Andragogy is a messy term
I found chapter three of Adult learning: Linking theory and practice by Sharan B. Merriam and Laura L. Bierema to be… an uneven read. I will focus on the final point made in this chapter where the authors address the critiques made toward andragogy.
I do not think it’s necessary to provide concrete definitions to terms and specific, manual-like implementations of tools and skills, particularly those of the intellectual sort, but I do feel that if you are going to write on the topic to present in in a textbook then you need to be fully in said concepts corner and be ready to respond to critiques beyond “yep, people did make some points.” It’s not that critiques shouldn’t be acknowledge or presented, but the way these criticisms are presented, they feel disqualifying of a topic the textbook just spent more than pages presenting.
In addition to this, I even found more things to be unsure about regarding andragogy as its use of assumptions instead of tenets or rules or whatever making andragogy an interesting series of ideas at best, but not something like a school of practice. The way the authors present andragogy seems reasonable but not all too realistic. While there are some important points that intersect with preparing teacher work, such as “make your class material problem-centered so that adults students work towards more immediate, practical application” (p. 56) these points hardly seem ground-breaking enough to put them under the term andragogy.
Ultimately, and a bit paradoxically, I feel the book does a great job capping off this chapter in the last sentence where it states “An even more pointed critique of andragogy’s context-free orientation is from Sandlin (2005), who states that an educational context is never value-free or apolitical, that all learners do not look and learn the same, that race, class, gender, and culture1 all influence learning” (p. 60) I understand that for many it might be frustrating that you can’t just pick up a manual, read it, and be ready to teach, but teaching and learning are human endeavors in all their weird, wild, wonderful, and wicked glory. The textbook doesn’t do a great job of settling the tumultuous nature of discomfort enough to make it make sense and make it worth the readers’ time.
There are two or three more points I could focus on from this chapter, such as the problematic nature of the term andragogy or a reflection on why I feel “solution-focused” is a better term than “problem-focused,” but this is how I engage on a deeper level with the text, not something I am required to do, so I’m not quite sure those are worth fully worth my time pursuing. Maybe if I get a bit of a manic episode, I’ll pound one of those out.
1 - I, Rodrigo, would add more!
