Compare and Contrast

We talked a lot this week about the similarities between how we teach adults and how we teach children.  I loved the point Wendy made that, hey, it’s not all that different.  From where I sit I don’t see a lot of differences at all.  We talked about the special situations that adults may have in the classroom like vision problems, hearing problems, health problems, family problems and that all these problems have to be taken into account when we teach adults.  Don’t most of the same issues have to be addressed when teaching children?  An elementary school teacher can have a wide assortment of students in his or her classroom, some could wear glasses, some could be physically handicapped, some could be ADD, some could have other learning disorders, some could have family problems, etc etc.  I guess the point I am trying to make is that we are learning how to be effective teachers of human beings, reagardless of age, because even though we may come to the table with a unique set of problems, age really doesn’t make it any different.  Some would say that the experiences that adults bring to the classroom influences their learning, but children also bring experiences and pre-conceived notions to the classrooms and it all effects how we teach and how they learn.

Situations

Sorry guys! I guess I clicked Save last week instead of publish and this blog post has just been hanging out unpublished. Oh well, here it is!

As I was reading the interpretations of the Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory it said that if you were not clearly dominate in one or two categories to clarifying your beliefs and values, looking for contradictions. So I paused, went back through the questions and thought about my answers a little and I came to this conclusion, my answers were situation dependent. I am more than just one kind of teacher. I may teach one way when helping my niece understand something, I teach differently when training new employees and I may teach yet still another way when I helping a fellow employee figure something out on the computer. Taking each inventory question in just one of these contexts I feel I would be clearly dominant in one or two these philosophies, but I didn’t think of just one context when taking the inventory. As each questions was read, I thought of a situation in which it would apply.