Box 1.

The adult learner

The case for separating adult education from school based learning rests on the following principles:

• Adults need to know why they need to learn something

• Adults maintain the concept of responsibility for their own decisions, their own lives

• Adults enter the educational activity with a greater volume and more varied experiences than children

• Adults have a readiness to learn those things that they need to know in order to cope effectively with real life situations

• Adults are life centred in their orientation to learning

• Adults are more responsive to internal motivators than external motivators

In contrast, the educational model most often used in schools is:

• Designed for teaching children

• Assigns to the teacher full responsibility for all decision making about the learning content, method, timing, and evaluation

• Learners play a submissive part in the educational dynamics

Adapted from Knowles¹⁰