Revisiting Adult Learning Theory through the Lens of an Adult Learner

In reading the last section of hour primary text, Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide by Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner (2007) in my Adult Learning and Development class, I continued to feel as though I was being self-assured of my previous learning experiences once again. The final section of the text focused on basic psychological concepts and theories that I had become familiar with while completing my undergraduate degree. However, our text highlighted the tangential relationships between these psychological concepts and adult learning theory. These relationships led me to ask myself: * What discoveries [from the reading] relate to my personal development? * What about the content surprises me? * If necessary, how would I use this information as presented in the readings particularly in my current occupational position? The first chapter of our text focuses on traditional learning theories. Upon first reading, I felt as if I was reading a psychology text, and I guess, in fact, I was. The text discusses five different theories, or as the authors put it, "orientations," to learning: behaviorist, humanist, cognitivist, social cognitive, and constructivist. The behaviorist theory is basically a theory that focuses on how the environment helps to shape the learning processes of an individual. When I think of this approach, I most often think of the famous Pavlov dog experiment. I grew to know this response as classical conditioning, and, in many respects, this seems to be the most prevalent teaching model in the practice today. Let's take my high school memories for example, although it has been more than 18 years since my high school graduation. What I remember most from this period of my life is the school bell. As a matter of fact, from my earliest memories, the school bell was an essential part of my public school education. When the bell rang, we knew that we either needed to be in class, moving to another class, or being dismissed for the day. While the bell didn't signify any sort of learning response, it did entrench in every student a behavior--a conditioning--on how to act and what to expect within the next few moments. For many of us the anticipation of the bell led to a heightened anxiety level since we knew that just on the other side of the bell was the dreaded AP history class, or for others, the worrisome gym class, but in that way, we were all Pavlov's dogs. Another example of this theory of learning is the way in which a teacher would set up and decorate the classroom. It was every hope of our French teacher that with each picture of Paris or any other miscellaneous Francophone city or country placed on the classroom wall, our desire to learn the language would be that much more heightened. I remember the same with my science classes, my history classes, and virtually every other class that I can remember. So, in many ways, our teachers were trying to change our behavior in respect to a certain subject, and for many of us, this worked just fine. Our text cites Skinner (1971) as saying that the "ultimate goal of education is to bring about behavior that will ensure survival of the human species, societies, and individuals" (p. 280). But is this really learning? I would challenge this statement by saying no. I would consider this just to be survival. But then again, we would need to define "learning," which, I quickly understand, can be just about anything to any one person. In short, the behaviorist theory treats the individual as a subject that is completely reliant on its environmental surroundings. The next theory that was discussed was the humanist theory of learning. This theory establishes the perspective that an individual has the potential to grow, and further, has the desire to grow. This theory points to the fact that people strive to be the best that they can be--a similar message to what the Army would like you to believe. Merriam et al. …