How Adults Think and Learn

Question 1

How Adults Think and Learn

Answer 1

Adults do not function and learn in the same ways that children do, so we must examine our assumption about how to support, nurture, and enhance growth and learning in adults.

Question 2

Understanding learning

Answer 2

As Mentkowski and associates (2000) put it, understanding learning, understanding the learner, and envisioning the learner as a mature, motivated, and self-directed person will help create learning that lasts in the post graduate environment.

Question 3

representing the interraction or relationship between learber and teacher

Answer 3

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Question 4

Individual development in adulthood

Answer 4

Early adulthood is concerned with” entering the adult world” and building a life structure that includes both work and intimate or family life.

Question 5

Continued: Individual development in adulthood

Answer 5

Midlife- this may be the point at which a person decides to change careers so one that seems more rewarding or meaningful or the time when a woman who is largely engage in child rearing re-enters school to prepare to enter or re-enter the workforce

Question 6

Continued: Individual development in adulthood

Answer 6

Levinson speaks of normative disequilibrium, during which people are negotiating changes in life, eras and stages within them.

At such times, people may be psychologically fragile, but may also have the potential for rapid growth and change

Question 7

Continued: Individual development in adulthood

Answer 7

Cultural and social context, also affect all development, including adult development

Question 8

Adult thinking, and learning

Answer 8

Procedural knowledge-one of its important features is evaluating how a given piece of knowledge was derived.

Question 9

Continued:Adult thinking, and learning

Answer 9

Merdinger (1991) pointed out that for women and others from non-dominant groups in the society, the simple, but profound act of finding “ voice,” of developing confidence in the value of one’s own perception and experiences in a situation of being able to describe those perceptions to others, must be a goal of learning.

Question 10

Continued:Adult thinking, and learning

Answer 10

Traditional reflective techniques, often used in the classroom and the field, such as keeping a journal and process recording, require students to record their personal observations, perceptions and subjective reactions to the practice encounters, readings, or classroom events

Question 11

Critical thinking

Answer 11

Critical thinking, is that mode of thinking- about any subject, Content, or problem- in which the thinker improve the quality of his, or her, thinking by skillfully, taking charge of the structures, inherent and thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them.

Question 12

Learning styles

Answer 12

Kolb (1984) devise a system for thinking about styles of learning that has been used in social work.

It contains four ways of interacting with the world through active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation, and abstract conceptualization.

Question 13

Continued: learning styles

Answer 13

Determine the learning style with which an individual is most comfortable

Question 14

Continued: learning styles

Answer 14

Assimilative learners, prefer reasoning, theoretical, models, explanations, and working with ideas, concerts, and practice

Question 15

Continued: learning styles

Answer 15

Convergent learners Prefer, problem-solving, decision, making models, the practical application of ideas, and technical or school these tasks.

Question 16

Continued: learning styles

Answer 16

Accommodation learners prefer doing an acting, caring out, plans, fitting theory, to facts, and relying on other people for information

Question 18

Continued: learning styles

Answer 18

Divergent learners gravitate towards inductive reasoning (generating concepts from observations), generating, alternative ideas, and implications, and using brainstorming and imagination in their work (Davis, 1993)

Question 19

Transformational learning

Answer 19

The highest levels of conceptual development are considered to be rare, even in middle adulthood (Davis,1993)

Question 20

Continued: transformational learning

Answer 20

Transformational learning occurs when an individual has a Reflected on assumptions and expectations about what will occur, has found these assumptions to be faulty, and has revise them.., it has the potential to lead to transformed meaning perspectives, or changed ways of seeing (Cranton,1996)

Question 21

The reflective practitioner

Answer 21

Schon’s theory offers the idea of “ reflection-in-action” to capture how all professions must deal not just with thinking, but also with taking action.

His theory rejects technocratic views, a professional functioning

Question 22

Understanding how learning informs teaching

Answer 22

Reynolds (1942/1985) model of learning, and the others discussed have the following implications for teaching:

-start where the learner

-Engage the student in the learning process

-Be patient with the learning process

-At the same time have high expectations of everyone