Educators will make use of a range of methods based on their best estimation of how to achieve the objectives established as a result of the analysis of educational needs. There are, however, three overarching methodologies or paradigms: advertising, public information and education, and group learning.
Combined Methods
Broad-based educational programmes may make use of all three paradigms. This can lead to interesting dynamics as the practitioners of each bring their own language, planning assumptions and educational approaches to the meeting room and to the programme.
Voter education tends to be an eclectic enterprise because of the range of audiences and learning outcomes. This topic area is also eclectic because it has to address a range of country and electoral contexts. There may well be those who believe these paradigms to be mutually exclusive and who consider that they bring with them particular unintended outcomes that can undermine the voter education undertaking.
It is becoming increasingly difficult, to maintain a purist approach to adult education activities such as voter education. Certainly in the political realm, the art of the possible has been dominant. In addition to this pragmatic approach, the group learning paradigm - appearing to conform most closely to the democratic ideal of dialogue and debate - leaves something to be desired in terms of scale. As a result, it tends to move the education programme into the formal schooling setting. And this has its own problems. So it may be better to consider the paradigms of advertising, public information, and group learning as resources from which an educator draws the necessary methods and techniques to meet their objectives in the most effective way.
Advertising
Advertising establishes a brand identity, differentiates a product from others in the marketplace, and makes consumers aware of the availability of a service or product. Its techniques can be used to convey a message very effectively.
One of the techniques used, particularly in societies that value education or self-improvement, is to invoke the classroom metaphor to enhance the message. For this reason, the advertising paradigm is often chosen for voter information and education programmes.
Advertising agencies have an additional advantage in their apparent knowledge of the audience, and their ability to package messages on short notice to the standards required by national impact media and to determine the appropriate media mix for the targeted audience.
The basic nature of this paradigm is that it begins with a message that must be conveyed and that has been constructed at the centre of the programme. In some cases, the message is related directly to an investigation of the educational needs of the target audience. In most it is a construction based in part on knowledge of the audience and in part on objectives of the programme. This decision will be based on certain assumptions about what people need in order to participate in an election. For further details see Commercial Advertising.
Public Information and Education
The second paradigm is the multimedia national campaign based on public information principles. It relies on mass communication techniques, some of which come from the same advertising quiver. But it also makes certain assumptions about the importance of institutions and organisations in the development of people's attitudes and behaviours.
This concern for the individual in the group, rather than for the individual per se, characterises the underlying practice in a public education programme. It is this reliance on corporate identity, and the importance of environmental factors, that makes the public education paradigm particularly appropriate in developing societies and in societies where communal values remain in existence.
Group Learning
The third paradigm, and the one that is predominant in formal education institutions, is that which places group learning at the centre of the programme. Whether this is in the formal classroom, where individual achievement and group support and performance operate in an ambiguous fashion, or the informal community learning group, those who select group learning methods have to consider its potency against its relatively slow cumulative effect.
While face-to-face educational activities (see Face To Face Interaction) conform to the experience of most people, and while there is a broad range of educational technologies that have been developed for the small group, significant educational impact tends to be achieved only when there is regular interaction between an educator and a group. And establishing regular meetings of learners and educators is costly except where formal educational institutions are already in place and voter education programmes can be integrated into the curriculum of those formal institutions.
So those who work within this paradigm are constantly have to offset the quality of the educational experience for small groups of learners with the demand for universal education. As a result, group learning is often used for specialised groups and specialised skill development, while more general public education and advertising techniques are used for the majority.
