence of the learning task."
   
   "Reinforcement means the repetition of facts, skills, and attitudes in diverse, engaging, and interesting ways until they are learned." Basing this on the fact that learning happens through a module that has well sequenced learning activities and the need to do home work referring to the learning repeatedly facilitates the better learning. The emphasis is placed here on designing the training carefully. Participant reactions could become the best indicators of the success of the planning.

Implementation: Most activities were designed in the form of games or experiential exercises. Every session contained an group exercise, an opportunity for personal sharing and an activity. Given the sensitivity of some of the topics, however, we applied the principle of sequence in the reverse order from what Vella outlined: many activities started as individual exercises, but as the days progressed, the activities were more based on team work.

For example defining trauma would begin at an individual level where individuals would draw their traumatic experience or write a poem. Secondly, they would define trauma as a group by piecing all the information that they have. Finally, they would present how trauma would like in the form of a fluid sculpture. This step-by-step sequencing and reinforcement brought many issues that would have been missed out otherwise.

Trainer Notes: It was a challenge to carefully sequence the activities and then find adequate means to reinforce the learning. The learners were not familiar with dialogue-based learning, and some said, "So when are you going to start teaching us about peace education, you cannot have us do things all the time, you need to stand in one place and talk to us"; another said, "it seems as if we are doing the same things". But then a few participants also said, "why didn't our teachers teach us this way? We now feel that we own the entire thing."

5. Praxis
   Praxis - Action with Reflection - or "doing" is a key way that adults learn new concepts, skills and attitudes (Vella 1994). When adults reflect on the implication of their actions, this results in learning and understand the concepts. Prof Packiaraj, an English teacher and social analyst, coined the word "Reflaction" a combination of the words Action and Reflection, and here we'll refer to reflactive learning where inductive and deductive learning methods are combined.
   
   

   Implementation: In our training, we used case studies and Open Questions to help the participants describe, analyze, apply their insights to their own situations and implementation. The learners were able to directly relate to the situation, for example in a case study of how up country Tamils were discriminated against. After reading the case study together, we posed four Open Questions to them.

   1. What do you see happening here?
   2. Why do think it is happening?
   3. When it happens in your situation what problems does it cause?
   4. What can we do about it?

Though this stirred a hornet's nest, and here was a lot a debate, especially about the last question. But the exercise raised issues that lead to a reflective learning of why these people were underdeveloped and were treated as second class citizens. The learners said that, "we have been systematically deprived of our rights for so many years now we will make the best opportunity and get ourselves educated to undo the wrongs".

Trainer Notes: Nancy Good Sider once mentioned in a training , "In a crisis there are two results, you can either break down or find a break through". This came true in the reflection process where the participants had a breakthrough despite the state of learned helplessness. Every participant was sure of gaining something new through this action and reflection process. Further it helped to evaluate the activities and relate it to their daily experiences.

7. Respect for learners
   In her sixth principle, Vella explains respect as: "regarding the learners as subjects of their own learning is a principle that involves the recognition that adults are in fact decision makers in a large part of their lives. Healthy adults desire to be subjects-decision makers and resist being treated as subjects, something that that can be used by someone."
   
   

   This means learners are in a position to decide what occurs in a learning event. Here total respect is paid to the learner and the learner's knowledge and choices of the learning event and pattern. This removes the barrier of the assumption about what the learners really know and how they would adapt themselves to new knowledge.

   Implementation: From the needs assessment stage, it was found that the learners were interested in peace in their home land. They were eager to know what was happening and were already looking into the fourth question of the previous section as, "What can we do?" in a proactive manner. They were considerably well-informed about the situation ; most of the technical information came from the participants themselves. And they were so motivated that after a whole day's program that ended at 7:00 pm the participants would come and ask, "Sir, is there a night's session where we can say more?". Giving respect meant trusting the abilities of the participants to concretize and consolidate their experiential knowledge.
   
   

   Trainer Notes: One specific dilemma was how to give new technical information to the participants so that they would not feel alienated. At the same time, when it was combined with an experience it was easily understood. For example, while explaining the stages of conflict escalation (Lederarch, MCS manual) each stage had to be personalized. This resulted in learners creating their own examples.
   
   
8. Ideas Feeling and Actions.
   Any information that does not touch the ideas, feelings or actions are sure to pass over the head of the adult learner. Hence special attention needs to be paid to cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects of learning. A balance of the three are proven to produce the best results of the neuro-linguistic programming. Vella says that the best learning takes place when the adult learner is able to think, feel and carry out learning actions. This can prevent the initial freezing fear that results from facing something totally new and alien to the learner. This takes the control away from the lecturing sages and puts the ball in the learner's court to experience the learning at every stage.

   Implementation: Every session of the workshop was filled with a balance of cognitive, affective and psychomotor activities. For example, a session on the social history of Sri Lanka included: an input on what was happening, a discussion on what they were doing at that period of time, a skit on a particular incident from that part of history and a reflection that helped the learners to take home a part of history they would have otherwise missed.

   Trainer notes: Composing activities for every activity was challenging. However, the results that emerged were encouraging. The involvement of all the senses proved fruitful in more that one way; participants were able to derive new meaning from the activities, reflect on the process, internalize the learning and engage themselves in a constant debate with the content.
   
   
9. Immediacy
   The skills, knowledge, or attitudes should have immediate use to the learners. This will help them practice the learning and make a difference in their lives. Immediacy helps the learners to relate their learning experiences to field based knowledge. Additionally it helps the trainers to reorganize their schedule in accordance with the needs of the learners. Immediacy also reflects the relevance of the learning at a given time.

   Implementation: With peace in Sri Lanka uncertain, and the learners wanting to contribute towards its progress, the topics held a certain immediacy for the participants. Moreover, the topics were organized in such a way that the learning could be used at an interpersonal, family, small group and at the camp level. Local immediacy was instrumental in promoting the topic at a country level. A session dealing with a conflict would relate to how the participants would face the situation in a family and later how they would respond to it at the national level. All parts of the training were contextualized to the participants.
   
   

   Trainer Notes: This was one of the easiest principles to incorporate. With the context being clear, and the need being urgent, it was very simple to organize the training. Interestingly immediacy bore quick results. In a later feedback the participants mentioned the usefulness and application of the program at the camp level in understanding and dealing with camp conflicts.
   
   
10. Clear roles
    Clarity in the new roles of the teacher-learner relationship is important in the process of adult education. Instead of the usual learning situation, the learner is submissive, non challenging, and non questioning; he/she is obediently paying respect to all that the teacher says and there is absolutely no scope for dialogue. In a dialogue learning situation, the learner sees a revised role where there is equity between the learner and the teacher. This does not happen all at once; it takes a while for the learner and the teacher to decolonize and understand the dynamics. This new role can sometimes be shocking, in some situations depending on the culture.

    Implementation: From the planning phase of the course, a lot of responsibility was placed on the participants and they saw that there was a difference in our approach. One of the first instructions was, "You are going to share, understand and learn from experiences and the teacher is just a facilitator". First they wondered, "Why is the trainer asking us what we want to know? What am I going to teach my peer group? Do I really qualify to share my experiences?". But after the introduction and the first session, the learners began to demand what they wanted to learn and to set the agenda. Since most of the examples were drawn from the field, they began to substantiate with their own experiences and it seemed that they began to own the process.

    
    Trainer Notes: The shift in roles was also not too easy for the trainer! Coming from the traditional school of thought with a lot of exposure to the elicitive models, it was hard for me to move from being "Sir" to "Gladston", (although the younger participants continued to address me as "Sir"). As Vella says, in some contexts it is best to be by a formal title like Dr., Sir, Mr., or Ms. Nonetheless, "the death of the professor" happened soon after the first session when the students shared their own experiences as peace builders and compared these with international peace efforts. This helped them to understand that the local peace efforts are in many ways similar to those at an international level, if only at a smaller scale with fewer actors.
    
    
11. Team Work
    Vella describes teamwork as both a process and a principle that provides a quality of safety that is effective and helpful in the adult learning process. Carefully constructed learning teams can produce remarkable learning. At times friends are invited to work together to create an, "optimal field" or a field where in optimal results are obtained. This provides a lot of opportunity for the peers to think creatively, challenge the system, and put forth ideas without fear. It also renders extra help for the learner who is struggling with concepts, definitions and theory. Sometimes peer groups can take over the teacher and challenge the set notions about a particular field. It also provides a positive reinforcement to the learners to be assertive.
    
    

    Implementation: Since most participants were not familiar with each other, many rounds of personal sharing were organized. Later they were invited to form groups according to their interests. A few themes were laid out and students were asked to choose the groups. In one exercise, "Truth, Mercy, Justice and Peace" Participants were asked to choose a topic and form a group. The introduction of competition for some presentations dealt with the initial resistance. Most groups wanted to perform their best so they had to deliver. Gradually the learning and ideas replaced competition, and this facilitated a collaborative learning climate.
    
    

    Trainer Notes: Since there wasn't much information on the participants available prior to the workshop, it made group formation very difficult. However, the identification of needs and interests through personal sharing helped group formation. Getting the team working was yet another issue. Coming from various backgrounds, educational qualifications and age groups, it was particularly difficult to find common meeting points. Disagreements often stormed the floor. Yet, this became a safe space for the learners' unrestricted thinking. In collaboration, learners were able to determine a learning agenda that was non-threatening and non-judgmental.
    
    
12. Engagement
    Engagement is inviting the learners to apply themselves to the learning tasks. Vella says that, "When Learners are deeply engaged, working in small groups or teams, it is often difficult to extricate them from the delight of that learning." Engagement with the subject is established using specially-designed activities in the learning process. Learning through doing infuses an experiential learning component. Learners find an engaging task produces more learning results than one way teaching methods do.
    
    

    Implementation: Every session in our workshop had an individual activity, a group activity and a reflection exercise. For example, in one exercise on conflict analysis, groups were divided according to four themes. Based on the subject each group had to construct their maps. The catch was to place them in according to their position in the conflict. This facilitated an involved mapping process where the participants identified co-learner positions and interests for collaborative learning.
    
    

    Trainer Notes: As mentioned earlier, it is always interesting to find ways of engagement. The idea is to be sensitive and aware of the signals that the participants send to recognize participant interests and reorganize the program based on their need.
    
    
13. Accountability
    Vella states that, "The design of the learning events must be accountable to the learners. What was proposed to be taught should be taught, what was meant to be learnt must be learned… Accountability is a synthesis principle- the result of using all other principles as well as the beginning of the action". Here one needs to pay careful attention to every stage of the learning program. Keen attention should be paid right from determining the objectives to the evaluation of the program. This is a major challenge to most of the learning settings, because this means breaking away from the beaten tracks of hierarchy, and the teacher's autonomy to decide how to teach and "deliver" the knowledge. As Vella quotes Thomas Kuhn, "a change of pattern will only occur when the present pattern has proven itself ineffective and impossible to live with". Cultural sensitivity is another core idea that backs the process of teaching-learning. It fosters a kindred spirit in the learning process.
    
    

    Implementation: Because the objective of the course was to make people aware of peace education and its concepts, we adhered strictly to the topics in the program. On the other hand, there was a lot of flexibility to include the learners' requirements, for example, by creating a buffer time in the program to accommodate any changes. Participants set up a learning agenda upfront. Evaluations held at the end of every day to see the achievement of the learning objectives. In most cases, we met the learning objectives. However, in the event of gaps, we used the first session of the following day to deal with it.

    
    Trainer Notes: Understanding accountability in the light of training and learning was very important. From a teacher's point of view, one tends to think of accountability from a "know all" approach where the learners are accountable to the teacher, without the least accountability of the teacher to the topics or to the learners. Learning accountability as understood in Dialogue Education brought about a paradigm shift to understand the issues in the light of the learner. There was a dramatic shift in the participation level of the learners once they realized that there was accountability from the trainer. Accountability also meant walking the talk along with the learner.

Conclusion
The twelve principles of Dialogue Education give the basic guidelines for adult learning. They facilitate an understanding of the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the learners. Additionally Dialogue Education is instrumental in creating a learning community.

The key is to adapt these principles to the given cultural context. Some marked differences lie in how the participants address and show reverence to the teacher, and to view the teacher as in fallible requires mending some of the existing stereotypes.

The principles of democracy, challenging the systems and involving oneself in the learning process are some immediate process learning issues that emerge because of the principles. The use of the principles was a journey to plan, perform and pursue a dream with the participants. Finally it helped to open and break free in order to understand learning in a new light that provided a safe space for debate, dialogue and understanding.

From here such trainings should become more popular and address the direct needs and interests of the learners. Several questions remain, including:

How do we deal with populations that are not aware of what is available and what they can choose from?
How do we release people from the oppression that sustains hatred, violence, discrimination, and other systemic violence?

The twelve principles of Dialogue Education need to reach a wider audience to break the shackles by juxtaposing the opposites.

---

References

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, The Continuum Publishers.
Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy and civic courage. Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Hope, A., Timmel,S. & Hodzi (1984, 1999). Training for transformation, A Handbook for community workers, Mambo Press.
Johnson, D., Johnson, Frank (1991). Joining Together. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall.
Oliver, D. W., Gershman Waldron, Kathleen. (1989). Education Modernity and Fractured Meaning. Toward a process theory of teaching and learning. New York, Suny Press.
Vella, J. (1994). Learning to listen learning to teach: The power of dialogue in educating adults. San Francisco. California, Jossey Bass.
Vella, J. (1995). Training through dialogue. San Francisco, California, Jossey Bass.
Vella, J. (2000). Taking learning to task. San Francisco. California, Jossey Bass.
Vella, J., Benardinelli,P., & Burrow.J. (1997). How do they know they know: Evaluating adult learning. San Francisco, California, Jossey Bass.
Zohar, D. (1997). Rewiring the corporate brain. San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler.

© Global Learning Partners 2005
147 Springhurst Ave | Toronto, ON | M6K 1B9 | 1-877-973-3393 | www.globalearning.com | welcome@globalearning.com