3.3 Leading adult learners: preparing future leaders and professional  (Page 6/9)

Figure 1: Learning Theories Evolution to Adult Learning

As Figure 1 depicts the evolution of learning theories that have lead us to where we are today. Understanding adult learning and pedagogy requires us to know the adult learner differs from the child development theories and that adult motivations and experiences require us to know different strategies to keep adults attention. The best adult strategies are found foremost in the work of Knowles, Cross, Lave and Wenger, and Cronbach and Snow. The evolution of these theories can be found in the cognitivists, social constructivists, motivation theory, intellect theory and humanism.

Today, adult learning can only be studied through a complex arrangement of factors. Learning styles and the psychological theories of learning allow us to acknowledge that learning is neither stagnant for adults nor easy to describe by a single learning theory.

How we lead the adult learner is greatly impacted by both knowledge of the context and of the learner themselves. Contextual understanding by the educational leader is as critical as the transfer of knowledge and how it is transferred through strategies and activities. Our skill and ability as an educational leader is tested now by both knowledge of how adults learn and the tools we have available today that we did not have even ten years ago.

Mentoring (the most complete human skill to acquire) adult learners

The former role of the educational leader, the benevolent authoritarian, is now being transformed to the mentor/coach. Papa (Papa-Lewis, 1987; 1983) has researched extensively as an organizational theorist how mentoring adults influences their learning. Mentoring, teaching, coaching, facilitating and other such similar descriptors describe a process for adult learning. Building upon the work of Maslow, Rogers, Lave, Erikson, Glasser, Levinson, Gilligan and Vygotsky cultural, linguistic, and gender nuances are additional factors that comprise the adult learner and that the educational leader must understand when working with adults. In understanding the communication patterns of the individual the following eight stages represent in descending order of ability how adults communicate both at work and in their personal lives: Mentoring; negotiating; supervising; diverting; persuading; speaking-signaling, and serving. Mentoring is considered the most complete human skill to acquire immediately followed by negotiating and instructing (1983; 1987; 2002). Papa’s research combines adult learning, Knowles and Cross, and characteristics of mentoring in the following manner.

• Adults are motivated to learn as they develop needs and interests that learning will satisfy. The adults (protégé’s) needs and interests are an appropriate starting point for mentoring.
• Adult orientation to learning is life or work centered. The appropriate frameworks for organizing mentoring are life or work related situations rather than theoretical subjects.
• Experience is the richest resource for adult learning. The approach for mentoring involves active participation in a planned series of experiences, the reflection of those experiences, and their application to work situations.
• Adults have a deep need to be self-directing. The role of the mentor is to engage in a process of inquiry, reflection and decision making with the protégé, rather than transmit knowledge and then evaluate the protégé’s conformity to it.
• Individual differences among adult learners increase with age, gender, culture, language, and experience. Mentoring must make optimum provision for differences in style, time, setting, and pace of learning.