ADULT EDUCATION

Adult Education



Adult Education

Summary of the Article

This report reviews the article 'Towards a discipline of adult education?' written by Jarvis in 1987. Jarvis starts by stating that as the number of adults taking up higher education increase, either because of demands on the job or because of pure interest, an understanding of what compels adults to have a positive attitude towards learning becomes vital. An idealized myth persists as an academic orthodoxy in adult education; that adult learning is naturally a joyous experience; that adults are inherently self-directed as learners; that good educational practice always meets the needs articulated by the learners themselves. Of course, this myth is not necessarily true among adult learners.

Analysis

Jarvis Defined as the disposition to respond positively or negatively towards an idea, object, person, or situation, attitude has a great effect on learning. Attitudes are related to opinions and beliefs and experiences and importantly, also in interaction with others. Learning involves a great deal of acquiring or changing attitudes. Jarvis studied intervening variables that affected such behavior as initial drive, incentives, inhibitors and prior training. Intended as a general theory of learning, Jarvis's theory involves a number of relevant principles.

• Jarvis's theory surmised that drive is essential for responses to occur. The student must have the will, must want to learn.

•Stimuli and responses must be detected by the organism for conditioning to occur.

•A response must be made for conditioning to occur. The student must be active, participative.

•Conditioning happens only if there is reinforcement that satisfies a particular need.

Jarvis's theory provided the basis for one of the pioneering major theories of attitude change. This theory states that changes in opinions can lead to attitude change with the presence or absence of rewards. Learning new attitudes is similar to any verbal or motor skills.

Jarvis offered cognitive dissonance as a theory to explain attitude change. As per the theory, individuals seek consistency among the various cognitions—beliefs and opinions. Inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors makes for an imbalance that the individual is compelled to change. With a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, the attitude will be modified to adapt to the behavior. Eliminating the dissonance involves:

Reduction of the importance of the dissonant belief.

Addition of consonant beliefs that outweigh the dissonant beliefs.

Elimination of the dissonant belief by changing so they become consistent.

Dissonance takes place in situations where a choice must be taken between incompatible actions or beliefs.

Memory, Motivation, and Social Learning

Jarvis studies on motivation and memory, as well as social learning, emerge as some of the more pertinent theories of learning, even as other theories help to guide educators as well. Memory counts as a vital concept to learning. After all, if ideas, facts and other matters are not remembered, there can be no learning. A number of theories help to define memory: recall versus recognition, forgetting, memory structures and intentional versus incidental learning. Early behaviorist theories, including Hull's, assign remembering as a function of stimulus- response pairings that is strengthened by contiguity or ...