Teaching Adults by Griff Foley

Teaching Adults by Griff Foley

How does Foley's perspective on teaching compare with your own understanding of teaching adults?

In the past, most of the articles and papers and books that were written about teaching were about young children, or teenagers - perhaps some people up to college age. That is not the same thing as adult learners, because many of them learn things quite differently than young children, and they often have to work harder to remember the same things. The issue of formal classroom learning is one that has been misunderstood for many years. There are individuals who study it and discuss how significant it is, and there are others that see it issues with it as some kind of made-up problem that is really not important enough to focus on.

Both of these are valid points-of-view but, in recent years, it has generally been accepted that formal classroom learning is still the best way for many people to learn, and that the study of it is important. The concern, however, is with what kinds of learning work the best, especially in the adult learner population. Both accelerated learning and suggestopedic learning have both been touted as working better for older learners than standard forms of classroom learning, but few studies into this issue have actually been performed.

There is a lot of evidence that accelerated learning, suggestopedic learning, and other different learning styles, such as extrinsic motivation, provide a better option for a lot of adult learners. Students who are allowed to learn through different styles fair better on tests and have a significantly higher average as a collective classroom group than students who do not have a different style of learning or teaching presented to them. Different learning styles, it would appear, would correlate with different teaching styles and also with motivation, in that the instructor creates different activities for the learners and rewards can be given for the learning of specific tasks. The types of rewards given are not as important as the fact that there was a reward at all.

Some of these reward/motivation ideas work better with children than adults, but all people have things that motivate them, and because of that there are many different options of that can be used where learning is concerned. Foley also seems to believe that there are a lot of different choices when it comes to adult learning. Not all people learn the same way, but children can more easily adjust to other learning styles and find ways that they can adapt. Adults have more of a difficulty with that, so giving them more learning styles is often the best choice if a person wants to find the best way to help them learn.

2.What is your reaction to Foley's emphasis on the idea that good teaching must be grounded in the passionate dedication of the adult teacher to his or her values?

It seems as though Foley is right. People who are passionate about what they do often show that passion to others, and it makes the learners more interested in the subject matter. Opening up to students is very important for teachers. While it is obviously not appropriate for a teacher to confide intimate personal details to the class, or gossip about others to try to be more accepted, there are ways that a teacher can seem more 'real' to the students. For example, crying over something very sad or letting the students know when the teacher is getting angry with their misbehavior goes a long way toward having younger students see teachers as real people. These same kinds of things - made age-appropriate of course - can work well for adult learners, as well.

Many individuals who are a bit older also have trouble connecting with their instructors, because they are uncertain about what is wanted from them, and they may have trouble learning everything that they need to know in the way that it is presented to them. The way that students are taught is so very important to their future, and the way that they learn things must be addressed so that they do not have to struggle as strongly through school, and this is especially true of adult learners who may already be dealing with many other issues as well. Naturally, students can all have different learning styles, which means that not all students in a classroom will respond to a specific style of learning. With this being the case, utilizing many different ways of teaching material to students will allow all of the students to benefit from the lesson, instead of only those students that have a particular, specific learning style.