Seven Factors In Adult Learning Environments

According to the study conducted by Dorothy D. Billington from her “Ego Development and Adult Education”, here are the Seven Factors in Adult Learning environments which best facilitate adult growth and development :

1. An environment where students feel safe and supported, where individual needs and uniqueness are honored, where abilities and life achievements are acknowledged and respected.

2. An environment that fosters intellectual freedom and encourages experimentation and creativity.

3. An environment where faculty treats adult students as peers–accepted and respected as intelligent experienced adults whose opinions are listened to, honored, appreciated. Such faculty members often comment that they

learn as much from their students as the students learn from them.
 

4. Self-directed learning, where students take responsibility for their own learning. They work with faculty to design individual learning programs which address what each person needs and wants to learn in order to function optimally in their profession.
 

5. Pacing, or intellectual challenge. Optimal pacing is challenging people just beyond their present level of ability. If challenged too far beyond, people give up. If challenged too little, they

become bored and learn little. Pacing can be compared to playing tennis with a slightly better player; your game tends to improve. But if the other player is far better and it’s impossible to return a ball, you give up, overwhelmed. If the other player is less experienced and can return none of your balls, you learn little. Those adults who reported experiencing high levels of intellectual stimulation–to the point of feeling discomfort–grew more.

6. Active involvement in learning, as opposed to passively listening to lectures. Where students and instructors interact and dialogue, where students try out new ideas in the workplace, where exercises and experiences are used to bolster facts and theory, adults grow more.

 

7. Regular feedback mechanisms for students to tell faculty what works best for them and what they want and need to learn–and faculty who hear and make changes based on student input.