Learning Styles
Malcolm Knowles andragogy is a learning style that fits certain personalities like a 'T', and one that calls into play an individual who enjoys collaborating and cooperating with other individuals who are also interested in learning as much as possible from a wide and diverse participation pool. Knowles set about creating learning environments that called for mutual planning, diagnosis of needs, interests and desires of individual learners, and then an ever-evolving method to meet those needs and interests with knowledge and experience.
Malcolm's objective was to develop activities that would be sequentially mannered and would provide the materials and resources needed to accomplish the learner's and facilitator's objectives in conjunction with self-directed problem solving. Knowles believed that he (and the instructors) were the facilitators and managers of the educational process. He espoused the idea that "teaching is a process of guided interaction between the teacher, the student and the materials instruction" (Knowles, 2005).
The theory of andragogy as presented by Knowles was a process that required ongoing relationships that were fluid in nature. He wanted the students, teachers and interested individuals to work together.
He also wanted all the stakeholders to participate in ongoing assessments and using a wide variety of resources to stimulate the learning process. Malcolm practiced what he believed by avoiding professional teachers who used traditional lecture styles that did not care about the student's interests, instead he employed ever adaptive instructors who "played with ideas." He wanted instructors who had the learner's interests at heart rather than presenting what they thought the students desired.
It is interesting that Malcolm enjoyed teachers who were not 'locked into an academic teaching stance' instead...
Jack Mezirow believed that learners were not only supposed to learn the facts and figures supplied by teachers and instructors but were also to take information and change from who they are to someone new through
critical reflection and deep thinking.
He believed that learning resulted from degrees of change within the individual learner and that each student should strive to become a new and improved person with each intellectual moment.
Jack wished to see a transformation in the learner considering who that person was initially, and who they were to become. He desired that
adult education would directly affect ongoing changes in the individual at personal levels. Mezirow wanted critical personal reflection to take
place concerning the student's
assumptions, beliefs and values.
Other transformative thinkers believed in the same way, as exampled by Grabove who wrote in 1997 that 'learners are encouraged to challenge, defend and explain their beliefs, to assess evidence and reasons for these beliefs, and to judge arguments" (Grabove, 1997, p. 91).
While many educators believe that Mezirow added something significant to the field of education by fostering critical thinking skills, there are still many that don't agree with the idea that internal change has to take place within the individual as they become more and more educated. This could be entirely incorrect since many students don't really want to change their internal and external relationships just because they have acquired a higher educational level.
The thought that Mezirow wished to promote concerning students who will function as 'more autonomous, socially responsible thinkers' does not necessarily relate to every student. Some just wish to pass the course!
This article seems to present a number of different styles of learning not necessarily a
methodology. Many of the statements made by Richard Felder and Barbara Soloman are strategies of thinking and studying rather than beliefs in methodologies. Together they write about the different styles of learning such as active vs.
reflective, visual vs. verbal, sensing and intuitive, and sequential and global learners. They espouse ways…
