2. THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN ADULT EDUCATION Just 42 years ago, on May 14, 1951, in Columbus, Ohio, the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. was founded. Prompted by its inception and the oncoming information age, the increase in life expectancy, the exponential rates of change, and the realization that in order for the individual to not suffer from intellectual obsolescence, myriad adult educators began advocating for reinventing the concept of youth and especially, adult education. Attempts to bring the isolated concepts, insights, and research findings regarding adult learning together into an integrated framework had already begun in the late 1940's with the publication of Harry Overstreet's, "The Mature Mind", and continued with Knowles' Informal Adult Education in 1950, Edmund Brunner's Overview of Research in Adult Education in 1954, J.R. Kidd's How Adults Learn in 1959, J.R. Gibb's chapter on "Learning Theory in Adult Education" in the Handbook of Adult Education in the U.S. in 1960, and Harry L. Miller's Teaching and Learning in Adult Education in 1964. These works were limited, because they were more a descriptive listing of concepts and principles rather than comprehensive, coherent, and integrated theoretical frameworks. An adult education concept was evolving in Europe for some time under the unified theory of andragogy and introduced in 1967 by Yugoslavian adult educator, Susan Savicevic. Knowles introduced it into America in an article "Andragogy, Not Pedagogy" in Adult Leadership in April, 1968. Tragically, Knowles (1978) reported, the earlier traditions of teaching and learning were aborted and lost with the fall of Rome. All the great teachers of ancient history--Lao Tse and Confucius of China, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Cicero, Quintilian--were chiefly teachers of adults, not children. They made assumptions about learning, such as learning is a process of discovery by the learner, and used procedures like dialogue and "learning by doing" that came to be labelled "pagan" and were forbidden when monastic schools started being organized in the seventh century (p.53). For nearly 12 centuries, adult education lay dormant. Knowles (1978) speculated that with growing support from research (Bruner, 1961; Erikson, 1950, 1959, 1964; Getzels and Jackson, 1962; Bower and Hollister, 1967; Iscoe and Stevenson, 1950; White, 1959) that "as an individual matures, his need and capacity to be self-directing, to utilize his experience in learning, to identify his own readiness to learn, and to organize his learning around life problems, increases rapidly during adolescence" (p.54). Within the education establishment and beginning with the writing of Eduard C. Lindeman, whom many consider to be the "Father of Adult Education", and culminating in the writings of J.R. Kidd and Malcolm Knowles, adult education began to influence the behavior, attitudes and beliefs of educators world-wide. Not to misrepresent the reader into believing that only American adult educators were impacting the world of adult education, the following list of leaders in other nations is presented to indicate the scope of work being done throughout the world in advocating for a new vision of adult education and lifelong learning. Founders of Adult Education Throughout the World. Seppo Kontianen - Finland Erik Erikson - Switzerland Havighurst - England Loevinger - England Perry - England Koring - Germany Niemi - Finland Blakely (1960) wrote that "adult education implies purposeful systematic learning, in contrast to random unexamined experience. It contains elements of science and art (a phrase that Knowles would later incorporate into his own definition of andragogy). Second, adult education implies a respect for the purposes and integrity of the learner. It has an ethic. Whatever interests free citizens in a free society is subject matter for adult education." He noted three trends occurring in adult education programs in western civilization which influenced new thinking regarding the age-old practice of education: 1. Methods used with adults are specifically designed for them. 2. Participation by the adult learner is essential in the planning process. 3. Media of mass communication are increasingly being used as tools with adults (pp. 4-5). Adult education, Blakely (1960) maintained, "is the growing and the harvest, for which formal schooling is only the planting and the cultivation. Adult education is a purposeful and systematic use of the opportunities of a society in which all its institutions--government, business, unions, and civil organizations, its homes, neighborhoods, cities, states, and the nation--are concerned with helping individuals fulfill themselves. This is the ideal educational society" (p. 8). In 1947, Lundberg wrote that change was terribly contemporary. He began to explore the rapid developments in the world and predicted significant cultural changes were yet to come in all areas of human endeavor, but especially in education. Regarding the burgeoning culture, Bryson (1936) proposed that the culture always determines the form, the content, and the scope of its organized education. Each characteristic of a civilization, both old and new, created the need for particular knowledge, skills, understandings, and qualities on the part of those who make up the society and keep the civilization in operation. Given the change taking place in the civilization and the incongruent response on the part of the culture to adapt to it, new and unique educational programs needed to be created. Some characteristics of the American culture in the 1960's and 1970's and their implications for adult education were: 1. Rapidity of change - (Future Shock, 1970). 2. Dominance of technology - (Third Wave, 1980). 3. Intensity of specialization - (Reinventing the Corporation, (1985). 4. Complexity of human relationships - (How Adults Learn, 1973). 5. Vastness of opportunity - (Future Shock, 1973). In response to these characteristics, Hallenbach (1960) described the function of adult education as: 1. Expanding communication skills. 2. Developing mental flexibility. 3. Improving human relations. 4. Facilitating participation in the learning process. 5. Expediting personal growth through self-discovery. Powell and Benne (1960) maintained that the academic group, the community development group and the group dynamics school of adult education all disagree on some issues, but they do agree on the following principles of adult education: 1. There is an adult mind and it is different from that of the youth and the undergraduate. 2. There is an interplay of intellectual and emotional elements in all adult learning. 3. There is a concern with the guidance and understanding of action. 4. Individual learning can most effectively occur in a continuing face-to-face group. 5. The individual is the learner, the agent of learning and of judgement and acting. 6. All adult learners are activated by optimism and self-creative activity. 7. Adults are focused on skills of implicit commitment. "The true end of community development, as of all adult education," Cyril Houle (1956) wrote, "is to make life better by changing people in desirable ways" (p. 10). In extensive research by Houle and others, many factors were discovered regarding the adult learner: 1. Interest in education among adults is very widespread. 2. Far more people than ever before have been exposed to education as part of their adult experience and are motivated to continue learning if suitable opportunities are provided. 3. Educational experiences for adults should be introduced into the activities to which adults choose to belong. 4. The more education people have the more they are likely to desire as they grow older. 5. Participation in education must be directed toward the achievement of goals which the students feel to be real and significant. 6. Programs of adult education must be directed toward the achievement of goals which the students feel to be real and significant. 7. The success of an educational activity for adults is enhanced if it starts at the level of the students and then proceeds to more abstract things. 8. The motivations of adult learning grow in part out of the social setting in which the learner lives. 9. Almost all adults who lack the basic tools of learning can achieve them if the subjects are well taught (p. 44). Gibb (1960) postulated that the adult educator can find the most penetrating analyses of human learning and the most significant help in understanding the problems of the adult learning situation from the fields of psychotherapy, social anthropology, group psychology, and cultural and organizational sociology. He maintained adults do not always respond to the traditional extrinsic rewards of the typical classroom. Many adults require something other than the usual dependency relationship between learner and teacher -- new relationships for which neither the learner nor teacher are adequately prepared. The typical knowledge-centered curriculum and method contained less perceived relevance for the adult than the child. He listed the following primary principles of adult learning: 1. Adult learning must be problem centered. For the most significant kinds of learning that adults do, the problem must be a problem for the learner, not a problem of the teacher. When the learner sees a problem he is motivated to seek some kind of solution. The teacher cannot "give" another person a problem, cannot expect "read chapter four" to be a learning process. In the learning situation, the problems must arise in the experiences, perplexities, doubts, and thinking of the learner. Learning must be motivated. The problem serves to provide energy, direction, and sustaining force for the activities of the learner (pp. 59-60). 2. Learning must be experience-centered. The learner must get data on his problem. The data may come from experiments relevant to the problem, from authorities who may tell of their experiences, from logical argument, or from direct sensory experiences of the learner (p. 59). 3. Experience must be meaningful to the adult learner. The experience that bears upon the problem must be suited to some degree to the learner's innate capacity to perceive, his age, his interests, his readiness and his capacity to understand. Meaning does not come passively to the non-participative learner. 4. The adult learner must be free to look at the experience. Learners learn from others in social situations. The learner who is emotionally and psychologically "free" to look at experiences is ready to start on the process of acquiring the necessary behavior with which to learn and grow. For learning to proceed creatively, and optimally, the learning must be adjusted emotionally to the learning situation, the teacher, the fellow students, and to the classroom climate (p. 60). 5. The goals must be set and the search organized by the adult learner. In order that problems be problems to the learner, it is significant that the goals of the broad learning quest be set by the learner. It is also significant that the learner participate in the organization of the total learning situation. Learning even at the simplest levels is not trial and error. The learner must be free to make errors, to explain alternative solutions to problems, and to participate in decisions about the organization of his learning environment. His attempts at problem solving must be a series of provisional tries, which become increasingly effective as he gets feedback on each try and modifies subsequent explorations. 6. The adult learner must have feedback about progress made toward his personal goals. Evaluation of progress toward goals, particularly when goals have been set by the learner, is highly important. Some indication of success or failure, some frame of reference for determining adequacy of problem solution, some corroboration that the alley is not blind, some reality factor with which to assess one's achievement against one's level of aspiration, some knowledge of success and failure--all are necessary in the functional feedback process (pp. 54-55). In 1956, Bugelski speculated that the future of adult education would need increased focus in the following areas: 1. A growth in research in areas thought of as adult education. 2. Greater attention to the institutional settings in which learning occurs. 3. Further expansion of non-institutional adult learning attitudes. 4. Greater integration of learning theory with innovation and invention. 5. More experimentation with adults in adult learning settings. 6. More specific study of the problems that adults face, about which they must learn, and for which they must prepare. 7. Greater development of the social psychology of learning. 8. Increasing development upon the needs of the learner. 9. Increasing concentration upon the needs of the learner. 10. Closer relationship of therapy to learning theory. 11. Ascendence of theories of cognition and insight over theories of punishment and reward (pp. 61-64). Liverlight (1959) described what he considered to be the characteristics of the adult learner as: 1. Possessing more experience and a different quality of experience to contribute to the learning situation. 2. Being ready to learn different things than the youthful learner because he faces different developmental tasks. 3. Tending to be more autonomous and therefore, less comfortable in a dependent role. 4. Being more interested in the immediate usefulness of new knowledge (application of theory) (p. 32). Kelley (1951) noted certain conditions for adult learning to take place. They are: 1. Understanding and accepting objectives and procedures. 2. Making ideas available. 3. Select the sources of ideas. 4. Develop the general design. 5. Orient leaders and learners to the purpose and plan of the learning program. 6. Plan for evaluation (pp. 83-85). In 1959, Brunner maintained there were significant areas which needed further research to advance the art and science of adult education. These included: 1. Who is the adult learner? 2. What are his/her characteristics? 3. What changes in speed take place as the adult ages? 4. What changes in his/her physical capacities occur as he ages which might affect his learning ability. 5. What is the nature of the emotional development of the adult as it relates to his developmental needs? 6. What motivates the adult learner? (p. 111). Focusing on the adult educator, Liveright (1959) advocated for those occupying positions of responsibility in adult education to operate in a far more complicated pattern than those who practice the traditional profession of youth education. "The future will bring increased diversification rather than greater simplification. As the broad field of adult education grows, the education of leaders can increasingly be built around a common case of tested knowledge and belief. While the general shape of the field is no longer as obscure as it used to be, it still has many 'dark corners.' Many of the fundamentals which underlie successful theory and practice have yet to be discovered. It may be hoped that as new knowledge grows the future will bring clearer and firmer, as well as more co-ordinated, ways of educating adults and adult education leaders" (p. 128). Ross (1957) believed that new developments in adult education would greatly enhance the development of human relationships. He described them as the: 1. Acceleration and spread of human, social and technological change. 2. Unfreezing of cultural barriers. 3. Flowering of volunteer social agencies concerned with societal problems. 4. Tapping of the human ability of free women. 5. Forces of change creating personal uncertainty (p. 496). Generations, Cross (1971) maintained, were promised the rewards of middle-class affluence if they made it through the conventional formal academic system. All this learning need not take place only in classrooms, but in careers, on the job, and in the pursuits of life. Educators forgot at times that a youngster from the lower socioeconomic quartile, whatever his or her talent, had a much poorer chance of entering higher education than does a youngster in the top socioeconomic quartile (p. 7). Havighurst (1970) advocated that it was crucial, for the community and the race, but not less for the individual human being to engage in lifelong learning. Adulthood is not all smooth sailing across a well-charted sea with no adventures or mishaps. People do not launch themselves into adulthood with the momentum of their childhood or youth and simply coast along to old age. There are fully as many new problems to solve and new situations to grasp during the adult years as there are during the earlier periods of life. Adulthood has its transition point and its crises. It is a developmental period in almost as completely a sense as childhood and adolescence are developmental periods (p. 27). Hesburgh et al. (1974) hypothesized the changing nature of our society required virtually all citizens to gain new skills and intellectual orientations throughout their lives. Formal education of children, adolescents, and young adults, once thought of as a "vaccine that would prevent ignorance later in life," was recognized as inadequate by itself to give people all the educational guidance they will need to last a lifetime. The obsolescence of knowledge, the rapid growth of new knowledge, the shifts in national priorities, the multiplication and complexity of social problems, and the close relationship between the application of knowledge and social progress all led to the conclusion that lifelong learning was not only desirable but necessary (p. 3). If the United States were to become a learning society, significant changes would need to be implemented in changing attitudes toward the design of education. Terms like continuing education or adult education were too conventional and administrative in meaning to encompass the comprehensive responses called for in attitudes and national policy. The learning society would be based upon the concept of lifelong learning and referred to as a universe of purposeful learning opportunities found both with and outside the formal or core, academic systems. By 1975, Stanley Moses (1971) estimated that more than 80 million adults would be counted in a learning force outside the realm of traditional educational programs. Lifelong learning would become a vast enterprise involving millions of citizens who may never enter a college door or who may never return after once enrolling (p. 5). Peter Drucker (1969) referred to an imminent conflict between extended schooling - conventional education for eighteen-to twenty-two year olds-and continuing education. "If educators give any thought to the question, they assume that we should have both ever-extended schooling and continuing education. But the two are actually in opposition. Extended schooling assumes that we will cram more and more into the preparation for life and work. Continuing education assumes that one can only learn before one becomes an adult...Above all, extended schooling believes that the longer we keep the young away from work and life, the more they will have learned. Continuing education assumes, on the contrary, that the more experience in life and work people have, the more eager they will be to learn and the more capable they will be of learning" (p. 323). In a true learning society, formal education would be spread throughout an individual's lifetime. This reflects a recognition that people learn more readily when they see a clear need to do so, and also that some learning is more appropriate to one age than to another. It makes little difference where or how learning takes place, whether it occurs in the classroom or on the job, at age twenty, fifty, or seventy, as long as it does take place, and under circumstances appropriate to the learner. "Education for adults as well as for children should be centered on the needs of the learner" (Hesburgh, et.al, 1974, p.6). The authors maintained that under a system of lifelong learning, all educational and voluntary learning institutions would share the responsibility for helping people to educate themselves. Employers, for example, would give greater recognition than they do to the potential of the work place as a prime site for vocational upgrading and personal fulfillment through well-designed educational programs. Church-related groups, families, labor unions, and the media all have unused potential for purposeful learning. In the future, all the major institutions of society should be conscious of their educational functions and take deliberate, planned steps to improve them (p. 8). After participating in a national task force on adult education, Hesburgh et al. (1974) suggested the following changes be made to formal educational processes to establish a greater emphasis on lifelong learning: 1. A substantial part of any university's undergraduate curriculum in every subject matter area should be redesigned to help students to learn how to carry out program of self-education and lifelong learning (p.10). 2. The responsibilities among institutions for inculcating skills and attitudes favoring lifelong learning differ according to institutional type and purpose; these different responsibilities should be recognized and appropriate steps taken to meet them (p. 12). 3. The congress should enact a universal bill of educational rights that would guarantee every citizen access to the widest possible educational opportunities (p. 15). 4. Changes are needed in public policies to promote lifelong learning through released time from employment, tax deductions or tax credits, and retraining programs that promise new careers. Public policy should encourage the use of school and college facilities for community education purposes. 5. Model programs of in-service education should be developed for public employees and elected officials (p.18). 6. Consortia of institutions should be established on a local, regional and national basis to pool resources for continuing education, with the aim of making sure that virtually all citizens have access to continuous learning of high quality (p. 22). 7. Each university should continuously renew its commitments as well as identify the resources necessary to meet its responsibility in lifelong learning. Account should be taken of the changing educational needs of groups to be served, and strong efforts should be made to improve the access to programs (p. 24). Eduard C. Lindeman (1961) expressed the view that "adult education, accurately defined, begins where vocational education leaves off. Its purpose is to put meaning into the whole of life." Hesburgh et al. (1974) wrote that Lindeman's ideas did not fair very well at the time, because he espoused a liberal education tradition (p. 5). J. McConnaughey (1967) asserted: "Teaching is teaching and learning is learning at any level and under any circumstances. If teaching is an accepted function of the university, then the extension of the teaching function to the larger community is a question of interpretation and not a third new university function" (p. 7). E.I. Johnson (1966), in outlining his view of continuing education, stated: "The great need now is for us (universities) to engage all these (urban) bodies in a great civic dialogue about the long-range goals of our cities, individually and collectively, so that planning of a more comprehensive nature and at a higher level of excellence will guide the destinies of our cities and the lives of the people in them" (p. 292). As man was freed more and more from manual and even administrative tasks, he could turn toward enhancing his own life and the lives of others. Helping people to do so was a basic duty of continuing education, or lifelong learning. The knowledge source for these new skills was suggested by the National Commission on Technology, Automation, ad Economic Progress: "Much of this technology will be derived from the social sciences and the humanities as well as the physical and biological sciences. It will be concerned with such values as individuality, diversity, and decentralization rather than conformity, massive organization, and concentration. It will seek to make work more meaningful rather than merely productive" (National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, 1966, p. 13). Malcolm Knowles, through his study in Europe under the tutelage of some of the acknowledged masters in adult educational theory, and through his own teaching and writing in America, assumed leadership of the adult education movement in the United States. His first major publication was Informal Adult Education (1951). He followed this with "The Modern Practice of Adult Education" in 1970 (revised in 1980), a text which many adult educators cite as the seminal work in adult education in the United States. Knowles' (1970) basic premise for adult education was, "The single most effective teaching device available to a teacher is the example of his own behavior." An adult learning experience should be a process of self-directed inquiry, with the resources of the teacher, fellow students, and materials being available to the learner but not imposed upon him" (p. 14). Knowles believed, "My attitude is that I am sharing my experience, training and point of view with you rather than imposing them on you" (p. 16). Knowles (1970) described the phases of the adult learning process as follows: 1. Establishing a climate and structure; 2. Assessing needs and interests; 3. Defining purposes and objectives; 4. Constructing a design; 5. Operating a program; 6. Evaluating results (p. 17). Initially, Knowles (1970) focused as much attention on the adult educator as on the adult learner. He believed the adult educator was found in three different phases of the adult education process. At the firing line level there are teachers, group leaders, and supervisors. 1. Helping learners diagnose their needs for particular learning within the scope of a given situation (diagnostic function). 2. Planning with the learners a sequence of experiences that will produce the desired learning (planning function). 3. Creating conditions that will cause the learners to want to learn (motivational function). 4. Selecting the most effective methods and techniques for producing the desired learning (methodological function). 5. Providing the human and material resources necessary to produce the desired learning (resource function). 6. Helping learners measure the outcomes of the learning experiences (evaluative function) (Knowles, 1980, p. 22). At the program director level, there are the committee chairmen, training directors, and deans who are responsible for: 1. Assessing the individual, institutional, and societal needs for adult learning relevant to their organizational settings (diagnostic function). 2. Establishing and managing an organizational structure for the effective development and operation of an adult education program (organizational function). 3. Formulating objectives to meet the assessed needs and designing a program of activities to achieve these objectives (planning function). 4. Instituting and supervising those procedures required for the effective operation of a program including recruiting and training leaders and teachers, managing facilities and administrative processes, recruiting students, financing and interpreting (administrative and training function). 5. Assessing program effectiveness (evaluative function) (Knowles, 1980, p. 22). At the professional leadership level, there are small groups of career adult educators who are: 1. Responsible for developing new knowledge. 2. Preparing materials. 3. Inventing new techniques. 4. Providing leadership for coordinating organizations. 5. Training adult education workers. 6. Promoting the further development of adult education (Knowles, 1980, p. 22). Overstreet (1949) concurred with Knowles by describing what he believed were the needs and goals of the individual as: 1. The prevention of obsolescence. 2. The development of the attitude that learning is a life-long process and to acquire the skills of self-directed learning. 3. The achievement of a complete self-identity through the development of their full potentialities. 4. The development to maturity - a maturing person. He diagrammed the process of the human being moving from immaturity to maturity this way. DIMENSIONS OF MATURATION FROM TOWARD 1. Dependence Autonomy 2. Passivity Activity 3. Subjectivity Objectivity 4. Ignorance Enlightenment 5. Small abilities Large abilities 6. Few responsibilities Many responsibilities 7. Narrow Interests Broad interests 8. Selfishness Altruism 9. Self-rejection Self-acceptance 10. Amorphous self-identity Integrated self-identity 11. Focus on particulars Focus on principles 12. Superficial concerns Deep concerns 13. Imitation Originality 14. Need for conformity Tolerance for Ambiguity 15. Impulsiveness Rationality This chart emphasized the systematic development of the human being from a position of dependence toward independence, from a being incapable of taking care of himself, to a mature individual capable of functioning in the world without "mommy and daddy." Realizing that most adults had completed this progression, the adult educator must take into consideration the independence and other characteristics which define the mature adult human being. Erik Erikson (1950) described this same progression, but with the human being changing for amorphous self-identity toward integrated self-identity. He proposed these developmental stages. a. Oral-sensory - basic issue is trust vs. mistrust. b. Muscular-anal - basic issue is autonomy vs. shame. c. Locomotion-genital - basic issue is initiative vs. guilt. d. Latency - basic issue is industry vs. infecundity. e. Puberty and adolescence - basic issue is identity vs. role confusion. f. Young adulthood - basic issue is intimacy vs. isolation. g. Adulthood - basic issue is generativity vs. stagnation. h. Maturity - basic issue is ego-integrity vs. despair (p. 273) According to both psychologists, the child develops toward adulthood through a progression of stages that are lifelong in duration. The implication for the adult educator, Knowles (1970) believed was that to provide a learning experience for the mature adult learner which discounts the adult's full development was both demeaning and would eventually result in the learner withdrawing from it (p. 44).