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. They may have families at home and full-time jobs to work when they’re not in class. 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. 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 relatively unchanged 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, saying, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (1). The day is divided by subject, with no time left between for analysis or connections between the courses. 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, Sizer says, “A high premium is placed on punctuality and on ‘being where you’re supposed to be.’ Obviously, a low premium is placed on reflection and repose” (265). Because the traditional college student comes straight out of this environment, the collegiate world is in many ways designed as a transitional period between high school and employment. Students have more active roles in determining their schedules but the overall structure remains almost identical.
An adult learner, however, enters college with significant life experience and is more accustomed to the scheduling demands of employment and family than those of a school day. They come into the classroom with a cultural literacy that’s based around their real-world experiences. 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). While the workplace may be the same approximate length as a school day, time is scheduled very differently over the course of a shift. 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 learning for the sake of knowledge, without connecting it to any real-world applications, is familiar to a student who just graduated high school but can be frustrating to an adult learner, whose cultural literacy dictates learning is to be done with a direct purpose. This issue is explained by David Barton, “While some reading and writing is carried out as an end in itself, typically 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. 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.
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. In another article, 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 concept of society. An 18-year-old freshman is likely to have vague objectives, such as choosing a career path or even simply 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.
Several education scholars have formulated approaches to addressing this discrepancy. As mentioned earlier, Paulo Freire defines the teacher’s role in the traditional classroom as simply “depositing” knowledge in a student’s head which is then “banked” for later use. He suggests instead a problem-posing method of education that lets students “develop their power to perceive critically the ways they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire 9). This would pull students out of the passive role of receptacle for knowledge and make them an active part of their own education. Barry Alford responds to and seconds this idea, 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). 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.
Ultimately, addressing the needs of the adult learner in the college classroom is a benefit to all the students, regardless of their age. By connecting the knowledge being learned to the broader context of the real world and allowing students to share and learn from each other’s experiences, each student is encouraged to discover the practical and tangible connections between seemingly disparate pieces of knowledge. 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.
