This workshop provides an overview of a few key learning theories, as well as common assumptions about adult learners. You will reflect upon these theories and assumptions, and you’ll explore how you can bridge them to your own teaching practice.
By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:
To begin, take 3 minutes and write down your responses to the following questions. These questions will challenge you to articulate a foundational concept in teaching and learning – what is learning!? – and start to build your own theory about a certain type of learners. Please save your answers somewhere that you can revisit, as we will ask you to come back to these answers later in this workshop!
For each video in this workshop, try hovering your mouse over the video, and you should see some control option icons appear. Clicking on the icon that looks like a square with a smaller square inside it brings up options for how you want the two video streams – slides + facilitator – to be arranged: picture-in-picture, side by side, etc. Clicking on the double-arrows icon switches the location of the two video streams, so for example you can minimize the facilitator and maximize the slide. We recommend maximizing the slides so that they can be better read.
At the moment, we’re unable to remove the captions that are attached to the video of the facilitator, If you typically have captions enabled on the video player, you may see two sets of captions overlapping when you begin to play the video. You can turn off one of the two sets via the ‘cc’ closed captioning button on the bottom of the video player. Sorry for the inconvenience!
The following video introduces the subject of adult learning theories and what defines an adult learner.
In this workshop, we will build a framework that describes different approaches to learning that span child-learners through to adult-learners by way of three “gogies”. These three “gogies” are pictured in the bare-bones framework below, which we will supplement with more detail during the workshop.
These three “gogies” often shape (implicitly or explicitly) a wide variety of teaching and learning approaches and how one might implement “signature” pedagogies in their teaching. By “signature pedagogies”, we mean styles of teaching such as Experiential Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Trauma-Informed Teaching, and others.
As you develop as educators, this framework should help you to:
Note: Pedagogy is likely the most familiar ‘gogy’ term to you. In day-to-day practice, people typically use ‘pedagogy’ as a blanket term to describe any teaching approach, including approaches that fall under the other two “gogies” noted above. For example, you and a colleague may be speaking in depth about an activity your peer has designed for their class. In the discussion, your peer describes the “pedagogical choices” they made when designing the activity, but the activity may be more andragogical than pedagogical. It’s somewhat like calling the measurement of body weight “weight”, when the measurement is actually “mass”. Using “weight” in that way is technically incorrect but conversationally accepted. It is the same with the blanket use of “pedagogy”.
What this means is that you may be familiar with andragogical and heutagogical techniques without even knowing it, because “pedagogy” is almost always the word used in conversations about teaching and learning. Keep this in mind as we explore each of the three “gogies” and see if anything presented seems familiar to you!
First, we consider Pedagogy, a theory that encourages teacher-led learning.
Next up, we present Andragogy, a theory that fosters more self-directed learning than pedagogy.
Finally, we present our third “gogy”, Heutagogy, which is a theory that promotes self-determined learning.
Now that you’ve explored the three “gogies”, consider the following question:
Do each of the “gogies” have a place in post-secondary education?
All together, the three “gogies” can be considered to make up a continuum of learner development.
This activity may take you 10-15 minutes.
Please take 3 minutes and revisit the following questions as well as the answers you wrote down at the beginning of this workshop. Have your ideas changed, deepened, expanded, or narrowed?
Take an additional moment to write down your ultimate takeaway from this workshop: How will your understanding of these theories influence your teaching practice?
Now that you have completed the workshop “Adult Learning Theories” you should be able to:
Congratulations on completing a module in the MacPherson Institute Learning Catalogue!
We hope you found the experience meaningful and relevant to your teaching and learning practice. As part of our ongoing effort to improve and grow the Learning Catalogue, we invite you to take just a few minutes to complete a short reflection form.