Question

Androgyny is premised on at least four crucial assumptions about the characteristics of adult learners that are different from the assumptions about child learners on which traditional pedagogy is premised. A fifth was added later.

1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being

2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.

3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.

4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.

5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12).

Prepare a 2 – 3 page paper that reflects on your personal attainment of each of these 5 assumptions. Are you there yet? Maybe you don’t necessarily agree with one or more of the assumptions-why or why not? And finally, can you see how you might learn differently now than when you were in high school, for example?

Answer 1

Answer. It is right that the characteristics of child learners are different from the adult learners.

As we become adult, we change, we develop in every way.

In terms of self concept, I think as every person grows, they learn more about themselves. I think from my childhood to being an adult, I learned a lot from all the experiences. I think I learned new things about me which made a better human being. I am not in a stage that I know everything about self concept and recognized myself but I Definitely developed in my personality. I have become more independent. I take my own responsibilities & that is what self concept is about being a self directed human being. Knowing what you want in your life and making your decision, becoming self sufficient.

In terms of experience, i think every person learns every single day in their life. Life taught things in many ways and everyday in your life teaches you a different lesson. I think as I am growing, I learning new things, from every experience I have. I think we actually become a reservoir of experience from which we learns. Everday is a new experience and an opportunity to learn.

In terms of readiness to learn, yes every person learns new things as he or she grows, we become more aware of our surroundings, we starts involving in them socially. Our decisions in our society reflect who we are and they do play a important role in our social life. But I think I am not in a place where I involve myself into social work or build my social life or get oriented towards social tasks. I do have friends but in personal manner. But I have developed enough to learn my social responsibilities & being aware of society.

In the concept of orientation of learning like from being a bag to knowledge to move towards utilizing them in applications. I think our  orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness. But not everybody have these characteristics. I am not in this place & probably we do take interest but not get involved. I don't agree with this concept.

The concept of motivation to learn, I think as we grow, the motivation to learn definitely increases and this is something internal. I do agree with this assumption because i think this is something that develops natyrallyvin every person as he grows. Motivation to do work & learn.

The way we learn also changes as we developed I think we become more sincere and aware and the learning is not based on the books we read, it is based on the experiences of our life and those experience influence our decisions.