Learning Strategies for Adults

Introduction

When we talk about Teaching Strategies, there are a number of these that can be used to help learners gain the understandings that the instructor would like to instill. The following list/description presents some of the strategies that can be particularly helpful when trying to teach adult learners. These strategies can be used either individually or in collaboration with each other. Adult educators frequently talk about adult learning as if it were an unconnectedly separate sphere, having little correlation to learning in early days or teenage years.

Issues in Understanding Adult Learning

We are very far from a universal understanding of adult learning. Even though warnings are frequently issued that at best only a multitude of context and domain specific theories are likely to result, the energy expended on developing a general theory of adult learning shows no sign of abating. Judged by epistemological, communicative, and critically analytic criteria, theory development in adult learning is weak, and is hindered by the persistence of myths that are etched deeply into adult educators' minds (Brookfield 1992).

These myths (which, taken together, comprise something of an academic orthodoxy in adult education) hold that

Adult learning is inherently joyful

Adults are innately self-directed learners

Good educational practices always meet the needs articulated by learners themselves

It is a uniquely adult learning process

It is a uniquely adult form of practice

The attempt to construct an exclusive theory of adult learning - one that is distinguished wholly by its standing in contradiction to what we know about learning at other stages in the lifespan is a grave error.

Major Areas of Research on Adult Learning

The four areas discussed in this section represent the post-war preoccupations of adult learning researchers.

Taken together these areas of research constitute an espoused theory of adult learning that informs how a great many adult educators practice their craft.

1. Self-Directed Learning

Self-directed learning focuses on the process by which adults:

Take control of their own learning

Determine how to set their own learning goals

Locate appropriate resources

Decide on which learning methods to use

Evaluate their progress

It is important to note the cross-cultural dimension of the concept has been almost completely ignored.

Recent work on gender has criticized the ideal of the independent self-directed learner as reflecting patriarchal values of division, separation and competition. The extent to which a disposition to self-directedness is culturally learned, or is tied to personality, is an open issue.

Finally, work is needed on clarifying the political dimensions of this idea; particularly on the issues of power and control raised by the learner's assuming responsibility for choices and judgments regarding what can be learned, how learning should happen, and whose evaluative judgments regarding the quality and effectiveness of learning should hold sway.

Citing self-direction, adults can deny the importance of collective action, common interests and their basic interdependence in favor of an obsessive focus on the self.

2. Critical Reflection

Developing critical reflection is probably the idea of the decade.

Evidence that adults are capable of ...