Adults seek out learning for very different reasons in different contexts, and this book is intended to support adult educators' development in responding to this rich array. There is no single way to be an adult learner, and so it should not be surprising that there is no single way to be an adult educator. However, the authors believe that all…

A mid-career transition from public children's librarian to academic librarian revealed new pedagogical challenges that emerged when engaging adult learners. Initially feeling unprepared to teach credit-bearing courses, the author enrolled in a graduate program in Adult Education to gain the theoretical and practical tools needed for effective…

The aim of this paper is to introduce a correction into the notion of self-directed adult learning by way of conjoining it with philosophically elaborated notions of autonomy, self-reflectiveness, and maturity. The basic premise of this intervention is that in andragogical theorizing, learners' self-directedness ought not to be thought as obvious…

The purpose of this study was to make the teachers in a particular private night high school participate in a School Based Professional Development program for their needs in educational technologies and adult learning theory so that the effectiveness of teachers in Private Night High Schools could improve. This was a case study including…

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's work related to andragogy is insufficiently discussed in adult pedagogical literature, although most of his work deals with this field, if we employ his own definition of andragogy. This paper makes visible his role as an andragogical pioneer, and clarifies his understanding of andragogy and basic perspectives in his…

Which competences do professional adult educators need? This research note discusses the topic from a comparative perspective, finding that adult educators' required competences are wide-ranging, heterogeneous and complex. They are subject to context in terms of national and cultural environment as well as the kind of adult education concerned…

St. Clair (EJ1072357) provides a summary and lays out some of the important issues inherent in the broad strategies articulated in "Making Skills Everyone's Business: A Call to Transform Adult Learning in the United States" (MSEB) (United States Department of Education [USDoE], 2015) (see ED558793). In this commentary, JoAnn Weinberger…

Purpose: As two doctoral students and adult learners, the authors strongly believe that story telling can be a great tool for educators working with adult learners. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of how effective storytelling can be for adult learners. Design/methodology/approach: The approach of this paper is one of gathering…

This article centers on theories of adult learning methods and how they relate to the practice of using icebreakers in the adult classroom. While one's language is geared toward the adult learning world, one's experience has been that these practices also work well in a variety of classroom and group settings, both traditional and non-traditional,…

This paper examines the results of research into the learning experiences of a group of adult learners in a university preparation programme in a college of Technical and Further Education in Sydney, NSW, Australia. The research was conducted over a three year period by the author as a teacher-researcher and is grounded in the phenomenological…

While there may be similarities between adults and children in how they learn (such as language, interaction and communication), many writers argue that adult learners are different from child learners in a number of ways. This article aims to review how adults learn through examining one particular theory of adult learning. Two conflicting…

Malcolm S. Knowles stands as a giant catalyst at the juncture--past, present, and future--of andragogy (the art and science of helping adults learn) within the field of Adult Education and Human Resource Development. For more than 50 years until his death in 1997, Malcolm devoted his personal and professional life to exemplifying the theory and…

This article aims to continue the conversation initiated by Denis O'Sullivan in the 2008 issue of the "Adult Learner". O'Sullivan raises several important points about the nature of Irish adult education and the need to develop a rigorous theoretical basis for the authors' work. The authors wish to engage with O'Sullivan's observations…

Teaching adults is a specialist area. Current education policy defines adult learners as those over 19. However these days if one teaches in some parts of the further education sector one may find teaching students from age 14 upwards. Adult learners may be studying to improve their skills and qualifications for work, or to progress to further…

Drawing from Bloom's 1956 Taxonomy and Western theories on adult learning, the authors argue that adult teaching methods in China feature a teacher-centered, information-based and test-driven instructional format. An author-designed survey instrument called Lower-Order Thinking Skills and Higher-Order Thinking Skills (LOTSHOTS) was used to…