Abstract:

Ongoing education for professionals raises particular challenges that are sometimes missing in other educational settings. Often the topics addressed are novel or cutting edge social issues that may be controversial and trigger strong resistance based in culture, personal beliefs or religion. A paradigmatic example of a controversial societal topic raising these issues involves rights for sexual orientation and gender identity minorities. In addition, unlike undergraduate or professional degree programs (law, business, medicine, etc.) where students are not yet entrants into a field, continuing or advanced specialized education teaches persons who are already practitioners in an occupation, already proficient and accomplished in their profession. Accordingly, this group of students has both greater experience from which to judge the effectiveness of teaching quality and materials and higher expectations for their expectations. One group of experienced learners that present special challenges for educators is judges, people whose job entails being expert decision-makers, and who are not uncritical recipients of information. By discussing the example of training judges on sexual orientation issues, this presentation will provide some guiding principles and methods for facing difficult challenges head-on and turning these problems into strengths in order to reengage expert learners in continuing education, to overcome resistance or closed-mindedness, and to increase professional competence in new or controversial ideas.

Keywords:

Professional education, adult education, controversial subjects, difficult learners.