Understanding Adult Education and Training

Griff Foley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781865081472
• eBook ISBN: 9781000248258
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

'This is an impressive book that will be of wide interest to adult educators everywhere.Many of the book's contributors work at the University of Technology, Sydney - surely the world's pre-eminent institution for the study of adult learning, and the most open and generous location for debate. Its virtues are the book's.'

Alan Tuckett, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, UK

'I am happy to endorse this book enthusiastically as being appropriate for a North American audience of adult educators.Though it's an intentionally introductory survey, it never talks down to readers, never condescends. On the other hand, it's not so intenationally erudite that it collagpses into theoretical posturing; it stays firmly grounded in and connected to practice.'

Stephen Brookfield, University of St. Thomas, USA

Understanding Adult Education and Training offers a broad overview of the field for adult educators and workplace trainers. It introduces the keys issues, debates and theories in a way which is relevant to practice. Its aim is to deepen readers' understanding of adult learning and education so that they can be better practitioners.

Adult education is a diverse field so there is no single body of knowledge which is appropriate for all adult educators. Understanding Adult Education and Training introduces a wide range of formal theory from adult education and associated fields, and shows readers how they can use it their own circumstances.

The first edition of this book has become a standard reference for students and professionals in Australia. This edition is fully revised and updated for an international readership.

PART I
THE FOUNDATIONS

Introduction to Part I

Part I provides readers with an overview of issues and theory related to adult learners and the core areas of adult education practice: teaching, program development, and the evaluation of learning. It also offers readers an approach to understanding the complex and multifaceted nature of adult education and training. It is argued that it is fruitless to search for formulas, as there are no techniques or theories that provide foolproof results. Rather, understanding adult education and training is a never-ending process of coming to grips with complexity.

Chapter 1 provides a framewrork both for understanding the work of adult educators and for reading this book. All adult educators and trainers have cognitive frameworks which help them to make sense of their experience. Their frameworks are made up of ideas and theories which arise partly from their work experience (these we call ‘practical1 or ‘informal’ theories) and partly from their professional education and reading (these we call ‘formal’ theories). This chapter discusses the relationship of practical and formal theory in adult education and training. It also looks briefly at different schools of thought in adult education and training, and discusses the notion of the ‘paradigm’. This latter concept is an important means of understanding different theoretical and value positions in education, and is used on a number of occasions in the book.

Chapter 2 discusses ways of understanding the ‘raw material’ of adult education and training—the adult learner. Theorists have focused on two dimensions of adults’ capacities as learners—the intellectual and the personality/social. For many years studies in intellectual development were wedded to the construct of IQ, to dichotomies such as ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallised’ intelligence, and to cognitive stage theories. There has been a growing recognition of the narrowness of these ways of conceptualising intellectual development. There is now a developing body of data on such varied aspects of cognitive functioning as insight, practical intelligence, wisdom, creativity, tacit knowledge and expertise. Similarly, research on adult personality and social development has progressively moved away from theories that see adults moving through life stages towards a single-end point of ‘maturity’ or ‘psychological health’. Increasingly, adult psychological life is seen as diverse, complex and contextual.

Chapter 3 discusses writing about teaching. In this huge body of literature, we can detect three broad ways of understanding teaching: instrumental, interpretive, and critical. (For explanation of these terms, which are of central importance in reading the book, see chapters 1 and 18.) If we see teaching as instrumental activity, we are concerned with effectiveness: we want to know the most effective ways in which teachers can transmit knowledge, skills and values to students. We turn, then, to studies of what teachers and learners actually do in classrooms, and to practical teaching handbooks that suggest ways in which teachers might improve and expand their repertoire of teaching strategies. On the other hand, if we understand teaching as interpretive activity, we recognise that each person understands the world differently and has their own learning style and strategies. The interest, then, is in writing that can help us to understand these different interpretations and teach to them. Here we turn to cognitive and humanistic psychologies and what they tell us about such phenomena as learning styles and learning strategies, meaningful learning, the dynamics of learning groups, self-directed learning, adult learning principles and facilitating learning. But if we see teaching as critical activity, our focus is on teaching as an activity which takes place in a particular society at a particular time in history, in accordance with particular social interests and human values. Here we turn to the literatures of critical and feminist pedagogies and the poststructuralist critiques of these pedagogies; to critical thinking and popular education; to ethnographic studies of classroom relationships; to research which locates teaching and learning in their economic, political and cultural contexts; to accounts of teaching and learning in emancipatory social movements; to accounts of attempts to build democratic teacher-learner relationships; and to the rich tradition of adult education discussion groups.

Chapter 4 examines theory and literature related to program development, the deliberate production of learning experiences. It begins by discussing the diversity of adult education programs and of models of program development. Programs vary in their origins (e.g. in ideas, people, issues, fads, political and economic changes), the interests which drive them and the contexts in which they occur. In the vast literature of program development, four streams can be identified: a liberal focus on the importance of programs transmitting knowledge to learners; a behaviourist emphasis on learner performance and learning outcomes; a humanistic focus on the development of the learner as a whole person; and a radical emphasis on the contribution that education can make to developing learners’ ability to critique oppressive social practices and act in socially just ways. This chapter surveys the literatures associated with each of these traditions, paying particular attention to a number of theorists (Tyler, Houle, Knowles, Brookfield, Boone, Field, Rogers, Freire) and issues (needs analysis, program design, an ‘institutional’ model of program development, workplace training models, competency-based curriculum, experiential learning programs, and programs for critical thinking and social action).

Chapter 5 begins by pointing out that evaluation of learning processes and outcomes is an integral part of adult education and training. The origins of educational evaluation are then discussed and some major evaluation approaches surveyed: an objectives model, judgmental models, decision-making approaches, and outcomes models. The second part of the chapter outlines a comprehensive approach to evaluation which provides information about the objectives of a program, its effects or outcomes, the stakeholders or interest groups involved, ethical issues raised by the program, the coverage or reach of the program, and cost issues.

1
A framework for understanding adult learning and education

Griff Foley

This chapter provides a framework for understanding the work of adult educators and for reading the book. It begins by distinguishing between a model of professional education which assumes that practitioners need to be introduced to a body of ‘necessary knowledge’, and a model which assumes that practitioners are ‘practical theorists’ (i.e. that they continually construct their own understandings and explanations of what happens in their work). The concepts of practice, theory and theoretical frameworks are then examined. A distinction is made between adult educators’ informal and practical theories about their work and more formal theories of adult education. It is argued that adult educators and trainers need both sorts of theory. The chapter concludes by looking at three different ways of understanding adult education and training: as instrumental activity, as interpretive activity, and as critical activity.

TWO MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

For many years professional education in most fields, including education, was based on a ‘front-end loading’ model. In this approach, professionals were taught the knowiedge, skills and attitudes they were thought to need before they began to practise. The competent among these new professionals, it wras argued, would then apply in practical situations the theory they had been taught.

Experienced practitioners know that the actual world of practice does not work in this way. Real work situations are complex and fluid: they do not sit and wait for theories to be applied to them. As Donald Schon (1983), an American adult educator, pointed out in the early 1980s, we need a different model of professional education, one that focuses on the ways in which practitioners think and act in actual work situations. This ‘practitioner-centred’ model puts the practitioner and the complex contexts in which she works at the centre of analysis. It is this view of professional education which has been adopted in this book. The book will introduce readers to a lot of new knowledge about adult education and training. They will be invited to test this new knowledge against their existing understanding. For each reader, some of the new knowledge will be illuminating while other aspects of the book will be less helpful. Overall, however, the book is intended to help adult educators working in a diversity of settings to develop their understanding of their work.

This practitioner-centred model of professional education assumes that adult educators and other practitioners are active thinkers, or ‘practical theorists’, who are continually trying to make sense of their work. The model also assumes that adult educators and trainers—and others with an interest in adult education and training—are active readers. It is assumed that they will read critically, taking in what is of interest to them and discarding what is not. Underpinning these assumptions about how practitioners think and read is a particular view of practice and its relationship with theory. The rest of this chapter will elaborate on this perspective, because it provides both a framework for understanding the work of adult educators and a way of reading the book.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF THE BOOK

As already noted, this is a book about understanding adult learning and education. Because it treats such a diverse and complex field of human activity, it needs an organising principle, a coherent conceptual framework. The rest of this chapter outlines this framework, whose core concepts are: theory, practice, reflection, formal and informal theory, and paradigms.

PRACTICE AND THEORY

Adult educators do things, and they think about them. When they do things they are engaged in practice; when they are thinking about their practice they are reflecting and theorising.

Theory (systematic thought) and practice (systematic action) are tied together. One cannot exist without the other. But practitioners do not always act and think systematically. They often act and think rigidly and dogmatically. It is common, for example, for adult educators to have set value positions on teaching and favourite bundles of techniques, often acquired early in their careers and never subjected to rigorous evaluation. An important goal of this book is to encourage adult educators and trainers to critically examine their practice and theory and to develop frameworks for understanding and acting on their work. Readers will be encouraged to reflect on practice situations, and to theorise.

To theorise is to attempt to make connections between variables, to explain outcomes and to predict what w7ill happen if particular courses of action are taken in the future. Theorising can involve any or all of: solitary reflection, discussion with others, reading and writing. Theorising involves the application of concepts (i.e. systematic ideas) to experience. We can theorise well or badly: in ways which illuminate our experience and help us to act more effectively, or in ways which obscure connections and outcomes and lock us into ineffective action. In sum, theorising is something we inevitably do, and it is inevitably selective. In theorising we should endeavour to be as rigorous and comprehensive as possible, within the limitations of our competence and resources.

FRAMEWORKS

Each of us has a cognitive framework through which we understand the world. In our everyday lives we are bombarded with sense impressions. Our frameworks are filters, which allow us to make sense of what we experience. Our frameworks develop over the years—they change, or should change, as we have new experiences.

Frameworks are made up of analytical constructs that help us to summarise and systematise experience. Some examples of frequently used constructs are set out in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Examples of analytical constructs

Construct	Definition	Examples
Idea	Notion conceived in the mind, way of thinking, pattern, plan.	‘I have an idea. Let’s get Jack to administer the program next year.’
Concept	General notion, class of objects.	Social class, the adult learner
Theory	A supposition explaining something, based on evidence.	Adult learning principles, Kalb’s experiential learning theory
Stereotype	Fixed mental impression not based on empirical evidence.	Dole bludger
Prejudice	Preconceived, opinion, bias, against or in favour or a person or thing.	‘Students have to be led.’ ‘Aborigines are drunks and welfare bludgers.’

Developing your framework

To become more effective adult educators and trainers, we need to become more aware of and systematically develop our theoretical frameworks—the ways in which we understand and explain our work. We are usually so busy getting on with the job that we don’t have time to look at our theories. We need to give ourselves time to do this—to think creatively. We need to seek out and use concepts and theories that strengthen our practice. We also need to identify and allow for our stereotypes and prejudices.

Building a framework is a lifetime job. Because the world is so complex, no-one is ever able to say she/he understands it all. But some framew...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the editor
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I The Foundations
• Part II Coxntext and Change
• Part III Workplace Change and Learning
• Part IV Contemporary Issues
• Bibliography
• Subject index
• Name index