It is not unusual for people to assume that the way you learn as a child is the same way you learn as an adult, but that’s not actually the case. In fact, adults learn in a variety of different ways. Not surprisingly, many of these ways bear little resemblance to how we all learned through kindergarten and into school. By the time young adults reach college, we can already see how different things are for them. The reason for that is that the brain (and the way it can process information) has changed.
The following are some of the ways that adults learn and how those ways are different from how children learn. It’s an interesting topic that can help improve the way you study or teach, depending on what side of the educational divide you are looking at.
Adult Learning Is Self-Directed
Whereas a child will need the guidance of a teacher to help them through whatever topic it is they are learning about, an adult is much more likely to be able to work autonomously and learn for themselves from books and online. This doesn’t mean that adults don’t need tutors at all, it simply means that they are expected (and prefer in many cases) to do a lot of the background work themselves.
A child will go to a class and be taught as much about a subject as possible. If they have homework regarding it, that homework will be most likely something that reinforces what they have just learned from their teacher. An adult’s college class, for example, will give an overview, with the gaps to be filled in through self-directed studying.
This is a huge difference and one that many young adults need time to get to grips with when they move from high school to college, or if they decide to sign up for an online course of some kind. However, it is also extremely important because it allows those students a certain amount of freedom to pursue their own studies and lives and work out how to live responsibly and productively.
Adult Learning Has A Goal
In essence, all learning has a goal – to educate the person who is being taught. However, not all learning has a specific, personal goal; adult learning usually does. When a child is sent to school, they go without a plan, without any particular ideas or aims to reach. They go and learn and study, and eventually, they will decide what they want to do with their lives, at which point they can direct their learning towards their goal.
If an adult decides to look into schools teaching criminal justice courses, fine arts, media studies, business, or any other of the thousands of different courses available either online or on-site, there will be a reason behind it. That adult will have some goal or dream they want to fulfill, and education is their starting point. This gives the adult much more desire and impetus to learn – this can sometimes make teaching adults much more satisfying for tutors who want to impart their knowledge.
The adult learning goal doesn’t even have to be something that relates to their future career. It might be a goal to get fitter (so they learn more about exercise), keep their brains active (which is why crossword books are so popular), or understand how to take care of a pet, or even a child. However, whatever the ultimate goal is, the fact is that adult learning will link to it.
Adult Learning Incorporates Life Experiences
Children don’t have a lot of past to draw on, and in most cases, they won’t have any particular life experiences that will be of much use in their day-to-day learning. There might be a handful of stories about family vacations or Christmases, they might understand the power dynamics of a home or school, but in general, they will simply be enjoying their childhood with no additional worries besetting them.
Adults are completely different. They will have experienced much more in their lives, and even the most content and happy person will have seen, heard, or felt things that shaped them in some way. Some of those things will be good, some bad, but each of them will inform how they learn and what they learn. In a lot of classes, the educator will actively encourage the adult learner to think about their past experiences and to use them in their course. One of the skills that a teacher of adults should have is to be able to draw out those thoughts and feelings and show how they can help with the current situation and the current lesson.
Adult Learning Is Practical
In a lot of courses aimed solely at adults, there will be placements of some kind. The learner will leave the college and go into a place of work to shadow someone or even do some of the work. This is a practice that sometimes begins in high school and goes on into college and beyond. This is a hugely important piece of the learning puzzle as it gives the learner the chance to see what it is really like in their chosen field, cementing the idea of the learning they have experienced so far.
They will also be able to ask questions and ‘learn on the job’, which is something that children, for both practical and safety reasons, cannot do. This added layer of learning can become the catalyst to obtaining a job after the course is done and the exams are taken, but even if the learner is not offered a job, it is something useful to include on a resume when applying somewhere else. Employers like to see the practical application of learning; it gives them more confidence that the person they are hiring really does have a good understanding of the sector they are going into and the tasks they are being asked to do.
Adult Learners Work Collaboratively
It’s true that children are also often asked to work in teams or pairs in order to get a task done, but this is less about the task itself than it is about teaching children how to interact with other people. That is certainly an important life lesson and one that helps adult learners immensely when they are asked to work collaboratively on a project.
Although still working in teams and still displaying the life skills that were picked up at an early age, the end result – the project or assignment itself – is what is more important here. A tutor will want to see that everyone has taken some part of the task for themselves, as they will need to be assessed individually, of course, but working together (or not) and how well that happens is down to the group and nothing to do with the tutor. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interests to understand how to work together for the best overall result. This isn’t always an easy task, but it will stand everyone in good stead for the future, so it should be learned and used as well as possible.
Adults Have Done It Before
Due to the fact that adults have been through the educational system already, they will certainly have some preconceived ideas about what education and learning is all about. They have a way of learning that they are used to, even if it isn’t actually the most conducive when it comes to their subject matter. A good adult teacher will be able to work out a way to show their students how a different method of studying might actually be better.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the adult will change their ways, and if that is the case, then the teacher needs to be able to support them fully.