How Does Age and Culture Affect a Learner’s Motivation?

This post continues my exploration of Wlodkowski’s book, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults*. In this section, Wlodkowski discussed how aging and culture may affect motivation to learn. While age and culture influence learning, instructors can mitigate their effects through careful attention.

Working Adults

Throughout Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, Wlodkowski primarily focused on working adults (25 to 64 years old). We must keep this in mind because he often bases his assumptions on that group. The other two groups are younger adults and older adults. They bracket the working adults.

Wlodkowski pointed out that 73 percent of all college students are nontraditional students who not only go to school but also must support themselves. There are several reasons an adult would need to keep learning continuously, including rapid social change in the workplace, job obsolescence, aging workers, and changing lifestyles (Hiemstra & Sisco, 1990). Information or knowledge in fields becomes obsolete in a matter of years rather than lifetimes (Knowles, 1980).

Expect to see more and more lifelong learners. Because of the increasingly changing world, more individuals are going back to school to improve their skills . Lifelong learning seems to be self-perpetuating. The more involved individuals are in adult education, the more individuals continue to stay involved. Adult education participation increases from 6% for grade school graduates to 38% for those who have gone to college (Knowles, 1980). With more and more people pursuing education, they are also doing it in different stages of life. As a result, age becomes a factor.

Aging

Aging affects learning in that as adults become older, their physical functions such as sight and hearing degrade. However, their capability to learn does not degrade. If adult learners control the speed of learning, they demonstrate proficiency equal to that of younger learners.

Wlodkowski offered suggestions for adjusting to adult learners.

• Allow older learners to control the pace of learning.
• Provide more time for adult learners to process visual material.
• Ensure presentations are within the auditory range of learners and control for distracting sounds.
• Adjust presentations or instruction to account for working memory. Instruction needs to be broken down into bite-size bits of information for easier processing.
• Make the information relevant to the learner. If not, the learner will discard it.
• Tie new material to a learner’s previous experience.

Wlodkowski and Cross provided a list of suggestions for helping adult learners learn new material:

1. Make information relevant
2. Use physical aids or memory aids to help organize information
3. Pace the information appropriately
4. Focus on one idea at a time
5. Summarize often
6. Encourage interactive note taking
7. Apply the information in a realistic setting

Practical Intelligence

One area Wlodkowski discussed I found very interesting was that of practical intelligence. This seems to be an area especially important to adult learners, but researchers need to conduct more studies. It basically focuses on knowledge developed through experiences. The knowledge needed to solve problems as learners experience them in work, home, or play. Each discipline has the knowledge necessary to the success of that discipline. It is knowledge common to the field. An expert in a field is someone who has mastered this common knowledge. Understanding what this knowledge is and identifying gaps in a learner’s knowledge would help a learner develop in a field of study.

Life Transition

Another area I found to be interesting and relevant to Cooperative Extension was the idea of life transition from Carol Aslanian. I see this closely tied to the life-cycle phases of Robert Havighurst. Essentially, an individual learns something new because a problem drives them to do so. This problem may result from a life transition or a change in life-cycle. For example, if a company is downsizing, an individual may need to look for a new job. They would, therefore, need to brush up on job-finding skills. This would be an example of a life transition. On the other hand, if an individual was preparing for retirement, he would explore material appropriately. They would not typically do this at an earlier life-cycle stage.

Culture Diversity

Finally, Wlodkowski discussed the challenge that culture diversity plays on learning. He pointed out that we need to respect different cultures. We need to work towards creating a learning environment that is inviting to everyone. Tying learning to a learner’s experience strengthens it. The more we can understand a learner including cultural differences, the more success we will have in passing on knowledge.

If you want to have a motivating lesson, you must plan for it.

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References

Wlodkowski, R. (2008). Enhancing adult motivation to learn: A comprehensive guide for teaching all adults (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint.

Additional Reading

• How Do We Keep Learners Motivated?
• What Makes a Motivating Instructor?
• Principles of Coaching and Instructing Closely Related
• What Motivates Adults to Learn?
• Are You Including Everyone in Your Instruction?
• How Do You Help Adults Develop a Positive Attitude Towards Learning?
• How Do We Make Learning Interesting?
• How Do We Assess Adult Learners Without Necessarily Testing Them?
• How Do You Weave Motivational Strategies Into Your Instructional Design?

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