Adult class learning strategy teaching

The teacher of adults has a different job from the one who teaches children. If you're teaching adult students, for the best results it's important to understand and practice five principles espoused by Malcolm Knowles, a pioneer in the study of adult learning. He observed that adults learn best when:. Most adult students are in your classroom because they want to be. This principle is not about why your students are in your classroom, but about why each thing you teach them is an important part of the learning. For example, imagine you are teaching a group how to make pickles.

By: Brooks Doherty. With the number of non-traditional students growing, many educators have discovered that adult learners are fundamentally different than their younger counterparts in many ways. Yet, most instructors have been left to their own devices to figure out how best to reach these students who come to class with an entirely different set of challenges, demands and expectations, and generally at a much different level of maturity. How can instructors better accommodate and encourage adult student success in a classroom setting? Here are a number of ways to create a better environment for adult learners, no matter what the subject material. Finally, beyond specific tactics, both Lisack and Leppert emphasize personal growth when working with adult students. While younger students are encouraged to do well on standardized tests and accustomed to being compared to their peers in this way, adult learners are challenging themselves.

Teaching adults can be very different from teaching children, or even students of traditional college age. Andrea Leppert, M. Many of her students are adults, and she has five key recommendations for other teachers of adult students. Adult students are more sophisticated and more experienced than younger students, and they should be treated like adults, Leppert says, not like teenagers or kids. Adult students benefit from respectful examples of how to use new skills in real life.