For the traditional student, college is the next step after high school. He takes only a few months off between high school and college as he did between the previous 12 years of his scholastic life, a whirlwind transition that leaves little time for maturation or new life experiences between being a senior in one place and a freshman in the next. Adult learners, however, bring a fully-formed identity as an adult with them into the college classroom. Educationally, they may have finished high school several years prior, not have finished high school at all, or be completing a second degree because of a career change. This can cause the adult student to feel disconnected both from the other students in their classroom and from the educational process in general. The adult learner comes in having a different cultural literacy than an 18-year-old student and has a different—often more defined—set of goals, all of which translates into a different approach from the successful educator if they want to give adult learners a positive educational experience.
The public high school education system in America has remained similar in structure and aims for the past century. Theodore Sizer explains, “Most Americans have an uncomplicated vision of what secondary education should be” that is “remarkably uniform across the country” (263). He points out the goals published by a California high school in 1979, which include both basic scholastic achievement and competency along with more far-reaching aspirations as to the students’ values and long-term health. In practice, Sizer notes, far more attention is given to the competency of students than the other stated goals. Paulo Freire describes this educational style as the “banking” concept of education, calling it a system in which students are vessels into which the teacher’s knowledge is poured. “Instead of communicating,” Freire says, “the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (1). Though the school day runs concurrent to the typical Monday through Friday work schedule, it is very much unlike a work day in that they are expected to be passive receptacles for knowledge instead of active contributors. Because of the structure’s emphasis on time, a high premium is placed on “punctuality and on ‘being where you’re supposed to be’” while a low premium is placed on synthesis of knowledge across disciplines, or reflection on how that knowledge can be applied to their outside life (Sizer 265). The collegiate world is similar in process. Students have more active roles in determining their schedules but the overall structure remains almost identical, and little attention is paid to synthesis of knowledge across disciplines or outside the academic realm.
This is where cultural literacy impacts an adult learner’s experience in the college classroom. The word literacy is being used here not in the best-known meaning of one’s ability to read but rather as an individual or community’s “characteristic ways of talking, acting, valuing, interpreting, and using written language,” and can be “best understood as a set of social practicesinferred from events which are mediated by written texts” (Barton 249). In this context, then, we can see cultural literacy as the way in which the student reads and absorbs knowledge, and their expectations for the role of that knowledge in their life. As David Barton says, for the adult student “literacy is a means to some other end. Any study of literacy must therefore situate reading and writing activities in these broader contexts and motivations for use” (250). An adult learner is accustomed to using their knowledge productively, which provides the motivation for learning; the student takes the course, acquires the skill, and is subsequently given a higher pay, more responsibility, or some other kind of workplace recognition.
An example may be the best way to illustrate why this is a problem for the adult learner in the college classroom. Imagine an adult student named Jane who is a 25-year-old administrative assistant with a law firm, who has recently had her first child. Jane never went to college, both for financial reasons and because she wasn’t certain of what career she wanted to pursue. She has developed an interest in the law because of her work with the law firm, and believes a career in law could put her in a better financial situation so that she can give her child a more stable, middle-class lifestyle and future. Jane is a very intelligent person, and has learned many things in the seven years since she graduated from high school. Her administrative work with the law firm has taught her a significant amount about the procedures, rules, and regulations of the legal system. She has gained skills in effectively communicating with the firm’s clients, has become an expert researcher through her work helping the firm to build their cases, and has mastered the unique formatting and specialized language involved in writing briefs and other legal documents. Aside from the skills learned in her workplace, Jane has mastered several real-world skills thanks to her time living independently of her family. She has learned the many unique skills and demands of being a parent, along with practical matters like how to pay bills, file taxes, and effectively manage one’s time. This collection of experiences has informed her cultural literacy—how she interacts with the world around her, both in spoken and written language—and has given her a frame of reference through which to view her world.
Jane enrolls in the fall semester at a local four-year university. Because it has been a while since she was in school, she cannot test out of any of the general education courses that make up about half of the required course load for her chosen major. Some of these seem useful, such as the foreign language requirement, but others—such as the physical science lab—are puzzling to her. She is unsure how learning about chemistry, physics, or biology will improve her ability to practice the law. Moreover, these courses are more credits than the others; since she has been doing her own budgets for several years, Jane understands that this means she is spending more money for these courses than others that she believes will actually be useful. The lab courses will also require a significant time investment, both throughout her scheduled school week and in homework and studying, time that Jane’s life experience tells her would be better spent with her child or earning money at work. Even more frustrating is the fact that all of Jane’s courses within her discipline are freshman level and very basic. These courses are designed to teach skills related to the law that Jane has already acquired through her real-world work for the law firm. The homework feels like busy work, and the lectures are telling her things she already knows. Because of this, Jane does not seem particularly engaged in the classroom, and doesn’t participate in the in-class discussions. She occasionally neglects her homework in favor of work or family time, resulting in a lowered grade even though she knows the material better than most of the students in the class.
The in-classroom environment for Jane is different, as well. She is the only non-traditional student in many of her classes, and is sitting in a room mostly with individuals in their late teens. It is not that these individuals are unfriendly, but they recognize that Jane is different than they are, and she has some amount of difficulty relating to them because of how much further along she is on the development of her personality. Even the pop culture references and childhood experiences that these fellow students had were very different than Jane’s; finding common ground on which to build friendships is more difficult. If she were able to relate to them on a social level, she may be more willing to participate in the in-class discussions and to engage with the content of the course. Instead, though, she feels isolated from the other students and uncomfortable participating in the class, which leads to further disengagement and a further lowering of her academic performance. This is ultimately unfortunate for everyone involved. Obviously it is unfortunate for Jane, whose grade in the course will not reflect her true knowledge of the material. It is also a shame for the other students, however, who would likely benefit from her real-world experience in the subject if she were to become more active in the classroom. Because the issue of their differing cultural literacies was not addressed, all the students involved ultimately suffer.
In terms of the flow of the average day, a shift in the workplace is similar in length to a school day, but the way that time is utilized is scheduled very differently. Activities performed are far more inter-related, with a logical progression or collection of tasks all executed in the interest of an ultimate goal. The educational model of a day that’s divided up into separate, distinct units based on subject is familiar to a student who just graduated high school but can be frustrating to an adult learner, who has come naturally to expect the things they learned to be connected to each other and to build toward an ultimate goal. In the case of Jane above, she certainly knows how to switch gears between her work life and her family life, and understands that there are different skills and sets of knowledge that will be applied to each, but the further division of the school day into many different subjects which are at best tangentially related is jarring after growing accustomed to life in the workforce. Her cultural literacy dictates learning is to be done with a direct purpose. The productive application of the knowledge is rarely a key focus in the college classroom. This is especially true in a liberal arts education, which includes general education courses outside the student’s main area of focus. An adult student may feel these courses are a waste of their time and thus have a difficult time engaging with the material or absorbing the knowledge. In addition, it can mean they have a difficult time engaging with traditional students. Since most students will come out of a very similar high school environment, many of them will share the ways of talking, understanding, and valuing language that Barton describes above. Being the odd one out in this context can make the adult learner less likely to take an active role in the classroom and less likely to feel a part of their own educational process, adding to the issue.
The adult learner enters the college classroom with learning goals driven by their real-world experiences in addition to their early educational experiences, and this disparity represents one of the most significant challenges in integrating adult learners into the classroom. In a high school classroom, the students are expected to have by and large the same goal: General preparation to enter the workforce or an institution for higher education. As Theodore Sizer explains, students are grouped by age “and all are expected to take precisely the same time—around 720 school days over four years, to be precise—to meet the requirements for a diplomaThe goals are the same for all, and the means to achieve them are also similar” (264). Having a range of ages and experiences in the classroom means things aren’t so cut and dry. Jack Mezirow discusses this issue in depth, saying, “Adults have acquired a coherent body of experience—associations, concepts, values, feelings, conditioned responses—frames of reference that define their life world” (268). They are better equipped to see themselves as a part of the broader society. An 18-year-old freshman is likely to have vague objectives, such as choosing a career path or completing their education; unrelated general education courses can still help to satisfy either of these goals. A freshman who’s in their twenties or older is more likely to have specific, practical objectives related to their life outside the classroom, and is more likely to question how the courses they take will help them in achieving these objectives.
Barry Alford responds to and seconds Freire’s idea. He says that students “need to hear themselves and their fellow students think out loud before they write. So we need to support a broader sense of literacy, one that engages students in a community of speakers and listeners rather than a community in which the problem is always already solved by some compartmentalized application” (280). Jack Mezirow refers to transformative learning, which puts learning into a real-world context. He suggests that adult educators should present concepts in the context of the students’ lives and let them collectively and critically justify learning new knowledge. As he says, “New information is only a resource in the adult learning process. To become meaningful, learning requires that new information be incorporated by the learner into an already well-developed symbolic frame of reference” (Mezirow 272). The idea of information as resource rather than goal makes the entire educational experience more suited to exist alongside the daily real-world life that, for an adult learner, is a continuing reality rather than an existential concept that will exist at some point in the future, as is often the case for the traditional freshman.
All three of these concepts suggest a similar approach: That by making the classroom more of an interactive dialogue than a static barrage of information, the students make connections between learning and the broader world, better enabling them to engage with the material. This can also break down the barriers between traditional and adult students in the same way it breaks down the barriers between students and teachers. In the duality presented in the traditional lecture class—the one who has the knowledge instructing the many who lack it—there is no place for those who defy the binary. The ultimate experience is rigid, offering only the knowledge of the teacher as an end product—a poor payoff for someone who is already well versed in the subject or who won’t be utilizing the subject matter directly in their future. When the classroom becomes more interactive, it can offer other benefits aside from the knowledge that’s being taught, giving the experience itself an inherent value. Individual students share their respective world views for the benefit of all and adult students are given a role to fill, giving them the confidence to feel like they belong in the classroom.
Ultimately, addressing the needs of the adult learner in the college classroom is a benefit to all the students, regardless of their age. The idea of learning as a practical tool is ultimately more beneficial in the long-term, as students of all ages will be expected to know how to selectively engage with and apply the skills they learn in the workplace. By giving knowledge a broader context and allowing students to learn from each other’s experiences, each student is encouraged to make practical and tangible connections. An open dialogue that allows the voices of the students to be heard alongside the teacher encourages more critical thinking and synthesis of ideas than the “Subject-object” relationship of Freire’s “banking” approach. By expanding the view beyond the borders of the classroom, teachers better equip all their students for life outside academia.
Works Cited
Alford, Barry. “Freirean Voices, Student Choices.” [Title of book]. [Ed. Name]. [City]: [Publisher], [year]. 279-281. Print.
Barton, David and Mary Hamilton. “Literacy Practices.” [Title of book]. [Ed. Name]. [City]: [Publisher], [year]. 246-252. Print.
Freire, Paulo. “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” [Title of book]. [Ed. Name]. [City]: [Publisher], [year]. 1-12. Print.
Mezirow, Jack. “Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice.” [Title of book]. [Ed. Name]. [City]: [Publisher], [year]. 268-274. Print.
Sizer, Theodore. “What High School Is.” [Title of book]. [Ed. Name]. [City]: [Publisher], [year]. 259-267. Print.
