Principles of Teaching Adults and Teenagers

Principles of Teaching Adults and Teenagers

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Teaching Adults Overview

Teaching adults often looks very different from teaching children. Adult educators can make assumptions of their adult students that they would not make of children because adults have had vastly different life experiences and come with their own unique sets of background knowledge. Andragogy, or the practice of teaching adults, studies the best methods and approaches for effective adult education.

Malcolm Knowles' Five Principles of Andragogy

Malcolm Knowles' Five Principles of Andragogy

Those teaching adults should understand and practice the five principles of andragogy espoused by Malcolm Knowles, a pioneer in the study of adult learning. Knowles posited that adults learn best under the following circumstances:

• The learning is self-directed.
• The learning is experiential and utilizes background knowledge.
• The learning is relevant to current roles.
• The instruction is problem-centered.
• The students are motivated to learn. By incorporating these five principles of andragogy into instruction, adult educators and learners alike will experience greater success in the classroom.

The Learning is Self-directed

One of the most important differences between teaching children and teaching adults is the self-concept of adult learners. While young students tend to be dependent on their teachers to guide their learning and provide opportunities for application, adult learners are the opposite. Adult learners are usually mature and self-confident enough to know how they learn best, what their areas of strength and weakness are, and how to go about learning. They don't require much help acquiring resources or developing goals for learning because, in most cases, they have done this before and already have reasons for being in school again. Adult educators need to grant their students plenty of space and be there to support rather than guide. Another benefit of self-directed learning is that students can design their studies around their preferred learning style—visual, auditory, or kinesthetic.

Using Experiences as a Resource

Educators need to utilize each set of background knowledge in their classroom as a resource. No matter how old your adult learners are or what type of life they have led thus far, every one of your students will have acquired an extensive cache of experiences that you can draw on to make the most of what everyone brings to the table. Rather than behaving as if the classroom should be a level playing field and ignoring irregular stores of background knowledge, use them to enrich instruction. Your students could be coming from vastly different walks of life. Some will be experts in an area that your whole class could benefit from learning about or will have experienced something very unfamiliar to the rest of your students.

Relevance of Material

Adult students are most likely to want to learn about subjects that will have immediate pay-offs in their life, especially as it pertains to their social roles. Adults have little use for material that is not relevant to the roles they already occupy and this is another reason for allowing students to play a part in designing their own curriculum. For example, some of your learners will want to learn about career advancement, but some, perhaps retirees or stay-at-home parents, will not need this information. The job of adult educators is to get to know students well enough to be able to teach to their roles. Always keep in mind that your older students are there to accomplish something and probably have busy lives. The goal of adult education is to fit the needs of your students, who are more often than not opting to be there because they identified an area of need for themselves—ask and listen to them about what they want from this experience.

Problem Centered Instruction

Adult learners do not desire to learn about material that doesn't fit into their lives and they do not usually want their learning to be abstract either. Adults are practiced, knowledgeable, and flexible learners that have a lot of problems to solve. Unlike young students, they do not usually need long to think about unfamiliar subjects before trying a skill out for themselves because they exercise their problem-solving skills every day and learn more each time. Adult educators need to tailor their instruction to specific problems that their students face rather than approaching their teaching one subject at a time. Andragogy is about spending more time doing than learning and the quality of instruction is much more important than topic coverage.

Motivation to Learn

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears” is a Buddhist proverb that applies well to all areas of education. No matter how hard a teacher tries, learning only begins once a student is ready. For most adults, returning to school after several years can be intimidating and a certain degree of apprehension should be expected in adult learners. Getting past the initial uneasiness of adult learners can be a challenge. However, many adult educators find that their students are eager to grow their knowledge.The teacher's role in these cases is simply to encourage this motivation and help your students maintain positivity toward learning so they can move past any discomfort they may feel about their situation. Listen carefully for teaching moments and take advantage of them. When a student says or does something that cues a new topic, be flexible and discuss it, even briefly, to show your students that their interests are important.

References

https://www.thoughtco.com/lesson-plans-for-adult-students-31633

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/resources/adults

Teaching Teenagers (9-12 th graders)

Who Are Teenagers?

Teenagers are students in your class from about 13 to 18 years old. Obvious really! Teenagers are often described as an unwelcome bunch of learners that pose multiple difficulties to teachers. And it may be true as it is for any age group when you do not know how to deal with them. Teenagers have strong opinions and they want to voice them. English as a school lesson might be a bit dull for them, but they will often be fighting to use English as a language in order to tell you something important to them.

TOP TIPS FOR TEACHING TEENS

Discipline

Teenagers need to have boundaries. You may well want to be their “friend” but it does not work. From the outset you need to establish how the class needs to be run and who is the boss. Note that we’re not talking about being an authoritarian bully of a teacher but simply having ground rules for classroom behavior and sticking to them. Although some 16 year olds may look like adults they are not; they need boundaries as much as a 7 year old. Without discipline the class will simply not work. With discipline it will. It’s as simple as that.

Rapport

Building rapport with teens is essential for success. If you don’t, they will probably complain about everything and anything you say or propose. A genuine interest in them and their lives will really improve your relationship with teenagers. They have a talent for seeing through you and knowing if you are being genuine or faking this interest. You could use the first minutes of class to engage in informal conversation about their lives.

Interests

Take time to get to know their interests and using them in your planning. You can do an online survey, for example with Survey Monkey, at the beginning of the year and then use the results to inform your planning. It’s difficult to please everybody but you can go for popular topics chosen by many of your students. Even if your syllabus is constrained in terms of what you can add, you can organise reading, listening and speaking tasks around these topics of interest. You can also take into account their preferred type of activities: listening to music, watching whole films, watching short videos, etc., which will vary from group to group.

Choice

Build choice into your classroom activities. I have experimented with different ways of introducing choice into my lessons. It should be clear that you cannot just let students choose what they want to do. I refer to choice as a planned strategy within a lesson. In order to do so, you first need to identify the main objective of your task. That is not up for choice! Once your main objective is clear you can come up with more than one way of achieving it. The choice can be in the type of task, the tool to be used, the way to present it, among others.

Challenge

Variety

Teens get bored easily. Use variety as your ally. You can vary topics, types of tasks, etc. Predictability can ruin your class. You can change the order in which you normally do things and come up with unexpected, original tasks to break down classroom routine. If you have the possibility of changing where you can have your class, do so! A classroom, a library, a playground, a garden…. Anywhere is good for a lesson. You can plan for specific tasks to be done in these alternative spaces.

Do not play it safe. Add challenge. Challenge can come in different ways. Creating slightly more difficult tasks. More difficult tasks will require more concentration on the part of the learners. Most teens are very competitive and will get involved in almost any task if there is a competition element involved. Make sure you keep track of points and set up a prize system, maybe monthly. Going for open-ended tasks. You can provide multiple points of entry and allow for varied and multiple possible solutions. This is also related to choice and interests. It is also a way of personalising tasks. It will increase motivation and promote creativity.

Motivation

It is vitally important to keep teenagers motivated if you want them to learn. To do this they need to be interested in what they are learning. They need to have a vested interest in the lesson itself otherwise there is no reason for them to sit there and take anything in. This means keeping the lessons real and relevant. How do you do this? Simple. Make the subject of your lessons apply to your class. Find out their interests and passions and introduce them into the lesson. Instead of following the dry old textbook and talking about stuff from years ago, bring it up to date and talk about issues which your students are passionate about. In other words, use English as a medium, not an end in itself, and use it to talk about issues and subjects which your teenagers want to talk about.

If you have been assigned a group of teens, do not despair! Try these tips and experiment with your own ideas as well. Teens are as enjoyable as any other age group!

Referenceshttps://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/vicky-saumell/what-are-your-top-5-tips-teaching-teenagers-vicky-saumell https://www.icaltefl.com/teenagers/

Thank you!