The members of the cohort identified learning situations which violated the principles of adult learning as a reason for leaving a course before its completion. Knowles (1972, 1977) presented principles for adult learning, extended by Knowles, Holton and Swanson (1998). As reported in Chapter Two these principles are anchored on the assumptions that adult learners need a purpose and are self-directed. They are experiential learners who learn for immediate use. They are life, task or problem centred and are internally motivated (Knowles, Holton and Swanson, 1998).
Students will cease to participate in a course if they feel they are not being treated in a respectful courteous manner and with appropriate explanations of purpose for the activities taking place. That is, they need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking to learn it (Knowles, Holton and Swanson, 1998). Diane was disappointed and still angry because of an experience that had occurred several years previously:
The subject …was the most disgusting display particularly by someone who is professorial too. For him to be trying to teach us Curriculum then showing us military training videos while he drank tea and ate biscuits I thought was a waste of my time. And it wasn’t just me, everyone just sat there and said ‘why are we here?’ and the class numbers went from twenty to three within one weekend. I think that’s all that needs to be said.
Ann was insistent that there should have been more encouragement from a program manager during one interview in which she was reprimanded for having a poor
attitude to her studies. She strongly believed it violated the principle of ‘adults having a self concept of being responsible for their own decisions, for their own lives…they
have a deep psychological need to be treated as being capable of self-direction and will resist situations in which they believe other wills are being are imposed on them’ (Knowles, Holton and Swanson, 1998:65-68):
I also believe she does not encourage students; she presents issues in a threatening manner. For example: ‘this is what’s going to happen and if you don’t like it get out’.
The same assumption applied to Chloe’s reasons for withdrawing from a PhD program:
The supervisors were looking at trying to put it into the area, of grounded into, labour market issues, which was just awful. I’m not going to go off in a different area. I thought all that reading, all that work I’ve done, I’m not going to waste that.
In a program in which Ann had been enrolled the class felt that one of their lecturers violated the third assumption of adult learning that the emphasis should be on experiential techniques that tap into the past experiences of the learners.
Unfortunately for Ann this class was the initiating factor which eventually resulted in her leaving that program:
He made not only myself, but I know he made the class feel demoralised, that they didn’t have an opinion, that their opinion wasn’t worth listening to. He wasn’t open to discussion and I came out of that subject thinking ‘I can’t study this, I can’t do any more of this if this is what it is going to be like’. And the biggest impact that that had on me was not so much his lecturing but the fact that despite X amount of students all complaining, I think the most disappointing thing about that was that it fell on deaf ears and I think that when you have students at our level, which is the highest level at a university, where our views and opinions were not taken on board, that was really disappointing, very disappointing. Especially as it was so unanimous. It was appalling, absolutely appalling (Ann’s emphasis). And that again, as a manager, made me think that as a manager I never want to be like that. I’ll always listen and, you know, to what people say.
Diane also spoke on the same theme of the desirability for two-way interaction in an adult education classroom:
The professional doctorate really has much more to offer to the world of academe itself because of the sort of people that are in that class. The depth of knowledge, I think that a lot of the lecturers learnt more from the people in the classroom in some instances than that the class themselves learnt. I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about people such as yourself, Bob, Helen and Ellen who have been around for a long time. The question should be asked, ‘What did the lecturers learn from the group?’
In one course Ellen had undertaken, a lecturer conducted his classes in the style of ‘sit down, shut up, listen to what I say, do not ask questions and do not make comments’. Ellen reflected upon the benefits of a cohesive group of colleagues during this
unhappy period of time as several of her classmates threatened to withdraw. They believed the principle that emphasises that ‘emphasis in adult learning should be on experiential techniques that tap into the past experiences of the learners’ and ‘adults have a self concept of being responsible for their own decisions, for their own lives…they have a deep psychological need to be treated as being capable of self- direction and will resist situations in which they believe other wills are being are imposed on them’ (Knowles, Holton and Swanson, 1998:66) was violated.
I thought it was lovely really the way people got together and supported one another when so many went through a particularly horrible time…just the phone calls and laughing and joking and the bonding that went on; because I know there were at least four people were going to drop out if this was the calibre of the lecturers and this is how we are going to be treated.
Three decades after the event, Len was still angry with the poor teaching technique of a female architecture lecturer at a major city university. He felt the principle of adults being ‘ready to learn those things they need to know and to be able to do in order to cope effectively with their daily lives’ (Knowles, Holton and Swanson, 1998:66) was violated. Len explained his dissatisfaction led to his withdrawal from the course when the lecturer persistently did not meet his needs as an adult learner:
But the woman who was teaching the course at the time, she spent more time telling you about home than, you know, I just lost interest,
Chloe was more positive about the lecturers who applied the assumption that adult students are ready to learn those things they need to know and to be able to do in order to cope effectively with their daily lives in the program she was undertaking at the time of the interview:
Most of the lecturers were fairly flexible and tried to make the assessment relevant to our personal interest or focus.