How do you learn? Reflection is important. And the context or setting you are in is important. Another way to think about this, is to think of yourself in a teaching situation where you are dealing with fellow adults. When would they learn best from you?
If you understand how adults learn then you can create, or seek, the right conditions for yourself to learn. Adults learn best when:
- They feel the need to learning and to have input into what, why and how they learn. (Voluntary participation is almost always preferred to mandatory – however people do sometime perceive learning as necessary after being forced into it.)
- Learning’s content and processes bear a perceived and meaningful relationship to past experience and experience is effectively utilised as a resource for learning. (Adult learners need to realise that their experience constitutes both a potential asset and a potential liability for learning. Education needs to take into account previous experience – create environments in which people are free to analyse experience and try out new ways of learning.)
- What is to be learned relates optimally to the individual’s development changes and life tasks.
- The amount of autonomy exercised by the learner is congruent with that required by the mode and method utilised.
- They learn in a climate that minimises anxiety and encourages freedom to experiment (collaborative learning requires a climate of mutual trust and teamwork in which people feel accepted and free to disagree and take risks. “When people are truly treated as adults”)
- Their learning styles are taken into account.
From Smith R M (1983) Learning How to Learn: Applied Theory for Adults. Milton Keynes: The Open University pp.47-49
See also Reflection in Action: Reflection on Action. What is it that we do when we do what we do?
