OK, I want to tuck something in here, it is not quite a response to Tom 
because I don't yet have one.  But I will this fall, I hope.

The brain comes "online" at regular intervals up to I believe 25 years. 
A child's brain is very different from an adult's brain.  A lot has 
been made of the frontal lobe in adolescents--it hasn't matured yet, 
which "accounts'"f or aspects of adolescent thinking.

Beyond this, it seems that the speed of processing may increase up to 
60 years of age.  Speed is dependent on the  fatty coating of myelin 
around the  nerves--fat speeds  electro-chemical impulses.  We "think" 
using electrochemical neuron hook-ups.

Much conscious learning takes the form of puzzle solving.  This is true 
of how children learn to raad, I don't know if there is yet a 
description of how adults learn to read.  I DON'T mean all that stuff 
about  fluency, comprehension the way it  is usually talked about and 
measured.

I DO  mean the study by Ferreiro and Teberosky, "Literacy Before 
Schooling."  Andres, you manly fellow, listen up!  The research was 
done in Buenos Aries, from 1974-1976.

Fischer  et al has done studies of adult learning ( students who are 
adults) and come up with the same puzzle solving data.  Fischer can 
graph his stuff--computer modeling.

Andrea


On Jul 13, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Julie McKinney wrote:


> Hi Everyone,

>

> I am passing on this message from Tom Sticht>

>

> Julie

>

> **********************************************************

> Colleagues: My Google search found that the term andragogy was

> originally

> formulated by a German teacher, Alexander Kapp, in 1833. He used it to

> describe elements of Plato's education theory. Andragogy (andr- meaning

> 'man') could be contrasted with pedagogy (paid- meaning 'child' and

> agogos

> meaning 'leading'). Following is a long two part note that makes

> distinctions between the cognitive processes of children and adults and

> the

> reasons why teaching methods for the former may not be generally

> transferable to adults across the years. The first note calls attention

> to

> how the present government activities are pushing adult education more

> and

> more into the mold of childhood education. The second note illustrates

> with

> the National Assessment of Adult Literacy that it is not valid across

> the

> age range from 16 to 90 years. The human cognitive system changes

> dramatically with age and this is one reason why approaches to 

> education

> based on children's approaches are not transferable across the life

> span.

> As children grow into adulthood pedagogy should be transformed into

> andragogy (andra- considered now as meaning "adult" rather than "man" 

> in

> keeping with the idea that language constantly changes and new 

> functions

> are found for old forms).

> Tom Sticht

>

> Part 1. In Adult Literacy Education: Must Andragogy Recapitulate

> Pedagogy?

>

> In many industrialized nations today there appears to be a movement in

> adult

> basic skills education to have andragogy, defined as theories and

> methods

> for teaching adults, recapitulate pedagogy, defined as theories and

> methods

> for teaching children. This is suggested by many ideas and actions that

> are

> being initiated in adult literacy education.

>

> For instance, in many cases adult literacy education is thought of as a

> "second chance" at learning what should have been learned in the 

> primary

> grades of school. In this case, then, it seems to be assumed that 

> adults

> should be taught the "3 Rs" in the same way that children are taught

> them.

> Indeed, in the United States the National Institute for Literacy

> (www.nifl.gov) includes web pages on the "scientific basis" for 

> teaching

> adults to read that are based primarily on research in the K-12 grade

> school system. The focus is on teaching alphabetics (phonics, decoding,

> word recognition) and reading comprehension in the same way that

> children

> are taught.

>

> The U. S. Department of Education has created a National Reporting

> System

> for adult literacy education that has requirements for programs to show

> how

> adults learning literacy progress upward through levels of proficiency

> with

> each level being about equal to two "grade levels" of proficiency, as

> though adults in literacy programs are recapitulating  grade school.

> Such

> an approach is also found in the United Kingdom with adults in basic

> skills

> education expected to progress up to the same sorts of skills as

> children in

> the primary grades acquire.

>

> Further, adult literacy programs are often asked to measure progress in

> adult learning in their programs using standardized tests that are 

> based

> on

> methods used in measuring progress in the grade schools. In some cases,

> adult literacy development is stated in terms of gain in reading grade

> levels, as if adults were going to school for six hours a day for 180 

> or

> so

> days a years to make a year's gain in reading or other basic skills.

>

> One consequence of this belief that andragogy should recapitulate

> pedagogy

> is that a great misunderstanding of adult literacy education occurs. In

> particular, there is a tendency for policymakers and funding agencies 

> to

> think that adult literacy education is the same as children's literacy

> education and that may lead to the idea that, instead of investing much

> by

> way of resources into adult literacy education, we will be better 

> served

> by

> "stopping the problem at the source" and focussing instead upon young

> children to prevent adult literacy problems.

>

> However, such an approach fails to recognize that, in thirty years of

> trying, and after spending over a trillion dollars in preventing

> reading failure in the public schools, recent data from the U. S.

> National

> Center for Education Statistics for the years from 1971 to 2004 show

> that

> reading scores for 9, 13, and 17 years old have remained about the 

> same,

> with some up and down fluctuations over the years. So up to now, at

> least

> in  the U. S., there has not been much success in "stopping the problem

> at

> the source."

>

> Also, the belief that andragogy ought to recapitulate pedagogy in

> literacy

> education fails to recognize that while the teaching of basic skills as

> abstract "skills" may follow the same practices as for adults, the

> "content" in which the basic skills instruction is embedded should not

> be

> the same as for children. Over one hundred years of adult literacy

> practice

> has provided professional wisdom indicating that adults should be 

> taught

> in

> a "functional context," meaning that the content used to teach reading,

> writing, and arithmetic ought to reflect the kinds of daily needs that

> adults face.

>

> This showed itself in World Wars I and II during which time soldiers

> were

> taught to read using materials that embedded basic skills instruction

> with

> important military information. This type of taking account of adult's

> functional contexts does occur in many adult literacy programs today

> where

> materials of importance to adults, such as what to do in case of 

> spousal

> abuse, what kinds of health problems adults might be facing with

> themselves

> or their children, how to deal with consumer fraud, workplace demands

> for

> basic skills, and on and on are used to teach literacy.

>

> The fact that the "content" of adult literacy programs is so different

> from

> that of primary grade children reflects attention to andragogy. But 

> when

> the focus is on abstract "skills" devoid of any particular content,

> literacy instruction for adults begins to recapitulate the pedagogy of

> children.

>

> There is a need today for adult literacy educators to stand up for

> andragogy

> and to insist upon the rights of adult literacy students to have their

> education focussed upon their current life circumstances. There is

> evidence

> to suggest that this will not only make adult literacy learning more

> desirable and palatable for adults, it can also lead to greater rates 

> of

> participation, retention, better learning, and greater transfer from 

> the

> classroom to the world in which the adults live outside the classroom.

>

>

> Part 2. Fluid and Crystallized Literacy Assessment and Development With

> Adults:

> Challenges to the Validity of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult

> Literacy

> (NAAL)

>

> The disinction between the "skills' and "content" aspects of education

> has

> revealed itself in psychometric research on intelligence over the last

> half

> century. This research has

> resulted in a trend to draw a distinction between the knowledge aspect

> and

> the processing skills aspects of intelligence. Beginning in the 1940s

> and

> continuing up to the 1990s, Raymond Cattell and various collaborators,

> and

> later many independent investigators, made the distinction between

> "fluid

> intelligence" and "crystallized intelligence." Cattell stated, "Fluid

> intelligence is involved in tests that have very little cultural

> content,

> whereas crystallized intelligence loads abilities that have obviously

> been

> acquired, such as verbal and numerical ability, mechanical aptitude,

> social

> skills, and so on. The age curve of these two abilities is quite

> different.

> They both increase up to the age of about 15 or 16, and slightly

> thereafter, to the early 20s perhaps. But thereafter fluid intelligence

> steadily declines whereas crystallized intelligence stays high" (p. 

> 23).

>

> Cognitive psychologists have re-framed the "fluid" and "crystallized"

> aspects of cognition into a model of a human cognitive system made-up 

> of

> a

> long term memory which constitutes a knowledge base ("crystallized

> intelligence") for the person, a working memory which engages various

> processes ("fluid intelligence") that are going on at a given time 

> using

> information picked-up from both the long term memory's knowledge base

> and

> a sensory system that picks-up information from the external world that

> the

> person is in. Today, over forty years of research has validated the

> usefulness of this simple three-part model for thinking about human

> cognition.

>

> The model is important because it helps to develop a theory of literacy

> as

> information processing skills (reading as decoding printed to spoken

> language) and comprehension (using the knowledge base to create 

> meaning)

> that can inform the development of new knowledge-based assessment tools

> and new approaches to adult education.

>

> The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the National Adult

> Literacy Survey (NALS) of 1993 and the new 2003 National Assessment of

> Adult

> Literacy  (NAAL) all used "real world" tasks that are complex

> information

> processing

> tasks that engage unknown mixtures of knowledge and processes. For this

> reason it is not clear what they assess or what their instructional

> implications are.

>

> Colleagues and I used the simple model of the human cognitive system

> given

> above to analyze performance on the NALS. It was  concluded that the

> NALS

> places large demands on working memory processes  ("fluid 

> intelligence")

> and that is what may account for some of the large declines in

> performance

> by older adults. To test this hypothesis, an assessment of knowledge

> ("crystallized intelligence") was developed and

> used to assess adult's cultural knowledge of vocabulary, authors,

> magazines

> and famous people.. The results showed clearly that  younger adults did

> better on the NALS with its heavy emphasis on working memory processes

> ("fluid literacy") and older adults did better than younger adults on

> the

> knowledge base ("crystallized literacy") assessment .

>

> Given the differences between younger and older adults on "fluid

> literacy"

> and "crystallized literacy"  there is reason to question the validity 

> of

> using "real world" tasks like those on the Prose, Document and

> Quantitative

> scales of the IALS, NALS, and  NAAL to represent the literacy abilities

> of

> adults. In general, when assessing the literacy of adults, it seems 

> wise

> to

> keep in mind the differences between working memory or "fluid" aspects

> of

> literacy, such as fluency in reading with its emphasis upon efficiency

> of

> processing, and the "crystallized" or knowledge base aspects of 

> reading.

>

> It is also important to keep in mind these differences between fluid 

> and

> crystallized literacy in teaching and learning. While it is possible to

> teach knowledge, such as vocabulary, facts, principles, concepts, and

> rules, it is not possible to directly teach fluid processing. Fluidity

> of

> information processing, such as fluency in reading, cannot be directly

> taught. Rather, it must be developed through extensive, guided,

> practice.

> Though I know of no research on this theoretical framework regarding 

> the

> differences between fluid and crystallized literacy and instructional

> practices in adult literacy programs, it can be hypothesized that all

> learners are likely to make much faster improvements in crystallized

> literacy than in fluid literacy, and this should be especially true for

> older learners, especially those over 45 to 50 years of a

>

> Note; For references to fluid and crystallized intelligence  see Beyond

> 2000

> by Thomas Sticht downloadable online at

> http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/beyond/Beyond.PDF

>

> Thomas G. Sticht

> International Consultant in Adult Education

> 2062 Valley View Blvd.

> El Cajon, CA 92019-2059

> Tel/fax: 96190 444-9133

> Email: tsticht at aznet.net

>

>

>

>

> Julie McKinney

> Discussion List Moderator

> World Education/NCSALL

> jmckinney at worlded.org

>

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