What is andragogy, and how might the approach help in teaching FYC?
Andragogy- the education of adult learners.
According to our class, adult learners need to know the reason for what their learning, experience including their errors form the basic foundation for their education, adults feel the need to be responsible for decisions made in their learning (this is a BIG one!), and adults are more interested in learning topics that directly relate to their life/work experience.
In regards to teaching FYC, I think the classroom as well as the teaching methods and pedagogy, is a bit of a mix of both adult learners and non-adults learners (I'm not talking legal definitions of adult, I mean in terms of maturity and experience). Obviously the students are all likely legal adults, but not all students would fall under the andragogy pedagogical category.
In the FYC classroom, we should incorporate several pedagogical strategies for our students. I think a scaffolding system is necessary here. For instance, you can start the beginning of the year with a more teacher and content center classroom, and then throughout the semester, shift toward an andragogy student centered classroom. I think as students mature and grow over the course of the semester, the students will begin to have more experience in life and in the classroom, and will likely become more wanting of making more of their decisions and be more involved with their learning than at the beginning of the semester.
The way I see incorprating andragogy in the FYC is like teaching a kid to ride a bike. At first you hold on to the bike for the entire time the kid is on the bike, holding them steady, making sure they're understanding the basic concepts of riding a bike, and then after a few weeks of practice, you begin to slowly take one hand off the bike, then moving to just holding on to the seat, then briefly letting go for just a few seconds before you run up behind the kid and grab onto the bike before the kid falls. Then one day, the kid says, let go, I got this! and you do, and then the kid takes their knowledge, their ability, their skills to ride the bike on their own without falling off.
This is how I see andragogy being used in the FYC classroom.
I had the same idea as you that andagogy is best used for FYC, but I hadn't really thought that much of the transitional period. You are right, there needs to be some sort of start where the students are easing into the process of andagogy at hand. There needs to be this sort of transition period at the start, helping the composition student at least figure out where he or she is going. I'm surprised I glossed over such essential pedagogical first steps in my blog post.
ReplyDeleteNice ideas here about how principles of teaching adult thinkers can fit in well with motivating students in first-year composition. You do have to scaffold students (as you say, teaching them to ride a bike), and then let them apply their learning outside of the class. So, what we're teaching is critical thinking and direct use of ideas in the composition classroom to solve problems outside the classroom. In addition to the content of writing correctly, we're teaching students to solve problems in the real world.
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