Katrina: Here is a longer note I wrote a couple of years ago that addresses
some of the differences between pedagogy and andragogy. Unfortunately, when
I put the piece on discussion lists in 2006 most of the comments centered on
the idea of “andr” as referring to “man” and hence in some folks minds this
excluded women and was a sexist put down of women. There was not much
actual discussion of the differences in educating children versus adults.
If you overlook the sexist language of “andragogy” and focus more on the
distinctions among children and adults as learners this might be more
helpful for your work. Tom Sticht

Note: 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 federal and state 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 (andr- 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).


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 (phonemics,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 focusing 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 the Freedman’s Schools following the Civil War, the
Moonlight Schools of Kentucky in 1911-30, 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 focused 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 distinction 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 information on Functional Context Education see the following
reports:

1. Functional Context Education: Making Learning Relevant (1997 edition).
Eight chapters including The Power of Adult Literacy Education, Some
Challenges of Diversity for Adult Literacy Education, Views On Contemporary
Cognitive Science, Introduction to Functional Context Education, Functional
Context Education and Literacy Instruction, and four case studies in
applying Functional Context Education to the design of programs that
integrate (or embed, contextualize) basic skills and vocational or
parenting education (workplace literacy, family literacy).
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/context/context.pdf

2. Functional Context Education: Making Learning Relevant in the 21st
Century (2005 edition). Functional Context Education (FCE) materials
available online in several nations, the AdultLiteracy and Life Skills
(ALL) survey, National Adult Assessment of Literacy (NAAL) survey, FCE in
historical perspective, (1860-Present) including Paulo Freire and Learner
Centered, Participatory Literacy Education. Methodologies used in adult
literacy research for determiningwhat is relevant to youth and adult
learners; five case studies illustrating the application ofFCE in
parenting, vocational training, and health literacy.
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/fce/FCE.pdf

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