76 PREPARATION OF SCHOOL LEADERS
Diminishing Power Relationships
Tensions over power relationships within classrooms may develop when the environment
is exclusively controlled or micro-managed by an instructor. Because such tensions can
impede learning for adults (Rogers, 2003; Tough, 1999), adult educators can transfer the
responsibility for controlling the learning environment to the adult learners. Adult learners, in
turn, assume responsibility for ensuring that their peers feel at ease, manage the learning
space to support their comfort, and commit personally to individual and collective learning
goals (Hiemstra, 1991b). A learner-centered approach, then, requires that students accept
responsibility for “their own development through self-managed learning” and be “actively
involved in the development of their classmates” (Foreman & Johnston, 1999, p. 377).
Adult educators also can diminish power tensions by sharing their learning-teaching
philosophies with their students. Doing so makes instructors vulnerable to critique, but such
openness “promotes an understanding of human relationships; sensitizes one to the various
needs associated with positive human interactions; provides a framework for distinguishing,
separating, and understanding personal values; [and] promotes flexibility and consistency in
working with adult learners” (Hiemstra, 1991a, p. 9). Further, such self-revelation can lead to
exciting and productive conversations about learning and teaching that have implications for
students beyond their immediate classroom setting.
The role of an adult educator, striving to equalize power relationships by creating a
learner-centered classroom, is transformed from knowledge dissemination (i.e., one who
shows or directs) to coaching, mentoring, supervising, or tutoring learners in experiential
activities (Beaty, 1999; Kolb, 1984). By assuming a facilitator-of-learning role (Rogers,
1969), adult educators also become members of learning groups, collective and
collaboratively engaged in shared, purposeful learning. This guide-on-the-side role
(Cifuentes, 1997) seeks to support constructivist learning environments in which knowledge
is created individually and socially (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Relan & Gillani, 1997;
Savery & Duffy, 1995).
Supporting Collective Learning
With careful attention to group development by an adult educator, a loosely coupled group
of students can become a community of learners. Working as collegial partners, the members
of such learning groups acknowledge “mutual risk and [establish] a sense of safety in facing
the risk” (Senge, 1990, p. 245). Such collective learning becomes “a process... in which
taken-as-shared meanings... are constructed and acted upon by the group” (Kilgore, 1999, p.
191). Collective learning and learning communities emerge when group identity is formed
through revelation and understanding of and respect for individual differences within the
group. The resulting community environment supports open dialogue and discussion about
diverse topics, often including many of the “nondiscussables” in educational circles (Barth,
2001, p. 9), and creates a framework in which conflicts can be resolved effectively. Within
trusting environments that learning communities develop and sustain, adult learners can think
reflectively and constructively critique their own and their peers’ work (Achinstein & Meyer,
1997; Schön, 1987).