Name: Marjorie S.

Del Rosario Date: February 18, 2018

Program: MAed Integrated Science Course: Trends & Issues in Andragogy & Pedagogy (PED 702)
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REFLECTIONS ON REQUIRED READINGS OF SESSION 2, 3, 4

ARTICLE 1:
ANDRAGOGY: AN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY FOR ADULT LEARNING BY MALCOLM KNOWLES

The article written by Knowles entitled Andragogy: An Emerging Technology for Adult Learning,
serve as a new horizon to carefully understand and analyze a developing methodology to
education which mostly not given much emphasis and that is the adult education. Most of the
educators like me would agree that we learned a lot of pedagogy in response to the
characteristics and needs of children but little to even nothing for educating an adult. This
scenario would, in turn, lead us to educate adults in a way that is not helpful and effective for
them. In the article, Knowles argued that processing education by transmitting what is known is
no longer functional for the 21st-century education. Thus, education is clearly identified as a
lifelong process of discovering what is unknown. In addition, Knowles also emphasized that
Andragogy is the art and science of helping adults learned and is rightful for educators also to
understand that as adult aged, there are different assumptions needed to take in mind in
constructing teaching strategies intended for them. These include adult self-concept which
shifted to a self-directing personality and is needed to be treated with respect and mutual
inquiry. Another is the growing reservoir of experiences that established adult’s participation and
ego involvement. Third, is the readiness to learn that becomes oriented increasingly to the
developmental tasks of his social role. Lastly, the orientation of learning on which adult’s time
perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of
application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject
centeredness to one of problem-centeredness.

Knowles presented his argument in a very substantial and logical manner. Discussing the
problems associated with the incapability of educators to help adult learners is such a brain
shaker. These left the readers eager to see the need of moving away from the traditional method
of teaching and lead for their immediate thinking of possible actions to address the problem. It
was again another plus factor for Knowles that after awakening the mind of readers for this need
for change, he then clearly identified the different assumptions with its respective effect and
resolutions to feed them of how can they contribute to this change. The four assumptions that
Knowles demonstrated also allow the educators to understand the perspectives of adults with
regards to education before applying a teaching strategy. The article also highlighted certain facts
that made educators doublethink of the quality of instruction they are sharing with their

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students. I do agree with his idea of not restricting our students to follow us all the time and
agree to what we say simply because we are not helping them to learn. Students have their own
wisdom, critical thinking, and responsibility on how to manage their own learning. For me, it
doesn't matter if their actions are wrong or would turn out as a failure. It is because on their own,
they can see the shortcomings of their decisions and they will see the need why they should plan
and devise a new technique in order to meet their goals and standards. I also realized that the
true purpose of an evaluation is not in determining who's intelligent and poorly performing as
what conventional teaching left us. Instead, it should be more of a re-diagnosis of needs on which
learning deal with the capability of an individual to assess again the need to correct and modify
decisions to attain a better outcome in the future.