Photograph taken in Honduras, CA and Contributed by Fernando Carranza
The Road Less Traveled by: The Pedagogic Educator vs. the Andragogical Instructor By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Thursday, September 22, 2016 Post 295
At this point of my teaching 20-year-old teaching career in higher education, I am still very uncertain of what it is actually believed by many of my colleagues at the private university setting where I have been working for the last 18 years of my faculty member life. Don’t take me wrong since I am not saying that my partners are now knowledgeable of what a pedagogic or Andragogical educator is and how they teach, but what is not clear to me is how teaching, and in turn –learning-, is taking place in the classrooms and in all courses, especially the ones at night, where the Working adult learners abound? Are colleagues of mine still sticking to pedagogic principles or walking the Andragogical less-traveled path in education?
Understanding that as instructors we can find traditional students in class as well as working adult students (WASs), professors must understand that both types of learners are coming with different expectations to their classrooms. How content, success, learning demands, dependence for learning, construction of learning, application of what is learned, learning organization, and motivation manifest in the two types of students needs to be carefully thought of and proper actions need to be chosen to satisfy both types of learners in the construction of their knowledge, skills, and competences. And when we faculty members analyze the principles of horizontality and participation for WASs, we also need to make decisions to benefit both kinds of students co-existing in our teaching scenarios as well. Once, when talking about teaching scenarios, Malcolm Knowles (1984) stated that the definitions of Andragogy, pedagogy and Andragogy are not excluding one another: "These definitions do not imply that children should be taught pedagogically and adults andragogically. Both terms only make a distinction between two sets of concepts about the students; the educator who adopts one of these groups of concepts will teach pedagogically, whether he/she works with children or with adults; and the one who adopts the other group will do so andragogically, whether the students are adults or children" (Knowles, 1984). The importance behind Knowles’s explanation is that comprehending that learners such as WASs come to the classroom better equipped with lots of experience from the marketplace and jobs than traditional learners. And though traditional students may be lacking all this (workplace-related) schemata that can allow them to see their learning differently and helping them go in different directions while making them construct their own learning, they can also profit from their WASs
counterparts. Learning can be more engaging and fun if the less-traveled road is walked by these two types of individuals. To have a better understanding of both teaching and learning scenarios, here you are presented with a chart that typifies pedagogy, Andragogy, and where both educational theories overlap. Several learning features are analyzed and hopefully you can come up with more overlapping areas that can help you and peers see the importance of accepting the challenge of teaching WASs along with traditional learners.
Content Success
Learning Demands
Dependence for Learning
Construction of Learning
Application Learning
Pedagogic Educator Andragogical Educator Pedagogy Overlapping Area Andragogy Instructor decides on Objectives for The WAS decides on what content is content are stated what s/he wants to learned. as learning goals. study. To succeed what the Academic success To succeed the WAS teacher provides is is part of both needs to know more enough. types of students. than the instructor. WASs are interested The learner is not Learning takes in learning beyond interested in learning place in both course content and beyond the course learning situations. what instructor boundaries. teaches. Information for The learner is an The students depend learning is autonomous person. on the instructor’s processed with the Learning depends on teaching and help of the his/her own information. instructor. experience and info. Teaching and Teaching and Learning is built to learning move learning move develop skills and around answers and around questions and competencies. finished products. on-going processes. Learning and What is learned is Learning and knowledge is stored meant to be knowledge is ready to be applied later on applied in the job to be applied in a job in a job. market. immediately. Learning is organized A behaviorist Learning is organized
Organization around content. Extrinsically Motivation motivated to succeed.
Horizontality
Participation
paradigm is applied for learning organization. Motivation plays a central role in learning.
around problems. Intrinsically motivate to succeed. WASs assume their learning process in a self-directed and selfcontrolled way. WASs’ maturity and experience stand out in their construction of learning. The adult learners experience critical activity, active intervention, interaction, information flow, experience confrontation and dialogue to be put into practice.
To understand the principles of horizontality and participation in Andragogy and directly linked to WASs, I would like to share –at this point- two different situations I faced at work with a working adult students\, which I think are
wonderful examples that can be used for some good reflective teaching: At the higher institution where I work, I often have learners who have been working as English teachers empirically for years. Last term I had this 45-year-old gentleman who had been working for over 15 years as an educator. In class discussions and during my lectures, his interventions went beyond the textbook but into his experiences and his maturity as a seasoned language instructor who was simply lacking his teaching degree. These are beyond any reasonable doubt
horizontality in action and its fullest expression. My student assumed his learning process in a self-directed and self-controlled way; his maturity and experience stood out in his construction of learning and how the new information could be incorporated to his future teaching to better work in his high school. No doubt my student demonstrated his horizontality predisposition in class, but also showed his active and meaningful participation. His level of critical thinking, active intervention, dialogue, interaction with peers and me, the instructor, stood out from the crowd of neophytes intending to digest information to become competent educators in the future. My male student showed his horizontality and participation that increased his expectations for learning beyond the course boundaries and the minimum requested in course outlines at our university. To sum up, having a good understanding of what a WAS is can help any faculty member in many different ways as stated in the chart shared in this blog post to travel the teaching road less traveled by. There are overlapping areas where the traditional learner and the WAS have a similar educational orientation, but there are other areas that are not the same at all and deserve the instructor’s attention. And when one gets to the horizontality and participation principles, these two kinds of learners can be quite different and both need to be taken care in class to guide them towards learning. Reference Knowles, M. (1984). The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (3rd Ed.). Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing.