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Participatory Curriculum Development With and For Workers

by Cydney Pullman
Labor Institute, New York

CPSR News Volume 12, Number 3: Summer 1994

The Labor Institute develops training materials including curriculum workbooks and videotapes for working people in unions and community groups throughout the United States. Their participatory curriculum development techniques are described in this article, and are illustrated with two case study examples. For more information, contact the Labor Institute, 853 Broadway, Room 2014, New York NY 10003 US, 212-674-3322 (voice), 212-353-1203 (fax).

THE LABOR INSTITUTE

For the past 19 years, the Labor Institute, a non-profit New York City-based research and education organization, has developed programs and materials for working adults on such work-related issues as health and safety, plant closings, automation impacts, toxic waste dangers, and economic policy. Its work has included:

• Conducting workshops for over 30,000 participants
• Producing materials and programs which are used by over 3000 labor educators and health and safety advocates, and which have reached over 600,000 people
• Producing 25 slide/videotape shows and call-in radio programs, which have reached an audience of over one million people

The heart of the Institute's educational effort is a unique training methodology called the Small Group Activity Method, which combines audio-visual materials with a non-lecture training process. The method allows the curricula to be easily transferred to a wide variety of worker trainers trom rank and file activists to industrial hygienists. The small group method is particularly effective because it does not depend on experts to train workers. This is because the scientific and other technical information is embedded in the factsheets used in the training workbook. Worker-trainers and others are trained in the method and may then facilitate training workshops on their own.

The Institute works closely with a group of worker advocates called worker consultants. These individuals, representing workers in unions concerned about a particular issue, attend curriculum development meetings in which the Institute staff and the consultants review our work, test materials among their constituents, and revise our materials to ensure that our final training programs and materials are effective and relevant to the workers.

Participants are put to work solving real-life problems, building upon their own skills and experiences. Instead of learning by listening, we learn by doing.

Most recently, this process was used to develop the following training materials and programs:

• Sexual Harassment at Work: A Training Workbook for Working People (1994)
• Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) in the Workplace (1993)
• Hazards of the Modern Office: Indoor Air Quality (1992)
• Fire Hazards in the Modern Office (1992)
• Electromagnetic Fields in the Modern Office (1992)

We are currently producing a training program on Tuberculosis in the Workplace.

THE SMALL GROUP ACTIVITY METHOD

The Small Group Activity Method is a participatory, non-lecture training method that is worker- oriented. 'Fine Labor Institute uses this teaching approach to train workers to be trainers themselves, and has shared this method with over 200 different unions and community-based organizations in the United States and Canada.

The Small Group Activity Method puts the learner in the center of the training workshop. Participants are put to work solving real-life problems, building upon their own skills and experiences. Instead of learning by listening, we learn by doing.

The method uses Activities to teach. An activity can take from 30 minutes to an hour. Each activity has a common basic structure: Small Group Tasks, Report-Back, and Summary.

1. Small Group Tasks. The workshop always operates with people working in groups, preferably at tables. Each activity has a task, or set of tasks, for the group to work on. The idea is to work together using each others' experiences to tackle problems and make judgments on key issues. Part of the task involves looking at factsheets and reading short handouts to develop an opinion on an issue.
2. Report-Back. For each task, the group selects a reporter whose Job it is to take notes on the small group discussion and report back to the workshop as a whole. The trainer records these reports on large pads of paper in front of the workshop, so that all may refer to them. After the Report-Back, the workshop is thrown open to general discussion about the problem/issue at hand.
3. Summary. Before the discussion drifts too far and wide, the trainer needs to bring it all together during the Summary. Here, the trainer highlights the key points (there are summaries in all the training workbooks), and brings up problems and points that might have been overlooked in the Report- Back.

EXAMPLE 1. A TRAINING PROGRAM ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT

The Coalition of Labor Union Women and several other groups approached the Institute to develop a training program on the prevention of sexual harassment at work. Twenty women from different unions and work organizations were invited to join our curriculum development workshop as worker consultants. Our first meeting consisted of finding out what kinds of materials and issues these women (most of whom had some direct or indirect experience with sexual harassment at work) felt were missing from the resources already available. At the same time, Institute staff surveyed the existing literature and consulted several experts on the issue of sexual harassment.

Out of these initial discussions, a series of activities and accompanying factsheets was developed for the introductory section of the program on the following topics:

• Sharing Our Experiences (an open discussion)
• Defining Sexual Harassment (reviewing sexual harassment scenarios and legal/commonsense definitions)
• The Extent of the Problem (answering a series of questions based on data in charts and graphs)

Prior to the workshop, our worker consultants tested some of the activities with their co-workers, suggesting revisions and additions. Further changes were made to the curriculum materials when the activities were reviewed during the workshop.

Among the issues that the consultants felt needed to be dealt with in the curriculum (that had previously been ignored in other curricula) were race and sexual harassment, and sexual orientation and sexual harassment. They wanted to address these "sensitive" topics head on. Additionally, union members were particularly concerned about what to do about co-worker (i.e., fellow union member) harassment.

Each of the twelve activities developed for the training workbook were tested with workers and revised jointly by Institute staff and worker consultants. The final section of the book includes topics on communication skills, tools for tackling sexual harassment, and examples of success stories obtained by participants and illustrated by the Institute's cartoonist. The book has just been printed, and will be used in training programs throughout the United States by unions and worker groups.

EXAMPLE 2. A TRAINING PROGRAM ON TUBERCULOSIS AT WORK

Like the process described above, groups of health and safety advocates were contacted about participating in the development of a curriculum on Tuberculosis in the Workplace. Tuberculosis is on the rise particularly among workers in high-risk workplaces, such as health care settings, correctional institutions, homeless shelters, long-term care facilities, and drug treatment centers. Workers in close (repeated and prolonged) contact with people in high-risk groups, or who are exposed to high-risk procedures, are at increased risk of getting TB. As with the sexual harassment curriculum development, these worker consultants worked closely with Institute staff to develop a list of issues and concerns regarding TB in the workplace which were not already being addressed. For example, a major issue for health care workers is that, even though guidelines recommend the use of a special air filter respiratory mask, such masks are unavailable to the majority of workers exposed to TB patients. Additionally, workers want to know how to identify emergency room patients who might have active TB disease and to be able to isolate them appropriately.

Another issue for participants was that they were concerned about workers "blaming the victims" of TB. They wanted us to develop an activity that made clear the socio-economic reasons for the re- emergency of TBÑthat is was not due just to the increase in drug use and HIV in society. Many other issues were discussed at the first curriculum development meeting, which enabled the Institute staff to prepare materials and activities appropriate to the curriculum development group's needs.

Most of the workshop participants are testing the first packet of activities with their co-workers, including one activity that asks small groups to examine a series of statements about "What is TB and Who Gets It?" Small groups discuss such statements as "Doctors and nurses are the primary workers threatened by TB in the workplace" or "People who live in non-urban areas are not likely to contract TB." Workers are asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement, and why? They refer to factsheets in the packet which provide data or anecdotes that permit the group to conduct an informed discussion. The factsheets are developed by the Institute staff in conjunction with experts in occupational health, and doctors knowledgeable about tuberculosis in the workplace.

CONCLUSION

The combination of both formal experts and workplace experts (the worker consultants) working with the Labor Institute, facilitates the creation, testing, and finally production of materials for workers that have the possibility of being effective as tools for social change. The final curricula incorporate hard facts, debates, and solutions to problems in a format that does not require expert teachers, but rather a facilitator. to work through the materials with participants. We believe that this participatory curriculum development approach is both efficient, not requiring experts to accompany training program presentations, and democratic, including the workers themselves in the conceptualization and production stages of the curricula.

Vicki O'Day, SRI International, Center for Technology in Learning, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025, 415-859-3934, 415-859-2861 (FAX), oday@sri.com

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