ADULT EDUCATION

Adult Education



Adult Education

Introduction

historic, adult education and literacy have developed out-of-doors the formal scheme of education. Adult education and literacy programs have often been referred to as non-formal education. Typically, formal education stresses the development of academic skills, while informal education stresses the development of skills learned in the workplace, or the community at large.

Over the last thirty years or so, there has been a steady shift toward greater inclusion of adults in inclusive classroom settings. Inclusive education means that children with and without disabilities are educated together in integrated classrooms. In inclusive settings, all children and their parents have an equal opportunity to interact with the larger school community. Inclusion is not the same as mainstreaming (Galbraith, 2004). Mainstreaming includes adults in the general classroom only part-time.

Where mainstreaming occurs, adults receive the majority of their education in segregated classrooms with other children who have disabilities. The opportunity to interact with typically achieving peers is limited, and children who are mainstreamed are less likely to feel like they belong to the larger school community and are less likely to be accepted by their peers.

Discussion

The learning model of adult education is often viewed as emancipatory because it stresses the learner's role in creating and conducting her own learning and the educator's role in supporting these activities. Humanistically inclined adult educators are drawn to its stress on self-actualization and the realization of individual potential, individually determined. Radically inclined adult educators appreciate its conception of learning as a participatory process in which adults learn habits of genuinely democratic practice. One area that has been under theorized in this model is the exercise of power on the part of the educator. There is a need for more study of how power flows reciprocally between learners and educators, and the way that learner-centered practices sometimes function as what Foucault calls “disciplinary power”; that is, as a way of ensuring that adult learners keep themselves in line.

The adult education curricula should be built with the participants by using their own experiences and realities to help them understand whose “reality” is constructed through the media, including textbooks. In addition to learning basic skills, they should be made aware of how public consent is manufactured (Taylor, 2006). As citizens who contribute to the transformation of the world, adult learners should not merely learn basic skills but should focus on understanding the world so that they can contest hegemonic social practices and systems. Adult educators are bound to assist learners in unveiling the everyday taken-for-granted realities and prejudices that result in oppressive practices and inequity.

Current thinking in the field of adult education includes providing for the senior citizen community, community-based education programs, and individuals involved in basic skills development. Adult education will continue filling these training and development gaps (Taylor, 2006).

The increasing number of universities and colleges are addressing the needs of the older student. University-level programs are now of more interest to the senior citizen community than the typical arts and crafts ...