William Rothwell - Adult Learning Basics

All people learn in pretty much the same way, right? Wrong! Research, theory, practice, and philosophy over many years indicate that people may learn in different ways and may even change how they learn. Children tend to be willing to listen as adults give them information that may not have immediate application. But adults have traditionally been regarded as being much less patient and much more prone to focus on immediate application. They want to know why new information is worth knowing and how to use it.

Since many talent developers and other learning professionals are promoted to their roles internally, they may lack a solid grounding in adult learning theory, practice, and principles. That can cause problems. There is more to training others than simply throwing grab bags of facts at them. Good talent developers should possess an excellent grasp of how adults learn, how adult learning differs from that of children, and how older adult learning may differ from younger adult learning (Moseley and Dessinger 2006). It is also crucial to know how learning differs from training. That is especially important at a time when growing research sheds light on how brain anatomy and chemistry affect learning.

But what is an adult, and what is an adult learner? Who should read this book? This preface answers these questions, provides chapter-by-chapter highlights to indicate the issues treated in each chapter, provides an overview of visual icons that are used throughout the book to emphasize key points, and acknowledges the contributions of others to this book.

What Is an Adult, and What Is an Adult Learner?

Any book about adult learning should start off with answers to the questions What is an adult? and What is an adult learner?

The term adult usually means someone who has reached maturity. Of course, there can be a difference between mental maturity and legal age. We sometimes hear people say, Act your age to admonish someone to behave in a more mature manner. Legal age varies by culture and even by location. The key issue in legal age is the age at which an individual may enter into a contract. That is not the same everywhere in the worldor even in every locale in the United States.

An adult learner, on the other hand, usually implies someone who engages in learning beyond the traditional age of school attendance. Of course, even what is regarded as traditional school age can vary. It has been getting older as the U.S. population ages and there are fewer traditional school-age people (from ages seven to 17 for grade school and ages 17 to 21 for college). Average school age has been on the increase in the United States as people find that a plethora of college graduates leads to a need for higher educational levels to be competitive in the entry-level job market. That will be especially important after year 2025 when a precipitous drop is predicted in the graduation of high school students in the United States due to the so-called advent of the birth dearth (Grawe 2018).

But there are several important fallacies to address right at the outset of any book on adult learning. First, while adults may share some things in common, it is a mistake to generalize that all adult learners are the same. They are not. Second, while it is popular to point out generational differences in working and learning styles, the reality is that too little empirical research has been done to indicate documented and verified differences among so-called Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, and all the other various age groups in todays labor market (AMA 2019). Care must be taken in making sweeping generalizations about people, since the research to support it is not strong enough to do so with certainty. Third, as the U.S. and global working populations age, interest will increasingly shift from a focus on differences between teaching children and adults to differences among teaching children, adults, and older adults. An older adult is an individual beyond traditional retirement age. Some authorities even distinguish among the young old (6575), the old (7685), and the old old (86 and up).

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is written for anyone who has occasion to teach, train, coach, sponsor, or mentor adults or to facilitate groups of adults working together. The audience for this group thus may include:

Subject matter experts

Managers

Learning and talent development professionals

HR professionals

It is important to emphasize that most learning occurs on the job. Hence, supervisors, managers, and executives have important daily roles to play in developing their staff on the job (Rothwell, Chee, and Ooi 2015). Being aware of adult learning theory and practice can improve efforts to manage and develop staff members in real time while simultaneously getting the daily work accomplished.