When a trainer at a company workshop opens a textbook and reads it aloud from start to finish, many people quickly get bored. Yet the same people light up and fire off questions when they are learning an Excel feature they need for a meeting tomorrow. Why do adults learn so much better when the material connects to their own work? A leading educational theory that tries to answer this question is “Andragogy.”
Simply put, andragogy means “the art and science of helping adults learn.” The word combines the Greek “andros,” meaning adult man, and “agogos,” meaning to lead, and it is paired with “pedagogy,” which means leading children. The German educator Alexander Kapp first used it in 1833, and the American educator Malcolm Knowles developed it into a theory of adult education and made it widely known from the late 1960s onward.
In this article, we will look in turn at the background from which andragogy emerged, the six assumptions Knowles proposed, examples from everyday life and the workplace, and the criticisms surrounding the theory.
How Do Adults Learn?
From Pedagogy to Andragogy
For a long time, schooling was based on pedagogy, the approach to teaching children. In this approach, the teacher decides what, when, and how students learn, and learners follow that plan.
(1) The Growth of Adult Education
After World War II, the number of adults in vocational training and lifelong education rose sharply. It soon became clear that teaching methods designed for children did not work well when carried over to adults unchanged.
(2) Knowles Meets the Term
In 1966 in Boston, Knowles met the Yugoslav adult educator Dušan Savićević and learned the word andragogy, which was in use in Europe. He borrowed the term to organize his own ideas about how adults learn, and in 1970 he published “The Modern Practice of Adult Education: Andragogy versus Pedagogy.”
(3) A Changing Role for the Teacher
In andragogy, the teacher is less a person who hands down knowledge and more a facilitator who supports learning. That is because adults are seen as people capable of directing their own learning.
Knowles’s Six Assumptions
Knowles first summarized his ideas about how adults learn as four assumptions, and later expanded them to six.
- Need to Know: Before learning something, adults want to know why they need to learn it.
- Experience: The experience adults have built up, including their mistakes, becomes an important resource for learning.
- Self-Concept: Adults want to make their own decisions about their learning and to take part in planning and evaluating it.
- Readiness to Learn: Adults show the most interest when learning things they can apply right away to their work or daily life.
- Orientation to Learning: Adult learning is centered not on subjects but on solving the problems in front of them.
- Motivation: Adults respond better to internal motivators such as confidence and satisfaction than to external rewards such as grades or praise.
These six assumptions serve as a kind of checklist for what to consider first when teaching adults.
Andragogy in Everyday Life and at Work
The principles of andragogy are easy to spot in learning situations we have already experienced.
Onboarding New Employees
Good onboarding, rather than reading out company rules at length, first presents real work situations new hires will face and has them work through those situations. Because the reason for learning is clear and the knowledge can be used right away, it also stays in memory longer.
Learning to Use a Smartphone After Retirement
An older person who wants to video call their grandchildren picks things up much faster when they start by learning how to reach that goal. A class that makes them memorize a list of features from the beginning quickly drains their interest.
Discussion Classes That Share Experience
In continuing education for nurses, sharing the emergencies each person has faced and working out responses together is a good example of using adults’ experience as material for learning.
Criticisms of Andragogy
Andragogy contributed greatly to establishing adult education as a field of its own, but it has also drawn a range of criticisms.
(1) It Is Unclear Whether It Is a Theory or a Set of Principles
There is still no consensus on whether andragogy is a proven theory of learning or a collection of principles for good teaching. Knowles himself described it as a framework of assumptions that forms the basis of an emerging theory.
(2) It Cannot Be Divided Neatly by Age
Knowles later revised his view and came to see pedagogy and andragogy as a single continuum running from teacher-directed learning to learner-directed learning. This means andragogy can suit children, and pedagogy can suit adults, depending on the situation.
(3) Not Every Adult Wants to Learn on Their Own
In an unfamiliar field, adults too may want detailed guidance and a structured sequence. If teachers assume that adults will figure things out on their own, learners may actually miss out.
Andragogy is not simply a demand not to teach adults like children; it is a proposal to respect learners’ experience, needs, and desire to make their own decisions. That is why it is still consulted today when designing job training, lifelong education, and online courses.
Before teaching anything, first asking why the learner wants to know it—that is the first step in an educational approach that helps adults learn.
