Module 1 table of contents

MODULE 1: THEORY

SECTION 1.4: FACILITATED LEARNING

In the following sections we will look at four main approaches to teaching that are currently guiding adult education. They are presented as distinct or separate types of learning, but like most things in life they overlap to some extent. Taken together, they represent what is commonly referred to as "facilitated learning."

SECTION 1.4.1: SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING

In the 1970's, Knowles and other educators such as Carl Rogers were beginning to promote the idea of that education needed to move away from a teacher-centred field in which directed learning was the approach of choice for a majority of educators, towards learner-centredness or facilitated learning. Supporters of this approach suggested that education should adjust to the needs and wants of learners rather than the other way around. From their perspective, teachers need to move out of role of "sage on the stage" to that of "guide on the side" in which learning becomes more of a collaborative affair between the teacher and student. Students are encouraged to become more involved or self-directing in their learning.

The notion of self-directedness in learning is based on a humanist philosophy, the underlying assumption of which is that education should focus on the development of the individual. (See http://www.fsu.edu/~adult-ed/jenny/philosophy.html for a summary of the major philosophical traditions in education.) As Barer-Stein and Draper (1988) suggest:

This approach focused on encouraging people to explore the depths of their feelings, building self-concept, and valuing human life. The goal was to maximize human potential, building on the innate goodness of the individual, with the support of empathetic teachers as facilitators and partners in learning …. This philosophy is especially evident in adult education programs today which value learning as a process and which encourage discussion and self-discovery (p. 61).

Thus, in a humanist perspective learners are seen quite differently from the notion of 'empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge' held by more traditional educators. Goldgrab (in Draper & Taylor, 1992, pp. 240-241) captures the essence of humanism in the musings of a tutor, "We see learners for what they have to give, their ideas as individuals, and for their life experience and common sense. It breaks down stereotypes of what a learner is in your mind. "

In self-directed learning then, the goal of education becomes more about process (development of critical thinking skills, growth as a person and citizen) than content (acquisition of subject-oriented knowledge/skills).

As we shall discuss in the next section, this emphasis on personal growth has been and continues to be the subject of an ongoing debate in the field of adult education.

Resources: For resources on self-directed learning, please click here.

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SECTION 1.4.2: TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

In the 1970's, Jack Mezirow suggested that the goal of adult educators must be to guide learners to transform; that is, literally to grow and mature intellectually and in turn, change as a person through critical reflection on one's assumptions, beliefs and values. The notion that learning results in varying degrees of change is not a problem for most adult educators. That adult education should strive to directly effect change at a personal level was a significant departure from traditional education in which such change was an indirect result of learning.

In directed learning then, change relates more to achieving technical competencies or mastering subject matter, and less to a change in one's perspective. In transformational learning, however, "…learners are encouraged to challenge, defend, and explain their beliefs, to assess evidence and reasons for these beliefs; and to judge arguments" (Grabove, 1997, p. 91), the ultimate goal of which is personal growth, independence, and independent thinking. As Mezirow (1997) writes, "the educator's responsibility is to help learners reach their objectives in such a way that they will function as more autonomous, socially responsible thinkers."

There has been and continues to be considerable debate among educators regarding the ethical implications of deliberately setting out to effect personal change in learners. What if learners don't want to grow? Lawrence Daloz, an adult educator in the United States, wrote about just such a student in "The Story of Gladys Who Refused to Grow." Daloz acted as a mentor and academic advisor to a woman named Gladys, a woman in her 60's who had returned to college to get a diploma after raising a family and running a business for most of her life. For the most part Gladys did well and was content with her course work, but she did not deal well with any requirement to think critically about her own beliefs and values, to identify her assumptions and challenge them. Gladys just wanted to finish her program and write a book about her experiences with running a business. She was not at all interested in reflecting on the meaning of these experiences, she simply wanted to recount them. Believing his role to be going beyond simply assisting Gladys with her courses, Daloz is baffled by her unwillingness to develop her critical thinking skills. However, he then has the opportunity to meet her family and he begins to see that she is caught up in a life that extends well beyond her education. And, her unwillingness to change relates to these relationships which would be threatened if she were to "transform" into a more independent thinker.

...change demands a complex kind of renegotiation of relationships among spouses, children, friends, parents, and teachers… Sometimes it is just plain simpler to stay right where they are, or at least to appear that way. That seems to be what Gladys chose to do (Daloz, 1988, p. 7).

Daloz chooses to set aside his "teacherly narcissism" and leave Gladys be although he continues to be bothered by the question of whether he actually failed her in the end.

Are our adult literacy students affected similarly by learning? As cited in Merriam and Caferella (1999), Fingeret (1983) investigated the relationships of low literacy adults and found that they developed extensive interpersonal relationships based on an exchange of goods and services that related to the individual's illiteracy. For example, in exchange for reading or writing something, the learner might babysit for the person helping him/her out with this. However, no longer needing to exchange babysitting for assistance with reading and writing tasks obviously changes the relationship. As Fingeret suggests, learning which decreases a learner's dependence on others can have the unintended result of isolating the learner from important sources of support.

Most educators agree that Mezirow's notion of transformational learning has made an important contribution to adult education by drawing attention to the benefits of fostering critical thinking skills. Whether or not personal growth should be a direct goal or the indirect consequence of learning, however, remains a cause of disagreement in the field.

Resources: For resources on transformational learning, click here.

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SECTION 1.4.3: EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

In the mid 1980's, David Kolb proposed that adult learning is more effective (i.e., processed at much deeper levels) when material is more directly and deeply experienced than passively received (e.g., the teacher lectures, the student writes notes). He developed what he called the "experiential learning cycle" in which there are four distinct stages of learning. While the cycle can start at any stage, all stages are required in order for students to learn effectively:

• Concrete Experience - active learning as opposed to passive receipt of knowledge (i.e., learn about something directly by being involved with the material rather than learning about it)

• Reflective Observation - refers to thinking critically about the experience.

• Abstract Conceptualization - linking the experience to the theory or concepts underlying it.

• Active Experimentation - testing out one's learning in new situations.

Taylor et al (2000, p. 24) offer the following example of a student who was able to transfer Kolb's model to his employment as a police officer:

In my most recent report about traffic conditions on a local street, I not only presented the facts about the collisions and enforcement activities, but I reflected on the previous attempts to solve the problem as well as the effects of those attempts. Having the ability now to generalize about the situation and the trends in traffic safety, I was able to identify new ideas and solutions to try and use to try and increase the level of traffic safety on this street. This process also allowed me to predict possible results, thus creating a sort of method of evaluation for further analysis in the future.

Experiential learning has come to be identified as "learning by doing" or "hands-on learning." However, this belies its complexity. Experiential learning goes beyond simply being more active physically. Rather, it is a matter of being more actively involved in one's learning overall; that is, more deeply processing knowledge/skills through experience, reflection, experimentation and application.

A key notion which experiential learning has served to highlight is that learning occurs in both formal (e.g., a university course) and informal situations (e.g., everyday life), As Bouchard (in Barer-Stein & Kompf, 2001) writes, "Experiential learning challenges the misconception that learning mostly occurs in formal environments such as classrooms, and replaces it with the notion that all learning is the result of experience, no matter where it occurs" (p. 177). This is particularly relevant to adult literacy learners in that typically, they prize formal education and undervalue the informal learning gained in their day-to-day lives. For example, novice learners may place a fair degree of value on learning how to read a table in a numeracy class, but brush off their ability to find a show in the TV guide or determine which bus to take to the mall using a schedule, not realizing that the same skill set is involved.

What is helpful to our particular student population in this regard is that the value of informal learning is now being recognized by governments and the education system. In Manitoba (as in many provinces), for example, there is an office of Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) under the ministry of Advanced Education and Training. (Web site may be viewed at http://www.plarinmanitoba.ca/plar_main_e.html). It has a mandate is to "identify, document, assess and recognize skills and knowledge" learned informally by the province's residents through "hobbies, family and life, military, volunteer activities, travel, independent study, and/or workplace training." While not all adult literacy learners will need/want to avail themselves of this service (i.e., obtaining credit for informal learning), its very existence can reinforce the notion that informal learning has value. This can go a long way with regard to motivation in that many literacy students have had less than positive experiences with regard to the formal education system.

Active or engaged learning (as opposed to passive reception of knowledge) in both formal and informal situations is emphasized in an experiential approach. As we shall see in the following section, while experiential learning stresses that learning must be more active, contextualized learning proposes that it must be more authentic.

Resources: For resources on experiential learning, please click here.

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SECTION 1.4.4: CONTEXTUALIZED LEARNING

The notion of "contextualized learning" suggests that learning is most effective when it is framed within the context in which it will be used. For example, rather than simply teach learners spelling guidelines, spelling would be integrated into a lesson or learning unit involving other skills/knowledge that would be used in conjunction with spelling (i.e., writing). It would be framed around realistic situations in which the skill would be used (writing a letter in which we want to make sure our spelling is accurate). This stands in contrast to a pedagogical tradition in which it is assumed that knowledge/skills will transfer across or generalize to various contexts. As Brown, Collins and Duguid (1993) suggest:

Teaching from dictionaries assumes that definitions and exemplary sentences are self-contained "pieces" of knowledge. But words and sentences are not islands, entire unto themselves…. Experienced readers implicitly understand that words are situated. They, therefore, ask for the rest of the sentence or the context before committing themselves to an interpretation of a word. And then go to dictionaries with situated examples of usage in mind (p. 1).

Contextualized learning on the other hand, does not make this assumption and in fact, suggests that context is essential to students' understanding of when to apply knowledge/skills.

Thus, as in experiential learning the goal of contextualized learning is a deeper level of processing than the simple acquisition of knowledge/skills. The emphasis is on understanding and applying knowledge/skills in context.

Resources: For resources on contextualized learning, please click here.

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SECTION 1.4.5: POINTS TO PONDER

1. How might a family literacy learning unit on positive discipline proceed through the four stages of Kolb's experiential learning cycle?

2. A fictional example similar to Lawrence Daloz's experience with Gladys is offered by Merriam and Caferella (1999, p. 383):

   In the movie "Educating Rita," the protagonist enrolls in an open university course and is introduced to a world very different from the one she has inhabited all her life. Midway through her transformation from a working-class London hairdresser to an articulate student of great literature, Rita is invited to a party at her professor's home. In a particularly poignant scene, she stands outside the house afraid to go in. Instead, she joins her husband and parents in a tavern where they are singing and drinking. She sits with them, but remains separated from the activity. The next day she tells her professor that she can no longer relate to her family's world, but she is not comfortable in his world either. She is clearly in a great deal of pain

   Merriam and Caferella go on to ask:

   Most educators believe in the "goodness" of continued learning-that more is better than less, that through education both individuals and society can advance to higher levels of development. But what of the unintended outcomes of learning…? What responsibility do we have for the pain and discomfort of our learners as well as their growth and successes (p. 383)?

   What is your opinion? Should personal maturation/change be a direct goal of education as transformational learning would suggest? Why or why not?

3. What responsibilities would an educator who is adhering to a humanist philosophy have toward teaching and learning? Reflect on your own tutoring and experiences as a student. Have you exhibited and/or experienced a humanistic approach? Did it help and/or hinder the effectiveness of learning? How so?

(Please go to "DISCUSSION OF POINTS TO PONDER” for a discussion of these points and additional activities)