African-American Adult Learning Theories

¶ … Metacognition and Effective Study Strategies Among African-American College and University Students, Bernadette Nwafor discusses the fact that many African-American students have trouble with basic concentration and retention skills and how the implementation of various study techniques could enhance student concentration. Nwarfor purports that those students that try to understand what they are reading through "meaningfulness, collaboration and establishment of relationships between new ideas and old experiences" are more likely to do better on tests than those who learn by merely reading through text or memorization It is her perception that African-American students learn better when they can relate to the material in question. In this article she studies the three kinds of memory (sensory, short-term and long-term memory) as she shows that if a person associates something familiar with new material they are able to retain it better in their long-term memory. She cites for her example a study by Ormond that uses meta-cognition to retain information. Meta-cognition, which is "students' knowledge and beliefs regarding their own cognitive processes and students' attempts to regulate their cognitive processes to maximize learning and memory." Nwafor also cites the work by Eggen and Kauchak which basically explores two types of metacognition which are meta-attention and meta-memory. These two types basically explore attention and also a person's ability to use certain tools to enhance memory. Nwarfor believes that it is not what we study that will enable us to learn. She shows that it is how we study which will prove effectiveness in learning. It is the tools that you learn to use to study that will help you to retain information better. She also uses note taking as an example of an effective study tool. In her opinion, if teachers would encourage note taking, students would be more apt to take effective notes and thereby would be able to retain more information. This note taking would foster organization which would enable students to better relate the new information to old information. Teachers can also assist these students by encouraging more thought provoking discussion and by monitoring student's progress more carefully.

In the article, American Students' Polyrhythmic Realities in Adult-Based Education, Vanessa Sheared reinforces the above theories by drawing a comparison to the film, Field of Dreams. She theorizes that the Adult African-American learning environment has to be more welcoming to this particular group of students. It is her belief that if the environment were one by which students would feel comfortable and could relate to their own experiences and belief system they would feel more encouraged to learn. She also stresses the importance of African-American role models in the classroom. African-American students are more apt to learn from a strong African-American presence in the classroom that shares their belief system, experience and history. She cites lack of funding for these particular programs and also a lack of participation by adult learners as co-contributors. She shows that due to many social and economic constraints many African-American adult learners are often discouraged to return to school. Compiled with this is a lack of funding for these programs. She stresses the importance of race, gender and class as it relates to adult African-American learners. She shows how these three social items have a direct correlation to how African-American students relate not only to learning but also to the person conveying the learning material.