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Adult Learning Principle Implication for Teaching/Training Design

Adults bring life experience and knowledge to the

learning environment. This experience and

knowledge includes work-related, family, and

community events and circumstances.Adults learn

best when they can relate new knowledge and

information with previously learned knowledge,

information, and experiences.

Provide opportunities for learners to reflectupon and share their existing knowledge

and experience.

Create learning activities that involve theuse of past experience or knowledge.

Ask learners to identify the similarities anddifferences between what they are learning

and what they already know.

Adults tend to prefer self-directed, autonomous

learning?but this is often not an expectation of

educational institutions and society.

Design training around participants' needsand goals.

Ask participants what they want to learn.Learners learn best when they establish a

specific learning objective or goal for

themselves.

Provide learner action-planning tools andtemplates to help develop and focus their

self-directed efforts and facilitate learning.

Provide opportunities for learners to direct their

own learning through guided inquiry and self-

facilitated small-group discussions.Ads by

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Adults have self-pride and desire respect. They

need their experience, beliefs, knowledge,

questions, and ideas acknowledged as important.

Because learning involves risk and thepossibility of failure, design training to

minimize each learner's risk and

embarrassment.

Provide opportunities for learners to shareideas, questions, opinions, experiences,

concerns, etc. and to create an environment

that honors and respects everything that is

appropriately shared.
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Create flexible training programs that honorparticipants by accommodating their

contributions and questions as much as

possible.

Make it safe for learners to express theirconfusion, anxieties, doubts, and fears.

Provide opportunities for "small wins" andlittle victories in the learning process - to

build competencies incrementally.

Adults want practical, goal-oriented, and problem-

centered learning that can immediately help them

deal with life's challenges.

Ask learners to identify what they would liketo learn about a topic.

Establish clear learning objectives that makethe connection between participant's needs

and the learning content.

Share examples and stories that relate thelearning content to participant's current

challenges. Ask learners to share their own

examples that make this linkage.

Engage learners in identifying the challengesthey face and the value of learning to

addressing these challenges.

Follow theories with practical examples andapplications to demonstrate the relevance

of the learning.

Adults desire feedback on the progress they aremaking at learning something new.

Provide opportunities for learners to getimmediate feedback to their own learning

through case examples, role-playing,

quizzes, and responses to trainer questions.

Encourage learners to self-evaluate andassess their own learning and performance.

Praise any level of learning improvement and

encourage continued learning.Ads by

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Adults have preferences for the way in which they

learn. Some prefer learning by doing (kinesthetic),

others prefer learning by observing (visual), whilestill others prefer learning by listening (auditory).

Recognized that not all learners will respondto a given teaching method or technique.

Use a wide variety of methods that tap intoall learner preferences in training delivery.

Use all three learning modes (kinesthetic,visual, and auditory) in every 20-minute

teaching interval.

Make trainers aware of their own learningpreferences and make them wary of

favoring this approach in their own teaching.

Free learners to learn in the style that bestsuits them by using small group work, dyadic

discussions, and individual activities.

Adults learn best through collaboration and

reciprocity - an environment where people learn

with others while sharing what they already know.

Provide a low-risk environment for learningwhile capitalizing on the different levels of

knowledge and skill within a group by using

small group work and didactic discussion.

Strengthen learner self-esteem isstrengthened through team-based learning,

based on mutual trust and respect.

Use small-group learning to more accuratelyreflect participants' interdependent and

collaborative work environment back on the

job.

Adults are motivated to learn by a wide variety of

factors. These are the most common: personal

aspirations, externally imposed expectations,

internal desire or interest, escape from a situation

(boredom or fear), growth and advancement, and

Inquire into the reasons participants areinterested in learning.

Invite learners to identify the link betweenlearning and the satisfaction of a personal

need or a reduction in an external stress or
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service to others. threat.

Make a connection between the learningcontent and each learner's long-range

objectives (in work and life).

Ask participants to discuss in dyads andsmall groups the short- and long-term

benefits of learning the program's content.

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ASTD