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Teaching Adults PDF

362 Pages·2010·5.61 MB·English
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Teaching Adults T Fourth Edition e “Alan Rogers’ Teaching Adultshas established itself as perhaps the a leading textbook in the field for both academics and for practitioners. c The merits of the book lie in the clarity of its exposition and in its h combination of theoretical discussion and practical advice… i n I recommend it wholeheartedly.” g PROFESSORW. JOHNMORGAN UNESCO CHAIROFTHEPOLITICALECONOMYOFEDUCATION, UNIVERSITYOFNOTTINGHAM, UK A d This bestselling book will help anyone who is engaged in teaching adults. Whether you are working with groups or individuals, in a formal or informal u setting, face-to-face or through blended learning, it will help you to develop a l t relationship with your student learners while increasing your understanding of s yourself as a teacher. The authors examine different aspects of teaching including: Teaching Adults • What is meant by adult learning and what are the main characteristics of F o adult learners? u • What is the nature of learning and how does theory relate to practice? r t • How do teachers plan learning, set goals and objectives and most h importantly how does a teacher know when learning has taken place? E d i Each chapter contains a series of activities to help you relate what you are t io ALAN ROGERS & NAOMI HORROCKS reading to your own experiences. n Key features of the new edition include: Fourth Edition • New research on unconscious and conscious learning R • Coverage of adult learning in formal and non-formal education programmes O • Fully updated and extended activities G • Opportunity for teachers to pause and reflect on their role as teachers E This popular book is valuable reading for experienced teachers who wish to R reflect on and improve their practice. It is also useful reading for those who are S new to teaching and workplace trainers. & H Alan Rogersholds a Special Professorship in Adult Education in the School of O Education at the University of Nottingham and an Honorary Professorial R Fellowship in the University of East Anglia, UK. He engages in research, R evaluation and training programmes overseas. O Naomi Horrocksis a freelance consultant in the further and higher education C sector, working for both national and K regional agencies on teacher education, S research and evaluation. She is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Lifelong Learning at UEA, UK. Cover design Hybert Design (cid:129)www.hybertdesign.com www.openup.co.uk BIBLIOGRAPHY i Teaching Adults Fourth Edition 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd ii 55//55//1100 11::5533::1144 PPMM ii TEACHING ADULTS 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd iiii 55//55//1100 11::5533::1155 PPMM BIBLIOGRAPHY iii Teaching Adults Fourth Edition Alan Rogers Naomi Horrocks Open University Press 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd iiiiii 55//55//1100 11::5533::1155 PPMM Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL6 2QL email: [email protected] world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA First published 1986 Reprinted 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 Second edition 1996 Reprinted 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Third edition 2002 Reprinted 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 (twice) First published in this fourth edition 2010 Copyright © Alan Rogers and Naomi Horrocks 2010 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978-0-33-523539-1 ISBN-10: 0-33-523539-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data applied for Typeset by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in the UK by Bell and Bain Ltd., Glasgow Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters and/or data that may be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to represent any real individual, company, product or event. 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd iivv 55//55//1100 11::5533::1155 PPMM BIBLIOGRAPHY v Contents Foreword viii Before you start xi 1 Teaching adults today – the context 1 From certainty to uncertainty 1 From defi cit to diversity and back again 1 From (adult) education to (lifelong) learning 5 Exploring the context of your teaching 10 Three main parties 13 Further reading 15 Appendix: Taxonomy 16 2 A contract to learn 17 Adult participation is voluntary and purposeful 17 A contract to learn 19 Making and interpreting the contract 24 Writing a contract of learning 35 Further reading 37 3 Perceptions of adult education 38 The search for understanding: adult education 38 Adult 44 Education 50 Adult education 60 Further reading 66 4 Adult students 67 Student profi les 67 Lifespan studies 70 General characteristics of adult student learners 79 Implications for the teacher of adults 92 Further reading 93 5 The nature of learning 95 Learning and change 96 Learner-based theories 99 Context-based theories 113 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd vv 55//55//1100 11::5533::1155 PPMM vi TEACHING ADULTS Knowledge-based theories 117 Process-based theories 119 Diversity of ways of learning 127 Further reading 128 6 From learning to teaching 129 Learning and life 129 Learning episodes 133 Two different kinds of learning 138 The uniqueness of adult learning 144 From learning to teaching 147 Further reading 155 Pause for thought 156 7 Aims, goals and objectives 158 Aims, goals and objectives in adult learning programmes 158 Levels of goals 163 Setting the goals 170 Widening the goals 180 Further reading 185 8 The adult learning group 186 The importance of groups in adult learning programmes 186 The nature of groups 188 Groups in adult education 195 Forming the group 200 The teacher and the group 201 Facing some problems in an adult learning group 205 Further reading 214 9 Roles and the teacher 215 Roles in adult learning groups 215 The roles of the teacher of adults 219 Resistance to change 231 Further reading 235 10 Teaching: content and methods 236 Curriculum 236 The relationship between content and methods 241 Content 243 Methods 252 Teaching – choosing content and methods 258 Further reading 262 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd vvii 55//55//1100 11::5533::1155 PPMM CONTENTS vii Pause for more thought 263 11 Blocks to learning 264 Identifying the problem 264 Pre-existing knowledge 268 Self-perception factors 272 Some sources of emotional diffi culty 277 Learning attitudes 281 Further reading 283 12 Evaluation 284 The importance of evaluation 285 Evaluate what? 293 How to evaluate 299 Practices 305 Teacher self-evaluation 306 The wider signifi cance of evaluation 306 Further reading 307 13 Participation 308 Participation as involvement in the process (active learning) 308 Participation as increasing control over the process 314 Participation as presence in teaching–learning programmes 319 The invisible teacher of adults 322 Further reading 323 Conclusion 324 Bibliography 327 Author index 340 Subject index 343 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd vviiii 55//55//1100 11::5533::1166 PPMM VIII TEACHING ADULTS Foreword: Using the Map for the Road Ahead Imagine that you are on a mountain side. The path behind and ahead of you changes all the time, sometimes going up steeply, sometimes going down, sometimes more gently undulating. The area is combed with paths, all occupied by individuals and groups of climbers. You have in your hand a map but it is a bit unreliable, for it was drawn by people who passed along this path some time before and the paths keep chang- ing as more and more people use them. Then your path and the path of some others coincide; for the next section of the road, some of the other walkers coalesce into a group and you meet up with them and for a short time travel together, exchanging experiences and insights. Then their path and yours separate and the group disperses, all along different tracks. That is teaching adults. For a relatively short time, you have met up with one or a group of adults, and for a time you will travel together, sharing insights and experiences. And this book is something of a map. Reading and using this book is only a part of your journey; there were journeys for you before and there will be journeys afterwards. But for a time you and your student learners can try to follow the map; then you will separate, though some may stay within hailing distance for a time. The aim of this book is to help you in the relationships within the learning group. Learning to teach adults is a matter of increasing your understanding not only of your subject but of yourself and of the learn- ing group and in this way to improve your practices. This book will help you to explore (again) your attitudes towards the student learners in your group. Looked at in this way, you can see that you do not need to motivate the participants in your travelling group to walk the walk – i.e. to learn; indeed, they do not need to learn how to learn for they are already learning all the time with enthusiasm and commitment, mostly through informal learning. But much of this learning will be unconscious, resulting in tacit funds of knowledge and skills, and even when they are conscious of it, as in a new job with its ‘I’m on a steep learning curve’, they may not regard that as ‘learning’. For them, infl uenced by what has been called ‘the empire of education’, ‘learning’ may be seen as the same as ‘being taught’. But your student learners may well need to learn how to study (which is only one form of learning). And they may well need to be motivated to 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd vviiiiii 55//55//1100 11::5533::1166 PPMM FOREWORD ix learn what you wish them to learn. For in today’s world, increasingly in adult education, there are adult student learners who do not wish to be there (we heard very recently of a large police training programme where the majority had been ‘required’ to be there when they wished to be back in their own locations – which made hard work for the training team!). The argument of this book is that if we can identify and understand something of this informal learning and use it in our teaching of adults, if we can help the participants to become more conscious of their exist- ing funds of knowledge and skills and draw on them, then our task of helping adults to learn something will become more effective. This is not, of course, easy; it will be much easier for us to regard the group as a whole as uniformly ignorant and needing our standardised inputs. That will make us feel good, superior, needed. But it is not teaching adults, people who are our equals; this is not horizontal but vertical learning. So that part of our journey at this stage is to re-examine ourselves, our attitudes towards the people we meet and work with for a time, our commitment to them, the confi dence we bring to the task. And then we need to re-examine our adult students. They too are in the middle of a journey; they too each have a past journey and will have their own future journeys, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Each of them brings his or her own experiences, their own insights and concerns, which they need to contribute to the common task. They, like us, will have a goal, the next staging post or milestone of their journey. What they learn while with us – both what they learn formally and what they learn informally through the programme – will literally ‘inform’ their future journeys. And this means that, whatever may be the formal circumstances in your adult learning context, the measures of success you choose for your group will be your own measures; they do not need to be only the formal assessments of the programme. And each of the participants will have their own intentions, their own different measures of success. Passing the examination or test (if there is one) and obtaining the certifi cate may well be important for some members of the group; but for others, the chief gain may well be ‘walking tall’, increased curiosity about the way ahead, increased confi dence to travel on – though for the one or two over-confi dent, it may perhaps be a reining in of expectations through wider horizons and better perspectives of the risks in front of them. This book provides an opportunity for you to look again at the goal(s) you have set before yourself as well as the route to get there; and also to look at the paths and destinations the student learners have set before themselves. Reading a map is not like reading a book. A map is consulted from time to time; it is explored, not in sequence. It is used again and again. So that reaching the end of this book will not be the end even of one 99778800333355223355339911__AA0011..iinndddd iixx 55//55//1100 11::5533::1166 PPMM

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This bestselling book will help anyone who is engaged in teaching adults. Whether you are working with groups or individuals, in a formal or informal setting, face-to-face or via distance learning channels, it will help you to develop a relationship with your student learners while increasing your u
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