Medical school curricula are undergoing transformational change in response to calls for integrating content across courses and years to enable better retention and application and for individualizing learning to meet the diverse backgrounds and thus differing needs of students. To address the related teaching challenges, faculty can employ solid…

Based on multiple sources, this article concludes that, when learner-centered instructional strategies are used with doctoral students, these adult learners take charge of their individual and collective learning, become accountable for both, and enhance their ability to transfer learning to practice. The students studied skills of developed teams…

Online learning in higher education has increased substantially over the past five years with community colleges in the forefront of most of this growth. The California Community Colleges System, the nation's largest higher education system, has increased its online offerings among its 110 colleges. But student success rates for online learning…

Past research has indicated that different students learn differently. If we could identify into which group(s) students were more closely aligned, then we could help students learn more effectively. One such classification has been whether students were considered to be traditional or nontraditional, where traditional students were frequently…

This article describes an action research project in which the members of a basic English class for adults over 50 at a Colombian public university undertook the mission of discovering their potentialities as autonomous learners. By means of the reflective use of the language portfolio, the members of this course guided the planning and execution…

This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of major developments, trends, issues, and practices relative to self-direction and adult education and offers strategies that have direct application to practice. Its intended audiences are practitioners and professors, students, and researchers in adult education. Part I is an introduction. Chapter 1…

This paper discusses motivation of adult learners. The first section discusses the adult learner, including the concepts of andragogy and pedagogy, as well as student-centered learning. The second section summarizes changing student demographics and predictions. The third section presents principles of adult learning. The fourth section covers…

This book presents a comprehensive survey and analysis of the concept of self-direction in learning. Part 1 (Chapters 1-3) distinguishes uses and meanings of the term self-direction and provides an historical introduction. Part 2 (Chapters 4-7) contains a more careful analysis of the four principal domains of self-direction: personal autonomy,…

This book describes the framework for an individualistic approach to learning--critical self-directed learning (SDL). A preface explains what is meant by "critical practice of SDL," describes educational streams that have fed into the concept, and situates the context within which the ideas about critical SDL developed. The order of the chapters…

Teaching adults should be different if adults learn differently than children do. Theories or perspectives on adult learning, such as andragogy, make a number of assertions about the characteristics of adults as learners. If there are indeed distinctive characteristics of adults, on which claims for the uniqueness and coherence of adult education…

This handbook provides Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA) tutors with a theoretical and attitudinal base from which to tutor, demonstrations and discussions of needed skills and approaches for tutoring, and opportunities to practice these skills. The newly expanded text emphasizes tutoring as a collaborative process, the learner-centered…

This paper discusses the development of a learning approach based on the unique needs of adult learners who are required to learn and use new information technologies. It establishes how the "Inquisitivism" learning approach has evolved from a synthesis of key cognitive learning theories into one cohesive approach and how the…

The question of how adult educators can make their teaching of adults more effective is explored in the context of recent work on adult lifelong learning. The following are among the topics discussed: (1) modes of adult education and the shift in focus from adult education to lifelong learning; (2) the contract between adult student and adult…

Using adult learning theory, this quasi-experimental study, involving a convenience sample of senior student nurses (n=13) enrolled in an Interactive Television (ITV) Course at East Tennessee State University, evaluated the perceived importance of engaged learning activities used. Subjects completed pre-test, post-test, and reflective papers.…

Education has traditionally been seen as a pedagogic relationship between teacher and learner. Although andragogy has provided many useful approaches for improving educational methodology and has been accepted almost universally, it still has connotations of a teacher-learner relationship. Some have argued that the rapid rate of change in society…