In the essay following I will be concentrating on the subject of Andragogy and how it has always been a cornerstone of adult education. Andragogy in a sense leads you down the path promoting individualism in learning and in turn allows the availability for each adult to find their own specific learning style. As we all know, each individual will not learn the exact same as another. In the following essay we will explore all there is to know of Andragogy.
The long standing debate of Andragogy is if adults and children learn differently and also if they should or should not be taught differently. To fully understand andragogy one must research into the different perspectives as I have done. For centuries it has been a well-known fact that adults learn each and every day sometimes without even realizing that they are taking in the information and retaining it. It wasn’t until the twentieth century the process of learning was even introduced to a systematic study. The basic question came to be can an adult human actually learn and retain knowledge or was the learning that was instilled as a child be the peak of their learning abilities.
So after the question was proposed and the research into the subject began so forth theories and findings began to come as well. Tests were ran much like testing older adults vs. younger adults and the result of this particular test was that in fact younger adults did learn better than the elder. This test came to be insufficient due to the older adults not attaining the same type of education as the younger adults. The gap in age difference and new material learned deemed the test irrelevant. The intelligence tests developed right around the same time as we saw before younger adults did better than ...
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... taking their critiques to its lack of focus and context in the education that happens.
In conclusion, my focus on Andragogy has given me information that I would have never known if I hadn’t taken interest in the subject. As an adult I realize that the motivation and interest in education is in fact a huge factor of Andragogy and I agree completely with the theory.
The debates and critiques on the subject may never go away and in essence I find that to be comforting because it goes to show that adult learning will not end. People are interested enough and concerned enough with the discussion of the theory that it drives the adult to be the adult learner that Andragogy points them out to be. So throughout centuries before and centuries to come the ever changing learning styles and adaptation to learning capabilities, Andragogy will continue as a world known theory.
Pedagogy is the passive trends from transfer of information from teachers to students, Andragogy is about active information seeking by the learner. Pedagogy assumes that students comes into the classroom with no life experiences to build on. Andragogy assumes that students have prior experiences that they can apply to the learning process. In Pedagogy teaching structure is subject-oriented, In Andragogy learning is less instructed and more relevant, relevance to real life issues are usually more essential using Andragogy as compared to Pedagogy. Pedagogy assumes that students have few internal motivations to learn and must rely on rewards and punishments. Andragogy assumes students have more internal motivations to learn. In Pedagogy students are dependent on teachers, In Andragogy students are more independent and responsible for their own learning. Pedagogy is more authoritarian model and Andragogy is more collaboratively learning model. In summary Pedagogy is more suitable for children in most cases and Andragogy is more suitable for adults in most
Intelligence has been commonly thought to decline as we get older, however this is a flawed belief. Countless individuals will argue that there are various cognitive processes that are associated with changes in the brain that do deteriorate with time, however there are also other brain areas that increase their activity in older age. I believe a person’s ability to perform certain tasks may become slower as they get older, but this doesn’t automatically mean that they are cognitively getting less intelligent. There are numerous ways in which intelligence can be defined, although it is commonly defined as general cognitive skills, this means that it is a mental ability involved in the capacity of learning, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, understanding, facts, meanings, etc. (Dictionary definition). However Raymond Cattell (1963) argued that ‘intelligence does not generally consist of only cognitive performance’. Cattell and Horns theory developed in 1966 and emphasises that intelligence is composed of a number of different abilities that interrelate to form the broad term of intelligence. The main two factors are crystallised and Fluid intelligence.
Recent information collected showing an increase to our IQs have many asking the question, are we smarting than our ancestors? Unlike our predecessors, we live in a time that poses a greater range of cognitive problems than our ancestors encountered, and as a result we've developed new cognitive skills and the kinds of brains that can deal with these problems. So in a way we are getting smarter throughout history, though it is widely debated if this is due to our environment or genes. Since IQ tests have been standardised many times over the last one hundred years, scientists have participants take a test designed for a previous age and record the results. What (Flynn, 1994) unearthed was that new test takers score much higher than those of the older generation. Flynn and his colleagues guessed that the difference in scores was due to improving modern environments. To them IQ is part heritable and part environmental- provide a child with opportunities to learn and they're likely to have a higher IQ later in
Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky spent their lives constructing theories to explain human growth and development. Both theorists are, today, considered leading contributors to the field of developmental psychology. The purpose of this paper is to explain how a better understanding of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories will provide you with a better understanding of how we ourselves learn and grow as students in today. This will be accomplished by summarizing, comparing,
What is andragogy? Andragogy consists of a theoretical model of six assumptions that was developed by Malcolm Knowles in order to “distinguish adult learning and adult education from other areas of education” (Mirriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007, p. 83). And so, andragogy might also be defined in terms of the efforts of “multiple researchers and scholars” (Henschke, 2011, p. 35) searching for a way to “establish andragogy as a proven theory and strong method for teaching adults” (Henschke, 2011, p. 35). But why is the topic of andragogy important for both adult learners and teachers? It is important because in order to effectively teach adult learners we must first “be cognizant of the differences which adult students bring to the classroom” (Schultz, 2012, p. 1) and to also understand that among adult learners, there exist “varying expectations and reasons for learning” (Schultz, 2012, p. 1). Andragogy is more¬over important to adult learners and teachers because both “learners and educators alike can use [it] to strengthen the learning transaction” (Mirriam et al., 2007, p. 84). With this brief definition of andragogy, along with the corresponding reason for its importance in mind, what now follows is what this paper is going to be about. The topic of this paper is an evaluation of whether or not the traditional learning environment is conducive to learning for adult learners as opposed to the andragogical environment. And the dual purpose hereof is to first briefly relate my own personal experience in a traditional learning context (under the heading of a ‘Traditional Learning Environment’), and then to reflect upon whether or not that traditional context (this time under the heading of ‘Andragogy Reflection’) i...
This essay is to consider and discuss how I might apply the theories of Malcolm Knowles, in my own current or future training work. The essay will include a brief biography on Malcolm Knowles, and his theory on adult education / learning andragogy, to include definitions of andragogy and pedagogy, which has been the mainstay of all education theory for hundreds of years.
Hiemstra, R., & Sisco, B. (1990). Moving from pedagogy to andragogy. Foundations of Adult Education: Critical and Contemporary Issues, Retrieved from http://www-distance.syr.edu/literature.html
One theorist that is relevant to this study is Malcolm Knowles’s theory of adult learning. Though Malcom Knowles may not be the first one to introduce adult learning, he was the one that introduced andragogy in North America. (McEwen and Wills 2014). Andragogy means adult learning. The core concept of Knowles’s Adult learning theory is to create a learning environment or awareness for adults to understand why they learn .Knowles
A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our experience. For some, any uncritically assimilated explanation by an authority figure will suffice. But in contemporary societies we must learn to make our own interpretations rather than act on the purposes, beliefs, judgments, and feelings of others. Facilitating such understandings is the cardinal goal of adult education. Transformative learning develops autonomous thinking. (Mezirow 1997, p. 5)
Andragogy, made famous in the United States by Malcom Knowles in 1967, is the art and science of teaching adult learners as opposed to pedagogy which is the art and science of teaching but not distinguishing what age group (Rachel, 2002). Knowles implemented andragogy through the use of a learning contract, in which learning objectives, strategies and resources, achievement, and methods for evaluation are all determined by both the learner and instructor (2002).
But I think in some classes, it has gotten worse. I think part of the problem might be teachers losing their passion for teaching. I may be wrong, but it seems that some teachers get the material they are supposed to teach, put it up on a PowerPoint for us to take notes, and then expect us to regurgitate it on a test. They do things like this instead of fun activities that really make us think and discover new things in our minds. Although this is just an assumption, this article really did make me think. I found that interesting because we are in the critical thinking unit and it is exactly what we are meant to do. We’re meant to think about things, analyze things, synthesize things, and then think about it all over again until we finally come to our own conclusion. I think that was the main point of Harris’s article. We discover our true feelings and knowledge when we search for them inside of our minds, and then we create something with our own unique ideas. Sydney J. Harris did a wonderful job on this article and I thoroughly enjoyed reading and then going into my own mind and writing about
Teaching the adult student is a great and unique responsibility; Andragogy preaches that teaching the adult learner takes a certain skill set and approach in order to be highly effective. The adult teaching theory and approach is based off the characteristics of the adult student. Andragogy views the adult learner as a very highly motivated student, a student ready and prepared to learn, and a student that comes to class with expectations of learning (Knowles 1984, pg12). With such a capable learner in the classroom the teacher must make the necessary adjustments. When teaching the adult learner, the teacher will have respect for their students and respect the fact that each student will have their own individual learning style. The teacher will also allow the adult student to experie...
Professor Ozuah mentioned that Edward C. Lindeman wrote lengthily about this subject of andragogy. Lindeman in 1926 stated that the way adults learned was by attacking the problem and thinking of ways to solve the situation not by what academic subject it fell under. Lindeman also stated that adults get self-gratification by solving a problem and coming up with a way to master the obstacles. (Ozuah) I do agree with both Professor Ozuah and Edward Lindeman. I know I feel better about my approach to teach when I watch my students use their intuition that the height of the building they just calculated with a protractor, straw, and tape measure doesn’t seem
Andragogy is the way adults learn, as opposed to pedagogy, the way children learn. The term was first introduced by Alexander Krapp in 1833. It was later popularized by Malcolm Knowles as he described his theory of adult learning. He had 6 theories as to how adults learn: 1. Learners need to know- Why am I learning this?
...at previously, sometimes in the midst of a discussion, people forget that there are two sides of a story and not everyone has to agree to yours. What we learn from our books or our studies is not what is necessarily important. What we learn from our peers and our professors is what’s important. Learning is more than absorbing fact, it is acquiring understanding, and it is being passionate about the material you are given. Each piece that we have read in class, and each comment that we make impacts a person no matter how little it seems. The education systems focuses too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning. However, this course felt like we were learning something instead trying to finish the curriculum. As Albert Einstein once said, “education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”.