ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the patterns and problems of educational administrator training in the Third World, drawing on the authors' experience and observations of a range of training initiatives and on some of the pertinent literature.
The current emphasis on training educational administrators is discussed in relation to earlier educational preoccupations and trends in developing countries, and the danger that administrator training will become another in the list of transient fads is noted. The chapter identifies five principal patterns of current provision, briefly highlighting some of the issues and problems associated with each.
The nature of this provision is examined further. Until now greater emphasis has been given to quantitative questions than to questions of quality. It is suggested that the latter needs to be more carefully addressed and that course design and training methodology are key problem areas; a brief overview is given of developments in the use of a variety of methods and materials. The challenges faced by Third World trainers are, it would seem, remarkably similar to those faced by trainers in industrialized countries, namely, how best to solve the problems of what training schemes to adopt, what content to cover, what learning experiences to provide and what methods to employ. However, these issues are particularly critical in the Third World because of the shortage of trained trainers.
The chapter concludes by suggesting that if the initiatives in the Third World are to have significant impact in the future there are five key problem areas that will need to be tackled. These are: inadequate budgets, undertrained trainers, lack of suitable materials, neglect of research into training needs and the impact of training, and the lack of a coherent national training policy.
