To:
From:
Philip Fournier
Date:
Thursday,
August 11, 2005
Both articles are
obviously written by those who value education and see that education is a
life-long and rewarding process. The one
author has strong words for those who give up on education. “We either continue to learn throughout our
lives, or we allow our skills and knowledge to quickly slide into
obsolescence.” Both articles are a
testament to the value of adults continuing the education process throughout
their lives.
I found the
document “Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective Adult learning Programs” to
be a bit simplistic in its approach. The
rather all-inclusive statement “adult students grew significantly only in one
type of learning environment” seems on the face of it to be an
exaggeration. The other article is more
broad-minded in its outlook, identifying five patterns of learning (or more
accurately reasons for learning) among adults, rather than more narrowly
classifying exactly what constitutes an effective adult learning program as in
“Seven Characteristics.” This is not to
say I disagree with the “Seven Characteristics.” I am only observing that I think the approach
is too narrow, and frankly to me does not bear the marks of a four year
study. Nevertheless, at least some of
the seven hit home to me as indeed reflecting a quality adult education
environment.
I appreciated the
first characteristic in particular “where individual needs and uniqueness are
honored, where abilities and life achievements are acknowledged and
respected.” In my many years of
teaching, I have routinely had a few senior citizens in my classes, though they
have never made up the majority of the students. I was never taught the above axiom, but still
I sensed in my heart that I needed to treat these older folks with respect for
their life achievements, even though I might know quite a lot more about the new
technology I was attempting to pass along to them. I sensed that the adults (all of my students
are theoretically adults as I teach in a post-high school environment, but many
are young people, while the older ones I’ll call adults) felt somewhat threatened
by their lack of a grasp of basic computer skills. I felt I needed to find ways to lesson their
feelings of inadequacy in this area so they would feel comfortable. I would do this by engaging them in
discussions about old technology which they would often know about, and the
younger ones would not. Though it was
not necessarily completely relevant to the topic at hand, I would try to draw
parallels between the old and the new, giving credit to the adults for their
contribution of what I like to call “obsolete knowledge.” It helps that I count myself among the
“mature adults” though since I have been teaching for seventeen years, I wasn’t
always in that category.
The above comment
fits in nicely with pattern number 5 as expressed in “Implications”. “Adult learners tend to appreciate – and
continue learning – in courses where they feel they have a significant
contribution to make to the discussion, and that their contributions are
acknowledged and appreciated by the group as a whole.” The idea and the challenge is
to integrate the two groups, the young people and the adults, in an environment
that is mutually beneficial. I can’t say
I have always succeeded in this attempt, but have always had a sense that it
was necessary. It is nice to read in these
two papers a confirmation of my efforts in times past.
Number six of
“Characteristics” is basically saying the adults learn better in the
psychomotor domain. For those of us in
vocational education, this seems like a given for all of our students, not just
the older ones. Pattern two of
“Implications” suggests something similar, i.e., that adults
are more interested in applied knowledge rather than purely theoretical
knowledge. Once again, this is pretty
much a given for vocational education.
Our goal is applied knowledge almost exclusively.
Number five of
“Characteristics” regards pacing, setting a standard of learning just a
comfortable margin beyond where the learner is currently at. I have no objection to the idea; however, in
practice this is not always in the realm of possibility. Students, both young ones and adults, enroll
in classes for which they may or may not be fully prepared. While being able to “pace” would be a nice
luxury, mostly we do the best we can to balance the advanced students with the
less advanced, hoping to allow the more skilled to learn by teaching
others. It takes a talented instructor
to do this when the more skilled is the very young and the less skilled is a
mature adult, also know as an “old fart.”
(Couldn’t resist that one, since I call myself that
often.)
In conclusion,
these two different papers addressed some issues that I have known and applied
intuitively but it is nice to have confirmation that I was on the right track
all along.