Adult Learners in Higher Education and Training

The adult learner who was interviewed is an adult male who is thirty six years old and is married with two children. He was born, has lived and worked in the city of Detroit all his life and says that he has no plans of moving away from his home city any time soon. He previously worked at the General Motors Company as a middle skilled worker until he was laid off four years ago at the height of the economic recession that is currently plaguing our country. Despite the fact that he worked for this company since leaving high school, as had his father and grandfather before him, he was among the first to be laid off and he is still quite bitter about the events that led to this. After spending the last four years doing odd jobs, he and his wife, who has a stable job, decided that it would be best for him to return to school to ensure that he has the education necessary to be able to get a more competitive job than he previously did (Kistler, 29 – 30). After securing a loan, he enrolled himself into an adult learning program and he admits that at first he found it very difficult to fit in the new atmosphere where he was in class with people his own father’s age. He states that it took quite an effort to get to accept these people as his classmates and commends their instructors for bringing into class activities which encouraged all the adult students, no matter their background to get to cooperate with each other.

The interviewee says that their instructors introduced class activities, which they referred to as ice breakers, whose purpose was to create an ideal environment which would enable adult students to get to know each other in an educational setting (Flint, 3 – 8). He states that these activities were a great way of getting to establish a common ground between himself and other students who were doing the same course and that they helped him a lot when the time came to cooperate with them. These ice breaking activities were often done especially when they began new classes, during the introduction of new topics or when new adult learning activities were about to be introduced in class. Each course he was undertaking had its own ice breaker activity to fit in with its specific situation but he states that the introductory part was similar for all the courses. During the introduction of the new courses which the adult students had enrolled themselves for, there were activities which were designed to encourage the students within the class to get to know each other so that in case of a need for them to work as groups, then there would be very little difficulty. Furthermore, these get to know each other sessions also had the purpose of ensuring that the adult students became more comfortable within the environment in which they found themselves. They also enabled the promotion of unity and group cohesion in the class.

Although at first many of the adult students did not take these activities seriously, they later came to realize just how helpful it was for their learning process (Frey, 21). Not only did it encourage group work within members of the class but it also promoted unexpected friendships among adults of different generations. Furthermore, it ensured that all the adult students were comfortable in their new environment and that they were more receptive of what their instructors taught them. As these activities continued to be done, there seemed to be an increase in the participation of students in class especially when compared to the first day in class where there was little or no participation from the students. These activities also encouraged the adult learners to form study groups whose aim was to set goals for each member to achieve as well as helping one another in specific areas of weakness. They helped the adult students realize that they all shared the same fears and that it would be best if they were to work together to ensure that they had gotten rid of such fears. An unexpected environment of cooperation was created within the class when the adult students realized that they had so much in common than otherwise. Many came to realize that they had come from the same background and that most of them had been victims of the economic recession which had either rendered them jobless, or it had made the services they had to offer redundant (MacArthur, 108 – 121).

The learning activities in which the interviewee participates were not the same as those which he participated in as a child. The reason for this is that while those activities of childhood were done in the form of games, those in adult learning have a seriousness which can only be attributed to maturity. He further states that he only participates in such learning activities because they are in no way childish and in fact, they are have been tailored to suit an adult learning environment and the strategies of learning which are involved in each course. As an adult learner, the interviewee states that he has encountered quite a number of problems or barriers in his learning process. He states that since he had been away from school for almost eighteen years, it was very hard for him to get back into the mood for learning. Furthermore, he found that the learning process was much altered from what he had previously known because of the new technology being used in class. He has had to redevelop his skills in swift note taking, concentration, and the fast and efficient use of the new technology which is available to him in class. When asked to summarize his experiences as an adult learner, he says that although in the beginning he had a hard time getting to learn within a new environment, the learning activities as well as his quick learning abilities have helped him come a long way towards achieving his goals.