Review of Becoming Adult Learners: Principles and Practices for Effective Development by Eleanor Drago-Severson. New York: Teachers College Press, 2004, 221 pp. ISBN 0-8077-4484-0
Judging this book by its cover, I paraphrased the title into something like “Effective educational practices for adult learners.” On campus, developmental education seems to be under critical scrutiny, since student achievement has not been as expected. The shortcomings were significant enough for President Curtis to dedicate three New Year’s resolutions to making positive changes in the College Achievement Partnership (C.A.P.). So, I looked forward to this read, as I thought a book on effective educational practices would be valuable to us at the College.
Drago-Severson has structured her book like a research article or dissertation, beginning with a theoretical background linking student learning to three stages in the framework of human cognitive development formulated by the psychologist Robert Kagan. At stage one are Instrumental Knowers, who ask, “What’s in it for me?” and attend classes to acquire something. Socializing Knowers ask, “What do you think I should know?” and they attend college to be someone, often as defined by others. The Self-authoring Knowers ask, “What do I want and need to know and learn?” and see education as a way to be a unique, responsible individual. These three categories seem to be useful when describing C.A.P. students. Many of them seem to show the traits of Instrumental Knowers, who seem comfortable examining their self-interests. It is usually a positive indicator when C.A.P. students express career goals, even if these goals might be a challenge to achieve, such as nursing, or perhaps unduly influenced by variable external forces, such as the identification of “forensics” as a future job. Many C.A.P. students also seem comfortable acquiring skills and completing tasks, which are the ways Instrumental Knowers learn. Instrumental Knowers tend to look to an external authority for knowledge.
Kagan’s terms may be more useful than others to describe C.A.P. students—preferable, for example, to a blanket diagnosis of “learning disabled” or the frequently accurate but non-informative “immature.” Many C.A.P. students are attending college just after high school, and they are predisposed to be immature. This label, “immature,” also at times is used to express dissatisfaction with student behavior, but it would perhaps be more helpful to focus on the behavior without using qualifiers. Kagan’s categories indicate where a learner is on a continuum of learning, and thus are suitable for an educational setting. If many C.A.P. students are Instrumental Knowers, instructors and staff might take a constructive approach by encouraging students to become Socializing and ultimately Self-authoring Knowers.
Following the research article format, Drago devised a methodology employing qualitative measures, including interviews, focus groups, and self-evaluations, to identify key elements in academic growth. In the concluding chapters, she discussed her findings and made recommendations.
When reading through these sections of the book, I began to suspect that I might have been too easily distracted by the cover. Besides the single chapter on Kagan’s constructive-development theory, the text did not have much to offer. The basic recommendations were to group the students into cohorts so that their learning could benefit from collaborative activities and personal interactions. This recommendation has already been implemented in the College Achievement Partnership and is fairly familiar to educators. Based on qualitative evaluations of a rather small number of participants, Drag-Severson found that collaboration in student cohorts showed evidence of producing academic development, but the book did not present a model of effective educational assessment which could be used with the large numbers of diverse students who make up the C.A.P. at Community College of Philadelphia.
Becoming Adult Learners may offer educators a useful, informative, and innovative way to talk about their adult students, but it probably will not supply them with ground-breaking approaches to effective teaching.
©Copyright 2005. Contact author for permission
Maintained by Jay Howard,Sept 2005