Holistic Adult Learning
All of our Training modules are available online as stand-alone courses for personal and professional development.
Learning Packs are available at any time – see our Shop. Optional online sessions are scheduled each year.
Check our Training List below to access further information on all the courses available.
Email us for the dates for the next online sessions.
We highly recommend that our Introductory Course or Foundation Course is completed first. They provide sufficient background to Biography Work and its underlying philosophy, to facilitate understanding of other course material.
In addition, we offer three online Courses in Adult Learning.
These are also available for personal and professional development, either as Learning Packs only, or with online facilitated sessions.
Over three years, each year a different course is offered, based on the work of Coenraad van Houten and colleagues.
Courses in English for next 3 years –
- 2023 – Guiding Groups: Creating and Holding an Open Space
- 2024 – Holistic Adult Learning: Awakening the Will to Learn
- 2025 – Designing Integrated Programs: Learning for Head, Heart & Hands
Trainer: Karl-Heinz Finke, assisted by Laura Summerfield and colleagues in Holistic Biography Work.
Each Adult Learning course comes with a comprehensive Learning Pack:
Study Guide, video Lectures, suggested Reading and activities.
Supported by optional online sessions over 4 days: Thursday to Sunday.
The Three Adult Learning Modules:
These modules explore the underlying theory and methodology for educators to work with adult learners. Adults learn differently from children and young people; therefore the principles of teaching adults are different. These modules address these differences. Each module is self-contained. They may be completed in any order.
ADL-71 Guiding Groups: Creating and Holding an Open Space
- Essential elements of communication
- Different styles of facilitation
- An exploration of group dynamics
- Recognising Thinking/Feeling/Willing statements
- Enabling a helpful conversation
- The mystery of encounter
- Creating an open space for sharing
- Maintaining a healthy group-work process
- Designing and assessing group-work processes
ADL-72 Holistic Adult Education: Awakening the Will to Learn
- The 3 ways of learning
- Triangular relationships – learners/educators/staff
- Introducing Phenomenology via observation processes
- The 4-level observation process
- Working with 7 life and learning processes
- 3 levels in the Learner/Educator relationship
- Individualisation of content in learning
ADL-73 Designing Integrated Programs: Learning for Head, Heart and Hand
- Creating an Integrated program with an integrated team
- Understanding Horizontal and Vertical Integration in learning program designs
- 4 levels of educating and learning
- 4 level observation processes related to education
- Applying understanding of 7 life and learning processes in program design
- Integrating 7 planetary qualities
- Assessing learning outcomes
Integrated within all Three Adult Learning modules is ADL-70:
Core Skills and Practices
- Self-reflective work on the part of the learner – Learning Journals
- Daily Review – insights, challenges and takeaways in a learning process
- Night Echoes – tuning in to ongoing imagination, inspiration and intuition
- Non-reactive listening – maintaining an open mind and heart
- Collegial Inter-vision process – building supportive networks for learning
Core Principles of Adult Learning
- How do adults learn? Supporting self-reflection. Building on existing knowledge and experience. Applying the 7 learning processes.
- Growth and development of the individual learner. How is adult learning different from that of children and young people? How do we develop from Reactor to Learner to Researcher in our life journey?
- Qualities of the self-guided learner. Maintaining inner motivation and a sense of personal life mission. Relationship with the True-I during the learning process. Examining individual expectations – what to develop and what to let go.
