Andragogy vs Pedagogy - Paper

Adult Education is the extension of educational opportunities to those adults beyond the age of general public education who feel a need for further education or training of any sort. Even though it has been around for some time, it is still a growing field in the US that hasn’t caught up to the education of children and younger adults. There is a set of principles for Andragogy, how adults learn and another for pedagogy, how children learn. This paper will look at one main theory of adult education and how the ideas are portrayed. It will also compare the pedagogical and andragogical approaches to highlight the differences between how children learn compared to adults and how these differences affect learning needs, preferences and the type of instruction received by both adults and children. The two different approaches will affect the instructional methods used for adults and children. The pedagogical approach assumes that “the learner enters into an educational activity with little experience that can be used in the learning process[1]” therefore they become what are called “dependent personality” who relies on the teacher for everything. In this scenario, the teacher is the dominant person who has all the knowledge, they make every decision regarding the teaching/learning process including all the learning needs, what and how knowledge is learned and the classroom becomes teacher-dominated. In this teacher-dominated classroom, there may be little input from the students and student would not work together to share ideas and information to promote creative and independent thinking. The learning needs of the students become secondary as “student achievement is at the forefront of teacher-centered curriculum, but teachers are driven to meet accountability standards and often sacrifice the needs of the students to ensure exposure to the standards.[2]” Therefore what you find in this classroom is “teacher talks, students listen”, “teacher asks questions,