Read about three kinds of learning in which adults are engaged in order to discover for you whether teaching adults is different from youth teaching.

Kinds of Adult Learning

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Kinds of Adult Learning
kinds_of_adult_learningAdult learning may be classified into three categories:

Subject-oriented adult learning
In adult learning contexts that are subject oriented, the most important purpose is to obtain content. The educator speaks of covering the material, and the learners see themselves as expanding knowledge or skills.

Consumer-oriented adult learning
The aim of consumer-oriented learning is to accomplish the expressed necessities of learners. Learners set their learning purposes, recognize objectives, choose applicable resources, and so forth. The educator operates as a facilitator or resource person, and does not engage in challenging or questioning what learners say about their needs.

Emancipatory adult learning
The aim of emancipatory learning is to free learners from the forces that bound their opportunities and are seen as beyond their control. Emancipatory learning causes changes of learner views throughout critical indication. The educator participates actively in the advancement of critical reflection through challenging learners to think about why they hold convinced statements, values, and beliefs.

Only emancipatory adult learning has been described as unique to adulthood, but even that maintain has been challenged. Subject-oriented learning is the most widespread form of learning connected with youth. Collaborative and cooperative learning and additional kinds of experiential learning that are more consumer oriented may be found in youth classrooms as well. On the other hand, emancipatory learning, with its stress on learner change, can happen only in adulthood for the reason that it is only in late adolescence and in adulthood that a person can be familiar with being caught in his or her own history and reliving it. In adulthood adults more conscientiously are applying old ways of knowing rather than simply adapting to changing circumstances. They discover a need to obtain new viewpoints with the purpose of gaining a more complete understanding of changing events and a higher degree of control over their lives. The formative learning of childhood becomes transformative learning in adulthood.