Didactics Meet Water: Providing First Level Response Officers in Cape Town the Dedicated Training they Need

Authors

J. Oost (World Water Academy, The Netherlands / AquaDactics, South Africa)
M. De Sousa-Alves (City of Cape Town, South Africa)

Abstract

City of Cape Town in partnership with the South African training centre AquaDactics and Vitens-Evides International (The Netherlands) started the development of training modules for First Level Response Officers. The main aim of this capacity building project was to showcase the philosophy and way of thinking of the World Water Academy in The Netherlands, the mother organisation of AquaDactics. The first intervention took a week, excluding preparations and after-care. The basic philosophy is empowering local professionals to train their peers with a quality programme and quality materials by quality trainers in a quality environment. All aspects with the focus on one thing: learning efficiency.

The time for training for professionals or adults training, also Life Long Learning is lacking, because the major priority is working. Training is often of secondary importance, because of lacking of time, funding, motivation or a lack of a good and accredited or acknowledged training programme. Meanwhile the employer mostly pays the training and the less time and money, the more attractive for the employer. The focus of training time reduction, without losing relevant content and which is applicable in the daily routine, the next day. Key is the prior knowledge, skills and attitude of the professionals (including learning charactistics) and the learning objectives, based on the tasks and performance indicators the learner needs to learn or grow.

Download the full PDF paper on http://www.ss-pub.org/journals/aeer/vol-3/vol-3-issue-4-april-2018/.