Working the Planning Table

Book excerpt: In Working the Planning Table, Ronald M. Cervero and Arthur L. Wilson offer a theory that accounts for planners’ lived experience and provides a guide for developing effective educational programs for adults. The book presents three planning case studies that illustrate how power, interests, ethical commitment, and negotiation are central to planners’ everyday work. These stories offer guidance on how to respond to the realities of practice and clearly point out that the technical work of planning is always political. Working the Planning Table reveals how people work to negotiate educational and political outcomes for multiple stakeholders. Cervero and Wilson introduced their groundbreaking framework in their 1994 book Planning Responsibly for Adult Education. Their theory provided a new understanding of the everyday realities faced in planning educational programs for adults. Since that time, they have further developed this effective approach to educational planning. Working the Planning Table reflects their most recent research and offers a practical, user-friendly guide for planners of adult education programs. Working the Planning Table is an essential resource for all educational planners. In addressing the perennial topics of planning, Cervero and Wilson show how assessing needs, developing objectives, designing instruction, and administering and evaluating programs always require planners’ ethical commitment and astute political negotiation of interests in social and organizational contexts.