Instructional Style: Inside-Out Learning

Clients | Instructional Style | Process

Look for wisdom within ...
	... to guide you through life.
The missing link is thought.
	Notice a good feeling.
A secure state of mind is every person's birthright.

How does learning occur? NRRC believes all human beings are born in a secure state with natural resilience, common sense, innate mental health, or wisdom. While not every person has discovered or realized this, all can learn to experience it. The instructional strategy used by NRRC facilitators is constructivist, meaning facilitators draw out or tap the natural wisdom of participants. The Latin word educere means "to draw out." Participants enter the classroom with common sense and wisdom. NRRC educational sessions simply point to this innate health and help clients discover this within. Sessions are interactive, in the moment, and supported with a variety of activities, experiences, and audio, visual, print, and other resources. Facilitators teach from what they know. The goal is to tap innate participant wisdom, strength, health, and resilience.

"Training," therefore, is used interchangeably by NRRC to mean classes, seminars, courses, professional and personal development programs, staff development, and more. All of these terms are distasteful or inappropriate within at least some professions. The critical factor is whether or not the facilitator knows students actively "discover" and learn from the inside out, or thinks participants master externally dispensed knowledge and facts. Despite these different meanings, "training" is the term NRRC clients most frequently use in arranging to purchase services.

Technical assistance is provided by NRRC to support clients in meeting their system's goals. Special organizational training events are undertaken within the context of systems-change. NRRC is especially well prepared to work with an organization comprehensively. Matters of leadership, policy, evaluation, marketing and publicity, support materials such as written and audiovisual products, grant writing, and other matters of program development and implementation are addressed. Institutional change requires more than stand-alone episodes of training.