Adult Learning Principles

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Agenda
 What is learning?
 How does learning occur?
 How children learn?
 How adults learn?
 The six adult learning principles

What is learning?
If your parents repeatedly tell you "kick the ball" and react positively
when you swing your foot against that round object on the floor, you
have just learned what the words kick and ball mean.
So, learning can be defined as a relatively lasting change in behavior
that is the result of experience.

Learning is a complex process that involves multiple
factors.

Psychologists today not only study how learning
occurs but also how social, emotional, cultural,
and biological variables might influence the
learning process.

Now, we can infer two things from the definition:
 Learning is relatively permanent
 There is always a stimulus that kick starts learning

How does learning occur?
We learn from the things that happen to us - our experiences.
For example, we learned that lightning is followed
by thunder, we learned not to lie because it can
cause us to lose our credibility and to lose our
friends, we learned how to dance by watching
others demonstrate dance steps to us.

How do children learn?

Children learn because they are told and expected to learn.
They anticipate their learning will help them in the future.

They are prone to learning information by rote or memory.
They will not try to comprehend the idea behind 1+1=2

They are dependent on their teacher to lead the learning. If their
activities are not teacher-directed, chaos and confusion are the result.

How do adults learn?

They have a well developed, sensible self-belief system, allowing
them to reject information that contradicts their beliefs.

They gain knowledge from practical everyday experiences.

Malcolm Knowles, an
American practitioner of
adult education,
popularized the concept of
adult learning as a theory
and model in the 1970s.

If we know why we are learning and if the reason fits our
needs as we perceive them, we will learn quickly and deeply.
— Malcolm Knowles on Adult Learning

SIX Adult Learning Principles

1. The need to know
Adults need to know why they’re learning something.
They assess the benefits they will gain and what they risk by
not learning something.

2. Changes in self-concept
Adults enjoy self-direction in their lives i.e., they accept
responsibility for their own decisions.
They feel responsible for the decisions pertaining to learning
and the evaluation of their instruction (why and how to learn).

3. The role of experience
Most adults draw upon the experiences they’ve assimilated
throughout their lifetime to aid their learning.
In other words, their experiences act as a foundation for their
learning.

4. Readiness to learn
As an individual matures through adolescence, they become
ready to learn only those things they "need" to.

5. Orientation to learn
Adults tend to have a problem-centered orientation to learning
and focus on tasks and problems.
Adults take up learning largely because they are experiencing
some inadequacies in coping with current life problems.

6. Motivation to learn
Motivation in adults is more likely to be intrinsic such as
confidence, self-satisfaction, enjoyment, or having a choice over
what is learned.

Adult Learning Principles

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