Why I Hate "Program Planning" (Part 1)

I strongly dislike the term “program planning.” Why I have such a strong, negative reaction toward the phrase is not entirely clear, however. Nearly six months of reflection on the matter has failed to produced a coherent argument. Unconnected mental-emotional snippets clog my brain, so today I am trying something new: blogging my thoughts. This post, therefore, represents the first in what is likely to become a lengthy series. As this series progresses, please feel free to comment, offering advice, insight, and (gentle) critique. Perhaps together we can figure out why I hate “program planning.”

In a chapter on learning spaces, Knud Illeris (2007) describes how divided and disjointed modern life has become. Learning that takes place in one realm of life—say, the school—does not
easily inform other realms—work or hobbies, for instance. On the surface, this seems to be a problem of “learning transfer”—an issue upon which educational researchers have been working for years and of which program planners in adult education are well aware. (Caffarella (2002) even devotes an entire chapter to the topic in her textbook on program planning.) But Illeris is concerned with far more than the application of knowledge acquired in one of life’s learning spaces to another part of life. Rather, he addresses the discrete and disjointed learning that results from life’s uncomplementary contexts, spaces, and roles. “It is of decisive importance,” he argues, that “one understands and can obtain a general view of the connections between all the different kinds of experience and understandings one develops. It is, therefore, also important that connections can be created between the various learning spaces on a more practical level.” (Illeris, 2007, p. 230).

Disconnection—like that against which Illeris rails—is one of the reasons I object to the word “program” in the phrase “program planning.” To me, the word “program” seems self-contained. It connotes a single, self-sustaining, independent-of-all-others, finite unit. To be sure, learners can stack one program on top of another in order to reach something higher, but “program planning” does not require or even expect this. “Programs” lack grout or mortar to tie them together; their learning seems discrete, unconnected.

This, of course, is not how adult educators think about their work. Adult education is synonymous with personal development. It is holistic. Its andragogical roots constantly connect with prior experience in order to address today’s problems. Adult educators understand with Illeris that compartmentalization limits learning and, with it, individual and societal potential. This is just one of the reasons we have to find a better word than “program” to describe what we do.

References
Caffarella, R. S. (2002). Program planning for adult learners: A practical guide for educators, trainers, and staff developers (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Illeris, K. (2007). How we learn: Learning and non-learning in school and beyond (M. Malone, Trans.). London and New York: Routledge.