Article Type: Research Article Article Citation: Ionela Roxana Urea, and Cristina Cora Pirvu. (2020). CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON PROJECTED PV POWER
POTENTIAL UNDER RCP 8.5 SCENARIO IN BURUNDI. International Journal of Research
-GRANTHAALAYAH, 8(5), 139-145. https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v8.i5.2020.110 Received Date: 19 May 2020 Accepted Date: 31 May 2020 Keywords: Communication Styles Learning Style Adult Learners Training Programs for Adults Long Life Learning Today, it is clear to everyone that regardless of the studies completed, the process of continuous improvement is necessary depending on the field in which they work. Each country has designed specific strategies in the field of adult education, as part of lifelong learning. Our research had the aim to highlight, beyond the type of training program for adults, the relationship between the communication style of trainers involved in adult education and the learning style of adult learners. In our research we used: a) the “Questionnaire S.C. (Analysis of Communication Style) b) the Romanian version of “Learning style Questionnaire”; c) non-directive interviews; d) statistical processing methods. The results that came from the data allow us to see the influences of the trainers’ communicational style upon the learning style of adult learners during the training sessions. The conclusions are significant for developing proper vocational counselling programs for trainers that are involved in training adult learners.
1. INTRODUCTIONAdult’
education, due to the effects: of globalization, of increasing number of aging
populations, of increasing retirement age, currently is not only a subject of
interest for the specialists coming from educational sciences, but also it is a
subject that concern the experts from economy, sociology, communicational
sciences. The concept
of "adult education" is not new, as it is about a century and a half
old in European countries, from the days when the Danish Enlightenment Grundtvig campaigned for the transformation of Sorø Academy into a different school than the traditional
universities. The concept
of adult education, as an ensemble integrated in the global project of lifelong
learning, was imposed under momentum of UNESCO and of the Council of Europe,
bodies interested in providing equal opportunities for development to each
individual throughout his life and in all fields, in order to participate fully
in the development of society. Formalized under the auspices of these
international forums, the expansion of the topic of adult education is
explained by several reasons of a social and economic nature. The adult
education has no boundaries. Adults have equal rights of access to education,
without discrimination based on age, sex, race and ethnicity, politics and
religious affiliation Each county
tried to facilitate the adult education according to his specificity. In
Romania, interest about adult education was expressed before joining the U.E.
The Law on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (Law 202/2002) emphasizes the
equal right of both sexes to participate in training programs, as well as to
receive counselling and career guidance. The access of adults, employees or
jobseekers (defined in accordance with Law 76/2002) to training programs is a
right guaranteed by the Labour Code (Law 53/2003). After joining the EU, in
Romania, adult education was approached as an integral part of lifelong learning
(as it is mentioned in the Romanian National Education Law, Law no. 1/2011). But let see
what adult education stand for. Adult
education includes all the developing processes of formal and other learning,
with which adults, in the spirit of the society in which they live, develop
their skills, improve their technical and professional skills and enrich their
knowledge or apply it for personal and social benefit. Adult education includes
the forms of formal, continuing, non-formal, informal education and the whole
spectrum of informal and complementary education existing in the polyvalent
educational society, in which the approaches focused on theory and practice are
recognized. Adult
education is not only a process of assimilation, internalization, development,
but also a process of restructuring, generalization, of changing the relations
between adult and environment (social, work, family, etc.). The adult sometimes
has a passive attitude towards learning, generated by reluctance to change and
the fear of not meeting the demands of learning or diminishing his social
prestige. From this it can be concluded that adult education is a process of
knowledge, but especially a practical action of capitalization and application
of knowledge and life experiences. (apud. Jarvis, 2004). As in each
educational action/ activity/process, the learning is the most significant part
in adult education. But we have to be honest and to mention that the learning
in adulthood is not the same like in childhood. The goals of the learning
process in adulthood area changed. For the adult, the learning activity is an
inner act, not a constraint; he is not a passive receiver, he seeks, discovers
knowledge; he is an agent of his own education (apud. Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). The adult
does not want to be educated. He is now "formed." He will resist to
any attempt to re-educate him. The adult educates himself. Adult
learning means deepening, restructuring, creation; it is focused on concrete
situations, detached from life, it appeals to experience. One can notice the
reversal of the informative-formative relationship, which means putting a
special emphasis on the creative - practical activities within the adult
learning process. The most
obvious feature of adult learning is the responsibility with which they seek to
acquire skills and knowledge. The adult engages in a learning activity if there
is a correlation between his projects and the desire to achieve them (Freedman,1985). In 1984, M.
Knowles pointed the principle of
adult education: 1. Adults are motivated to learn as they develop certain needs and
interests that are met by learning. Therefore, the needs and interests of adult
learners are the starting point suitable for structuring adult educational
activities - the essential landmarks for preparing a training session; 2. The
orientation of adults towards learning is determined by the life or work they
carry out. Therefore, the appropriate framework for structuring adult education
must consist of situations of life or work and not from academic or theoretical
subjects; 3. Experience is the richest resource for adult education. Therefore,
the basic methodology for adult education programs involves active
participation in a planned set of experiences, analysis of those experiences
and their implementation in life or work situations; 4. Adults feel an urgent
need to self-direct. Therefore, the role of the trainer is rather to engage
with students in a process of research, analysis and decision than to pass on
knowledge to them and then test whether they have mastered it; 5. The
individual differences between adult students are accentuated by age and by
personal experience. Therefore, adult education programs must take into account
in particular the differences in style, time, place and pace of learning (apud.
Caffarella, 2001, p.57). In the same
period, in 1984, D. Kolb wanted to show how adults analyse their own experience
in order to understand and apply it in new situations, David Kolb developed a
model of experiential learning. The fundamental idea of experiential learning
is that the learner is directly involved in a learning experience. event, then
draw conclusions based on it. These conclusions are “teachings" Kolb
suggested a cycle of activities in the process of learning through experience,
consisting of four elements: a) Concrete experience; b) Reflection. Remember
what happened; c) Abstract conceptualization: you start to realize the
experience, draw conclusions, try to frame the experience in known patterns
(schemes), formulate theories and rules; d) Application and testing of concepts
in new conditions. (Kolb, 1984) The
learning process is in continuum developing and each person has his own
learning style. The learning style can be defined as the way in which an individual
/ person assimilates knowledge, skills, abilities and integrates them according
to their specificity and complexity, in a specific dynamic conceptual system
that is structured pyramidally in relation to the learning experience. The
learning style has three basic elements: 1.- the person's attitudes, as
constant ways of relating it to the social life, to the fellows and to oneself;
2.- the learning models with which he was confused during his life learned
communication - assertive, non-assertive, aggressive (with its
passive-aggressive variant), manipulative; 3.- temperament, as a type of nerve
cell reactivity. Two
developmental and learning management specialists, P. Honey and A. Mumford,
researching Kolb's studies, among others, have developed in 1986 a theory of
adult learning styles. They classified the four learning styles as follows: a)
Active style. Active people get involved in new experiences, without
prejudices. They enjoy the present and have an open mind, which makes them
enthusiastic about anything new. They make judgments based more on feelings and
intuition than on theory, which characterizes it as "too abstract.; b)
Reflective style. Reflective people stand aside and judge experiences,
observing them from different perspectives. They collect data both personally
and through others, and prefer to analyse it carefully before reaching a
conclusion; c) Theoretical style. Theorists adapt and integrate their
observations into theories that sound logical. They analyse a problem
logically, step by step, and assemble all the circumstances into a coherent
theory. They tend to be perfectionists, they are concerned with principles,
theories, models; d) The pragmatic style. Pragmatists are people eager to try
ideas, theories, techniques to see if they work in practice. They are always
looking for new ideas and take the first opportunity to experience them in
practice (apud. Honey, Mumford, 1986). Research
related to adult learning style shows that during different activities, each
person can uses one or two learning styles (Bransford, Brown, Cocking, 2000) and
maintaining awareness of his/her particular learning style has a huge
impact on learning outcomes and increase choices for personal development
(Margot, Arlene., 2018). Learning
activities, in spite of the forms that is done- informal, formal, long life
learning, social, cognitive, etc., involve sending and receiving messages
between the participants; directly or indirect, verbal of not. - it involves
communication. Practically, communication is the binder between the person that
provides information (teacher, trainer) and the person that gets information
(students, adult learners, mentees, etc.). In adult
education the communication process involved has distinct features, mainly that
the training programs, in particular those that are developed in private and
accredited organizations, are led up by the fundamental principles: the adult
learner is an active participant; the
adult attend training programs in order to gets knowledges, skills, experiences
for achieving better professional insertion in labour field and social
environment Therefore, the
trainer’ communicational style suits more in the practicum aria for
understanding the utility of the information that the training program provides. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
In this
context, the following questions arise: which are the influences of the
trainer’ communication style on the adult’ learning style? Are specific areas
of the training program that we notice these influences more present than in
other? To answer this question, we developed an
investigative research that had the aim to identify the influences of the trainer’
communication style upon the learning style of adult learners; the wider goal was to see if we can increase the efficiency of the
training’ adult programs developed by the private educational providers. Our
research focused on two major objectives: a) investigation of the trainers’
communication style; b) investigation the learning styles of adult learners. We started our investigation from the
following hypothesis: taking into consideration that the adult
learners choose the training programs according with their personal development
goals, we will find specific influences
of the trainers communicational style on adult learners’ learning style in
relation with trainers’ training experience. Participants Our research had an initial testing procedure
on 15 Romanian trainers coming from private educational organizations and 36
adult learners that followed training programs provided by private
organizations and the Cronbach Alpha index (α= .764) obtained allowed us
to proceed to an extended psychological research. We performed our research on: a) 39 Romanian
trainers coming from private educational organizations, aged 31-56 years (with
mean of 42.26 years and median =39.05 years) and 6-20 years’ experience in the
field of training adult. The trainers’ participation to this investigation was
voluntary and based on personal accord.
Distribution is uniform, skewness index values from .821 to 1.893, and
with a standard error of skewness from .673 to 1.581; kurtosis index values
from .675 to 1.862, and with a standard error of kurtosis from .761 to 1.729);
b) on 118 adult learners that followed training programs provided by private
organizations, aged 29-54 years (with mean of 44.07 years and median =43.05
years). The adult learners’ participation to this investigation was voluntary
and based on personal accord.
Distribution is uniform, skewness index values from .953 to 1.784, and
with a standard error of skewness from .791 to 1.642; kurtosis index values
from .748 to 1.621, and with a standard error of kurtosis from .725 to 1.587). Methods In our research we used the following
instruments: a) the “Questionnaire S.C. (Analysis of Communication Style) –
built in 2010 for Romanian trainers by R. Urea based on the S. Marcus’s
Questionnaire S.C. (fidelity index =.
784, test- retest index=. 744) b) the “Learning style Questionnaire” Romanian
version - an adapted questionnaire for Romanian adults (fidelity index =. 804,
test- retest index=, 781) by R. Urea in 2015 (of the questionnaire created by
Honey and Mumford in 1986); c) non-directive interviews; d) statistical
processing methods. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
3.1. INVESTIGATION OF THE TRAINERS’ COMMUNICATION STYLE
Investigation
of the role of the communication was the objects of concern of experts,
especially of those coming from educational sciences, psychology, sociology. In
current practice, in education, the data collected from serious researchers
proved to be valued and strategies was developed in order to facilitate the
process of understanding of the contents during the training session. Each
training program for adult ‘learners has a distinct section regarding
communication associated to the specific topic. There are
serious researches done on the effectiveness of training in diversity
(Holladay., Quiñones, 2008), on the impact of
teachers’ communication on pupil’s self- safety in learning process (Urea,
2013) on treatment the anxious patients (Van
der Molen, Klaver, Duyx 2004), etc. In this
study, we were focus upon revealing the specific communication styles of
trainers involved in training programs for adult learners. Therefore, we used
the S.C. Questionnaire aimed to reveal the for types of communication styles:
assertive, non-assertive, aggressive and manipulator; the data are presented in
table no 1. Table 1: Communication styles of
investigated trainers.
From the
data presented in table no.1, we noticed that the dominant style among our
investigated trainers is the assertive one. It means, that during the training
sessions, they have the abilities to clear expression of their’ opinions and
are also able to pursue the training objectives without violating the adult
learners need. In other words, it means that during the training session, the
trainers know how to combine different methods and strategies that allow them
to maintain a proper psychological distance with adult ‘learners, to generate
curiosity and satisfaction in relation to adult learners need. Probably
the data are better understood if we take in consideration the opinions
expressed by our investigated students (adult learners) during the interviews
that we conducted. Most of them
associated the trainer’ assertive style with: ·
the
ability to provide explanations of the training contents depending on the field
in which they work (79%); ·
the
ability to create problematic situations appropriate to the understanding of
the contents (68%); ·
the
ability to create role-playing games appropriate to the students' personality
(54%); ·
the
ability to plan training time (46%). ·
From
statistical data we found that there is a direct, significant correlation
between the trainer’ experience and the assertive communication style used in
training sessions r=. 789, p=.01. We can say the assertive communication style of the
trainers for adult learners develops as the trainer's
experience grows. Satisfying
development needs of adult learners during the training programs determines the
permanent reconsideration of objectives and prioritization of activities.
3.2. INVESTIGATION OF THE ADULT LEARNERS’
LEARNING STYLE
One of the major area of researches in
educational sciences is related to improve the efficiency of the learning
outcomes by taking in consideration the students’ learning style. There are
studies done in relation with educational psychology (Redifer, Norman, Ryle, 2019), in relation with academic performance (İlçin, Tomruk, Yeşilyaprak, 2018), etc. In our
study we investigated the four learning styles developed by Honey and Mumford
in 1986; the data collected are presented in table no.2. Table 2: Learning styles of investigated
adult learners
We can see from data presented above (table no.2) that
the dominant learning style among our investigated adult learner is the
pragmatic style. It means that at these subjects the learning outcomes are
higher because: ·
there is an obvious link between the topic
discussed and the activity they performed in labour market; ·
ideas with obvious applicability are
presented by the trainers; ·
they have had the opportunity to
practice, to benefiting from the comments / assistance of an expert trainer; ·
the trainer presents them with a
useful model, which they can replicate in different work’ contexts; ·
they are offered techniques and
skills that are currently applied to the activity they carry out in labour
market. We wanted to see that really means the findings that
we presented in paragraphs above. So, we asked our investigated learners that
revealed the pragmatic learning style about the significances associated with.
We find that: ·
82% pointed the utility of
the learning contents: ·
74% pointed the transferability
of skills formed to other work’ contexts; ·
69% pointed the
possibility of differentiated use of abilities, skills formed in
interdisciplinary teams on tasks ·
55% pointed the
satisfaction with the new opportunities offered by new knowledge, skills ·
formed in the training
sessions. The statistical data analyses pointed that, in
training sessions there are a direct and very significant correlations between
the trainers’ communication style and the adult learners’ learning style: ·
trainers that have
assertive communication style work better with adult learners that have
pragmatic learning style (r=. 887, p=.01); ·
trainers that have non-
assertive communication style work better with adult learners that have
reflective learning style (r=. 769, p=.05); ·
trainers that have
aggressive communication style work better with adult learners that have active
learning style (r=. 724, p=.05); ·
trainers that have
manipulator communication style work better with adult learners that have
theoretical learning style (r=. 759, p=.05). So,
we can say that learning style of adult learners is shaped during the training
sessions by the contents, by the strategies used by the trainers and is
associated with personal goals related with the activities they carry out in
labour market. 4. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONSThis research had the goal to identify the influences
of the trainer’ communication style upon the adult learners and are relevant
for increasing the quality of the training programs We used in our investigation instruments adapted for
Romanian adult population. We found that: 1) the communication style of the trainers for adult learners develops as the trainer's experience grows and become a
landmark for trainer’ personal brand. 2)
adult
learners’ personal goals have key roles in learning style during the training
sessions. 3) the
success of the training program with adult learners depends the relation
between their learning style and trainer’ communication style The
assumption of our research was confirmed. We can use
the previous conclusions for: ·
developing
vocational counselling programs for trainers involved in adult education. ·
developing
modern strategies of training the adult learners in relation with their
learning styles; ·
increasing
the efficiency of training sessions by selecting contents in relation with
adult learners’ goals; ·
encouraging
the “good practices changes” between trainers who train adult learners; · developing stress copying techniques for trainers who train adult learners. SOURCES OF FUNDINGNone. CONFLICT OF INTERESTNone. ACKNOWLEDGMENTNone. REFERENCES
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