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White Stag and BSA's Junior Leader TrainingLearning MethodsNational Youth Leadership TrainingNYLT utilizes 10 pleasing, hopefully mnemonic, acronyms that are intended to help participants retain the content. NYLT automatically assumes the trainee does not know anything, that each individual is an "empty vessel" waiting to be filled, and that all learners are identical. There is no attempt to determine what level of competence, knowledge, or ability each participant brings into the learning experience. For example, "...the mnemonic EDGE — Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable – is at the heart of other skills that the staff will learn and teach, especially the Teaching EDGE. Discuss how each leadership style will be modeled and demonstrated by the staff during the course (and the senior patrol leader and course director with the staff during staff development)." (page 7) On Day Four, page 9, the session on Teaching EDGE itself says that it is a model for the entire program. The Teach EDGE session jumps right into a demonstration by the Troop Guide on how to use a GPS receiver. The Troop Guide teaches the learners about the concept of latitude and longitude. He then Explains and Demonstrates how the GPS receiver works. He Guides the users in finding their current location. He then "Enable[s] patrol members to continue with little further input from you. Let them know that in order to truly own the skill, they need to practice it many times." The relevance of using a GPS to teaching is not given. The introduction to GPS receivers is the introduction to the Teaching EDGE content. That session goes on to provide more details on "Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable." The session then segues into the four stages of group growth: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. It then states that the four Leading EDGE techniques match up with the four stages of group growth. White Stag Leadership DevelopmentWhite Stag advocates the Manager of Learning method, which is comprised of four phases: Guided Discovery, Teach/learn, Application, Evaluation. Manager of Learning begins with an assessment of what the learner’s know in the form of a Guided Discovery. The staff the proceeds from that point forward, utilizing the expertise of more knowledgeable participants to facilitate the learning of others. A variety of teaching methods are employed, including games, assigned projects, buzz groups, exhibits, simulations, games, role plays, and more. Among those is one method that closely resembles the Leading EDGE technique. We call it the Introduction, Explanation, Demonstration, Application, and Summary (IEDAS). These are steps utilized within the Teach/Learn phase of a leadership training session. "The Manager of Learning process is not lock-step but at the learner's own pace of discovery. It is open ended, not confined to one 'right way,' and cyclical — new learning is based on old learning plateaus. It is a design for producing in-depth learning. The emphasis is on learning, not on what the instructor teaches. Learning situations are designed that are hopefully directly relevant to the content of the training. |
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