Enhancing risk management skills at a municipality using an adult education approach
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Date
2021-12
Authors
Choane, Mamokhosi Paulinah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
This study aims to formulate a framework to enhance risk management skills at a municipality using an adult education approach. Risk management is a process whereby the risks in the organisation are identified, assessed and mitigated. It also involves monitoring projects and their finances towards sustainability. Adult education is a learning process that involves collaborative learning, prior knowledge and experience and self-directed learning. In this study, some challenges remain critical to effective teaching strategies for risk management, including the inability to promote collaborative problem-solving skills, a teacher-centred approach and ignorance of adult learners’ experience, which affect an appropriate assessment of risks. Participatory action research was used as an approach to intervene and respond to these challenges. However, the adult education strategy needed for teaching risk management skills is contextually bound and complex. Therefore, the study adopted Ubuntu as a theoretical lens, mainly due to its values and commitment to promoting humanness and challenging the social oppression that frequently limits the potential growth of municipalities and municipal officials. In this study, Ubuntu has encouraged the researcher and co-researchers to use an integrated form of risk management education, as Ubuntu expresses humanity and advocates working together towards effective teaching strategies for risk management and employing solutions to these challenges that prevent social development. Using the Ubuntu approach, the study embraces multiple perspectives and negotiates meaning in formulating a strategy to respond to the identified challenges. The study was guided by an epistemological stance that embraced the value of welcoming subjective views on knowledge production. Participatory action research created a platform for the participants, who later became co-researchers, to engage in knowledge production activities, equality and tolerance of contrasting views. Through adult teaching and learning workshops, working closely with a participatory action research methodology, a team of eight municipal officials, a youth community member, a post graduate student and I, the researcher, worked together at the research sites. As a research team, we collectively identified challenges to the effective teaching of risk management and employed standard solutions to improve the risk management skills of the municipal officials at one municipality. The generated data comprised photographs, video recordings, audio recordings, lesson plans and co-researchers’ reflections. We used critical discourse analysis to analyse the data. To understand the deeper meaning of the personal and subjective accounts of the co-researchers’ lived experiences of ineffective strategies for teaching risk management, the data were analysed and interpreted at three levels of critical discourse analysis, namely text, discursive practice and social structure. Through critical discourse analysis, the problems experienced by municipal officials in terms of effective teaching strategies for risk management were examined. The purpose was to propose possible solutions and components that could be adopted to address ineffective methods of teaching risk management to municipal officials. In order to formulate the strategy to be sustainable in enhancing risk management skills during and beyond the duration of the research, the conducive conditions of the process were investigated and enacted. Furthermore, possible ways to circumvent threats and risks that could derail the successful implementation of the design were analysed and presented. The research was transformative, which created the opportunity to operationalise and evaluate the success of the strategy before it was considered for recommendation. In conclusion, the study findings are revealed, indicators of success are identified and recommendations are made. Some of the results were that officials worked in silos and their teamwork was ineffective. In the end, the knowledge gap regarding effective teaching strategies for risk management results in a learning dead end.
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Keywords
Thesis (Ph.D. (Education Studies))--University of the Free State, 2021, Adult education, Coordinated team, Municipality, Risk management, Ubuntu