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Review of models of adult learning and their implications for literacy, numeracy and ESOL (Completed)
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| Related
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| Project
description:
| This paper summarises a wide-ranging review of literature on adult learning, drawing out the different models of adult learning in existence and the significance of this work for research and development in adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL. The review aims to cover work which has looked at learning in settings other than compulsory schooling. We suggest that a full understanding of adult learning must be a complex one which, rather than seeing learning principally as an individual, cognitive phenomenon, takes into account the interrelationship of many factors in the learning situation, while placing the learner’s contexts, purposes and practices at the centre. |
| Findings:
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- Adults have their own motivations for learning. Learners build on their existing knowledge and experience. They fit learning into their own purposes and become engaged in learning. People’s purposes for learning are related to their real lives and the practices and roles they engage in outside the classroom.
- Adults have a drive towards self-direction and towards becoming autonomous learners. Learning is initiated by the learner and one role of the teacher becomes to provide a secure environment in which learning can take place.
- Adults have the ability to learn about their own learning processes, and can benefit from discussion about and reflection on this. They are able to learn how to learn. For instance, there are different learning styles which people synthesise in any situation. Teaching can enable learners to develop their range of learning styles.
- Learning is a characteristic of all real-life activities, in which people take on different roles and participate in different ways. People learn by engaging in practice and can be supported in participating in new ways. Teaching can scaffold these activities, enabling learners to develop new forms of expertise.
- Adults reflect and build upon their experience. Reflective learning is generated when people encounter problems and issues in their real lives and think about ways of resolving these.
- Reflective learning is unique to each person, since it arises out of the complexities of their own experience. A great deal of learning that happens is incidental and idiosyncratically related to the learner, it cannot be planned in advance. While there are things that can be done to encourage reflective experiential learning, there is no set of steps that can be followed that will guarantee it will happen.
- Reflective learning enables people to reorganise experience and ‘see’ situations in new ways. In this way, adult learning is potentially transformative, both personally and socially.
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