Foreword

The teachers of community health workers in developing countries have the important task of training staff to deliver primary health care. They work in difficult conditions, often without sources of reference materials and with little or no experience of teaching methods. This manual is intended to help them in their work.

It is the result of a long process of development and testing, beginning in 1979, when WHO established a project to review the educational needs of teachers of middle-level health staff in a number of countries. As a result, a library of some 45 selected books was assembled, and distributed to about 1000 training schools for health workers in the English-speaking developing world, to serve as a source of reference material for teachers. In particular, this library was to include a simply written, comprehensive manual on teaching methods which would help to ensure that teachers could make the best use of this new resource. A draft manual was prepared by Dr Abbatt and was extensively fieldtested before the first edition of Teaching for better learning was issued in 1980. Funds for the project were generously provided by the Government of the United Kingdom through its Overseas Development Administration.

Since the libraries were distributed, WHO has intensified its assistance to countries through the interregional Health Learning Materials (HLM) Programme. Its aims are to work with individual countries to help them to design, test and produce their own teaching, learning and promotional materials to meet priority needs, and to promote the sharing of resources through intercountry networking. By the end of 1991, more than 30 developing countries had established their own national HLM projects, and four intercountry networks had been set up to ensure the exchange of information, materials, expertise and training facilities between individual countries.

During the past ten years, this manual has been widely used by teachers all over the world. It has been translated into many languages. The first edition had a tear-out questionnaire, inviting comments and suggestions from readers, and all those received have been taken into account in preparing this second edition.

M. A. C. Dowling Coordinator, Interregional Health Learning Materials Programme Division of Development of Human Resources for Health World Health Organization