Equal Opportunities and Treatment and the Real Training Needs of Adult Learners - A Case Study

AbstractAdult training in the field of equal opportunity and treatment is the main way of raising awareness, informing and promoting measures to prevent and fight discrimination in Romania. Contrary to many andragogical principles according to which adults learn if by learning they can solve specific personal problems, these training courses are generally designed starting from the global analysis of problems and needs of trainees. The case study referred to in this article was conducted as a result of a training initiative on equal opportunity and treatment for employees in the public administration (50 adult trainees, Timis County, Romania), which resulted in the identification of specific training needs for employees and local community members. To this end, we made a comparison between our initial training objectives and those redesigned based on the feedback from the participants. The conclusion of this contrastive approach was that, to have the desired impact, the goals and objectives of adult education courses must meet the real needs of the participants