With over 40 million adult learners across the country enrolled each year, understanding the motivational factors behind adults returning to higher education is critical for both students and facilitators. An adult's learning experience is different from a child's, what motivational factors and benefits bring adults back to the classroom and then keep them there. How adults have different learning styles and instructors have to address various factors in their class to support adult learning, their life experience should be taken into consideration and integrated into the learning curriculum.
Adult learners find that the biggest motivational factor to success in returning to higher education. Without understanding why a particular reading assignment or essay needs to be completed, an adult learner is not invested in actually learning and retaining the information. Unlike children and teenagers, adult learners have many responsibilities that they must balance against the demands of learning. Because of these responsibilities, adults can have barriers against them participating in learning. Some of these barriers include transportation, finances, and confidence. Adults have a strong need to be able to apply the new knowledge immediately to their daily lives. Adult learners also have different outcomes for their learning and require active participation instead of passively receiving the information from a teacher. Adults find themselves internally motivated through confidence building and satisfaction rather than externally motivated by peers and they’re usually motivated by a sense of value they place on something and by the way they are valued.
Another large piece of the motivational puzzle belongs to the life experience that adults bring to their classrooms and assignments. Adult learners are interested in outcomes that are problem centered where they can draw on their greater life experience and apply it to the situation. Adults are also goal oriented and wish to see how they can apply what they are learning to their daily lives immediately. Due to their greater life experience, adults have been found to be more self-directed in their learning and require a teacher who is more of a facilitator who works with them.
Citations
Thomas, Dr. K. J. ( n.d.). They're Not Just Big Kids: Motivating Adult Learners. St. Cloud State
University. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed01/22.html
1 comment:
Adult learners do bring a lot of life experience to higher education. As an adult learner, I feel I have benefited far more from the Regis College for Professional Studies than the traditional college I first attended because of the accelerated pace and presentation of subject matter. My facilitator for Leadership Principals perhaps said it best. She said that young college students are very concrete thinkers whereas adult learners are mush more abstract thinkers. Though my younger self may have disagreed I understand this better now.
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