Pedagogy and andragogy are two unrelated schools of education with different origin. Pedagogy means child education and andragogy means man education. Both are etymologically incorrect in terms of how they are applied, but that is besides the point. 
 
Historically pedagogy referred to education in general as the big umbrella under which all education falls in. Recently, in education, pedagogy has been associated with Freire and what he referred to as critical pedagogy in the early 70s. Andragogy is a concept originating with Malcolm Knowles also in the 70s. Both Freire and Knowles models apply to adults and have some elements that are similar. Essentially they both believe that adult education has to be student centered. However, Freire adds a political twist. Friere felt that adults learners often come from poor backgrounds and poverty is socio-historically constituted. So in critical pedagogy it was important for the students to become conscious of the socio-political  and socio-historical forces that lead to their poverty and oppression and for them to work collectively to overcome this through education. Knowles does not have the political twist but is more inclined to students directing their education based on their particular interests. 
 
In Latin America and Africa critical pedagogy has been extremely popular because of the clear differences between rich and poor. In Cuba Freirian pedagogy has been developed and modified to highly sophisticated levels making Cuba, a country with almost 80% illiteracy before Castro to one of the most literate societies in the world. Even though nowadays, there is tremendous poverty in Cuba, everyone if fully literate. Freire's model and Cuban models have been reproduced in other Latin American countries with success but not to the Cuban level. In the US critical pedagogy has been very popular in universities and in schools of sociology and social theory as a model to criticize traditional education in the US. However, full critical pedagogy models have not been implemented. There have been some elements of critical pedagogy that have emerged here and there with success, but that is the extent of it. I would say that the most successful applied description of critical pedagogy in action comes from Elsa Auerbach's work. 
 
Andragogy was criticized for the prefix "andra" which means male. A lot of adult education programs serves women so many have rejected the term. Yet, without knowing a lot of advocates for adult education have always embrace models that theoretically coincide with the principles of andragogy. That is that education is students centered and lead and the teachers facilitate the process by which students learn what they want. The closest comprehensive model that emerge in the US that sort of reflects andragogical principles is the Equipped for the Future model that emerged during the Clinton years. The model proposed that adults wanted to acquire skills to fully participate in family, vocation, education and community roles and develop this role maps to facilitate the process. The roles and roles maps supposedly emerge from interviews with learners and educators throughout the country. 
 
The problem with either critical pedagogy and andragogy in the US has been the lack of standardization. Adult education in the US is essentially funded by the US dept of Education. They want evidence of results and they think that standardized testing is the most obvious evidence. So programs get lost in endless testing and in preparing the students to take standardized tests. Also this is supposed to lead to employment which is the other motivation for funding adult education in the US. 
 
Hope this offers a good review. Another good source of the history of literacy in the US for the past 30 years is George Demetrion's Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy. You may want to look at Allan Quigley's book about literacy in the US. I have a brief review in my office of George Demetrion's book and I'll try to post it later if I remember. 
 
By the way, most of the references that I made will pop up right away if you google them, and you'll get tons of stuff. 
 
Hope this helps. Good luck, 
 
Andres 
 
 
 
 
Please visit my art website at:
http://www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html

________________________________

From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Katrina Hinson
Sent: Fri 10/17/2008 7:09 AM
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2605] Question for the List



Good morning everyone.

I have an interesting question that has come up for me in recent days. I'm first year PhD student in a Technical and Professional Discourse. My classes come from a variety of disciplines which is one of the reasons I picked this field to advance my studies. I have worked in adult education for twelve years and continue to do so. I had to deveop an 'issue' to explore in one of my classes this semester and opted to explore differentiated instruction as it applies to the adult learner, but I can't find a lot of research related specifically to this. Does anyone on the list know of a good place to look? My second question comes about because in my proposal for my issue paper, I mentioned the difference and defined the difference between 'pedagogy' and 'andragogy'. When I did this, my professor remarked that a) he didn't know the difference between these two terms and only knew it becuase I had mentioned it in a prior class and b) that from where he sat he saw andgragogy as "good"
  pedagogy and the definition of 'pedagogy' as bad teaching.  I thought this was interesting. Additionally, alot of the readings I have done for the class are all related to adult learning in developmental classes and the practices discussed are definitely an application of 'andragogical' theories rather than 'pedagogical' but all the practitioners tend to refer to the latter term.

How do you on the list see these two 'different' theories? Do you think there are two different theories / approaches to teaching adults vs teaching children?

I'm curious  because I thought people with an educational background  would automatically know the adult learning theory as much as they do the child centered learning theory. And perhaps it's the use of the words adult and child...perhaps one theory isn't any more adult or child but that one theory is geared more to the student and one theory is geared more to the teacher and that is where the difference is?

Your feedback on these quests is most appreciated and most welcome.

Regards,

Katrina Hinson


>>> "Jackie A. Taylor" <jackie at jataylor.net> 10/16/08 9:27 PM >>>

Hi Holly,

Thank you for sending this heads up! Obviously I didn't review the
resource in enough depth before posting. As moderators, we cannot review
every resource shared to the depth it might take to identify these
things. Sometimes resources that others find inappropriate might get
posted. It certainly escaped me this morning and I apologize.



We do rely on community members to catch these things when we miss them.
So thanks again and keep it up! I encourage everyone to critique
resources that we share and let us know what you think.



Appreciatively ~



Jackie



Jackie Taylor, Online Facilitator, jackie at jataylor.net

Adult Literacy Professional Development



Adult Literacy and Language Learning Communities of Practice

http://www.nifl.gov/lincs/discussions/discussions.html

National Institute for Literacy www.nifl.gov <http://www.nifl.gov/> 





________________________________

From: Holly Dilatush [mailto:holly at dilatush.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 11:14 PM
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List
Subject: Re: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2601] Fwd: [Technology 1772]
FinancialCrisis explained?



Actually, when I checked the powerpoint slides.the sub-prime primer:
 http://www.slideshare.net/guesta9d12e/subprime-primer-277484/, I found
it full of offensive profanity and would never use it with students.

holly


--
Holly (Dilatush)
Charlottesville, VA USA
holly at dilatush.com
(434) 960.7177 cell phone
(434) 295.9716 home phone
[OK to call 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. EST / GMT -5 time]

"Live with intention. Share inside~out smiles, inspire hope, seek awe
and nurture in nature."  (original by Holly)

http://tales-around-the-world.blogspot.com <http://tales-around-the-world.blogspot.com/> 
http://abavirtual-learningcenter.org <http://abavirtual-learningcenter.org/>   
http://blogblossoms.edublogs.org <http://blogblossoms.edublogs.org/> 
*Twitter and Skype IDs = smilin7


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