In the course of MALAT, and leading toward 691, I\u2019ve become very interested in two learning theories, and they both factor into my final paper:<\/p>\n
SE<\/strong> popped onto the radar during residency in a few of the projects and assignments we worked on. In training pilots, I have always been aware that the students who believed they could succeed outperformed those with strong doubts, but it wasn\u2019t until MALAT that I understood the amount of research that has gone into this phenomenon, with Bandura being a great starting point to my reading. In my time as a student, I\u2019ve always valued the instructors who helped me culture a belief that I could succeed, and in my case, this almost always involved showing me the required elements of success and then showing me that each of those elements was attainable in its own right. This led me to believe that perceived SE can be taught, and I\u2019ve attempted to do that in my instructional capacity. My ongoing curiosity involves the degree to which SE can be taught or otherwise transferred to a learner. Are there limits to how much SE can be obtained in an individual imposed by outside factors, or can anyone be taught to believe they can learn anything? Are there methods that are generally effective for improving a learner\u2019s SE, or are there strategies that are more suited to a situation or individual depending on the context, and have these strategies been indexed? Lot\u2019s to learn!<\/p>\n ALT<\/strong>, on the other hand, has been a recent arrival! It came as a result of collecting some reference resources to bolster the strength of a paper. After reading through Malcom Knowles\u2019 seminal \u201cThe Adult Leaner: A Neglected Species\u201d (1973) I was impressed at being able to see what may be the genesis point of the field of Adult Learning research, as well as Self-Directed Learning (SDL) which I find fascinating. But I will confess that I had a vague sense that there were issues with his writing. I don\u2019t think I have the academic chops to put my finger on exactly why that feeling exists, but I suspect it has to do with the narrowness of his references (although this could possibly be attributed to the scant data for him to draw from 45 years ago). Mostly, however, I think my issue was that I didn\u2019t think he understood why adults learn. I came to realize, though, that four and a half decades ago, the landscape of adult learners was very different. Career stability meant that most adults were learning for recreational reasons, as Knowles states: \u201cPleasure and Self-esteem\u201d. Today however, Rohit Talwar<\/a>\u00a0works for Fast Future<\/a>, which is a professional foresight organization devoted to analysis and prediction of trends for large corporations and governments. Talwar predicts that children today can expect to have up to 40 different jobs in up to 10 different career paths! I\u2019m nearly 50, so technically catch the tail end of Knowles expected demographic yet have had 5 distinctly different <\/em>definable \u2018careers\u2019, and when this MALAT is over, there may be more on the way! My point is, the motivations of the typical adult learner in the early 70\u2019s seems VERY different from today: adult learning, which was once recreation, has now evolved to necessity. I really like what Knowles had to say, and his passion for addressing the adult as a specific subset in education, but I believe his ideas need significant updating. Luckily this is occurring; in 1999 Geoffrey Norman published \u201cThe Adult Learner: a Mythical Species\u201d, which begins to unravel some of the assumptions that existed in Knowles\u2019 work, and hold them up to academic, as well as contextual scrutiny. Two papers, and I\u2019m already neck deep\u2026. Where are we now? How much horsepower is being devoted to this study, who’s doing it, and why? (Is it marketing departments trying to earn a buck off adult learners, or are the motivations more socially noble?)<\/p>\n Many more questions are emerging, and as a friend and colleague says \u201c\u2026looks like we got ourselves a good knowledge quest!\u201d<\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning.\u00a0Educational psychologist<\/em>,\u00a028<\/em>(2), 117-148.<\/a> (among other works of his)<\/strong><\/p>\n Knowles, M. (1973). The adult learner: a neglected species.<\/a><\/p>\n Norman, G. R. (1999). The adult learner: a mythical species.\u00a0Academic Medicine<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the course of MALAT, and leading toward 691, I\u2019ve become very interested in two learning theories, and they both factor into my final paper: Self-efficacy (SE) Adult Learning Theory (ALT) SE popped onto the radar during residency in a… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0030\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}