Serendipity35

PEDAGOGY is a a term I hear used by teachers, especially in the writing of reports & grants and in making presentations at conferences. I have found that since moving from the world of K-12 education (where all teachers have at least a general knowledge of educational theories and are required to attend professional development workshops on new techniques) to higher education, that professors are hesitant to talk about (some even hesitate at the pronunciation of the word) pedagogy.

Pedagogy literally means "leading children." Andragogy comes much later and was a term coined to refer to the art/science of teaching adults.

Malcolm Knowles and others theorized that methods used to teach children are often not the most effective ways of teaching adults. In his The Modern Practice of Adult Education, Knowles defines andragogy as "an emerging technology for adult learning."

His four andragogical assumptions are that adults:

1) move from dependency to self-directedness

2) draw upon their reservoir of experience for learning

3) are ready to learn when they assume new roles

4) want to solve problems and apply new knowledge immediately.

Adults over 21 are the fastest-growing segment of today’s "undergraduates," especially in distance and online education. That would seem to indicate that we should all be considering the implications of andragogy in our teaching.

Although originally andragogy was seen as "pedagogy for adults", I now find theorists looking at it as an alternative to pedagogy. By this they mean that andragogy can be used as a learner-focused approach for teaching people of all ages. The contrast is then that pedagogy can be seen as a "teacher-centered or directive" learning, and andragogy as "learner-centered/directed" learning.

What considerations might we make in designing courses for audiences that we consider to be adults? What considerations might we make if we want our course to be more learner centered?
From the educational theory, I have sifted out these conditions.

I agree that adults learn best when:

• they feel a need to learn the content
• they have some input into what, why, and how they learn
• the learning’s materials & methods have a meaningful relationship to the learner’s past experience
• and their own experiences are used as a learning resource
• what is to be learned relates to the individual’s current life situation
• they have as much autonomy as possible
• anxiety is minimized
• freedom to experiment
• their learning styles are taken into account
• a cooperative learning climate
• opportunities for mutual planning
• the teacher can diagnose learner needs & interests and then formulate learning objectives based on that
• they are given clear sequential activities for achieving the objectives

There are certainly things in that list that would benefit students of any age (learning styles, for example) but other items (life experience; input) do sound like more important considerations for the adult learner.

I suppose that one reason all this is coming back into my focus is that I'm preparing a new graduate course for next semester and I know I'll be teaching students who are older, working in the field - and I'll be teaching them online.