What Is Workforce Development and Continuing Education (WDCE)

WDCE Students and Andragogy   

While Workforce Development and Continuing Education (WDCE) courses are certainly open to everyone, many WDCE students are not typical college-age learners.  Some are attending college after first pursuing other life goals; others are returning to school after a years-long hiatus.  What they have in common is the desire to learn and to take advantage of new educational opportunities.  With this in mind, WDCE instructors may want to familiarize themselves with the concept of andragogy, first espoused in the United States by adult educator Malcolm Knowles (1913-1997).   

In 1968, Knowles proposed a new model for educating adults, one that was distinct from the way children were taught (Merriam and Baumgartner, 2020).  He called this model andragogy, though he made it clear that he did not invent this term (Merriam and Baumgartner, 2020).  In this new approach, Knowles began with a number of assumptions; these assumptions then led to four principles for teaching adults, as outlined below.   

Five Assumptions About Adult Learners

  1. Self-Concept:  Adults have a greater degree of self-awareness than do children.    
  2. Past Learning Experience:  Adult learners bring a wealth of life experience into the classroom.  
  3. Readiness to Learn: Adults see the value of education.   
  4. Practical Reasons to Learn:  Many adults return to the classroom for pragmatic reasons, such as career changes.  
  5. Driven by Internal Motivation:  Adults often have a higher degree of intrinsic motivation than do children.  (LearningTheories.com, n.d., para.5) 

Four Principles of Andragogy

  • Adult learners are self-directed.   
  • New learning adds to what they already know. 
  • Content needs to relate to students’ work and personal lives.  
  • Content needs to focus on solving problems, not just memorizing content. (LearningTheories.com, n.d., para.6) 

A Shift in Thinking

“In later years, Knowles would recognize that some points in his theory did not apply to all adults. In addition, some of what he wrote about education could also apply to children. He began to see learning on a spectrum between teacher-directed and student-directed. In his later work, he emphasized how each situation should be assessed on an individual basis to determine how much self-direction would be helpful for students” (LearningTheories.com. n.d., para. 7) 

 

References  

LearningTheories.com. (n.d.). Andragogy – adult learning theory (Knowles).  https://www.learning-theories.com/andragogy-adult-learning-theory-knowles.html  

Merriam, S.B., and Baumgartner, L.M. (2020). Learning in adulthood.  Jossey-Bass.   

 

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