Adult Learning: Key Concepts and Theories

Posted on Mar 3, 2025 in Primary Education

Week 1: Introduction to Adult Learning

The Social Context of Adult Learning

• Globalization
• The Knowledge Society
• Technology
• Changing Demographics

Six Assumptions of Andragogy (Adult Learning)

• Adult learners are more independent.
• Adult learners are more experienced.
• Adult learners are ready to learn what is needed (for their development/social role).
• Adult learners are more problem-oriented and have a greater need to apply learning.
• Adult learners are more driven by internal motivation.
• Adult learners need to know the reason for learning something.

Andragogy vs. Pedagogy

Age: Adults vs. Children

Learning/Instruction: Partially or Completely Self-Directed

Content: Strong focus on individual learner goals

Motivation: Primarily intrinsic – internal desire

Life Experiences: Many life experiences to build upon

Week 2: Self-Directed Learning

What is Self-Directed Learning?

• A personal attribute: Being self-directed and autonomous in learning.
• A process: A way of organizing instruction; a learning approach, controlled by the learner.

Definition of Self-Directed Learning

The learner determines, or is involved in determining, learning needs, learning goals, learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. It entails individuals taking initiative and responsibility for their own learning.

Dimensions of Self-Directed Learning

Educator Control: Learners’ personal responsibility in the teaching-learning process.

Learning Autonomy: Learners’ personal responsibility in their own thoughts and actions.

Knowles’ Six Steps of Self-Directed Learning

• Climate Setting
• Diagnosing learning needs
• Formulating learning goals
• Identifying resources
• Implementing appropriate strategies
• Evaluating learning outcomes

Four Types of Self-Directed Learning Projects

• Induced: Mandated by an authority.
• Synergetic: Optional and inspired by an opportunity/availability.
• Voluntary
• Scanning: Ongoing process of searching for new learning.

Four Goals that Motivate Self-Directed Learning

• Gain knowledge or develop a skill.
• Become more self-directed in learning.
• Inspire transformational learning.
• Emancipatory (support social justice and take political action).

Brockett’s Ten Myths of Self-Directed Learning

• All or nothing concept.
• Learning in isolation.
• Best approach for adults.
• Limited primarily to white, middle-class adults.
• Not worth the time it takes.
• Limited primarily to reading and writing.
• An easy way out for teachers.
• Limited primarily to free and democratic contexts.
• Just another adult education fad.
• Will erode the quality of institutional programs.

The Process of SDL

• SDL pre-planning is not common.
• Often, environment and circumstances determine SDL.
• SDL doesn’t occur in a linear and lock-step formation.
• SDL is tied to person, process, and context.

Context of SDL

• Psychological
• Cultural
• Economic
• Political
• Social

Critiques for SDL

• Desire for SDL
• Readiness
• Cultural Context

Week 3: Transformative Learning

What is Transformative Learning?

• Transformative learning shapes people; they are different afterward, in ways both they and others can recognize.
• Changing how we know.
• A process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide actions.

Theories of Transformative Learning

• Rational Process: It is a rational, critical, and cognitive process that requires thinking, reflection, questioning, and examination of one’s assumptions.
• Emotional Process: The process of accessing the unconscious world and incorporating it into our conscious being, our ego.
• Social Change Process: To challenge and transform oppressive structures in society.

Mezirow’s Updated Theory of Transformative Learning

• Conducted more research and acknowledged that emotions, intuition, context, and relationships play a role in the transformative learning process – but still secondary to critical cognitive aspects.
• Clarified the notion of reflection:
  • Content Reflection: What did they tell me?
  • Process Reflection: Why did they tell me that?
  • Premise Reflection: Why is there a pattern of them telling me such things?

Emotional and Spiritual Dimensions

• Soul Work: Feelings
• Spirituality and Culture
• One’s cultural and spiritual identity is challenged by an experience or a contradiction between beliefs and practice.
• One’s cultural and spiritual identity is expanded through engagement experiences that are intellectual, relational, and reflective.
• A better understanding of one’s role in the world.

Transformative Learning as Social Change

• TL as a way to bring in positive social changes to overturn/weaken the system of oppression.
• It involves dialogue.
• It involves community-based approaches.
• Critical theory is an important component.

Comparing the Theories of Transformative Learning

Sites of Transformative Learning

• Community
• Individual
• Classroom & Online
• Workplace

Promoting and Evaluating Transformative Learning

Promoting TL:

• Foster critical thinking, dialogue, and ongoing reflection.
• Use less academically traditional methods -> storytelling, interviews, artwork, literature, etc.
• Provide an inclusive, open, and safe space.

Evaluating TL:

• Self-evaluation, journals, metaphor analysis, conceptual mapping, arts-based techniques.

Critiques of TL and Some Questions/Dilemmas

• Is TL a separate experience from the everyday learning process?
• Is TL always towards positive social change?
• Thinking of our biases, what are the potential ethical issues we may face as educators?

Week 4: Experiential Learning

What is Experiential Learning?

• Aristotle: All knowledge and theory need to be tested in the real world of our everyday experience.
• Dewey: Learning is a lifelong process involving applying and adapting previous experience to new situations (the principle of continuity & pragmatic) – educative vs. mis-educative.
• Linderman: The whole of life is learning; we learn as we live and experience – experience is the adult learner’s living textbook.
• Knowles: Adults accumulate a growing reservoir of experience, which is a rich resource for learning – Greater experience may have potential negative effects.

Tennant and Pogson’s Experiential Learning Model: Experience as an Instruction Tool

Four Levels of incorporating experience into instruction:

• Prior Experience
• Current Experience
• New Experience
• Learning from experience (critical examination of prior experience)

Fenwick’s Five Possible Ways to Conceptualize EL: A Philosophical Lens

• Constructivist Perspective: Learning is the construction of meaning through engaging in and reflecting upon experience.
• Situative Perspective: Knowing or learning occurs in doing or in practice.
• Psychoanalytic Perspective: Our unconscious can interfere or conflict with our conscious desires and affect our learning.
• Critical and Cultural Perspective: Dominant norms of experience are critically questioned and resisted.
• Ecological Perspective: The continuous improvisation of alternate actions and responses to new possibilities and changing circumstances that emerge, undertaken by the system’s parts.

Reflective Practice or Practice-Based Learning

• Learning that is acquired through reflection.
• Reflection on Action vs. Reflection in Action.
• Reflection on One’s espoused theories vs. one’s theories in use.

Situated Cognition or Conceptual Learning

• Acknowledging the importance of where the learning occurs; that is, the context itself shapes the learning.
• Instruction takes place within the context, hands-on.
• Instructional strategy solidly grounded in the situated cognition framework (e.g., apprenticeship).

Communities of Practice

• Mastery resides not in the master but in the organization of the community of practice.
• Can you think of some communities of practice you are a member of?

Week 5: Adult Education and Digital Technology

What Does Distance Learning Mean?

Learning taking place across distance, not in a traditional classroom.

Types:

• Correspondence courses through regular mail.
• CD-ROM Courses: recorded content.
• Telecourses delivered via radio or TV broadcast.
• Online learning over the internet, offered synchronously and/or asynchronously.

The Technology/Digital Context

• People are digitally connected more than ever.
• For several reasons, there is a demand for e-learning.
• Higher Education
• Social Networking
• Online Learning Opportunities

Digital Divide

Difference in access to technology, the internet, and other tools of distance learning.

The digital divide today is not based significantly on race or gender. Instead, age, a lack of high school education, and having a low household income are the strongest negative predictors for internet use.

Is Distance Learning (especially e-learning) a Solution?

Distance learning, particularly in formal and non-formal formats, may be a means to increase equitable access and reduce barriers and accumulated advantages that have led to the educational divide.

Various Settings of Adult e-Learning

• Higher Education
• Social Networking
• Online Learning Opportunities

Navigating the Negative Aspects and Challenges of the Technology Context

Information Overload (explosion):

• Brain Fatigue
• Normalizing a non-realistic learning speed
• Loss of in-depth learning

Loss of Privacy

Language issues

Technology crimes:

• Identity theft, stalking, cyberbullying, cyber pornography, sexting, etc.

Helping Learners Become Savvy Customers of Online Learning

Our responsibility as educators is to help learners understand how to determine the accuracy, reliability, and validity of the information they see on the web.

Apply evaluative criteria to websites by finding out Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How:

• Who is responsible for creating this website?
• Why does a website exist?
• What information does the site seek to collect from you, and how will it be used?
• When was the website last updated?
• How does the site review and select information?

Finding reputable information:

• Look for reputable organizations.
• Check the purpose.
• Apply the who, why, what, where, when, and how guidelines.

Challenges Adult Learners Face in Online Learning

Internal Challenges:

• Management challenges
• Learning challenges
• Technical challenges

External Challenges:

• Job-related challenges
• Domestic challenges

Program-Related Challenges:

• Tutor-related challenges
• Institutional challenges

How Technology Changes Educators’ Roles

Revisit how we facilitate sense-making, coaching, and credentialing:

• Consider the use of learning apps.
• Explore game-based learning.
• Use learning analytics.
• Use accessibility features that technology offers (include the excluded).
• Let the learners lead (or co-lead).

Week 6: Critical Thinking and Problem-Based Learning