EFFECT OF VITAMINS C AND E INTAKE ON BLOOD ... - EuroJournals

European Journal of Social Sciences - Volume 2, Number 1 (2006)
Conventional education demands that the student adjust himself to an established
curriculum whereas, in adult education, the curriculum is built around the student’s
needs and interests.
Lindeman’s theory about adult learning emphasizes experience as living text
book for adult learners, and on which teachers of adults should build on. Thus, as one of
the pioneering theorists, the foundation for new way of thinking about adult learning was
laid. As a result, the following assumptions about adult learning emerged and constituted
the foundation stones of modern adult learning theory:
1. Adults’ orientation to learning is life centered
2. Experience is the richest sources for adult learning
3. Adults have a deep need to be self-directing
4. Individual differences among people increase with age.
Adults are motivated to learn as they experience needs and interests that learning
will satisfy. Knowles (1970) appears to have taken cue from Linderman’s assumptions
about learning in his quest for a different learning theory for adult learners. According to
Knowles, “adult education has not achieved the impact on our civilization which it is
capable because teachers of adult have only known how to teach adults, as if they were
children”. The emergence of Knowles’ theory of adult learning (andragogy) came to be
one of the theories for adult learning in recent times. Andragogy as theory for adult
learning offers an insight into the needs and interests of adults learners for teachers of
adults, as it x-rays the nature of adult learners as follow:
1. Adults need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking to
learn it.
2. Adults have a self-concept of being responsible for their own decisions for their
own lives.
3. Adults came into an educational activity with both greater volume and a different
quality of experience from youths.
4. Adult become ready to learn those things they need to know and be able to do, in
order to cope effectively with their real life situations.
5. Adults are life and tasks centred in their orientation to learning.
6. Adults are motivated by internal pressure and desire to achieve. (Knowles, 1980).
All the foregoing assumptions have implications for teacher of adults. They serve
as appropriate starting point for organizing adult learning activities which gives the
necessary methodology and approach in the teaching processes of adult learning as life
situation, experience, self-directing, and a call for mutual inquiry.
Other learning model that have implications fro adult learning are Skinner’s
(1938) “Operant model”, Hulls (1943) “Drive reduction; Bebb’s (1949) “Neuro
Physiological model” which emphasizes experience as power behind adults’ memory to
recall any educational experience which they have passed through. Bandura’s (1969)
“Social Leanring”. Brunner’s (1961) “Cognitivism”; and Rogers’ (1969) “Non-directive
teaching”, each of these theories posit adult learners as active and experienced
individuals who learn significantly only those things which they perceive as being
involved in the enhancement and structure of self. Adults according to Elinor (1982) are
people whose lives are overflowing with commitments, obligations, and burden of one
sort or another. They learn out of their own free will.
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