Working With Adult Learners

The importance of working with adult learners is to instruct in a fashion that best fits their learning ability and personal needs. Adult learners are individual that in some case have been out of school for an extended period of time, or are building onto their current knowledge or career. Adult learners are in charge of their own learning unlike with younger students and how their required to attend school until the set age limit of 17 years old. For educators there are four aspects to instructing adult learners efficiently and effectively, which consist of motivating, informing, monitoring, and engaging (Pappas, 2013). By educating students utilizing these four aspects, the probability of success highly increases this encouraging more

Due to some adults having been out of school for an extended amount of time, the learning style in which they became accustomed to can be different from the way the teacher may intend to instruct. Adult learners will fall into the category of one of three types of learners, which are visual, auditory, or tactile. While some students may prefer to learn through seeing, others may prefer listening or utilizing their hands to learn. Depending on the type of learner the adult student is will determine how they will best learn in a particular course or subject area. It is vital that the student understands their preferred style of learning prior to entering a particular course so they can maximize their ability for success. For example, a student that does not prefer learning by being hands on will struggle in a course that is filled with lectures and taking

The classroom teacher will be an adult and the adult learner will be around the same age or possibly older than the classroom teacher, which can lead to some very productive classroom conversations. The classroom teacher must utilize the adult learner’s life experiences and their knowledge to connect the student with classroom material so the student can better absorb information. The teacher should introduce new material to the adult learner in a fashion that is clear and concise, followed by a series of questioning that helps the student connect their current knowledge to new knowledge. Following the introduction and questioning of new material, instructional methods such as small group discussions, classroom experiments, and role-playing can serve as beneficial ways to better help adult learners connect to information. Research shows that adult learner’s retention rate increases significantly when engaged in active learning methods (Rasmussen,