Chris Cathcart posted to: Group Three and Four
Mary Henehan - posted to: Groups Three and Four
Rob Hill posted to:
Ben Ranfeld posted : Group 3 and 4
Leading Adult Educators
Chris Cathcart
Rob Hill
Mary Henehan
Ben Ranfeld
Ball State University
Adult and Community Education
February 17, 2014
Leading
Adult Educators
The
volumes of work produced on the subject of Adult Education is as unmeasurable
as it is varied. Many great leaders have
provided their insights as an effort to expand the field in a way that supports
better understanding of the adult student with needs that are vastly different
from traditional concepts. This paper
seeks to spotlight the contributions made by two great leaders in education,
Paulo Freire and Malcolm Knowles. As
researchers and educators both of these men made great strides to strengthen
our concept of Adult learning while along the way providing frameworks for
learning that are still used today.
Although
they represent different focus areas, Freire and Knowles are both widely
considered to be pioneers of the field.
Their diverse backgrounds are as dissimilar as they are fascinating
however they are joined by a common thread, the need to understand what makes a
successful learning experience for a given group and how can that knowledge be
used in learning settings. Here we
provide an overview of each one starting with histories and perspectives,
following through their work and ending with a summary of their impact and what
implications can be drawn from their work.
This work is not
meant to be an exhaustive review nor is it a critical analysis, although some
consideration is given to shortfalls of their work. Focusing on each individual’s body of work
should provide a clear understanding of their importance to the field and how
they are still influencing the work presented today.
Paulo Freire
In 1999, after the
death of Paulo Freire, an entire issue of Democracy
and Education paid tribute to one of the foremost educators of the
twentieth century. Such was his influence that Wilson (1999) memorialized him in
saying, “Our remembrances therefore, to be complete, must offer, beyond
reflection, concrete exemplars of the sorts of actions through which the
tenacity, love, and humanity of Paulo Freire can continue to educate.”
Having lived a
life in an oppressed socio-economic system among poor rural field workers and
laborers, Freire devoted an abundance of his life toward helping the plight of
these people. The Pernambuco province
of Brazil was a volatile region rife with political upheaval. Unrest became more common and a coup in 1964
forced Freire into prison for seventy-five days for “what the new regime
considered to be subversive elements in his teaching” (Paulo Freire Biography,
2014). A subsequent coup freed him and
he fled to Chile. While in Chile, he worked for democratic and agrarian reform
(Cook, 2001). These life-changing events
left a profound impact on Freire that is evidenced in his works and carries
heavy influence in all of education today.
Profile
In September 1921,
Paulo Freire was the fourth child born to devote Catholic parents living in
Recife, capitol city of the Pernambuco province located in the northeastern
region of Brazil (Cook, 2001).
Cook (2001)
states that Edeltrudes Freire Snows, Paulo’s mother, was a firm believer in
education and taught her son to read and write before he entered school. When he was 13, his father passed away
leaving the family destitute.
Challenging circumstances did not deter him from pursuing his
education. While still in high school,
he became a grammar tutor.
He and his first
wife Elza, also an educator, raised five children. He graduated from the Oswaldo College
Cross and University of Recife with degrees in education and law. He received twenty-seven honorary
degrees. Early in his career, he was a
welfare worker. In 1964, he was appointed National Coordinator of
Literacy. The campaign was targeted
towards those living in rural agricultural areas and the urban poor (Cook,
2001).
For much of his
life, Nita, his second wife believed that Freire struggled with depression
perhaps stemming from extreme living conditions of his youth (Wilson,
1999). The poverty of his youth shaped
his philosophy for life, education and serving the poor.
Perspectives
Groves
(2011, p. 702) believes Freire’s perspectives are based upon his “periphery”
experience with field workers in “Latin America reality.” His beliefs align with “existentialism,
phenomenology, catholic thinking, and obviously the Marxist tradition” (Groves,
2011, p. 702). Through literacy, he
believed he could empower others to make change, but not in the traditional
revolutionary models.
Freire
believed that “autonomy is a condition arising from the ethical and responsible
engagement with decision making”: that we are “unfinished in our development as
human beings” and that it was important to develop a “critical consciousness”
(Weiner, 2003, p. 90). A central concept
to his educational perspective was that curiosity is the “keystone of the
educational process” (Weiner, 2003, p. 90).
He helped others to believe in hope toward “a political, social,
individual, and spiritual horizon not yet known” (Weiner, 2003, p. 90). His perspectives clashed sometimes with the
concepts of capitalism and trickle-down economics as his beliefs aligned with
“democracy from below” (Weiner, 2003, p.
90). Weiner (2003) notes that his
emphasis on transformative leadership, whereby “power and authority begins with
questions of justice, democracy, and the dialect between individual
accountability and social responsibility,”
allowed him to limit his influence and “power through democratic
processes” (Weiner, 2003, p. 91). This
ability to change where the influence was derived helped in empowering the
oppressed he sought to support.
Schugurensky
(1998) posits that Freire manifested “anger and rigor in denouncing structures
of oppression and immense love and creativity in annunciating a better world”
(Schugurensky, 1998, p. 1). His disdain
for educational models that he termed “banking education” is evident in his writings
(Schugurensky, 1998). He believed that
the teacher as expert and student as ignorant form of education lead to
oppressive style learning. Conversely,
he believed in the problem posing model and adult literacy (Schugurensky,
1998). He advocated not only “reading
the word, but the world” (Bentley, 1999).
Part of this concept was to question what was being presented and to
think deeply as opposed to accepting concepts without critique.
Contributions
Freire’s
contributions are “recognized worldwide for his profound impact on educational
thought and practice” (Bentley, 1999).
His emphasis on helping the oppressed has carried on since his death in
1997. Today there are “thousands of
books, articles and dissertations written about Freire, full of descriptions,
interpretations and critiques” (Schugurensky, 1998, p. 2). His primary work was Pedagogy of the Oppressed and his explanation of banking education
led to his model of education that has the “teacher as facilitator” and “the
traditional class becomes a cultural circle where the emphasis shifts from
lecture to problem posing strategies, and the content, previously removed from
the learners experience, becomes relevant to the group” (Schugurensky, 1998, p.
3). This contribution to education today
is a highly used strategy in adult education.
Impact
Freire
believed that it was impossible to separate politics and education and his work
within adult education with oppressed workers can be linked to “issues of
authority and freedom, and oppression and social change” that are embedded in
adult education (Schugurensky, 1998, p. 2).
Bentley (1999) may have best demonstrated the lasting impressions and
contributions of Freire when he held that:
As long as the
struggle for more humane educational practices, for deeper insights into
constructions of power and oppression, and the impulse for people to invent
their own identities and realities exist-Freirean praxis will challenge every
person toward personal and social liberation, both in thought and deed.
Implications
By
using Freire’s models we could, as a society, look at how certain groups are
oppressed in the workforce, economy and education-both adult and traditional
education. If, as Freire believed, there
is a banking model that serves to keep others from rising from their
conditions, it is important to look at how adult education can serve to empower
persons to understand situations that might keep them from advancing. Shifting the focus to problem solving and
dialogue in situations is a proactive stance that would be considered admirable
in empowering the underprivileged. The
concept of power from below can serve adult education as those that desire
training or social change through action can be heard. Uniting together with a vision toward change
is a concept not exclusive to Freire in adult education but nonetheless a
powerful force. Freire himself believed that
his opinions changed over time and he was proud that they had. We can learn that in adult education there
are opportunities to change; we do not have to stay the path because it was our
original intent but rather we can adjust as we learn more.
Malcom S. Knowles
To state that
Malcolm Knowles was an influential figure in adult education would and should
be considered a gross understatement. In a retrospective of his work,
John A. Henschke, Associate Professor of Adult education at the University of
Missouri, St. Louis underscores Knowles’s significance with very powerful
words. “Malcolm S. Knowles stands as a giant catalyst at the juncture -
past, present, and future- of andragogy (the art and science of helping adults
learn) within the field of Adult Education and Human Resource Development.”
(Henschke, Fall 2008).
While Knowles is
considered the father of Andragogy based on his efforts to define the
discipline, his work is truly the culmination of years of study under great
educators such as Eduard Lindeman and Carl Rogers. It also spans a range
of practice areas including Humanistic and behavioral Psychology as well as
training and development.
Although his work
in the field of Adult Education is highly debated, especially with respect to
Andragogy, Knowles’s work remains a guiding force in the pursuit of a more
perfect system for helping adults learn to this day. Beyond just this
Knowles also pioneered study in the area of self-directed learning further
pushing the boundaries of what is considered adult education and learning
strategy. It is no wonder he is said to be “the” central figure in US
adult education in the second half of the twentieth century (Smith, 2002).
Profile
Malcolm Knowles
was born in Livingston, Montana in 1913 where he lived until the age of 12 when
his family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. Participating in the Boy
Scouts and his mother’s example, which encouraged him to be a more caring and
empathetic person, helped shaped Knowles through high school (Smith, 2002).
In 1930 Knowles started attending Harvard University on scholarship where
he met his future wife, Hulda. While at Harvard “he became President of
the Harvard Liberal Club, general secretary of the New England Model League of
Nations, and President of the Phillips Brooks House (Harvard’s social service
agency)” (Smith, 2002).
Knowles graduated
in 1934 with plans to enter the Foreign Service. He enrolled in the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and passed the Foreign Service exam, but
there was a three year wait for placement. He and Hulda married in 1935,
and Knowles joined the National Youth Administration (NYA) in Massachusetts as
their Director of Related Training. Knowles worked with local businesses
to find what skills were needed of its workers, created courses to teach those
skills, and recruited potential employees to enroll in his courses. It
was while working for the NYA that Knowles met Eduard Lindeman, another leading
adult educator, who became a mentor to Knowles while supervising training at
the NYA. Knowles read Lindeman’s book Meaning of Adult Education
which greatly affected and inspired his ideas on adult education.
In 1940, he left
the NYA to become the Director of Adult Education at the Boston YMCA.
Knowles was drafted into the Navy in 1943 and used his skills as a
communications officer until his discharge in 1946. He moved to Chicago
with his family and started working on his M.A. at the University of Chicago
while working as the director of adult education for the Central Chicago YMCA.
It was here Knowles met Cyril Houle, his program advisor and another
leading adult educator, and Carl Rogers, a founding father to the humanistic
approach of psychology. He earned his M.A. in 1949, became an associate
professor at Boston University in 1959, completed his Ph.D. in 1960, and joined
North Carolina’s faculty as professor of adult education in 1974. Knowles
was the executive director of the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A.,
and helped to pioneer the field of laboratory education (Bell, et all., 1989).
After retiring in 1979, Dr. Knowles stayed active in the field of adult
education as a consultant to many different groups and organizations throughout
the world. In 1985 Malcolm Knowles was inducted into the HRD Hall of
Fame.
Perspectives
Malcolm Knowles
as an educator believed that adults learn and experience learning in a way that
is fundamentally different from children (Robertson, 2002). Drawing on
the influences of his early mentors, Knowles was able to identify specific
characteristics that identify adult learners. Finally drawing the line between
pedagogy, the art and science of teaching children and andragogy, the art and
science of teaching adults; Knowles was able to blaze a new train in a field
that had little consideration before his work.
Key to his work
were the six assumptions that he developed to identify who adult learners were
and what identified them as such. Knowles believed that these six
assumptions were critical to the development of all programs for
adults (Merriam et. al, p. 85). The goal was to create a
comprehensive theory that would stand as the umbrella for adult learning.
This goal has been met with considerable debate over the years and is
still hotly contested in current research. The question of whether
andragogy is an actual theory or just a set of assumptions remains
unsatisfactorily answered (McGrath, 2009).
Knowles was also
known to his friends and colleagues as a very authentic person. “Few know Malcolm professionally without
feeling they also know him personally” (Bell, et all., 1989). Knowles took the time to listen carefully to
what people said. He truly believed in
his assumptions of adult theory in the need to foster a safe place for people
to share their experiences, and he treated everyone as equals. Throughout his career, Knowles strove to be
authentic in his interactions with students while facilitating workshops and
learning sessions.
Contributions
Malcolm
Knowles accomplished several firsts in his field. “He was the first to chart the rise of the
adult education movement in the United States; the first to develop a statement
of informal adult education practice; and the first to attempt a comprehensive
theory of adult education” (Smith, 2002).
While Knowles did not invent andragogy, he did bring the term “…into the
training vernacular” (Bell, et all., 1989).
His theory of how adults learn “provided a set of assumptions for the
fledgling field of adult education. It
continues to produce research and discussion" (Baumgartner, Lee, Birden,
Flowers, 2003).
Self-directed
learning goes hand-in-hand with andragogy and transformational learning. According to Knowles (1975) it is a process:
…in which
individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in
diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human
and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate
learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. (p. 18)
While this linear process may seem simple and
obvious, it helped to provide the framework for how adults learn and how adults
are instructed in informal settings.
Impact
As
previously stated the work of Malcolm Knowles has lasting implications for the
field of Adult Education and Learning.
His work redefined the ideas of adult learning by drawing a clear line
between adult and child learners. Knowles’s expansion of the established ideas
of Andragogy continue to shape our ideas about adult learners. It is clear however that his ideas while well
formed evolved over time to consider pedagogy and andragogy as bookends of a large
scale continuum (Merriam et. al. 2007).
According to Smith (2002), Knowles’ work was complimentary and
inclusive. He was always willing to
listen to another perspective and was willing to change his point of view. This speaks volumes to his impact as an
educator.
His
work also led to the development of self-directed learning theory. Focused on the adult learners need for
control and purpose in their individual learning experience, self-directed
learning drives this point home by providing suggestions on how to create an
ideal learning environment that is supportive and nurturing of the learning
experience. Either of these theories taken
alone would represent significant advancement in the field of education, taken
together they underscore the importance of Malcolm Knowles as a pioneer in
education.
Implications
Using
Knowles’s six assumptions of adult learning we are able to better understand
the motivations of adults seeking educational opportunities and develop
curricula that better meet their needs.
Although there is wide debate about the theories of Andragogy and
Self-directed learning it is clear that achieve the goal of providing a
framework through which program development can occur. The value placed on life experience and the
learning environment also have key implications for the classroom and the
instructor, who is in this model a facilitator of information sharing rather
than a gate keeper for stored resources.
In this work there are implications for classroom setup and the greater
question of the importance of self concept for adult learners. Using this information we can better
understand motivations for learning and have greater impact in learning
outcomes for adults.
Table 1. Summary of Leading Adult Educators
|
Paulo Freire
|
Malcolm Shepherd Knowles
|
Time period
|
1940-1997
|
1913-1997
|
Background
|
·
Sought
justice for impoverished through education.
·
Created
awareness and change for those with low SES.
·
Used
adult Education to address literacy to empower and inform those affected
|
Born in 1913 in
Montana. Knowles worked as an adult
educator, professor and consultant his entire adult life. He authored over 230 articles and 18 books. He is considered the father of andragogy as
he was the first to create a theory of adult education based on it.
|
Profile
|
·
Influenced
heavily by poor economic conditions of youth, Depression
·
Studied
at Brazilian Universities
·
Educational
Director at universities
·
Helped
worker programs
|
Earned a B.A. from
Harvard University and both his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago. He spent 14 years as an
associate professor at Boston University and was a full professor at North
Carolina State University until his retirement where he continued to stay
active as professor emeritus.
|
Perspectives
|
·
Socialist
Christian
·
Empowering
the oppressed
·
Dialogue
for Understanding
·
Literacy
for empowering
|
·
Authenticity
– Knowles strove to be authentic and not fall into the trap of playing the
role of scholar, professor or trainer.
He deeply respected fellow learners and found the most success when
simply being himself.
·
Six
assumptions of adult learning
|
Contributions
|
·
Oppressed
topic that has produced extensive research by others due to Freire
·
Challenged
Banking Education
·
Emphasis
from direct instruction to facilitator model
|
·
Created
a comprehensive theory of adult education based on andragogy
·
Self-directed
learning
·
Tracked the
adult education movement in the United States
|
Impact
|
·
Created
awareness of opportunity for oppressed
·
Demonstrated
that all can learn
·
Social
Change movement
·
Created
dialogue for equity
|
·
Established
field of informal adult learning
·
Introduced
learning contracts
·
Enhanced
the idea of adults ad independent learners in need of control in their
education
·
Redefined
learning as a continuum of learning from childhood to adult
|
Implications
|
·
Created
awareness of oppressed with focus on solutions to economics, literacy,
equality
·
Power
from below
·
United
visions for oppressed
|
·
Uncovered
need for unifying theory of adult and learning
·
Provided
framework for curriculum development
·
Invited
discussion of self-concept and motivation as they relate to learning in
adults
·
Redefined
the role of the educator
|
References
Baumgartner,
L., Lee, M., Birden, S., Flowers, D. (2003). Adult Learning Theory: A Primer.
Information Series No. 392. Center on
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Bell,
Chip R., and friends (1989). Malcolm. Training
and Development Journal, 43(10), 38-43.
Bentley, L. (1999). A brief
biography of Paulo Freire. Retrieved from
Groves,
T. (2010). Looking up to Paulo Freire: Education and political culture during
the Spanish transition to democracy. Paedagogica
Historica, 47(5), 702. doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2011.602348
Henschke, J. A. (2008). Reflections on the Experiences of
Learning with Dr. Malcolm Shepherd. New
Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 22(3-4), 44-52.
Knowles, M. S. (1975). Self-Directed Learning. A guide for learners and teachers.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall/Cambridge.
McGrath, V. (2009). Reviewing the Evidence on How Adult
Students Learn: An Examination of Knowles' Model of Andragogy. Adult
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Merriam, Sharan B., Caffarella, Rosemary S., Baumgartner,
Lisa M. (2007). Learning in Adulthood: A comprehensive Guide. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Schugurensky,
D. (1998). The legacy of Paulo Freire: A critical review of his contributions. Convergence, 31(1-2), 1-3.
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E. (2003). Secretary Paulo Freire and the democratization of power: Toward a
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