Meeting On-job Adult Learners’ Special Needs: Insights from Improved Opportunities and Obstacles to Development (O and OD) System’s Trainings in Tanzania
Hagai Joseph Mwakisisya
Abstract
Community participation is a precursor to development, yet, its nurturing calls for enormous
efforts and time. It is against this backdrop the government of Tanzania in collaboration with
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is rolling out Opportunities and Obstacles to
Development project (O and OD) through training of the local government staffs. The study seeks
to identify and examine the methodologies employed in O and Od trainings. It focuses on the
adults’ special needs and the extent to which they are embodied in the implementation of the
training. This study employed interviews, Focus Group Discussion, documentary review as well as
observation in data collection. The collected data were analyzed through thematic analysis in
which themes were generated. This study upholds the fact that adult learners are special because:
they know why they learn something; they need to be seen and treated as capable and self-
directed; they have vast learning resource from life experience, and their need to learn what
will help them confront their real-life situation. To cater for the above needs, the O and OD
trainings employ various strategies such as: role-plays that are performed by trainees
themselves, field study visits to different places where O and OD is being implemented and case
studies which are also widely used to provide trainees with the first hand experiences. These
methodologies give the trainees a first-hand experience which improves their problem-solving
skills in the field.
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