Learning and being taught are two very different experiences. Engagment in one’s own learning process (aquiring information and elaborating on it) is crucially important for deeper learning to happen. Learning is usually more enjoyable than the experience of being taught. (There is a LOT of infomation why professional learning is so much better than professional development, but let’s not get too deep into that! Suffices to say that teacher agency is crucially important for learner agency. Here is a good link: REL Pacific)
University and college students are (mostly) adults, and we need to be very mindful about how we teach. Just because learning happens in interactions. This is one of the deep truths in education: The content of our message matters, but also the delivery!
The phones in the picture are all mine. I used the pink Nokia flip phone in Finland and Mexico before I moved to the U.S., and then was surprised that I still needed a landline here. My house still doesn’t get much of mobile reception. When communication gets harder (because of tech or any other reasons) we should pause for a moment and consider what our students are receiving. Just because what we say (or think what we are saying) can be very different from what our students are hearing. This is why learning really needs dialogues, the back-and-forth exchanges where we are building mutual understanding. Which obviously takes time. But that time is so extremely well spent!
Adult learners bring such a huge burden of their previous learning experiences to every assessment they are facing. One part of the problem is that often there aren’t real rubrics that would map the scope of the assessment, the other part is that we all interpret the assessment and the rubric using our past educational experiences. This is why coaching (or mentoring) is an important part of adult learning. By engaging in dialogue and highlighting SEL (social-emotional learning) competencies we can support adult learners to enjoy their learning experience and gain the most of it.
Everyone who works in higher education should read the APA guide to College Teaching. It has excellent insight into how students learn and how we can support that learning. The other resource I use every day is the CASEL framework. It helps me to discuss the self awareness and self-management we need as eductors, as well as social awareness, relationship skills and my all-time-favorite: responsible decision making! My other blog is named “Choosing How to Teach” for this very reason – we DO have choices and we can choose to support our students’ learning and SEL. Learning IS a process, not just a product.
How about you? What are your best resources for supporting adult learning and SEL?
🙂
Nina
NotesFromNina 
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Nina. This is a refreshing read. It is refreshing to know that you are talking about adult learning. Most of the theories I encounter in teaching and learning focus on the development of child learning. There is a vast opportunity to learn the wonders of adult learning. I agree that adults bring in social and emotional experiences in professional learning. Hence, in adult learning, it’s not just about the information to learn but also how the adult learner attaches personal, social, cultural, and emotional significance to such information. This, I believe, makes the adult learning interaction both challenging and insightful.
Thank you! Learning proces is a little different for children and adults, but certain rules still apply to both: “Learning is not an event, but rather a process that unfolds over time.” (Stahl et al., 2010).
When we are discussing durable learning (or deeper learning) we really must highlight the importance of learning process and engaging in dialogues with students – because that is how we keep on constructing our understanding and hopefully having that growth mindset that enable the deeper learning. Both participants learn when we engage in dialogue!
🙂
Nina
Stahl, S. M., Davis, R. L., Kim, D. H., Lowe, N. G., Carlson, R. E., Fountain, K., & Grady, M. M. (2010). Play it again: The master psychopharmacology program as an example of interval learning in bite-sized portions. CNS spectrums, 15(8), 491-504.