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This presentation is on andragogy and the adult learner. My name is Dr. Charlotte Cochran and I'm Associate Professor
and Associate Program Director for the Albright School of Education at City
University. I have been with City University since 2007 and I've also had 19 years of
experience in the field of education. I hold a PhD in Education Technology and
e-learning Northcentral University, an MEd. in Special Education from
Grand Canyon University and a BEd from Lakehead University in Canada and a Bachelor's degree in Physical Education from Brock University in Canada.
My copresenter, I'll have him introduce himself. Hi, I am Steve Brown. I'm also an associate program
director here at City University in the teacher certification program. I
supervise our performance-based masters in teaching program and
several other programs including our Tacoma region. I have been teaching for
City University for about a decade primarily in the school law area and in
between and before that I had a varied career like many of our CityU candidates
starting as a practicing lawyer in Seattle for 15 years, had my own mock
trial based on literature business that I ran, I was on the Seattle School Board, I was a
school teacher, school administrator in a couple different schools, and have been
here now at CityU full time for the last two years. So our topic as Charlotte
said, is andragogy and one of the things we want to make sure we do up
front here is distinguish that from what we often talk about is pedagogy.
And traditionally in pedagogy, students are dependent upon the teacher knowledge it's
a teacher centered classroom or style of teaching and learning. And andragogy
which is specifically design towards adults is different because there the learner's at the
center and it's the learner's own experiences that form the basis of
their learning. They tie into their experiences in order to give the course
and the content meaning. So Charlotte's gonna tell you a little bit about the
background and assumptions within andragogy. Thank you Steve, Knowles developed the theory of andragogy
and there are six assumptions outlined in andragogy. First of all, we have the learners
need to know. The second is the learner's self-concept. The third is the learner's prior experiences. Then the learner's
readiness to learn. Learner's orientation to learning and the learner's motivation. We'll
start with the first one, the learner's need to know. The learners, they need to know what it is that they're
going to be learning, what is the purpose of the assignment. As adults, understanding why
they're doing what they're doing
will help learners remain engaged in their learning which also ties into
their motivations to continue the learning process. And then there are some examples to go along with this. I'm
going to share some of those examples with you now if we were in our live
session we might be asking you to share examples first but I'll go ahead and
share some examples that we have. One of the biggest ones it'll carry through
some of the other assumptions is authentic case studies and you want to make sure
there are a lot of collaborative and reflective opportunities in which the
students or candidates themselves can talk about why they're learning what
they're doing and reflect upon it. Sometimes in these situations you get to
bigger ideas or higher
issues not only do you have to know it for legal reasons or because the course
syllabus says you should know it but because there are some ethical reasons or moral
reasons to be able to know it. And if you can tie into that for the candidates who are
adults they're much more likely to participate
Charlotte will go on and talk a little bit about assumption two. Assumption two is the learner's self-concept.
it's really giving the responsibility to the adult learners to make their own choices
for how they're going to be demonstrating their knowledge and
understanding of the concepts taught. This is one of the key predictors for
success. So, Charlotte and I both thought about examples of this in
the performance based masters in teaching program which we're involved in.
And sort of in the big picture
the idea is that rather than having specific assignments which candidates
must turn in at a specific time following specific design instead what
we do is focus on outcomes and it is up to the candidate to amass the evidence
in a form that they so choose, that will demonstrate that they understand, can apply, and
master the outcome that we are looking for. And that might be in a traditional paper,
an essay, could be in a podcast, could be in a PowerPoint presentation just like this
could be in something else that they devised. And then we also have learners
responsibility for their own choices go down to the granular. So traditional
class where you would have assignments due on such-and-such a date set by the
professor or instructor, performance based candidates, at the beginning of each course
create their own calendar. They set the timeline that they say they will follow
and communicate that to the instructor and then it's their responsibility to
try to meet that timeline. Let's go on to assumption three. Assumption number three is the
learner's prior experiences. This is really the part where the adult gets to share what
they have done and gone through. As opposed to children they come into the learning
environment, they haven't had many experiences, life experiences to draw upon
was probably being much more and they're interested in sharing those experiences
and tying them in with the material. They like to make that connection. Demonstrating that connection with the material will
also help them get meaning from the classroom content. Also allowing the
learners to have a discussion about their past experiences if it's relevant to the subject area
using various mediums will
engage them and help them also learn the material, Steve... In a sense the examples
are embedded in what Charlotte has already talked about, you want to have
ample opportunities for open sharing of personal experiences and the candidates ideas
sometimes this can be done in an actual discussion, sometimes it might be online
discussion board. Another great way to do it is in journals, sort of like diaries were
candidates share their thoughts and their background and their experiences.
Another way to get at this is to go after controversial topics where candidates
can talk about their own experiences with that and then if you wanted some
specifics for example in any kind of education class or classroom management class
ask for example people who want to become teachers what were their own
experiences with teachers, what are teachers that really encourage them, that inspired them
and what was it about those teachers or even for example the school law class to
demystify it a little bit ask the people in the class to talk about their own
experiences with the law and how they might make them interested in the topic or might be scared
about the topic, so then there can be adjustments that are made. Let's move to assumption
number four. Assumption number four is learner's readiness to learn, it's really about meeting them where they are
as an instructor. As an instructor you want to find out how much experience they have in the past, what
they have already been taught or learned. So, aligning their experiences with developmental concepts is
really important in this area
and there are a few ways that we can do this with the learners. Again, liberal use of
discussion questions where candidates don't just put up something but interact
with each other and this can be done online quite easily by setting it up in
a structured manner. The other way a little bit like journals is to allow
opportunities for reflection but in this particular case when you're talking
about the learners readiness to learn you want to have both reflection on what's
happened to them in the past,
reflection on how they're feeling now, and also forward-looking thinking and reflecting upon
what they will be like in the future how ready they will be to take this
information and apply it. And interestingly enough, they can use that to do actual planning in
our case when they become classroom teachers themselves. Assumption five.
Assumption five is the learner's orientation to learning.
Adult learners really need to see the value of what they're learning. They're thinking in their head,
how can the information being shared, be applied to what I'm doing.
It's a 'what's in it for me' type of situation.
And how the instructor shares this can be very important for the adult learner.
And there are some examples for how to do this.
And I'm going to talk about the examples, in doing so
so I'll apologize if we're having any audio interference but you can see from
our point where we are so here you really want to focus on task based
activities and team problem solving. One of the reasons you want to do this is to
play on the strengths of the people involved themselves of the adults. When you're in a group
and have a group project, you tend to move to areas where you're likely to be successful and obviously our adult
learners have had plenty of chances to be successful and I suppose also to fail
and this would allow them by working in teams and on problem-solving to maybe move away
from some of those areas where they're more likely to fail or at least
to choose themselves to reslay the dragon and try to overcome a place where they've failed before in
this safer environment. Case analysis is
another opportunity in which to be able to do that. And the final assumption
assumption number six. Assumption number six is the learner's motivation to learn.
Many students who come to City University
come so as an adult learner who have
lives outside of CityU courses for example.
They're married, they have children, they may have full time jobs.
And learners such as these, are intrinsically motivated to learn.
And in order to address their motivation, we need to ensure that they are actively participating. And the previous assumptions that we've discussed
all tie in to motivating the adult learner. And there are several ways we can try to help motivate the adult learner which Steve will go into.
There's sort of the more obvious ways, like games, where the
adult learners actually have to use their tactile abilities or move quickly to be able to solve
problems and they can't do it unless they are actively involved in the learning.
Once again, case studies are really good here because they're a chance to
actually solve a real problem and our candidates are more likely to have
points of views and of course tying into social media is another great way
everybody can get involved with that fairly easily and just a personal
observation for me one of the reasons I enjoy teaching is by actually teaching
and having to be actively involved I learn more. I would much rather teach a
class than be sitting inside a class as a student. So it does work it ties in to my
desire for active motivation. Now I'm going to do something here that's not really very
nice because we've been having a little audio problems the last two minutes
with Charlotte which is I'm just gonna sum up a couple reflective questions
that we have for you for those of you who are watching this way you'll have the
opportunity to perhaps answer one of these two questions on the discussion board. So here are
our questions: one, is for your role as an educator and to think and reflect about
classes that you have recently taught or plan to teach, how could you apply one
or more of the six assumptions underlying andragogy to those classes
and how will that improve them.
Second one is going to something that Charlene I couldn't get away from as we
did this which was application of andragogical assumptions in all kinds of
interactions with young adults in schools, in life, and family. Think about
it, is
andragogy really the way to teach adults or is it perhaps the way to
teach all people. So think about that, I'll thank
you all for listening and watching Charlotte thank you, even though your
voice is gonna come in a little odd here so thanks everyone and we appreciate
your staying with us.