TRANSFORMATIVE ENERGIES

Transformative Energies

Transformative Energies

'Transformative Energies' by Kim Reynolds's is a unique piece of work about children's literature. Child learning is a complex phenomenon. Although there are many commonalities between how adults and children learn, development and change that take place across the life span play a definite role in understanding why adults learn, as well as how they learn. In educational psychology, an understanding of child learning and the adult learner is crucial to a commitment to lifelong learning (Reynolds 2007, 6-14). Major challenges facing those who work with and study adult learners include questions about the extent to which knowledge is discovered or constructed and where one locates oneself in terms of focusing on individual and social aspects of learning.

In the early 1900s, the psychology of adulthood and aging received scant attention, largely due to the strong influence of psychologists such as John Watson, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Piaget, whose work emphasized the view that adulthood could be understood as simply an extension of development or learning in the early years of life. However, as psychologists such as Erik Erikson, G. Stanley Hall, Charlotte Bühler, and Sidney Pressey began to extend their theories and research to address the adult years, a greater understanding of the psychology of adulthood began to emerge.

Probably the first major study of child learning was published by E. L. Thorndike and his colleagues in the 1928 book Child learning. As a seminal effort to provide empirical evidence related to learning in adulthood, these authors concluded that learning ability peaks at about age 45, rather than age 20 as previously believed. This study set in motion an effort to understand child learning ability; this effort has continued to grow over nearly eight decades. Today, most of the research and writing on child learning come from three fields: psychology, adult education, and gerontology. The field of psychology has offered a necessary, though not sufficient, foundation for understanding child learning. Adult education and gerontology, through their professional literature, have also made important contributions to learning in adulthood. Although there is some overlap across these areas, each field brings a different framework and importance to the understanding of child learning.

Participation in Child learning

Reynolds (2007, pp.16-23) explains that one of the most extensively studied areas of child learning relates to the nature of participation in child learning. This involves three questions: Who participates in child learning? Why do adults engage in learning? What are some of the factors that deter or limit adults from participating in learning? In 1965, William Johnstone and Ramon Rivera reported on a major national study of child learning participation and found that 22% of all adults in the United States participated in some form of learning activity during the previous year.

Beginning in 1969, the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics began to collect data about participation in adult education. These studies have been conducted every several years and have offered insight into some major trends. Unfortunately, because different data collection procedures and definitions were used at ...