I have had the opportunity over the last six years to teach non-traditional students about doing research in libraries. This experience has allowed my to think a great deal about adult learners in contrast to the traditionally aged college students I normally teach. In this paper, I will address my personal observations of adult learning as I understand it from my experience and from the education and library literature. I will also examine my personal pedagogy which I believe is appropriate to these learners. Further, I will look at how pedagogy can depend on the nature of the learner, the nature of the content, and the technology that delivers it.
My Course
I began teaching the Evening College course “Magic in the Library” in the Spring Semester of 1997. I have taught it annually every year since then. The course has evolved over this time. Currently, the course meets weekly for four weeks. Each class session last two hours long. The curriculum has varied but currently consists of searching the online catalog, searching full-text databases, research on the World Wide Web, and finding business resources. These are things I believe it is crucial for adult students to know about library research.
The number of students has varied from a low of 7 to a high of 18. None of the students are traditional college age students. The vast majority of the students have been retired members of the community. The oldest admitted age of a student was 85. There are also have been a few younger individuals in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Most have used libraries in the past and are baffled by all the changes that have occurred in libraries in the last decade. They are seeking to upgrade their search skills.
Most of the classes are taught in the Main Library. I teach in a room that has 25 computers which allows for the students to follow along with me as I show them new material. The business class is taught at the Gast Business Library where the students have access to computers as well. There are no tests, quizzes, or grades in the course. Students are free to do as little or as much as they like.
Observations on Adult Learning
My beliefs about adult (and traditional age) students has been heavily influenced by my understanding of Perry’s Scheme of Student Development. Both my master’s program at Ohio University and my course work at Michigan State University have incorporated multiple references to this theory. I have found myself applying this theory to the students I teach on a regular basis. Most importantly, I have applied this theory to explain how many students are searching and evaluating World Wide Web sites.
Perry’s Scheme can help to understand how pedagogy can depend on the nature of the learner. Perry postulated that students go through four stages of development in their critical thinking skills. These are dualism, multiplicity, contextual relativism, and dialectic. As students move through these stages, they become more sophisticated critical thinkers. The students change their views about the nature of knowledge as they progress. Their view of authority changes as well and it impacts how they think about teachers and other sources of information.
The beginning level of Perry's Scheme is dualism. Students in this stage believe that all questions have definite right and wrong answers. They expect that the teacher will tell them what the right answer is and that their job as a student is to memorize this answer. These students also tend to accept what they read in books at face value if it is presented to them from an approved source like a textbook. The students do not see themselves as creators of knowledge and do not believe they are capable of determining what the right answer is on their own.
The second level of Perry's Scheme is multiplicity. At this stage, students believe that questions may in fact have multiple answers. However, they give all opinions the same weight because the students are unable to choose between competing opinions. To these students, everything is relative and knowledge is never certain. These students see the teacher as a guide through the variety of equally valid opinions.
The final two stages of Perry's Scheme are beyond most high school students and many undergraduate college students as well. These stages are contextual relativism and dialectic. In contextual relativism, students realize that opinions need support to gain validity. For example, the Nobel Prize Committee does not give out the award for their opinion of a book's quality, but for its literary merit. In the dialectic stage, students can view problems from a variety of different viewpoints and recognize that best answers for questions depend on the approach from which the question is being asked. The students take on roles of meaning makers and are capable of presenting unique looks on a question on their own.
There are applications of Perry’s theory to how students search the World Wide Web. However, the Web also shows how pedagogy can depend on the nature of the content and technology. The nature of the World Wide Web makes it difficult for students who are in the first two stages of Perry's Scheme to use the Web effectively. The traditional print media made many of the decisions about the validity of information. The Web has lost this gate keeping function for information students are cast in the role of having to determine if something is true or not on their own. For students from dualistic or multiplictic views, this is hard to do successfully. An overview of the development of the Web can help to frame this idea.
The advent of the World Wide Web has been the most significant occurrence in the production and delivery of information since the invention of the Guttenberg printing press. The appearance of the printing press broke the hold of the church and learned societies to monopolize the process of deciding which books to copy manually and preserve in monasteries and estates. From then on, a printing industry emerged that allowed for a greater number of books. Further, these books were spread widely and were available to those who could afford them. A visit to a distant monastery was no longer required. In the same way, the existence of the World Wide Web is a revolution for information. Now, instead of the publishing industry deciding which writing gets published, the individual decides. Anyone with access to the Web with a little knowledge is now a publisher of any information they want to present. And anyone with access to the Web, with a little work, can find this information.
When the printing press was invented, it took several centuries for its full impact to be felt. For a long time, there were few printing presses and many still could not get their works to publishers. Further, books were expensive and only the well off could afford them. It was a long time before the average citizen could gain access to the new information world. This is not true with the World Wide Web. Within a decade of the emergence of the Web, its reach is nearly universal in western culture. The vast majority of households in the United States have a computer and the option of accessing the Web. Even the poor have access to computers and the Web in the United States if they visit a public library.
The difficulty in validating information on the Web has created a huge problem for seekers of information and scholars. There has not been enough time for the World Wide Web to develop a system of authenticating the information that is on the Web. True, invalid information did and does appear in printed material. However, there was always at least one level of gate keeping (and usually many more) that allowed interested and generally qualified individuals to pass judgment on whether the item should be published. While information still needed to be evaluated in the print media, an examination of the publisher or journal could often lend credible evidence to the information within a piece of print. The wonder of the Web is that this has been stripped away. And it may prove impossible to ever recreate this system Web wide. This is wonderful for democracy, but it is also a headache for those trying to verify the information at a web site.
The college students of today have come of age in this new information revolution. From the time they started elementary school, the World Wide Web existed. Many of them were using the Web early in their school careers. They have difficulty imagining a time when they could not turn on their computer, surf the Web, and find information. It is as simple and as natural as it was for older generations of students to open up an encyclopedia or check the old card catalog for books on the topic. This is a profound difference in the way these students seek and view knowledge from every prior generation of humanity. And this new view, assuming something completely unexpected happens, will be the one that librarians and teachers will be dealing with from now on. All of this has meant that the current group of college students is the first generation to have to deal with such uncertainty in the validity of the information they find. Since the World Wide Web is still relatively new, teaching how to evaluate information on the Web is in its infancy. Educators, who often are less sophisticated than the students in their understanding of the Web, have had difficulty in teaching students how to evaluate what they find on the Web.
Perry's Scheme for Student Development, while developed prior to the invention of the World Wide Web, can be used to understand the behavior of college students and the Web. Dualistic students will use the Web to look for the one right answer to the question. They will seek authority so they can learn what this answer is. The variety of web pages will confuse them and they will looks for clues that a web site is indeed authoritative. They will have difficulty in determining which web sites have valid information and which ones do not. Students at the multiplicity stage will see the variety of opinions expressed on the many web sites as being equally valid. They may not see the need to filter information for quality as all web sites to them may be equally valid.
However, the adult students I have taught in my Evening College course appear to be in the later two stages of Perry’s theory. They exhibit characteristics of the contextual relativism and dialectic stages. The students realize that opinions need support to gain validity. The students can view problems from a variety of different viewpoints and recognize that best answers for questions depend on which approach the question is being asked from. They do not trust the World Wide Web for information resources. They are hoping to find ways to evaluate the information they find. They want to learn gate-keeping skills.
Another difference between traditional undergraduates and adult students is the motivation they bring to learning. Many students want a degree so they can get a job. Their primary motivation is not learning. They are attempting to give the professor what he/she wants so they can get a good grade. If the library helps get them what they professor wants, then they will use it. Not all of the traditional students value the library or library instruction. However, I can be certain that my adult students do in fact value the library and the instruction I am giving them. They have signed up for my Evening College course even though it will not help them earn a degree. They also are not using the library to please a professor. They are coming to class on their own accord and this heavily influences how they behave in class.
Pedagogy
My pedagogical approach to teaching adult learners is difficult to summarize. I believe I can best write about it by examining teaching concepts. I am going to write about the history of public libraries and how they have taught adult learners and how this tradition is reflected in my teaching. I am also going to look at teaching methods such as active learning and lecturing and how I make use of them to teach adults.
I think it is important in understanding my pedagogical approach to adult students to examine the history of public libraries in the United States and how they have shaped opportunities for adults in the past and how librarians have viewed these opportunities. I will make some reference to adult learning and academic libraries particularly as it relates to my classes. However, most adult learning literature in the library literature pertains to public libraries. Adult learners have assumptions and views about what libraries mean to them and this shapes their view of what to expect from my teaching. I have responded to these expectations and this has worked to influence how I teach. Not surprisingly, I am also teaching in ways that parallel the pedagogy of past librarians.
The first American “public” libraries were what we now call social libraries. Apart from closed college collections, must of the United States lacked accessible libraries in the 18th and early to mid-19th Centuries. Shera (1949) described the process were individuals formed voluntary associations to pool money to buy books for shared use. These books were also made available to others who were willing to pay fees for access.
The role of the librarian in such a library would have been to teach motivated patrons how to use a collection that their money had directly purchased. Only those who had already decided to make use of the library collection would have purchased memberships. This conflicts with public and academic librarians today who must continually work to convince patrons that library collections are useful. The patrons of the social libraries would in some respects resemble the adult learners I have in my Evening College classes. The motivation to learn how to use the collection is self-evident by the fact that they have arrived at the library.
Public libraries as we know them today began to develop after the American Civil War. Growth was slow at first as many communities resisted having to pay for libraries. Andrew Carnegie and several other philanthropists helped to make public libraries standard for most communities by donating huge sums of money. Wrote Kett (1996), “Carnegie, wealthier and more generous than Astor, made libraries his favorite charity. An ardent autodidact who remembered fondly the days when a gentleman in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, allowed him and other working lads to use his library, Carnegie gave $50,000,000 for the construction of library buildings and dreamed of covering the nation with them.” (pp 205)
Carnegie had two main reasons for donating money to the founding of libraries. First, he believed that libraries added to the meritocratic nature of America. Anyone with the right inclination and desire could educate himself. Second, Carnegie believed that immigrants like himself needed to acquire cultural knowledge of America which the library allowed immigrants to do.
Carnegie indicated it was the first reason that was the most important to him. As a boy working a hard job with long hours, he had no access to education. However, a Colonel Anderson started a small library of 400 books which he lent on Saturday afternoons to local boys. This is how Carnegie educated himself. Wrote Carnegie (1920) of Colonel Anderson's library, "This is but a slight tribute and gives only a faint idea of the depth of gratitude which I feel for what he did for me and my companions. It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community..." (pp. 47) Further, Carnegie is quoted as saying, "In a public library men could at least share cultural opportunities on a basis of equality." (New York Times, Jan. 8, 1903, pp. 1)
In the case of my Evening College course, the students are seeking to use the library to better themselves. Carnegie’s view of the library is correct in this aspect. However, I am not sure that the meritocratic portion of his rationale applies to adult learners in my case. I am seeing primarily retired individuals who come from educated backgrounds in my Evening College courses. They already come from positions of respect and have comfortable incomes, which may or may not have been earned by merit in the past. However, Carnegie did not mean for his meritocratic libraries to serve only adults. As the quote above demonstrates, he was imagining children and young adults as the primary beneficiaries of his public libraries. Despite this, the Carnegie libraries opened up new avenues for many adult learners to educate themselves. Hence, the participation of adults in my Evening College courses is a furtherance of the tradition of the use of libraries by adults in the United States for educational pursuits.
Adams (1887) envisioned the public library as an open university. He tried to encourage groups to meet in libraries and hold seminars. The library could in this way be the center of adult learning in a community. He wrote that libraries should, “Set apart special rooms where classes and clubs can meet under competent direction for special use of books. Every great public library should become, in its own field, a people’s university, the highest of high schools in the community.” (pp. 25)
The entire Evening College program at Michigan State University is an embodiment of this idea. Individuals teach non-credit courses (seminars) for adults in the community. The students come on their own volition and receive no grades or diplomas. My teaching of a library course to adults through the Evening College is an expression of the pedagogical role of the library that Adams envisioned in the 19th Century.
One interesting teaching approach used by librarians with adult learners was steering them towards “good” books. Librarians believed in the 19th Century (and many still do today) that the librarian could recommend reading material that would better the reader. The job of the librarian in teaching was to help the reader find the books which would help advance intellectual skills. Ditzion (1944) amusingly wrote, “Make the library free to all and then, perhaps, there will be one young man less in the place where intoxicating drinks are found…Make the library free to all and then, perhaps, there will be one young woman less to fall from the path of purity and goodness down the depth of degradation and misery to which only a woman can fall.” (pp. 104)
This concept of teaching patrons to seek out good books eventually became known as reader advisory. This educational approach is still used by many librarians. In fact, I believe reader advisory has in fact turned into information advisory. Teaching students how to evaluate information and find the “good” stuff is central to teaching information literacy. Librarians are continually providing advisory services to students on how to recognize valid information on web sites.
Consider this 19th Century quote from Winsor (1876), “Librarians do not do their whole duty unless they strive to elevate the taste of their readers, and this they can do, not by refusing to point within their reach the books which the masses want, but by inducing the habit of frequenting the library, by giving readers such books as they ask for and helping them in the choice of books, conducting them, say from the ordinary society novel to the historical novel, and then to proofs and illustrations of the events or periods commemorated in the more readable of the historians. Multitude of readers need only be put in this path to follow it.” (pp. 432)
I firmly believe that my teaching is a continuance of this tradition. All of my teaching is about teaching students to evaluate information. I am providing a reader advisory service to my students, for example, by pointing them towards journals instead of magazines. And, most importantly, I am showing students how to find the right path on the World Wide Web. I show them Yahoo in hopes that they will listen to me when I show them Google. I show them how to find a site about cancer in hopes that the student will eventually follow my example and visit the US National Institutes for Health site. The complexity of information today makes reader advisory an important teaching tool.
Adult learners are, in fact, keen to listen to the advice I am giving them about finding “good” web sites. The students are aware of the fact that they are not up-to-date on finding information on the World Wide Web. They are seeking skills from me that will help them provide the gate keeping they need to determine between sites. Most have signed up for the course in hopes I would help guide them through web sites. Over a fourth of my Evening College course deals with the World Wide Web for this reason.
I believe I have shown a large number of parallels in my pedagogy to the adult education role of libraries in the past. The purpose and strategies of my Evening College course have been shaped heavily by the influence of past practice in the library field. At this point, I am going to focus on how I actually teach.
At the beginning of my career, I used to shake and tremble when I stood before a class. I found lecturing to be hard and I sought other ways to teach. One of the earliest ideas I hit upon was using active learning techniques. Using active learning did help me a great deal. However, lecturing has remained important in my teaching by necessity and as time has gone by I have actually gotten good at lecturing. Now, I try to teach using a blend of both lecture and active learning whenever possible.
This is important when teaching adults. Most adult students are in the latter two stages of Perry’s Scheme of Student Development. They are sophisticated learners and they bring considerable abilities to synthesis and evaluate information on their own. The students expect to use these skills in class. Allowing the students to participate in class by hands on experience and discussion will allow students to use these skills. However, adult students have also grown up expecting teachers to lecture. They expect that I will spend some time in front of the class lecturing to them. Blending active learning and lecturing together meets the expectations of the students and makes for an effective learning experience.
I think it is important that I address what I mean by active learning. This is also known as cooperative learning. Active learning is a method of educating students that allows them to participate in class. It takes them beyond the role of passive listener and note taker and allows the student to take some direction and initiative during the class. The role of the teacher is to lecturer less and instead direct the students in directions that will allow the students to "discover" the material as they work with other students to understand the curriculum. Active learning can encompass a variety of techniques that include small group discussion, role playing, hands-on projects, and teacher driven questioning. The goal is to bring students into the process of their own education.
Some of the pioneers in the push for active learning in the last several decades are David Johnson, Roger Johnson, and Karl Smith. Although none of the three are librarians, all work in academia and have taught widely to faculty in higher education. Many academic librarians (including the author) have heard them speak and they are widely cited in library literature dealing with active learning. The three have argued for active learning because they feel lecturing is over relied on by faculty even though lecturing has several limitations. They wrote (1991) that students have trouble focusing on lecturing and that their attentions diminishes over the course of a class. They also postulated that lecturing promotes the acquisition of facts rather than the development of higher cognitive processes such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluation. Finally, they believed that students find lectures boring.
Bonwell and Eison (1991) wrote that strategies that promote active learning have five common characteristics. Students are involved in class beyond listening. Less emphasis is placed on transmitting information and more emphasis is placed developing the skills of the students. The students are involved in higher order thinking such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluation. The students are involved in activities like reading, discussion, and writing. Finally, greater emphasis is placed on the exploration of student values and attitudes.
I have incorporated active learning in my Evening College course by having students do a variety of activities. I have students write minute papers at the beginning of class relating to their expectations and questions they may have. I have the students work in groups to explore databases and web sites. I also have the students follow along with me when I demonstrate databases by entering searches in computers. These activities, coupled with lecturing, seem to be effective in reaching the adult learners in my Evening College course.
Differing Views
I would argue that few would actually disagree with the purpose or scope of my Evening College course. However, some writers have disagreed with some of the underlying assumptions in my pedagogy. For example, some argue that library instruction should not be conducted. Others have been skeptical of the reader’s advisory movement that has influenced my teaching of World Wide Web resources. Finally, there are others theories that explain how students learn which can offer different insights than Perry.
I will start by looking at differing views on the value of library instruction. One of the earliest opponents to library instruction wrote in the early 20th Century. Lucy Salmon was a history professor at Vassar College from 1887 until 1927. She did not take kindly to librarians invading her classroom. She wrote (1913) that library instruction should not be taught as a separate credit-bearing course. Instead, it should be taught as part of other classes as an integrated part of the curriculum. She also wrote that the professors, not the librarians, should give the instruction in library use. She believed the responsibilities of librarians were to keep accessible libraries and help faculty in book selection. Further, she felt librarians should stick to non-curricular areas (such as advising the debate team) if they wanted to interact with students.
I do not believe that Salmon would object to my Evening College course. I get the impression from reading her writing that her objections centered around librarians working with traditional aged college students. She wrote that faculty were responsible for the curriculum and it was up to them to teach students. I think she may have felt differently about non-credit courses for adult students. As the Evening College is outside the curriculum and degree granting powers of the university, Salmon probably would not have seen my Evening College course as an encroachment on the responsibilities of the faculty.
Probably the foremost critic of academic library instruction is Tom Eadie. Originally in favor of library instruction, he concluded that it was largely a waste of time. Eadie (1990) wrote that gathering students into a classroom and teaching them about the library would fail in educating students. Since students had yet to ask the question that the librarian was teaching about answering, the student would probably not remember the answer. The student would still need assistance later when they think to ask the question (usually when the paper is being written) and come to the reference desk. Since Eadie questioned the effectiveness of library instruction, he recommended that the money and effort used for it be used on reference services instead.
I believe that Eadie would not object to library instruction for adults in my Evening College course. His objections stem from the way that the typical undergraduate student responds to library instruction. He believed students were not motivated to remember what they were taught in the library because they had yet to seriously contemplate the questions the library would help them answer. This response is not evident in adult students taking my course. The adult students know in advance many of the questions they are going to seek answers for and this is why the enrolled in the course. As such, the instruction is liable to be effective as the adult students will remember the answers.
I have compared how I teach about the World Wide Web to the Reader Advisory Movement. Not surprising, reader advisory itself was criticized a great deal by some. As such, it is worth briefly looking at the objections to see how this may apply to my teaching adults how to use the World Wide Web.
John Cotton Dana summarized the opposition that many had to reader advisory in 1898. He argued that libraries which circulated trashy fiction (which he defined as any work not true to life or recognized as good by competent authorities) were misusing public funds and were not fulfilling their mission to uplift the public. He asserted that the millions of novels issued forth from hundreds of public libraries were an evil to the public and a perversion. He wrote that restricting fiction in the public libraries would strengthen their work as an educational force.
Dana and others who felt similarly did not believe the use of popular fiction could be used to lead patrons to better and better literature. They apparently felt it simply feed to the lowest common reading denominator and that patrons were apt to stay there. This has a strong parallel with teaching about the World Wide Web. Many university faculty members for example are skeptical of student use of the World Wide Web. Many forbid students to cite web sources in their papers. They have asked me not to cover the web at all and instead concentrate on scholarly journals. I have complied even though I feel that prevents me from showing the students how the World Wide Web works and how they can identify the “best” sites on the Web.
This certainly applies when I am teaching adult student in my Evening College course. Many of the students signed up for my class because they wanted to learn how to search the World Wide Web. My web teaching is using the underlying assumption of reader advisory. By teaching how to use the World Wide Web properly, I lead the students towards better and more useful web sites. I can also point out the limitations of the Web and show them when a library visit will be needed. I can certainly sympathize with the views of Dana and others but I think public libraries should have popular fiction. And by extension, I think librarians should teach how to search and use the “popular” World Wide Web.
Another differing view would be the one that discusses the differences in how students learn. I have focused on Perry’s Scheme. However, there are other ways at looking how students acquire knowledge which can complement Perry. Kolb (1984) is one good example of this. Dunn and Griggs (1995) is another.
Kolb (1984) classified learning into four inventory areas. These included concrete experience, active experimentation, reflective observation, and abstract conceptual. Kolb said that all four elements were required for effective experiential learning. According to Kolb, individuals have different preferences and natural styles. I believe that this is important to consider when teaching as using different teaching styles can help the students learn better. However, I don’t think it has much impact on comparing traditional aged college students and adults. Perry’s Scheme works much better in understanding the learning behaviors of the different age groups.
The same goes for Dunn and Griggs (1995). Their research shows how the culture that the student comes from has a large impact on how they learn. For example, African-Americans may exhibit as a whole different learning styles than do Jewish students in Israel. This is obviously important as well. I believe though that Perry’s Scheme still works better at explaining the stages of student development. Cultural differences are still easily incorporated into the theory. I believe both Kolb (1984), Dunn and Griggs (1995), and other student learning theories can be applied and used with Perry without necessarily negating the Perry Scheme.
What Works (and What Doesn’t)
After five years of teaching adult learners, I have discovered some instructional activities work better than others. I believe this is directly related to ages and life experiences of the adult students. What works with my freshmen students is a great deal different that what works with my adult students sometimes.
One thing that does not work with adult learners is active learning assignments designed to entertain and catch the attention of 18-year olds. I developed a lesson plan at Ohio University-Zanesville that used alcohol and drink mixing to teach Boolean search techniques. I published a write up of this (Lorenzen, 1995) and spoke at a few conferences about it. However, I began to have misgivings about glorifying alcohol use and I altered it to use tattoos instead when I came to Michigan State University in 1996. My new lesson plans were published last year (Lorenzen, 2001).
I have used the tattooing activity successfully for hundreds of classes at this point. However, it did not work at all with my adult learners. They were very unresponsive to the activity and several seemed to be put off by the assignment. One student made pains to point out in the course evaluation that she thought the tattooing was silly. That was the first and last time I used this in my Evening College course.
I speculate that because the adult learners are more advanced that the traditional college aged student, they felt the activity was not at their level. Most of the adult learners were in the later stages of Perry’s Scheme. They were self-motivated and did not see the point in being “tricked” into learning Boolean operators. They cared enough to learn already and would have preferred a more straightforward presentation. I learned from this and approached the topic in subsequent Evening College courses differently.
Another activity the adult learners do not like very well in my Evening College course is library tours. I always give a tour of the Main Library early in the course. I feel this is important so the students can connect what I am teaching with actual physical collections. Further, many of our well-known collections (like the comic books and American Radicalism) are not available entirely online. However, many of the adult students signed up for the course because they wanted to learn to do research online. They feel they already know how to walk around a library.
For the traditional aged students, I have the instructor assign a self-guided tour in advance. This allows me to concentrate my limited class time on the library databases. However, with my Evening College course, I am not allowed to assign homework. So, I have to give the tour during class time. As I have learned the students are not always happy about this, I have been explaining the reasons why I conduct a library tour. I feel it is important to any course on library research and I will continue to do it.
One activity that both traditional aged students and adult student like is hands-on experience when searching the databases. I am fortunate to have access to classrooms that have enough computers for all the students in a class. I can search, project it on the screen, and have the students follow along. It works great. I move about the room from time to time to see if any of the students are having difficulty. This allows me to make quick interventions.
I have no complaints from the adult students in my Evening College course about the follow along searching. They appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to actively participate with a computer. They tend to be a little slower than the younger students but they also always let me know when they are confused or are uncertain.
Conclusion
I have learned a lot about adult learners over the years from course work, my colleagues, and my work experiences. My beliefs about adult learning have been influenced a great deal by the Perry Scheme of Student Development which indicates a great deal of pedagogy must depend on the nature of the learner. However, my understanding of the nature of the World Wide Web also indicates that pedagogy can depend on the content and technology.
My pedagogy has been heavily influenced by the way public libraries educated adults in the past. Many saw public libraries as open universities which is a role my Evening College course fills. Carnegie and others envisioned the library as a way that the self-motivated could better his or her self. I aid in this as well. I also teach the use of the World Wide Web and library databases in a way that incorporates the library tradition of reader advisory. I also use active learning techniques to all the students to actively participate in class.
There are other ways at looking at adult education in libraries. Some writers have argued that librarians should not teach in classrooms. I reject this in favor of using the library classroom to teach adults. Some library educators in the past also argued against reader advisory services to adults on the grounds that patrons should only be allowed access to high quality literature. Paralleling this with the World Wide Web, I am able to argue against this on the grounds that I believe I can led students to the best by showing them the common and the mundane on the Web. I also believe that there are theories other than Perry that can explain the nature of learners.
I have found some things work better in teaching adults than others. One must be careful in making sure the tone of an activity is appropriate for older learners. Tours can be important but their purpose should be explained to the students. Allowing adult students to have hands-on computer time works well.
I am sure I will learn a lot more in the years to come about adult learners. New experiences will undoubtedly broaden my views. As I age, I will find myself more and more inline with the adult learners and less in touch with the 18-year olds. Regardless, I hope to continue to be able to students of different ages and experiences as this makes me a better teacher. I still have a lot to learn.
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