A Strategic Approach as the Foundation for the Development of Adult Education

Lejla Halkić, Director of the Center for Education and IT Services at the Sarajevo Canton Chamber of Commerce, actively contributes to the advancement of adult education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the following text, she discusses the importance of strategic planning, leadership, and quality management in adult education, as well as her experience through professional training programs that deepened her understanding of the role of managers and organizers in this dynamic and increasingly important field:

"Adult education plays a vital role in the development of both individuals and society as a whole. It is an open concept that evolves in line with social, economic, and technological changes, including cultural and geographical shifts. In recent years, various educational concepts have emerged, such as the ‘learning society,’ ‘knowledge society,’ and ‘knowledge-based economy and society.’

Given that DVV International has been actively present in Bosnia and Herzegovina for over two decades, these principles of adult education have been largely implemented through various training programs, seminars, and workshops with both international and local experts working directly or indirectly in the field of adult education.

Thanks to DVV International’s strategic commitment to Bosnia and Herzegovina, awareness of the importance and role of lifelong learning has grown. Lifelong learning is the best response to the shift from the concept of a lifelong job to the concept of lifelong acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies.

As a participant in the training ‘Educational Management and Leadership: Towards a Competent Manager,’ I had the opportunity to explore in depth the responsibilities and possibilities we have as leaders, and how to approach problem-solving in our daily work. Strategic thinking is the path to developing strategic plans, while leadership and marketing are key to developing leadership skills and recognizing the need for marketing in education. Ensuring quality management in educational institutions and understanding the concepts and models of quality management opens new perspectives for establishing standards in adult education.

The training 'Strategic Planning as a Foundation for the Development of Adult Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina,' which I attended on behalf of the Sarajevo Canton Chamber of Commerce, introduced us to the theoretical foundations of strategic management and its practical application in adult education. This training is extremely valuable for all accredited adult education providers, especially since we rarely have access to such specialized and targeted programs. When we talk about strategy, we usually think of economic strategies and their impact on the social context. Through expert guidance, we learned which elements are crucial for adult education and how to develop and monitor them.

Through training on developing adult education programs, we learned about learning outcomes using Bloom’s taxonomy, how adults acquire knowledge, the skills educators need, the appropriate relationship with learners as both organizers and educators, and the importance of evaluating what has been learned.

One of the most important topics for adult education providers is monitoring and evaluating the quality of educational work with adults. It is essential for us, as organizers, to know how to monitor, control, and evaluate ourselves as institutions in order to improve the quality of our training offers. In doing so, we develop our own methodology for evaluating educational services."