Andragogy vs, Pedagogy

How can you teach someone unless you know something about them?  Pedagogy is a child centered teaching approach, while andragogy is adult centered.  There are many differences between teaching children vs. teaching adults, and the better you understand these differences the better you can reach your target audience.  When teaching children the teacher is responsible for all instruction and evaluation of learning. When teaching adults the learner is responsible for his or her own learning and there is more of a self evaluation of learning.  Children learners are made to go to school whether they want to or not, and told what they have to learn and what they must do you move on. Adult learners must be ready to learn and must see and reason to learn something. Pedagogy typically involves subjects where the teacher is the source of most knowledge and experience.  Andragogy involves more real life activities where the learners bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to add to the teacher’s. Knowing your audience is the first step to teaching them. Children come to you ready to learn and it is up to you to give them the information and skills to move on to the next level. Adults will only come to learn when they are ready to and when they see a need to learn, and they have an active role in what and how they learn.  Adults are quick to question things they don’t agree with or that go against their prior experience, whereas children will usually take whatever the teacher says as the truth without question. As students move from childhood to adulthood they will start moving from the pedagogy to andragogy. In my experience it is during the teenage years that this transition takes place. This is when they start questioning why we learn something and developing prior knowledge and experience from which to pull from.  Knowing where they are maturity wise is one of the first steps you need to take to teach someone. You must first know who you are teaching before you can reach them.

Is teaching adults is different than teaching children?

Teaching adults is definitely very different from teaching children.  Children are eager to learn whatever the teacher is telling them despite its relevance to their live while adults needs to see a reason to learn something.  Children will take whatever the teacher says as true while an adult learner is more likely to question the validity of a claim. Children are also most often ready to learn whereas adults have to be ready in order to learn.  Adults learners also need to feel a sense of control over their learning whereas children would rather have their learning controlled for them. The one powerful thing that an adult learning has that a child does not is a wealth of experiences to pull from and to relate things too and a self determination to make themselves better.  Most of my teaching experience is with teenagers which are in between children and adults so they are kinda mix of both. My students want to see a relevance to something before they learn something like adults. Most of my students are ready to learn when they come to my class as long as they are not be distracted by any of the numerous things that tend to distract teenagers.  The older the students that I have are the more likely they are to want to have a sense of control whereas freshman usually just want to be told what to learn. The same is true of questioning the validity of a claim, freshman will take what you say as law where seniors not so much. These are also some of the same thing that I have seen in myself throughout my journey as a lifelong learner.  When I was a child I just wanted to learn about anything. As I got a little older I still wanted to learn but about things that interested me like science, space and music. Now I want to learn about things that interest me but I also have a self motivation to learn things that will help me advance my career like I am doing now. I am going to question the validity of a claim if I feel it is invalid and I like to have control over my learning.  I also know that have have to be ready to learn in order to learn and luckily today I can honestly say I am ready to learn.