Adult Learners

Planning for Adult Learners

Introduction

Andragogy is a perspective on humanistic learner-centered curriculum development and enactment that was popularized by Malcolm Knowles within the field of adult education in the 1960s, when adult education as an academic and professional field was still young, and when those involved in this professionalization were seeking to establish adult education as an important arena of study distinct from K12 education. Knowles argued that adults learned differently from children and thus should be taught differently from children, a stance he modified during the course of his career, as he came to accept that all learners benefit from the learner-centered instruction championed by andragogy.

As such, andragogy was initially grounded in the perception that the prescriptive curricular models used in K12 settings were inappropriate for adult education, and Knowles positioned his work specifically as a reaction against classic Tylerian approaches to curriculum development. Whereas Knowles's approach evokes a core thematic of Deweyan and re conceptualist curriculum studies' theorizing, specifically around the involvement of learners in curriculum deliberation and learning

 processes, some adult education scholars see little difference between Ralph Tyler's approach and Knowles's approach because both consist of prescriptive steps that educators should do in idealized educational situations, and both fail to account for the politics of curriculum as well as the social, political, and economic contexts within which education operates.

Background

Based in the educational philosophy of liberal humanism, the prevailing approach within U.S. adult education, andragogy has been conceptualized in many ways: a set of assumptions about adult learners, a method of teaching adults, and a theory of adult learning. Critics have also described it as an ideology grounded in Western, middle-class values of individualism. The term originated in the workers' movement educational programs in 19th-century Germany and is currently used in many Central and Eastern European countries in the same way British and U.S. educators use the term adult education that is, as a broad umbrella term defining a professional field of practice. In Britain and the United States, however, the term andragogy denotes a more specific approach to adult learning and teaching, which will be described here (Knowles, 2005).

Knowles famously defined andragogy as the art and science of helping adults learn. Andragogy creates an image of adult learners based on six assumptions:

(a) As adults mature, their self-concepts move from dependence toward self-directedness;

(b) Adults enter educational activities with life experience, which is a resource for learning;

(c) adults are “ready to learn” when they experience a need to know something or to change a life situation adult learning is tied to the need to perform one's various social roles;

(d) Learning must be immediately relevant to adult learners;

(e) Adults are internally motivated to learn; and

(f) Adults need to know why they are learning something.

As a method of teaching adults, andragogy draws on these assumptions to design, enact, and evaluate educational experiences that best resonate with adult learners. Andragogy emphasizes process rather than content and focuses on adult educators as facilitators who are responsible for creating comfortable physical climates and welcoming psychological climates of mutual trust and respect; these teaching/learning situations should be collaborative, supportive, open, authentic, pleasurable, and learner-centered. Facilitators using andragogical methods, for instance, use “learning contracts” with learners, wherein adult learners diagnose their own learning needs, create learning goals, identify resources, carry out their learning, and evaluate ...