Andragogy; A definition

Andragogy is the methods and techniques used to facilitate and guide the learning for those who are mature enough to take responsibility for their actions and ownership of their own personal learning journey.

While looking into the subject of Andragogy I was amazed at how poor the definitions I found are. Poor might not be the right term, they just were not robust enough. The definitions I found were very short and sweet. The first simply defined andragogy as “the methods or techniques used to teach adults” (Dictionary.com). Frankly I wanted a little more meat to my definition then this. The second was not much better. “Andragogy is the theory and practice of education of adults” (Wikipedia).

Both of these definitions mention adults. The prefix “andra” does refer to adults but what we are missing here is what is meant by adult. Traditionally we think of an adult as a person who has reached a certain age that allows them certain rights of citizenship like voting etc. When we are talking about education, this simple one dimensional view of who an adult is does not work.  There is no magic age at which a person switches from being a child to an adult with respect to education. In my definition I was a little more specific about the actions of the actual learners. A person who has taken the responsibility for their education and has made the transition of having the learning experience self directed is an adult learner, no matter what their age is.

The other part of the definitions spoke to the methods and techniques. I kind of disagree with this being so simple. It tends to let people believe that the learning is still teacher focused. Of course we still have the development of the curriculum and the teaching plan as well as content, evaluations, rubrics etc. What is missing is the understanding that in adult education the teacher becomes more of a guide to help the students explore, critically reflect and learn. Fundamentally this is the difference between teaching children and teaching adults. All the catch phrases used in post secondary education like student centered or student focused are simply indicating that they are using Andragogy or teaching adults.

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Jeff

Dictionary.com (October 7, 2015) Andragogy, Retrieved from; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/andragogy 

Wikipedia (October 7, 2015) Andragogy, Retrieved from; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andragogy