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[ProfessionalDevelopment 2615] Re: Question for the Listtsticht at znet.com tsticht at znet.comFri Oct 17 14:44:05 EDT 2008
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 Freedmans 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
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