The Education of Adult Educational Leaders[ 1 ]

Most leadership training, like most adult education, is self-directed. An individual confronted with the responsibility of becoming an educator of adults learns partly by the process of participation and partly by his own examination of that process. Insofar as a pattern may be discerned amid the bewildering variety of forms of leadership in adult education, it takes the general shape of a pyramid. Lay leaders for the most part require specialized, brief, and clear-cut training to give them the immediate skills they need to carry out their responsibilities. The central task in training lay leaders is to help them understand the appropriate principles of action which seem significant in the light of their experience. The leadership of a group is a complex process which can never be analyzed and understood in a simple and uncomplicated way. The traditional pattern of professional training has little relevance to present practices in preparing specialists in adult education.