Meeting On-job Adult Learners’ Special Needs: Insights from Improved Opportunities and Obstacles to Development (O and OD) System’s Trainings in Tanzania

Community participation is a precursor to development, yet, its nurturing calls for enormous efforts and time. It is against this backdrop the government of Tanzania in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is rolling out Opportunities and Obstacles to Development project (O and OD) through training of the local government staffs. The study seeks to identify and examine the methodologies employed in O and Od trainings. It focuses on the adults’ special needs and the extent to which they are embodied in the implementation of the training. This study employed interviews, Focus Group Discussion, documentary review as well as observation in data collection. The collected data were analyzed through thematic analysis in which themes were generated. This study upholds the fact that adult learners are special because: they know why they learn something; they need to be seen and treated as capable and self-directed; they have vast learning resource from life experience, and their need to learn what will help them confront their real-life situation. To cater for the above needs, the O and OD trainings employ various strategies such as: role-plays that are performed by trainees themselves, field study visits to different places where O and OD is being implemented and case studies which are also widely used to provide trainees with the first hand experiences. These methodologies give the trainees a first-hand experience which improves their problem-solving skills in the field.