Pedagogy vs Andragogy

Adult education – andragogy – is a vast field of educational research and probably one of the most complex. Adults learn differently and have different learning strategies. Theories and principles of adult learning explain these strategies in detail and shed more light on how adults perfect their knowledge.

Talking about adult education leads us to the concept of andragogy. Malcolm Knowles, an American practitioner and theorist of adult education, defines andragogy as “the art and science of helping adults learn”. Knowles defines six principles of adult learning as:

• Adults are internally motivated and self-directed
• Adults bring life experience and knowledge to learning
• Adults are goal-oriented
• Adults are oriented toward applicability
• Adults are practical
• Adult learners like to be respected

Tom Whitby in his article “Pedagogy vs Andragogy” argues that he uses the same adult learning principles as those used in teaching children. We highly recommend this article to those of you who are interested in learning more about Andragogy. And here we share with you an interesting table created by floridatechnet.org, which shows the differences between pedagogy and andragogy.