Wood Mill Adult Learning Reflection

Adult learning is having a clear picture of how adults learn and how this in turn affects the program planning process. Many adults are not sure about what they want to do with their lives after high school. There are many programs that will help you to decided, what you want to do with your life. This is where adult education programs can help you decided on the importance of education. There are three content areas that connects with adult learning and planning education within the adult. Knowles state that the adult learner, learns from their experiences. Experiences is how adults live their everyday lives and make concise

Even if they were wrong or needed more information to come to the correct conclusion. Her lesson used cooperative learning with indirect instruction. She asked a lot of probing questions and then would build on students’ response. She gave plenty of think time for the students to process what they were trying express to the class. If students didn’t give the correct response she would allow other students to help come up with the correct answer. The correct answer came from the students building on each others knowledge. Mrs. Soglin facilitated the discussion and added new information as needed. After the class discussion the students worked on their activity in pairs or groups and were engaged in self directing during this time.

Knowles, M. S. (1980). The modern practice of adult education from pedagogy to andragogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Cambridge Adult Education.

This paper will describe the data-collection and data-analysis needs for a program to increase the retention rate of adult learners; subsequently, there will be an inclusion of strategies to be utilized in succeeding collection. There will be a description of communication needs with stakeholders that will include strategies to meet those needs.

Today's workers need to prepare with continuous job training, growth and development. Given the increased age, experiences and diverse lifestyles of the working population, it is understandable that adult education practices must move beyond the traditional model of teachers and learners, while new skills, working with local companies to match their needs and sending staff into factories and other workplaces to spread the word about state and federal retraining assistance. While trying to decide how to rebuild your life after loss of employment and lack of job opportunities following the current recession, or devastated from a divorce? Adult students faced with other struggles; studies have shown that older adult students face different hurdles, family problems, and poor self-image. These along with poor time management, weaker academic preparation and a need for remediation an increased focus on adult learners and their needs can help. (armour)

I have several expectations for the course. In addition to learning additional information about human development, I plan to further explore learning across various stages of adulthood. From my experience, the learning experience of people in early adulthood can be very different from the experiences of people in middle adulthood. Often people in early adulthood are using an educational program to prepare for or explore a new career. People in middle adulthood may be enrolled in an adult education course to fine-tune their skills. They may have recently lost their job

The adult learners in our communities are increasingly living longer these days and taking on the after school care for the grand-children in the family (e.g. homework assignments via computers and social media). Not too long ago there are signs of non-traditional adult learners on college campuses seeking undergraduate degrees, filling some of the seats formerly occupied by the traditional, 18-22 year old students according to (Apps, 1981; Cross, 1981; Leckie, 1988). Cross (1981) noted that part-time students make up the greater part of this increase. In other words, the number of full-time adult learners are still quite small, particularly at four-year colleges and universities. While universities are noticing the presence of mature adults

The National Commission on Adult Literacy (2008) states that “High quality instruction is essential to foster student retention and produce successful outcomes”, yet, adult programs, like many low-poverty school districts, encounter difficulties obtaining high quality teachers (p. 13). My opportunity to work in this class at Woods Mill made it clear to me how important high quality instruction is to all types of students from pre-school up through adult programs. In the short time I spent at Woods Mill Adult Education Center I had a chance to see two styles of pedagogy; one which taught me more about what to do as a teacher, and one which taught me more about what not to do. For this paper I will review one of those two

I agree there are several elements that Kagan recommends educators should use ahead of achieving cooperative learning during instructions. Moreover, these strategies will encourage students to interact in classroom activities. Additionally, important each students participates in group activities and is held accountable prior to receiving an appropriate grade after completing diverse tasks.

I believe that the purpose of adult education programs is to foster the growth of the non-traditional student population. Students who have either been displaced or chosen to return to college for a variety of reasons. It is critical that we, as instructors and administrators, realize that each of these students may learn in a different manner. We must take into account known strategies such as Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences as we design and deliver courses within our chosen fields. I for one am primarily a very kinesthetic learner, and learn

The collection and organization of literature will be based on the needs of adult learners and research conducted on assisting adult learners prior to them dropping out of their programs. Literature will be collected that addresses adult learners need to be able to connect the dots between the program they are enrolled in and past learning experiences; their need to know that they are a part of the learning community, which will give them a sense of belonging; the knowledge that their immediate needs can be met by their program choice; and knowing who to seek assistance through if those needs are not being met. The outcome of collecting and organizing literature that explains the institutional context of the capstone will be to present research that addresses the issue of retention and solutions that can be implemented, such as a retention program for adult learners that will help to ensure that their needs are being met, help to increase program completion, and ensure that adult learners will have a successful learning experience that will be transferable to other learning experiences. The article written by Howell & Buck focused on four manageable variables that are observed as influencing adult students’ satisfaction with a business course: relevancy of the subject matter, faculty subject-matter competency, faculty classroom management, and student workload that can be applied to most courses (Howell & Buck, 2012).

Cooperative learning will be a method I use in my classroom. I believe that in a cooperative learning group a student can learn socialization skills and how to work with others. This goes along with the pragmatic/progressive philosophy that children learn by doing. The progressivism teaching style also includes the incorporation of problem-solving and critical thinking techniques. I want my students to learn to think for themselves and be able to function in society. At the same time, I will be a fellow learner myself and

Basically, this article by Malcolm Knowles is a conglomerate of all aspects of adult learning. It outlines aspects of adult learning, theories of adult learning, and expands on them. The main idea of this article is to create awareness on the existence of adult learning, and to help instructors of adult learning to know how to go about it successfully. Additionally, the article is of help to adult learners to enable them to learn the most they can (Knowles, 2007).

My impression of adult education has changed immensely. First and foremost, the first lesson learned that teaching adults are a separate, intensive, and long debated process. Portions of certain theories learned illustrated below. I have extended knowledge about Meizrow (Transformational Learning) and Knowles (Andragogy). The six key features of Adult Learners are:

Gadbow believes it is the duty of adult educators to instill a life-long love of learning into their students, "helping adults learn how to learn is the most important thing a teacher ever does" (p. 53). The first responsibility of educators working with adults is to help them identify their learning styles and differences as well as other special learning needs, and then provide effective strategies to adapt to these individual learning needs (53). The author's contention that all learners are special means seeing the possibilities as well as the problems or particular needs of each student as they present themselves.