DEVELOPMENT TRAINING and learning for growth	HELP

What is provided?

• Support and encouragement to take risks that will enhance growth.
  The nature of support and risk is sensitively gauged and balanced to meet the needs and aspirations of the individuals and groups involved.
• A process that is guided by agreed objectives, but which also provides opportunities for open-ended curiosity, exploration and discovery.

What is experienced?

• Experiences of moving beyond what is safe, known or familiar.
• Experiences that are fulfilling and intrinsically rewarding.
  The sense of fulfilment and reward may arise mostly from the experience itself, or may arise mostly from the process of reflection/review (e.g. through positive feedback - perhaps following 'unfulfilling' experiences).
• Experiences that are 'missing'.
  For young people these experiences will generally involve crossing new thresholds and new ways of learning. For older people these experiences may include rediscovering 'the child within'. What is 'missing' could be guided by a curriculum/checklist of experiences to which everyone has a right, but what is 'missing' is something that is essentially an intuitive judgement made by the individual - perhaps in discussion with trusted others. For many young people the 'missing' experience of being in a supportive developmental group is the starting point from which other 'missing' experiences can be 'found'.

What are the outcomes?

"Some learning is now part of me, some I will need to remember."
(quote from a development training participant)

• Growth ("now a part of me")
  'Growth' outcomes are sensed but they may be hard to describe and measure. The person has changed (typically more confident - but perhaps only in certain situations)

• Learning ("I will need to remember")
  'Learning' outcomes are achieved more consciously and are easier to describe and measure. The person is empowered (typically more in control, but does not necessarily choose to apply what they have learned).

• Interdependence The ultimate outcome is not independence in which the learner no longer needs support and encouragement. Lifelong learners need continual support and encouragement, but may learn to source these things in different ways (e.g. through mentoring, developmental supervision or special personal relationships).
  

Please note: This is Roger Greenaway's attempt to describe the concept of development training in one page! It is a personal view. This 'academic' exercise does not represent the views of any development training organisations, and should not be used as an 'official' or 'accepted' definition. For other views refer to the collection of definitions in What is Development Training?.

For related pages view the Experiential Learning Research Index or the Development Training Index or the A~Z of outdoor learning research on the web

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