Reflective Essay: On Andragogy and the Self-Directed Adult in the Writing Center and Elsewhere

Helen Dano

The Adult Learner in Diverse Contexts

English CO855—Dr. Barbara Gleason

May 17, 2015 

Reflective Essay

On Andragogy and the Self-Directed Adult in the Writing Center and Elsewhere

            Before taking this course, I never ruminated on the differences age can bring to the acquisition of learning. Until I took this course, the word “Andragogy” was not one I ever heard, even if the term was around since Malcolm Knowles (also, someone I never heard of) tauted the concept back in the 1940s.   Andragogy, a word derived from the Greek noun agoge (the act of leading) and from the stem andr (adult) differentiates the two age groups of learning.  The word pedagogy, while meaning the study and practice of education, is associated specifically with the study of teaching children, of its directing relationship, where there is someone directing the learning (usually an adult teacher) and the learner dependent on that director for the acquisition of education.  Andragogy, the teaching of adults, is characterized by a  helping relationship. In this reciprocal relationship in the teaching/learning transaction, the student acts with teacher as collaborator in his learning rather than passively absorbing information more characteristic of the pedagogical model ( Trainer’s Guide 6).

I came to be familiar with these differences when hired as a tutor in the Writing Center of Hostos Community College in the fall of 2014, I became acquainted with students ranging from the ages of 18 and upward. I was nervous in tutoring people older than secondary students, having never done it before and not addressing the reasons prior to the position.  I did think I knew how to teach on some level:  afterall, I had been mentoring poetry to grade school children for a few years now and was fairly successful at it.  I homeschooled my son.  But I have discovered first hand that teaching the adult learner is something far different from teaching children. First, learning this by reading Knowles for this course and the materials and discussions that followed. I learned that while self-directed learning is what adults do, this type of learning  runs parallel to children’s classroom learning.  Hashimoto, wrote about this in the Journal of Basic Writing and noted that initially both groups “share many of the same problems when they sit down to write,” indicating a shared anxiety, “all often do not know what they want to say; all must learn simple skills before they learn complex ones: all suffer problems that can be characterized as developmental; egocentrism, failure to abstract or form conceptions” (55-56).  I have observed this characteristic where I tutor, and I can identify with this, being one of the oldest non-traditional graduate students I’ve encountered.

 I take note that as much as the adult learner is self-directed, he/she coming to college at an older age (25 years and older defines this age group by the literature), that those entering the writing center for their first session, I have discovered, tend to resemble those described under the first step in the Knowles pedagogical model (8): more of a submissive role of expecting the teacher to tell them what to do.  I have found this especially in the older of the adult learners who I tutor.  In fact, those in their mid-20s and younger seem to be more self-directed, initially. But with some students who are coming in on a regular basis to do sessions with me, their confidence to edit their own work has increased with time. The older student, indeed, at semester’s end, has gained in confidence to ask his questions, to be a collaborator in his learning.  I count myself in those numbers as well. This being my third year of studies, I actually feel smarter, have more confidence than the student I was in my first year.  I feel more independent , even to the point of having requested independent study at the end of my second year.  This action and attitude I have also noticed in my peers in their regard of their teachers as more collaborators than directors of their studies.

            Recently, I was talking to a security guard, in his late 30s, who works at City College.  He told me that he is considering taking up college studies in mechanical engineering, this to get a better job, his aspiration being an example of self-directed learning. I told him that at 6l, I am finishing up in school.  And then, he said, “But don’t you feel uncomfortable being around those young students?”  I told him that almost more than half the college students in the United States are now “older adults,” age 25 and over (Ntiri 48) and it is now, as it was predicted by Knowles, that that number “will only rapidly increase” (420).  I declared “Don’t you love the idea that you could go on learning for the rest of your life?” With that, I hope I supported his adult desire for more schooling. And kept fueled the fire for more of the same for myself.

Works Cited

Hashimoto,  Irvin. Y. “Adult Learning and Composition.” Journal of Basic Writing4.1 (Spring 1985): 55-68.  Print.

Knowles, Malcolm S. and Associates. Andragogy in Action: Applying Modern Principles of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. 1985. Print.

Ntiri, Daphne W. “Older College Students as Tutors for Adult Learners in an Urban Literacy Program.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43.1 (1999): 48-57. Print.

U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. A Trainer’s Guide to Andragogy: Its Concepts, Experience and Application. Washington DC: Social and Rehabilitation Service. (March 1972). Print.