Pedagogical Vs Andragogy

Malcolm Knowles was an American educator best known for his work on adult learning theory of Andragogy. (Pappas, 2013) The use of the term andragogy is a synonym of the work pedagogy, which refers to the theories and methods used to teach children. Knowles presented six characteristics of adult learners being self-motivation, self-directed, adult learner experience, readiness to learn, orientation to learning and relevance. (Pappas, 2013) (Keesee, n/a) Going more in-depth with these six characteristics, self-motivation and self-directed could be seen as one, adult learners are self-directed because of the multiple roles and responsibilities they may have in their lives. Adults often create their own schedules for education and become motivated

Training and development are perfect opportunities to expand knowledge, improve weaknesses, performance and overall employee satisfaction. While the benefits of training and development programs are positive, there are different learning approaches and techniques for each training situation. Below I will address whether pedagogical or andragogical will be the most effective for the following training

At the end of this course, there will be an evaluation in the form of a letter grade or point system to measure comprehension of the course material.

New EEOC Guidelines Seminar: This approach will follow similar guidelines as the sexual harassment seminar previously mentioned. Depending on the adult learner role, learning EEOC guidelines may come as a new responsibility overall resulting in a need for a mixture of an andragogy and pedagogy approach. The approach of pedagogy can be implemented into the seminar as Q&A to give the trainer and trainee time to elaborate on guidelines that are troubling.

Given these situations, it can be seen identifying pedagogical or andragogical training approaches are important factors when deciding training methods. Taking a pedagogical approach could result in wasted time and resources when an andragogy approach would have been more appropriate for the training subject. Nevertheless, taking an andragogy approach could lead to the same results and a longer process due to retraining. It is always best to analyze your potential crowd and decided what preparations are needed for training and