What Makes Adult Learning Unique

These days, almost all schools and universities have started to implement adult learning. The main reason for this is because a lot of adults are getting more interested to enter into a refresher course or finally achieve the diploma that has eluded them in their earlier years. Even special learning institutions are now being set up to cater to adults who would want to boost their career much farther through additional skills training.

But more than the obvious reasons, could there be any other possible reason why adult learning is a successful endeavor to get into? Well, here are some characters among adults that help them cope just as great with the thought of getting back to school and facing the deal with home work, projects, and exams once more.

Autonomy and Self-Direction - Adults are more independent and have a mind of their own, so to speak. This being said, teachers no longer serve as main directors but sometimes just facilitators of lessons. They are just there to guide adult students into the lessons. More often than not, teachers even involve the adult students regarding which projects to undertake and which lessons to tackle to sustain their interests and goals in mind.

A Wealth of Experience - What also makes for more fruitful discussions between teachers and adult students is the fact that the latter already has a wealth of experience to draw from. Often times this is what makes lessons more tangible. Instructors can freely relate their theories and concepts with what actually happens at work or with what happens with their students lives. They no longer speak in tongues and they, in turn, simply foster the existing knowledge that adult students have.

Goal-oriented - Adult students enter into a course with a particular purpose in mind. This is also why setting up goals and objectives becomes imperative for adult instructors. They want to make sure that their courses are fine tuned to suit the needs of their students. As a bonus the lessons becomes funneled down and more specific. Theories and concepts are filtered to answer the expectations and to meet the demands of the students.

Through this, instructors are also given a clearer picture of what their roles as educators should be. Thus, relevance becomes very important and a must for all the lessons covered by the course. This is also the reason why you will find most adult education courses to be short yet condensed enough to cover everything important.

Cognitively interested - Adult learners come to school not with passive interest but with the need to satisfy their cognitive thirst. That being said, they know that they are there to learn something new because they have always wanted to or because they need to for career advancement. Adult learners do not simply come to school because they need to earn a degree. While that may be a reason for those who are yet to graduate from college, they also have the intention of getting a diploma under a course that they particularly like.

Adult learning is a decision that folks make for different reasons. Aside from career advancement, they might also do this because it's something that they never got the chance to do when they were still finding their way in a stable job. Some also wanted to do this to be able to expand their wealth of knowledge. But for whatever it's worth, adult learning is always focused and done because there is an end goal already in mind. It's not because parents say so or there's peer pressure. It's always because of a love for learning.