The Adult Learner Experience: Self-Directed Growth and Successful Efforts to Learn and Change

Back in 1981, Ron and Susan Zemke sought to enumerate the things we as teachers / trainers / facilitators / classroom aides / tutors know about adult learners and their motivation, designing curriculum for adults, and working with adult in the classroom.  They call them "truisms" based on a fairly large body of research conducted over the years about the adult learner.

They point out that our adult learning knowledge base is derived from three main sources: the "tips 'n' tricks" accumulated along the way by teachers/trainers, the "market research approach" to research about adult learner motivation, and research into nonadult (children) learning -- from child development to Skinnerian behavioral mod, to programmed instruction, to Banduran social learning.

Major contributors to adult learning motivation research such as Carol Aslanian seek to utilize sophisticated market research techniques to discern adult learner preferences for mode of delivery of instruction/training and in this case, online delivery is the overwhelming winner. Allen Tough, named "one of six most often used authors" in a survey of the Adult Education Association in 1978, pioneered the field of self-directed growth, personal change, and adults' successful efforts to learn and change.

But it was Malcolm Knowles who first suggested in 1980 that adult learners differ from children and that teaching theory as it pertains to adults (andragogy) must rely on 5 basic tenets:

Self-concept

• As a person matures his/her self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being.

Adult Learner Experience

• As a person matures he/she accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.

Readiness to Learn

• As a person matures his/her readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his/her social roles.

Orientation to Learning

• As a person matures his/her time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his/her orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject- centeredness to one of problem centeredness.

Motivation to Learn

• As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12)

SOURCES:

1.  Zemke, Ron and Susan. (1981). 30 things we know for sure about adult learning. Training, v18 n6 p45-46,48-49,52. Found at http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ246636

2. Aslanian, Carol. (2013). Online college students 2013: comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Learning House. A research report, found at http://www.learninghouse.com/ocs2013-report/

3. Tough, Allen M. (1971). The adult’s learning projects: A fresh approach to theory and practice in adult learning. Toronto: OISE (Second edition, Austin, Texas: Learning Concepts and Toronto: OISE, 1979. The full text is downloadable from allentough.com.

4. Knowles, Malcolm S. (1980). The modern practice of adult education; From andragogy to
pedagogy. Cambridge Adult Education. Mentioned in Fidishun, D. circa (2005). Andragogy and technology: Integrating adult learning theory as we teach with technology. Found at http://www.lindenwood.edu/education/andragogy/andragogy/2011/Fidishun_2005.pdf