CC BY
74
THE ANDRAGOGICAL MODEL OF TEACHERS' SKILLS IMPROVEMENT Kh. F. Rashidov
In the year of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it is probably the right time to develop such an understanding of the right to education that would reflect the general intention of the modern conception of continuing education and contribute to the implementation of its central idea about lifelong enhancement of creative capabilities of a personality. In this context, Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("Everyone has the right to education") may be interpreted in a more holistic and conceptual way as follows: all citizens have equal state-guaranteed opportunities to gain high-quality education before beginning their career and consistently continue their learning activity throughout their adult lives.
Adult education is an area of knowledge that is most relevant to teachers' skills improvement. An increasing importance of adult education is an admitted fact. There is no country in the world that does not owe it its technological, social, economic or cultural progress or does not associate its nearest and more distant future with the overall development of adult education. Adult education encompasses the entire set of continuous processes that help adults to develop their abilities, improve their knowledge, moral values and professional qualifications or find new applications for them. The modern theoretical basis for research in adult education is comprised of the ideas and notions of the conception of continuing education. According to this conception, learning is a component element of the human lifestyle at all stages of the human life cycle. In a scientific sense, continuity is a process comprised of individual discrete stages, each of which, albeit being an integral part of the whole, has its own specific properties.
UNESCO regards adult education as one of the priority tasks: "Each [UN] Member State should recognize adult education as a necessary and specific component of its education system and as a permanent element in its social, cultural and economic development policy" [5].
In recent years, the theoretical conceptualization of adult education has been mainly based on the experimental learning theories centered around the concept of 'learning experience' (E. Husserl, A. Knox, D. Kolb, R. Frye, J. Mezirow, P. Jarvis, D. Schon, R. Mannings, R. Beard, M. Knowles, etc.). The advocates of the experimental theory believe that
49
adult education can be based on experience of any kind (professional, social, etc.). For example, P. Jarvis defines adult education as "a process of transforming present experience into knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, etc." [7]. In other words, adult education always begins with invoking past experience in a new situation. The level of the learner's awareness of the happenings, which is important both for gaining experience and further learning, may be different among different learners. An analysis of a new situation is bound to take place against the learner's past experience, while the subjectivity of perception is defined by his personal experience. At the same time, adult learners bring in the interpretations of their past experience retained in their memory into their learning activity. These interpretations can both promote and hamper the effectiveness of learning. According to US researchers D. Brundage and D. Mackeracher who defined the adult learning principles and their application to training program planning, learners of different ages perceive time differently, which has a significant impact on learning. As time, as perceived by adult learners, becomes shorter, the learning needs focus more acutely upon the problems of the immediate present and the previous experience becomes increasingly important [6]. A similar opinion is rendered by M. Knowles. He emphasizes that the time perspective of an adult learner "changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centeredness" [4].
Thus, adult learners have a number of specific features which should be taken into account in training management. First of all, they include an extensive experience and a large number of professional and other life duties. The sources of information available to an adult are plentiful; therefore it is more difficult for him to memorize and reproduce knowledge gained during the learning process. That is why it is necessary to create a special environment for learning educational material in class. Moreover, it is very important for adults to understand cause-effect relations between phenomena and regularities of their functioning and development and have an idea of the system as a whole instead of simply memorizing individual "portions" of material or using a ready-made routine. A. Knox notes in this regard that "...adults absorb information better when they are aware of its meaning and can integrate it into their own system of knowledge" [9].
Teaching based on active learning of the training material was and still is of interest to many andragogists. The works by P. Freire, J. Mezirow,
C. Argyris, D. Schon, D. Kolb and others consider different aspects of this
50
complex phenomenon, compare the significance of reproductive and productive teaching and offer classifications of learning in line with their views. A classification offered by P. Jarvis seems to us the most interesting and suitable for practical use in the adult education system because of its completeness and coherent scientific structure. Worth special attention is the presentation of the adult learning process in the form of models that reflect experience assimilation. D. Kolb and R. Frye offered a learning cycle model which is to a greater extent related to a specific experience. P. Jarvis offers a learning process model which is based on cooperation between educators and adult learners. In furtherance of D. Kolb's ideas, P. Honey and A. Mumford described different learning styles and developed a preferred learning style test. In the process of experimental learning, learners usually begin with their preferred learning style.
Today, the complexity of adult learning is enhanced by the fact that all adults were subjected to the old pedagogical paradigm of learning with all the drawbacks inherent in it. These drawbacks, in particular, include the following: the dogmatic type of teaching, the lecture format of learning sessions, book-learning, orientation towards learning of ready-to-use knowledge, etc. The andragogic model of adult learning, which implies that a learner is responsible for defining the area of learning, choice of methods, time planning, as well as evaluation of results, represents the key learning "driver", while a teacher acts as a process coordinator, creating new formats, methods and opportunities. Educational programs for adults are developed and implemented based on the following key principles: (a) take into account the specific features of educational needs of different categories of the adult population; (b) take into account the capability of an educand to learn the training material provided by a particular program; (c) modify the scope, forms and methods of learning depending on the actual level of knowledge and skills of the educands.
The tasks associated with the development of adult education are set and resolved with the help of the mechanisms of state-public governance. For management of the adult education development to become truly state-public, it should be systemic. In order to improve the efficiency of management in adult education, it will be reasonable: first, to establish an authority which will coordinate the activities and interactions between the institutions and organizations that deal with adult education; and second, to develop an adult education development program which will become a part of the National Program for Staff Training and provide for a system of
51
consistent measures aiming to reach specific goals in the development of a national skills improvement system.
References
1. Громкова М. Т. Андрагогика: теория и практика образования взрослых. - Юнити. - 495 с.
2. Калиновский Ю. И. Введение в андрагогику. Мобильность педагога в образовании взрослых: Монография. - М., 2000. - 78 c.
3. Концепция развития образования взрослых в государствах-участниках СНГ / Российская академия образования. Институт образования взрослых. Разработчики: Е. И. Огарев, С. Ф. Касаткин. Научный руководитель: В. И. Подобед.
4. Ноулз М. Ш. Современная практика образования взрослых. Андрагогика против педагогики. - М., 1980.
5. Рекомендация по развитию образования взрослых, принятая Генеральной конференцией ЮНЕСКО, Найроби, 1976.
6. Brundage D. H., Mackeracher D. Adult Learning Principles and their Application to Program Planning. Toronto, 1980, р. 35-36.
7. Jarvis P. Adult and Continuing Education: Theory and Practice. London, NY, 1995. - 67 p.
8. Knowles M. Andragogy. An Emerging Technology for Adult Learning // Edwards R., Hanson A.. Raggatt P. (eds). Boundaries of Adult Learning. London; NY, 1996. - 84 р.
9. Knox A. B. Adult Development and Learning. San Francisco, 1977. - 435 р.
52
