By Cindy Nebel

“Do adults learn differently?”

This has been a fundamental question that I have been asked time and time again. Much of what we know about learning and memory comes from research on students – college students (1,2), middle school students (3), etc. – but usually individuals who are in the formal education part of life. To generalize from these studies to someone mid-career, perhaps with grown children, who is choosing to engage in self-study; to say that we understand how you think because we know how teenagers think… is that reasonable?

This week I’m exploring the difference between pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching to children) and andragogy (the method and practice of teaching to adults). In particular, I’m going to analyze Knowles’ well-known framework for adult education (4) and compare it to what we know from the cognitive science literature about how people learn.

Let’s start with Knowles’ framework. Here are the components that Knowles claims make for successful adult education and how they differ from the instruction of children:

• Need to Know

  • Pedagogy: Learners only need to know what it takes to pass the class, not to apply it to their lives.

  • Andragogy: Learners need to know WHY they need to know the information.

• Self-Concept

  • Pedagogy: The learner is dependent.

  • Andragogy: The learner is a self-directed human who learns more when they have some control over their learning and don’t just sit back and wait to be taught.

• Role of Experience

  • Pedagogy: The learner’s experience doesn’t matter, only the teacher’s or textbook writer’s.

  • Andragogy: Adults have so much more experience in life that adults are much more diverse than students and therefore learn more from experiential (hands-on, active) learning techniques.

• Readiness to Learn

  • Pedagogy: Learners will be ready to learn if they want to pass the class.

  • Andragogy: Adults need just-in-time learning so that they are learning things they can use right away.

• Orientation to Learning

  • Pedagogy: Learners see their role as acquiring subject matter.

  • Andragogy: Adults see the purpose of learning as acquiring information about a task or problem-at-hand.

• Motivation to Learn

  • Pedagogy: Learners’ motivation is purely extrinsic – grades and approval are all that matter.

  • Andragogy: While adults do have some extrinsic motivation regarding promotions and the like, they also have intrinsic motivation to simply “be better”.

While the above are my words, they are very close to what is written in Knowles (1989). And, if I’m being honest, I’m really glad I wasn’t teaching in the pedagogical era that Knowles is referring to. This seems like a pretty pessimistic way of looking at education and a negative way of looking at our students!

So here’s my analysis of the difference between pedagogy and andragogy…

• Need to Know: Even though students “have” to be in class, they will still learn more if they understand why they are learning the material – that is, how it applies to their own lives. This is based on principles of elaboration and concrete examples.

• Self-Concept: Children and adults alike are self-directed beings and children will also learn more if they are invested in the learning and view themselves as having choice – one of the fundamental aspects of human motivation from social learning theory.

• Role of Experience: Regardless of age, the learner’s experience is paramount to learning. Whether educators are connection to learners via their experience with the cultural norms of childhood or on the basis of their organizational life experience, it is crucial to meet learners where they are in order to build on their existing knowledge… and children have existing knowledge.

• Readiness to Learn: Again, while students “have” to be in class, that doesn’t automatically make them “ready to learn”. As with adults, students will be more engaged with their learning if they see the purpose and are able to apply it immediately in their worlds.

• Orientation to Learning: While fundamentally, yes, the role of pedagogy is subject matter acquisition, that learning is enhanced when learners are able to mentally engage with the material in some way. However, there is also a difference here in novice and advanced learners. Any learner (adult or child) who is approaching material for the first time will be a novice, acquiring subject matter. But as that individual learns more, they will be able to grapple with the information, elaborate, and problem-solve. While adults in general have more knowledge than children, that is only true in certain domains and adults would likely have a similar orientation to children in domains in which they are novices.

• Motivation to Learn: While there is certainly extrinsic motivation built into our education systems, students will again be more engaged in the learning process if they are intrinsically motivated and interested in the material.

Now, it should be noted that Knowles himself recognized that this shouldn’t be considered a theory of adult learning but more a set of assumptions. And in reality, I think his assumptions about adult learners are pretty spot on. The problem is that he assumed that these things were not true of students.

From what I can tell (and from what others have shared on twitter, it seems as though pedagogy has shifted to look more and more like the andragogy that Knowles describes. The primary difference between child and adult learners? Their motivation to learn… sometimes. Children are put in classrooms and aren’t really given a choice about whether or not to be there, although when they do feel as though they have choice they will be more motivated to learn. Adults sometimes are choosing to learn. This is certainly true for adults coming back to school, but I would argue that most adults are put in formal or informal learning situations that they also aren’t choosing. Ever sat through an annoying PD session that had nothing to do with your role? Completed that annual training that required you to watch a bunch of online videos and take a quiz? How engaged were you in those learning situations?

There are some fundamental ideas in here about what motivates learners to be engaged and involved in their own learning, but those ideas are true for children and adults. What varies is their prior knowledge and the way in which their learning can apply to their environments.

Do adults learn differently? In some ways, yes, because their interests and environments are different than those of children. And yes, there are developmental differences between children and adults that might require various learning strategies to be tweaked or scaffolded (5), but those weren’t the differences that Knowles was referring to.

Bottom Line

Educators should know their learners, make content relevant to those individuals, give them choice in the learning process, and build on their prior knowledge – whether they are novices or experts in the domain at hand. These principles are true for learners of any age.

References:

(1) Roediger III, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological science, 17(3), 249-255.

(2) Karpicke, J. D., & Bauernschmidt, A. (2011). Spaced retrieval: absolute spacing enhances learning regardless of relative spacing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(5), 1250.

(3) McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger III, H. L. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: the effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(2), 399.

(4) Knowles, M. S. (1989). The making of an adult educator: An autobiographical journey. Jossey-Bass.

(5) Karpicke, J. D., Blunt, J. R., & Smith, M. A. (2016). Retrieval-based learning: Positive effects of retrieval practice in elementary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 350.