Empowering Trainers of Adult Education Personnel in Nigeria

Abstract

The paper set out to explore how trainers of adult education personnel are empowered. It also examined the forms and
importance of training to adult education personnel. Empowerment is conceived as outward and inward activity. Empowerment
means giving power or entitlement to people, helping them acquire capabilities or qualifications, establishing structures which
enable them to have more control over decisions affecting them. Some of the means of empowering trainers of adult education
personnel examined are: funding, membership of professional association, participation in conferences, undertaking research,
and acquisition of knowledge of Information and Communication Technology. Besides, traditional training technique, e-training,
workplace training and corporate universities are some of the training forms of adult education personnel. The importance of using
mentoring, presenting training modules, corporate training and Information and Communication Technology for adult education
personnel was reviewed. The recommendations made include: need to make fund available, by the government for the training
and retraining of adult education personnel; management of agencies on adult education enjoined to fund the training and
retraining of their personnel and imbibe the use of mentoring technique for training of their workers; university based adult
education Scholars encouraged to make their research findings available to end-users; and workplace training technique should
be incorporated into the training programmes of adult education personnel.