Karen Sichler

Interview with Adult Learner

Submitted to Dr. Lorenzo Bowman

EPY 8070 Understanding & Facilitating Adult Learning

lifelong learner, but Mr. Downey has also spent the last decade teaching philosophy as an adjunct

instructor at Kennesaw State University and more recently at Delaware State University. For full

disclosure, I have known the interviewee for over a year and he is my significant other.

Therefore, we have discussed education and our positions as lecturers at Kennesaw State

University as well as the state of higher education. I took this opportunity to formalize those

previous discussions. I will first provide an overview of the range of questions employed in the

interview. I will then discuss Mr. Downey’s responses in tandem with an analysis. Finally, I will

consider the implications for his perspectives as well as what it means for adult education in

general.

To begin our discussion, I first asked my interviewee how he defined education so as to

provide a general working definition for our interview. For Mr. Downey, education is structured

by the process of leading or drawing out the “abilities or possibilities that were latently already

there” in contrast to a process of inculcation. By starting with a student rather than a content-

focused perspective, Mr. Downey already begins to demonstrate a tendency towards Knowles’s

theory of andragogy which will continue to hold as our conversation continued. When discussing

a specific definition of adult education, for example, Mr. Downey did not create much of a

distinction between education and adult education except for the fact that the learner in the

second scenario “tend to carry so many ingrained habits, assumptions, and more with them.” At

the heart of andragogy is the notion of experience and how it must be acknowledged when

working with the adult learner. Failing to take into account the experiences of adult learners can

doom the learning experience for the learners can feel (or be) disrespected, unacknowledged, or

excluded.
 Our conversation then moved on to Mr. Downey’s personal experiences and education

which first dealt with his formal experiences. Mr. Downey first pursued a bachelor’s in English

with a minor in Philosophy and then completed a master’s in Philosophy. Like many other adults,

his desire to pursue an advanced degree was very goal-oriented with a specific application as he

wished to teach philosophy at the university level due to the experiences and development he

was exposed to as an undergraduate. Both of these elements point directly to two of Knowles’s

initial assumptions about andragogy which include the development of a self-concept in which

one is a self-directing human being as well as learning as related to social roles (Merriam &

Baumgartner, p. 118).

Our discussion then moved on to the non-formal and the more fluid informal educational

experiences. Although Mr. Downey’s non-formal educational experiences are rather limited, his

informal experiences are rather robust and ongoing. One of the most fertile and longest veins of

inquiry has been the personal study of foreign languages. Mr. Downey continued to study

German on his own past his undergraduate degree requirements and took on the study of Italian

out of personal volition which is another important element of the theory of andragogy. He has

also pursued nonfiction writing due to its connection “between creativity and learning. Between

doing and desire to understand.” Ultimately, Mr. Downey’s perspective ties directly into the adult

perspective regarding motivation as an intrinsic factor (Merriam & Baumgartner, p. 120).

Ultimately, all of this work ties back into the work Mr. Downey does in the classroom.

My final question to my interviewee allowed for a small variation from andragogy to slip

out of the original frame. I asked him what currently motivates him to pursue other avenues of

learning even though he is not in a formal learning program. It is at this point that Mr. Downey
engages with the spiritual perspective of education. Rather than chop up my interviewee’s

words, I will share them in full:

But nevertheless, that, in the end, is the fuller, farther dimension of “education” in
all of this for me: to draw out that indwelling, native, but silent understanding that
already beats in harmony with the heart of the creative powers that animate the
world. But not so much to transfer its silence into spoken words and phrases;
rather, to adapt my words and phrases to its greater silence—to let them be within
that silence instead of shouting over it. And in a more robust world, our education
systems would even have a place—even a small and modest one—for such a
notion.

His personal pursuit of ideas, therefore, is not simply something he does. Instead, it is who he is.

Taking into account all of these ideas about adult education, I do believe we need to take

adult learners’ needs and motivations into greater consideration when creating content and

considering how we conduct the classroom. To be effective educators, changes need to be made

to shift to a student/adult learner focus. I believe one of the main reasons this does not get fully

adopted by formal educational organizations for adult learners is due to the fact it implies a kind

of leniency or lack of traditional educational values. While there are some traditional educational

values it may be eschewing (and there are several that it should), it does not inherently mean that

it is easy or lacking in value because the inherent value of learners is recognized. Unfortunately,

it is a conversation I have had too often with fellow faculty members who have not made the

switch to see the classroom as a learner-centric space.

This is a particular issue I often wrestle with due to the different roles I have had on a

university campus – tutor, mentor, advisor, and professor. I worked with first-generation and

non-traditional students as they attempted to navigate this very artificial organism in hopes of

completing the requirements and graduating. It forever changed how I approach the classroom

and education due to this formative experience.

Merriam, S.B & Baumgartner, L.M. (2020). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. (4th
ed.) Jossey-Bass.
Appendix A – Interview Questions

1. How do you define education?

2. Do you have a different definition for adult education?

3. What formal educational experiences do you have? (traditional schooling or degrees)

4. What do you feel you gained, if anything, from your formal educational experiences? How

have these experiences informed your life?

5. What types of non-formal education have tried out? Some examples of non-formal education

can be community learning centers or life-long learning centers or other types of training outside

of more traditional K-12 or higher education

6. What types of information education do you enjoy? Some examples of informal education

include things you learn on your own or other forms of self-learning as well as learning on the

job.

7. At this point in your life, which mode of education (formal, non-formal, or informal) are you

most connected with at this point in your life? Is there a particular event or text that brought one

to the forefront?

8. As you are not in a formal learning program at this point in your life, what motivates you to

pursue other avenues of learning?