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Session 1. How Adults Learn and What Your School Needs
Objective. Explain how adults learn, collect evidence from three sources and use it to name one real professional learning need for a school.
Many school trainings are chosen by guesswork: a fashionable topic, a speaker who is free, or the loudest request. A wrong topic costs thirty teachers an afternoon each. This lesson goes deeper than the key ideas: what experienced adults need from the room, and how to read three small sets of data honestly so that your training answers a problem your pupils really have.
Key ideas
Teachers are adult learners
- Adults bring years of experience, want to know why a topic matters, and learn best when it helps with a problem from their own classroom.
- They also come tired after six lessons and may feel judged when a younger or equal colleague leads. Respect, choice and a useful take-away matter more than polish.
- In practice: open with a classroom problem they recognise, use their experience as a resource, offer choices and end with something they can use tomorrow.
Why one-off trainings rarely change classrooms
- A talk can inform, but changing a teaching habit needs practice, feedback and repetition. A topic that is general, a session that is all listening and no follow-up all make change unlikely.
- Research reviews, for example by Darling-Hammond and colleagues, find that effective programmes are focused on content, active, collaborative, supported with models and coaching, and sustained over time.
- This is why design starts with a real need, not with a topic that sounds interesting.
A needs analysis from three sources
- Pupil evidence: test results by outcome and samples of work show what pupils cannot yet do.
- Classroom evidence: short anonymous notes from lessons, taken with the teacher's agreement, show what teaching habits are actually used. Teachers' voice: a five-question anonymous survey or short conversations show what is hard and what is wanted.
- Triangulate: a need is something that at least two sources agree on and that teaching can change.
Need or want, and choose one
- A want is what people ask for; a need is what the evidence shows. Teachers may ask for digital tools while pupils' results point to explaining and reasoning. Both count, but they are not the same.
- Choose ONE focus for the next term using four questions: does it affect many pupils, can teachers change it, can it be learned in a term, does it fit school priorities?
- Write a two-sentence need statement and tell colleagues honestly what you found and why you chose it. Keep data about pupils and colleagues anonymous.
Want or need?
Want
What people ask for
- From a survey or a chat
- May be about a favourite topic
- Needs checking against pupil work
Need
What the evidence shows
- Two or more sources agree
- About pupils and teaching
- Teaching can change it
What experienced adults need from a room
Experience works in two ways: it is a resource and it is a filter. A teacher with twenty years in the classroom compares every new idea with what she already does. If the facilitator ignores that, she quietly switches off. So ask before you tell: 'Where do you already do something like this?' Then build on the examples you hear.
Adults also decide fast whether a session is worth their evening. Use the first ten minutes to name a problem they recognise and to promise what they will leave with. Avoid treating them like pupils: no quizzes to catch them out, no reading slides aloud. Treat resistance as information, because it usually points to a past experience or to a need that has not been met.
Reading three data sets without fooling yourself
Each source has its own bias. Test results show what pupils cannot do but not why. Lesson notes show one lesson on one day. A survey shows what people want and are willing to say. That is why no single source decides. Count instead of guessing: count the questions in a lesson, count the pupils who got an item right, and always write down the sample size.
Then test feasibility: can a training really change this? A need such as 'pupils arrive hungry' is real but not for a workshop. Write what would make you change your mind, share the result with staff in plain words and keep individuals out of it. If two sources agree and teaching can change it, you have a need; everything else goes on a list for later.
Examples from the classroom
Group work was the want
Scene. In a Samarkand school the history methodical association asks for training on group work. Its head, Dilnoza, first checks the Grade 7 quarter test: of 60 pupils, 48 name the cause of an event, but only 15 explain how the cause led to the result. Then she reads colleagues' plans. Group tasks exist, but most ask pupils to copy dates in pairs.
Insight. Group work was a want. Explaining cause and effect was the need, and group work may later become a means to it.
The hardest ten minutes
Scene. Aziz, a deputy head in Fergana, talks for ten minutes with each of 12 teachers and asks one open question: 'Which ten minutes of your lesson are the hardest?' Seven teachers name the start of the lesson, when pupils settle and get out books. Only two mention anything about subject content. Aziz writes this down, without names, and checks it against two lesson notes.
Insight. An open question can reveal a pattern that a closed survey would never offer as an option.
Starting with their stories
Scene. Malika opens a session for Bukhara colleagues on questioning with one sentence: 'Raise your hand if a class has ever gone silent after you asked a question.' Nearly every hand rises. She asks three people for two-sentence stories and writes the causes they name on the board. Fifteen minutes later, her short input uses their own examples, and nobody checks a phone.
Insight. Using adults' experience as a resource at the start makes the topic relevant and earns attention.
Common pitfalls
- Choosing the topic from the loudest or most popular request without checking pupil work.
- Using one source, for example only a survey, and treating it as proof.
- Starting a session by telling experienced colleagues what is wrong with their teaching.
- Naming teachers or classes in the needs summary, which makes people defensive.
Find the One Need
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE school with a pupil results table, four anonymous lesson notes and a staff survey tally. In your own school, use real artefacts with names removed. (5 min)
- Alone (8 min): read the three sets of data. Underline what each source says about pupils' work, about teaching, and about what teachers ask for.
- Pairs (15 min): fill the need matrix. Where do two sources agree? Which request is a want? Write a two-sentence need statement.
- Groups of four (10 min): compare statements. Agree ONE priority using the four questions. Name one more piece of evidence you would want before telling the staff.
- Second short activity, Adult learner check (10 min): alone, recall one training you attended that helped and one that did not. In pairs, tick on the card which adult learning principles were present in each.
- Alone (7 min): write your school-based task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which source changed your first idea of what the school needs, and why?
- How will you tell the teachers who asked for something else that their request was heard?
- What did the adult learner check show about trainings you attended, and what will you copy or avoid?
Reflect
- When did a colleague last learn something from you or you from them? What made it work?
- Which data in your school could tell you what pupils cannot yet do?
- What would make colleagues feel safe about lesson notes being used?
Try it tomorrow
- Ask three colleagues: 'Which ten minutes of your lesson are hardest?' Write the answers without names.
- Take one set of last quarter's test results and count how many pupils got each item right.
- Write one 'want' and one 'need' for your school on a sticky note and show both to a trusted colleague.
Further reading and links
Start from adults' experience and from evidence, not from a favourite topic: choose the one need that at least two sources support.