Pedagogical Stance vs. Andragogical Stance
A “pedagogical stance” to learning, according to Knowles refers to being highly dependent on the teacher and the subject-matter with little consideration on the students’ backgrounds (Knowles, 2005). This can be applied when I was in elementary school. As children, we were “spoon-fed” the information about the subjects and tasked with rote-memorization and answering of tests that measure our achievement of outcomes. Essentially, our learning was controlled by the teacher. One particular subject that I can remember is Social Studies. During Social Studies class, all the teacher does is write out terms and dates on the chalkboard. We are given time to copy them on our notebooks, then she follows with a very brief discussion. Usually, the note-taking takes up most of the class time, and the discussions only pertain to the terms being presented. As children, we usually don’t think about how this knowledge becomes applicable since we are motivated by other apparently “important factors” such as grades.
An “andragogical stance” follows the unconventional route to learning which utilizes the students’ self-direction and autonomy or independence. As someone who is only 21 years old, the closest that I can identify under this stance are my courses under UPOU. In fact, even my experience under this course can be counted as learning under the andragogical stance. Although the teachers set deadlines, objectives, and the assessment, the students are given a degree of independence and self-direction with regards to their learning; for instance, the course EDS 131 which follows an open schedule. In such situations, students are more independent and will explore the relevance of learning before undertaking in it. The learning experience is essentially controlled by the students. Furthermore, learning is “life-centered” rather than subject-centered.
Staged Self-Directed Learning
Grows Staged Self-Directed Learning (SSDL) model at first seems to follow a chronological order where students start out as dependent (Stage 1) but end in being self-directed (Stage 4). In fact, the previous experience I recounted seems to imply this sequence. However, this is far from true. All stages of learning can be applied at any level of the learners’ development. So, Stage 4-teaching can be used for young students, while Stage 1-teaching can be used for adult teaching. It all depends on the context for student learning. Often, stage 1-teaching is used for introductory purposes where students are exposed to new knowledge. While stage 4-teaching is used when students already have the knowledge base required for the activities at this stage. So the process of Stage 1 to Stage 4 of the model does not actually follow a certain order or correspond to specific stages of development, but rather the context of learning. For instance, in my course EDS 143: Health Education, a final requirement is the designing and implementation of a health program, which is a self-directed activity because students are expected to design implement their own programs without the teacher’s intervention. However, we were free to ask questions about our plans. Furthermore, before even starting that requirement, we needed to be familiar with health promotion, and health promotion theories and models, which is a stage-1 activity. So, that is one way in which the process changes from Stage 1 to Stage 4, wherein Stage 4 tasks become a culminating experience that covers all learning from Stages 1-3.
Conclusions
The pedagogical-andragogical continuum presented by Knowles and the SSDL conceptualized by Grow presents some very important facets of adult learning. One of them is that the goal of adult learning is to develop self-directed learners. Although Knowles makes it a point that subject-centered teaching is incompatible with adragogy, Grow asserts that dependent learning is not bad, and can even be considered necessary for learning “new things.” An important take-away for me is that dependent learning only becomes bad when it accentuates this type of learning all throughout a person’s life. Thus, dependent learning must transition further into the SSDL in order to eventually translate to self-directed learning.
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