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Learning styles – and other made-up stuff
Some years ago, when I worked in a university, I underwent training in teaching and learning to improve my lecturing skills. I have to say that I learnt a huge amount from this – and indeed went on to...
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Why my husband is a rubbish German teacher
My German is a little bit, erm, gramatically challenged – but unfortunately, having a German husband is not equivalent to a live-in German-teacher. The problem is that German is so natural to him that...
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The enthalpy of aid
I have decided to continue my theme of exceedingly geeky analogies by today comparing international development to a chemical reaction. I don’t know if you remember when you learnt chemistry at school...
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Can an outsider help solve your problems?
My sister, who knows about these things, tells me that most great innovations happen when someone from one sector/area of expertise moves to a new sector/area of expertise and introduces a new way of...
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Capacity building – why so difficult?
A frequent comment about capacity building is that it is very difficult and complicated. I understand this to a point – I mean any endeavour that involves human beings is going to be complicated. But...
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Capacity building rule 2: be ruthless in your selection
Rosipaw, flikr As I mentioned in the previous post, you can never ‘build someone else’s capacity’. All you can do as an outsider is to support the learning of others. Therefore it is good to be humble...
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Capacity building rule 3: do stuff to facilitate learning
http://www.morguefile.com This rule may sounds so obvious that it is not even worth stating. But it is amazing how many projects which are labeled as capacity building don’t seem to contain any plans...
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Capacity building rule 4: measure whether anything has been learnt
http://www.morguefile.com I suspect that one reason that bad capacity building programmes have persisted for so long is that monitoring and evaluation of capacity building has been so poor. It is...
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Guest post: Louise Shaxson on advising governments… and ugly babies
I have known Louise Shaxson for many years and have always valued her advice and insight. However, when she wrote to me recently to tell me that she had written a blog about how to talk to new parents...
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