Unlocking Potential: Understanding Adult Learning Styles
Adult learning is a transformative process of continuing education beyond the traditional school years. It encompasses various avenues, from independent study to formal programs in trade schools, apprenticeships, colleges, and universities. It also includes acquiring new skills or delving into subjects driven by personal curiosity. Adult learning emphasizes helping learners understand the purpose behind what they are doing, providing hands-on experiences, and offering minimal direct instruction to encourage independent problem-solving.
The Foundations of Adult Learning: Andragogy
When considering education, it's easy to focus solely on children, but understanding the principles and challenges of adult learning is crucial for creating effective educational experiences. In the 1980s, Malcolm Knowles popularized the principles of andragogy, the practice of teaching adults, contrasting it with pedagogy, the practice of teaching children. According to andragogy theory, adult learners differ significantly from children in their motivation, the relevance of education to their lives, and how they apply their knowledge. Integrating these principles into lesson planning ensures content is tailored to their unique needs.
Principles of Adult Learning
Several core principles underpin effective adult learning:
- Self-Direction: Many adults naturally engage in self-directed learning, planning, executing, and evaluating their learning experiences independently.
- Experiential Learning: Adults are shaped by their experiences, and the best learning comes from making sense of those experiences. Adult learners benefit significantly from hands-on learning opportunities.
- Relevance: While some enjoy learning for its own sake, adult learners are more likely to engage in learning directly relevant to their lives. For instance, a certification course for job advancement should align with their current role or career aspirations.
- Engagement: Because neuroplasticity tends to decline with age, it is vital to engage multiple senses during instruction to enhance memory and comprehension.
- Repetition: Repetition is essential for adult learning. Practicing new skills in a supportive environment fosters confidence and helps learners transfer those abilities into real-world applications.
- Challenging Assumptions: Utilizing dilemmas and situations to challenge an adult learner’s assumptions and principles helps them guide their own development.
- Goal-Orientation: Learners with specific career or personal goals in mind will have a better experience as they pursue their degree programs. For example, if a student wants to learn Spanish before a trip to Mexico, they might have a specific goal to be conversational by a certain date.
Teaching Strategies for Adult Learners
Children and adults learn in fundamentally different ways, necessitating distinct teaching strategies that cater to adult learners' needs. These strategies often lead to transformative learning, where adults develop new perspectives. Children and adults learn in unique ways, so teaching methods should be tailored to suit adult learners. Adults draw on past experiences and existing knowledge to understand new concepts, rather than relying only on reading and memorization. With a more nuanced and advanced hierarchy of needs, adult learners place more value on intrinsic motivation and personal ownership of their learning.
Challenges Faced by Adult Learners
Understanding adult learning theory also means recognizing the common barriers adult learners face. For educators and educational institutions, being informed about the many challenges and theories behind effectively educating adults will only strengthen student outcomes and success.
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- Lack of Time: Many adults juggle full-time jobs, parenting responsibilities, and care for other dependents, leaving little room for academic pursuits. These demands can make it challenging to find consistent time for studying, attending classes, or completing assignments.
- Self-Doubt: Many adult learners feel they are too old to return to school or that their chance has passed. This can lead to hesitation, low confidence, and fear of failure. But education is valuable at any age, and learners with 5 or 50 years left in the workforce still deserve the opportunity to pursue their passions and build meaningful careers.
- Neuroplasticity: The human brain has neuroplasticity, the ability to form and reorganize neural connections, which supports learning and adaptation. This ability is stronger in younger people, making it easier for them to absorb new information and adjust to change. As we age, plasticity decreases, which can make it harder for adults to learn new concepts or adapt to unfamiliar environments. Still, these challenges aren't insurmountable.
- Financial Barriers: Younger learners often receive support from parents or family to help cover the cost of higher education. Adult learners, however, are usually financially independent and may be supporting a family or managing debt. Expenses like tuition, textbooks, and time away from work can create significant strain, making it harder to pursue a degree.
- Contradiction: Some of what adult learners encounter in their education journey may challenge or contradict their prior knowledge or beliefs. Embracing these shifts in worldview, opinions, or understanding requires openness and mental flexibility.
- Lack of Support: Earning a degree without a strong support system can feel overwhelming, especially for adult students balancing multiple responsibilities. Many may discover they lack the emotional or social support needed to manage the challenges of coursework and academic demands.
Despite these challenges, adult learners often bring determination, focus, and a strong sense of purpose to their education. Recognizing these obstacles is the first step in creating programs and support systems that help them thrive. Institutions that offer flexible schedules, mentorship, mental health resources, and financial guidance can make a meaningful difference.
Adult Learning Styles: Tailoring Education to the Individual
It’s been said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks (I can say that because I’d qualify as an “old dog”). That’s because adults do not learn the same way that children do. Children are like sponges, soaking up knowledge from everything they see, hear and do. As children, we didn’t have any barriers to learning. Everything was new and our primary focus in our work and play was to understand and make sense of the world around us. Over time, though, what we learned became - in and of itself - a barrier to new learning. Once we think we “get it” we stop trying to understand. Behavioral scientists have identified five primary ways that adults learn differently. 3) Adults must be able to access their own experiences when learning something new. 4) Adults need a purpose for learning. Effective managers, trainers, and coaches allow learners to have a voice in shaping the learning experience. Instead of telling a new employee what to work on, for example, a co-worker or manager should ask the new employee to self-select a focus area. Similarly, rather than telling an employee what went right and what went wrong on a recent project, an effective supervisor will ask questions to promote critical reflection. Rather than sharing your own experiences, when talking to adults who need to learn something, ask about others’ experiences for comparison. In order for training to be effective, it is imperative for the instructional design of a training program to cater to these learning needs of adults. Additionally, the benefits of the training should be communicated before, during and after training, with an emphasis on relevant outcomes. If you are conducting meetings, leading training, supervising others, presenting work products or simply hoping to share what you know with others, you can also improve your effectiveness by understanding that adults have a preferred learning style. Presenting information in a variety of ways can keep participants engaged by appealing to the six preferred learning styles or perceptual modalities of adults.
Understanding individual learning styles is crucial for effective adult education. Here's a breakdown of common learning styles:
- Visual: Visual learners benefit from seeing information presented in pictures, diagrams, and visual aids. For example, if they're learning about history, then maps and illustrations will help.
- Aural: Aural learners process information best by hearing it. Aural learners need to hear something so that it can be processed. They may prefer to read aloud if presented with written material. Lectures, videos, and recorded books are helpful.
- Print: Print learners process information by writing it down.
- Tactile: Tactile learners need to do something in order to learn it.
- Interactive: Interactive learners need to discuss learning concepts.
- Kinesthetic: Kinesthetic learners learn through movement. Kinesthetic learners learn through movement. Training exercises and role plays help. Do you learn better by doing something than by reading about it? If so, then you're a kinesthetic learner. You'll need do a task hands-on, rather than just listen to a lecture, in order to learn how to do it.
- Intrapersonal: As the title implies, an intrapersonal learner needs to process the information taught by themselves, rather than in a group.
- Interpersonal: On the opposite end of the spectrum are interpersonal learners. These students learn best in a group setting, as they use things like social cues and conversation in order to remember what they're being taught.
- Verbal/Linguistic: Words have power and meaning to you. You love to read and remember a good portion of what's in your textbooks.
- Logical: If you find that you need to break certain things down into steps in order to learn them properly, you're likely a logical learner.
At a minimum, it is useful for you to know your own preferred learning style. Your own preferences will influence your delivery method, and you should be aware that what you would consider to be effective won’t be equally effective with others. Knowing your style will help you consider mixing it up. It’s also a good practice, when feasible, to ask people what they prefer. If your workplace communication includes conveying your ideas to others, try to employ some of these techniques.
The Changing Landscape of Higher Education
Historically, traditional students - those between the ages of 18 and 22 - have far outnumbered older students. In recent years, however, that demographic has been changing rapidly. Adults over the age of 25 are enrolling in universities and colleges at an ever-increasing rate. The National Center for Education Statistics has projected that by 2020, 9.6 million adult learners will be enrolled in an institute of higher learning. This number is equivalent to 43 percent of the total campus population, an increase of approximately 3 percent from 2010. During the same period, students over the age of 35 are expected to increase from 17 percent to 19 percent. Some adult learners are enrolling for the first time. Others are returning to complete an interrupted education. Still others are pursuing advanced degrees. Their reasons for continuing their education also vary. They may be attempting to advance their careers or start a new one. For some, it is an opportunity to realize a long-abandoned dream or to find personal fulfillment. Others have already retired from one career and are ready to launch a second one. Whatever their motives, it is an inescapable fact that adult learners are different from traditional students. They have different motivations, life experiences, challenges and needs. Adult learners tend to be more self-motivated. They expect to receive a finite benefit in the near future. Traditional students often need to be motivated by external forces, such as the prospect of having their grades reduced for absenteeism or disappointing their parents if their grades are deficient. Traditional students frequently view the benefits of an education in terms that are much more vague, with the benefits not manifesting until some future, unspecified date. Adult learners have typically been in the workforce for a number of years. They have acquired knowledge on the job and through self-study. Traditional students, on the other hand, have little or no work experience, and they have usually enrolled in college directly following their graduation from high school. Thus, they have had little opportunity to learn from a mentor, acquire skills independently or learn from hands-on experiences. Most adult learners have family responsibilities and jobs that can create time constraints. They may have difficulty finding time to complete homework assignments or work on a group project. Some adult learners may need a university or college that is focused more on them than traditional students. Traditional students are typically unmarried and childless, not yet faced with the demands of aging parents and seldom hold full-time jobs. Their schedules are more flexible, making it easier to meet with groups or complete lengthy homework projects. Older students are often less tech-savvy than traditional students, so they may need more assistance with classwork that requires technical knowledge, spreadsheets or use of other newer apps. Emotionally, they need recognition for the knowledge they have acquired through their life experiences. They are goal-motivated, so they need unambiguous statements of what is expected from them. They also tend to respond positively to coursework that is relevant to them in their current situation. By contrast, traditional students typically require little or no assistance with technology. They assume that relevancy will become obvious at some future point and are not troubled by their inability to immediately apply what they learn. It is important to remember that there is no single style that applies to all individuals, whether they are traditional students or adult learners. For example, there are traditional students who are self-disciplined and self-motivated, and there are adult learners who have extensive experience with the latest technologies.
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