My Philosophy of Adult Education

            Since I first developed it during my internship in 1982, my philosophy of education has evolved surprisingly little. I noticed that each student learns in her or his own way. This makes it the teacher’s goal to individualize the material so the learner “gets it.”

            Then I was teaching general education English to tenth graders. During this time and the following two years with sophomores and seniors at an all-boys high school, practicing this philosophy meant working to present lessons various ways. Several intervening years of training adult learners for Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU, a Department of Energy training contractor) taught me that personalizing education is crucial at all age and ability levels. The related challenge became keeping the delivery fresh enough that those who “got it” three iterations ago gain even more insight from this varied reinforcement.

            This individualization is required by law in Special Education, which made me a great fit during my years as a preK-12 special education teacher and administrator.  But always being mindful of individualizing the learning process has improved my instruction of adult learners.  I had a boss at ORAU who was big on Malcolm Knowles at a time when I wasn’t yet convinced of the distinctions between pedagogy and andragogy.  My supervisor’s point was that although the adult training we were doing was in most cases required, underneath it all adult learners are there voluntarily and are generally more motivated by and involved in their own education.   What I’ve found in my two years of working as an adjunct professor at Strayer and two other colleges—and especially as an advisor and tutor to Strayer students—is that adults want to learn something that they can use to make a life change for the better. Unlike me, the majority of adult learners are not interested in knowledge for its own sake but view learning as a means to an end, not an end in itself.   Where my philosophy and that of my students does coincide is in the belief that adults bring a wealth of information and experiences to each learning situation.  I tend to teach with a lot of open ended questions, so my students can tie in their own experience with the topic under discussion.  I tend to individualize their evaluation as well, by offering a lot of options for assignments and using various assessment methods.  This helps adult learners emphasize their strengths while working on their weaker areas.

Dr. J. Romanczuk, 2/20/09