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An examination of the ideas about how to teach adults: Do they reflect the best ideas about good teaching?
Abstract
This research explores the question of whether the current thinking in the adult education literature on how to teach adult students reflects the best thinking about good teaching. Two bodies of literature are reviewed. First, the literature on good teaching is reviewed to get a sense of the dominant ideas about how to recognize and judge good teaching. Then, the literature on teaching adults is reviewed both to determine the dominant ideas and to analyze the extent to which those ideas are reflective of the best ideas about good teaching. In depth interviews are presented with four people who teach in undergraduate programs at colleges or universities and who teach both 18 to 22-year old undergraduates and adult students. The teachers were asked to talk about their lives growing up and being students in order to show the effect of those events on their ideas about teaching. Each teacher then discussed the question of good teaching by talking about his or her own teaching practices. The analysis of the interviews concludes that none of the teachers use practices that are advocated in the adult education literature. The teachers all acknowledge that adult students are different from their younger counterparts; none of them say that those differences are fundamental to the activity of teaching. The conclusion of the dissertation is that good teaching is good teaching, no matter the age of the student, and that the adult education literature does not generally reflect the best ideas about good teaching. In fact, the research points out that much of the literature in the entire field of education does not incorporate the best ideas about good teaching. More research needs to be done on good teaching, and more work needs to be done to ensure that the best ideas about good teaching are reflected in the education literature.
Subject Area
Higher education|Adult education|Education philosophy
Recommended Citation
Mead, Margaret Lucy, "An examination of the ideas about how to teach adults: Do they reflect the best ideas about good teaching?" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9022718.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9022718