Learning to Teach Adults

 

How will I attend to the individual learning style needs of Ss, both instructionally and personally? 

 

Since none of them learn in the same way, we will always find in our classes activists learners, theorist learners, reflector learners, and pragmatic learners. So, all of them will have different needs and make different demands on us. We, as teachers, have to take into account all our Ss’ needs in order to balance our classes. Because we know that some of our Ss like active ways of learning or having their minds stretched and challenge, and others like to have time to reflect upon an activity before take part of it or to know the point of something, we must include a variety of activities that make all our Ss feel engage in the class.

So I will attend to the individual learning style needs of Ss, both instructionally and personally by creating a positive atmosphere and by developing a variety of activities in my classes; activities that take into account my Ss’ previous knowledge, experiences, and motivations. I’ll try to balance my classes by using a variety of techniques, methods, and exercises that make all my Ss take an active role in their learning process so that all their needs are fulfilled.

How will I see growth in the learners according to their stated needs/ goals, as well as my course goals?

Well, taking into consideration that we’re dealing with adults, we have to know that all of them might be at different phases of their lives and have certain amount of previous knowledge since this is not their first learning experience.

 So their growth will depend on their previous experiences. If their experiences are good, Ss will be more likely to easily learn more, so will see their growth very soon since our goals will be easily achieved, but if their experiences are not so good, they will not be able to easily learn; it will be more difficult to achieve our course goals with them.

How do I use the learner’s experiences within the instruction?

We have to know that all adult learners bring something to their learning process. Besides certain knowledge about the subject matter, they also bring experiences to their learning process. We, as teachers, must take advantage of it, and make it part of our course. We must take into account and respect all our opinions, thoughts, and feelings.

We need to match the activities that are to take place in our classroom with all our Ss; this means that everything we want our Ss to learn must be related to their daily lives, to what is important and useful to them. So while planning our classes, we must include and take into account our Ss’ experiences in order to develop the appropriate activities that make our Ss learn and enjoy our classes, so it is essential identify our Ss’ specific physical and educational needs beforehand.