andragogia


Pedagogy vs. Andragogy: A False Dichotomy?

Pedagogical and Andragogical Models
The histories of pedagogy and andragogy are both interesting and complex. Pedagogy evolved in the monastic schools of Europe between the 7th and 12th centuries. The term is derived from the Greek words paid, meaning “child” and agogus meaning “leader of.” Thus pedagogy literally means the art and science ofteaching children (Knowles, 1973).
Pedagogical assumptions made about learning and learners were based on observations by the monks in teaching simple skills to children. These assumptions were further adopted and reinforced with the spread of elementary schools throughout Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. When educational psychologists started scientifically studying learningaround the
turn of the 20th century, they limited their research mostly to the reactions of children and animals to systematic instruction. This reinforced the pedagogical model (Knowles, 1980).
In the early 1920s when adult education began to be organized systematically, the teachers of adults found some problems with the pedagogical model. One was that
pedagogy was based on the premise thatthe purpose of education was the transmittal of knowledge and skills. Adult learners seemed to feel this was insufficient and frequently resisted teaching strategies that pedagogy prescribed, such as lectures, assigned readings, drills, quizzes, note memorizing, and examinations. Dropout rates were high. Teachers also noted that many of the assumptions about the characteristics of learners in thepedagogic model did not fit their adult students (Knowles, 1980).
The term andragogy was coined in 1833 by the German teacher Alexander Kapp, who used it to describe the educational theory of Plato (Nottingham Andragogy
Group, 1983). A fellow German, John Frederick Herbert, disapproved of the term, and the term subsequently disappeared from use for almost a century. By 1921, the term hadreappeared in Europe, and during the 1960s it was used extensively in France, Holland, and Yugoslavia (Davenport, 1987).

Andragogy was first introduced to the United States in 1927 by Martha Anderson and Eduard Linderman, but they did not attempt to develop the concept (Davenport & Davenport, 1985). Lindeman did, however, emphasize a commitment to a self-directed, experiential, problem-solvingapproach to adult education (Davenport, 1987).
Knowles (1980) was exposed to the term andragogy from a Yugoslavian adult educator in the mid-1960s. His definition of andragogy was developed as a parallel to pedagogy. Andragogy is based on the Greek word aner with the stem andra meaning “man, not boy” or adult, and agogus meaning “leader of.” Knowles defined the term as “the art and science of helpingadults learn” in an effort to emphasize the differences between the education of adults and children (Davenport, 1987).
According to Knowles (1980), the goal of adult education should be self-actualization; thus, the learning process should involve the whole emotional, psychological, and intellectual being. The mission of adult educators is to assist adults to develop their full potential, andandragogy is the teaching methodology used to achieve this end. In Knowles’ view, the teacher is a facilitator who aids adults to become self-directed learners (Darkenwald & Merriam, 1982).
Although Knowles’ definition of andragogy focuses on the teacher’s role, his andragogical theory is based on characteristics of the adult learner. His four assumptions are that as individuals mature (a) theirself-concept moves from that of a dependent personality toward one of increasing self-directedness, (b) they accumulate a growing reservoir of experience that becomes a rich resource for learning and a broad base upon which they can relate new leanings, (c) their readiness to learn becomes increasingly more oriented to the developmental tasks of their social roles and not the product of biological...