Andragogy Vs Pedagogy Essay

Adult Education and the Online Approach

This assignment explores the term Andragogy and its origins, identifies the key people and their concepts on Andragogy and finally concurs in concluding the main themes in eLearning as applied to Andragogy today.

The term Andragogy is believed to be first authored by Alexander Kapp in 1833 (Nottingham Andragogy Group 1983:v), a German high school teacher. In the book on Plato's Educational Ideas he describes the lifelong necessity to learn. He began the book discussing his childhood and in the latter parts turned his attention to adulthood. Kapp argues that education, self-reflection and educating the character are the core values in human life.

Pedagogy is the passive trends from transfer of information from teachers to students, Andragogy is about active information seeking by the learner. Pedagogy assumes that students comes into the classroom with no life experiences to build on. Andragogy assumes that students have prior experiences that they can apply to the learning process. In Pedagogy teaching structure is subject-oriented, In Andragogy learning is less instructed and more relevant, relevance to real life issues are usually more essential using Andragogy as compared to Pedagogy. Pedagogy assumes that students have few internal motivations to learn and must rely on rewards and punishments. Andragogy assumes students have more internal motivations to learn. In Pedagogy students are dependent on teachers, In Andragogy students are more independent and responsible for their own learning. Pedagogy is more authoritarian model and Andragogy is more collaboratively learning model. In summary Pedagogy is more suitable for children in most cases and Andragogy is more suitable for adults in most