013332
Subject Lecturer: Bob Pithers
Date Due: Tuesday, January 15, 2005
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Assessment Task 2 |
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p. 1 |
Cover Page |
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p. 2-4 |
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p. 4 |
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BASIC PRINCIPLES OF ADULT EDUCATION
Education,
simply defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), as “organized and sustained instruction designed to
communicate a combination of knowledge, skills and understanding valuable for
all the activities of life”, suggesting it is a lengthy, continuous process.
Adult Education specifies the learner should be an adult, and can be divided
into two groups according to the focus:
1.
those which focus mainly on
the perspective of the organization providing education or training; and
2.
those which are more
concerned with the perspective of the individual learner.
It
affects the psychological mind of the learners, however, both concerning about
the NEEDs of the learners. Presumably, adults are self-directed, with a higher
ability to discover and focus on the key problem, and they can transform
learning to practice.
Therefore,
adult education are more flexible in terms of pedagogy, the flexibility can be
defined by the followings (the former Further Education Unit, (FEU) United
Kingdom 1984):
1.
aims and content of
learning,
2.
the characteristics and
stage of development of the learner on entry,
3.
the mode of learning,
4.
the resources available for
training,
5.
mode of attendance,
6.
pace of learning,
7.
interactions with others
and methods of assessment.
The
aims and content are supposed to be designed specifically for the NEEDs of the
learners or the institutions. As adult learners usually have their own target
in joining educational programs, they have expectations on programs.
Besides,
the mode of attendance and pace of learning should be flexible enough to fit
learners’ time schedule. It is because adult learners have jobs and may not be
able to achieve 100% attendance, thus the pace of learning for individual in
classes would be different. In adult education, interactions with others by
whatever channel is more important than attending lectures, therefore, adult
education is usually characterized by:
1.
plenty of resources which
can be accessed through various channels;
2.
a few lectures but students
are encouraged to form study groups and communicate in their own ways;
3.
clearly stated content,
assessment and its deadline, so that students can set their own pace.
Among
all dimensions, experimental learning and practices should be highlighted in
adult education. As adult possess considerable knowledge and/or skills,
learning by a practical and interactive approach can stimulate learners to
think, to explore, to develop and to apply ideas with the use of existing
knowledge base.
DO ADULTS LEARN DIFFERENTLY FROM CHILDREN? WHY OR WHY
NOT?
This
is not to discuss the difference between adult education and children education,
but to discuss the learning process itself, whether it is different between
adults and children.
Learning,
by Kolb (Kolb 1984, p.38), is best conceived as a continuous process grounded
in experience, that this process requires the resolution of conflicts between
different ways of looking at the world, that learning is an holistic process of
adaptation to the world, involves transactions between the learner and the
environment, the process of creating knowledge.
It
is assume that adult can make rational and coherent choices, because they have
been EXPERIENCING through years and keep building their knowledge base, that’s
why they should learn differently from children who have comparatively fewer
experiences.
Besides,
adults should have a higher self-control ability, in the sense of education
psychology, effective learning is directly links with emotion and motivation.
Learners
of second group (mentioned at the beginning of the essay) are usually joining
courses upon their free choices. They will have a stronger desire to learn,
which is quite different from children who always have no choices of what to
learn. Even the first group of adult learner are not volunteers, they can
concentrate on their practical needs and tried to obtain what they need in the
course.
But
sometimes, individual learners may be affected by past experience and opposed
to learn particular things. In this case, adults would have stronger bias than
children, and may have difficulties in transform the explicit motivation to
intrinsic motivation.
One
should always bear in mind that learning is never a maturation, it is a dynamic
change which may last for a life time. Therefore, adult education is somehow a continuum
of child education.
In
the discussion of whether adult and child learns differently, it is not easy to
give a definite answer. How a child being educated and what personal learning
experience his/her has would affect his/her learning attitude when he/she grow
up. However, no matter what, self-direction which is the issue of power and
control is always crucial in adult education.
1.
Educational Psychology: Developing Learners, 4th Edition. Ormrod, J.E (2003). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Merrill-Prentice Hall
2.
Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training 2nd Edition, Malcolm Tight, Routledge Falmer, Taylor
& Francis Group, LONDON AND NEW YORK
3.
Making Space : Merging Theory & Practice in Adult
Education. Contributor: Sheared,
Vanessa(Editor). Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated (2001)
4.
Skills Development in Higher Education and Employment. Neville Bennett, Elisabeth Dunne and Clive Carre, The
Society for Research into Higher Education, Open University Press Independent
International Publisher. (2000)
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