Perspective of Adult Education by Kassidy Chase

 

Kassidy Chase

Perspective of Adult Education

Interview Analysis

Dr. Bo Chang- EDAC 631

 

                                     Introduction

The adult educator that I interviewed is Karla Chase. She is an instructor at a human resources workshop. She works at the Richmond Georgia education center. Her daily routine includes teaching two workshops per day Monday through Friday. She focuses on team building activities as well as racial sensitivity training. She prepares videos and worksheets relating to the content. She also used group discussions to get the students involved.

 

                      Perspectives of Adult Education  

 

  Tell me your working experience in the field of adult education?

Karla: “My work experience includes developing and implementing education plans with adults and adults with disabilities. I have about 10 years of experience in this field. I got into the field of education in general by first working in an elementary school and I eventually made my way to educating adults.

What are the different types of adult education provided in the organizations or in the    community? Who provided them? For what purposes? Can you give me some examples?

Karla: “I find that when adult education partners with our local churches here, we get a large turnout. It helps get people more involved. Oh! And literacy programs. You would be surprised at how many adults benefit from our literary programs as well.”

Based on your experience, please tell me your perspectives of adult education: What is adult education? What are the challenges in adult education? What is the future direction of adult education? Please share some examples with me.

Karla: “I would define adult education as assessing how people learn and allow them to teach you how they want to learn. There is not just one way to teach people. “

Karla: “My experience has been positive in educating adults because I am able to use different supports for my adult students to learn outside of a classroom. I am also able to handle different personalities really well which is important. Some of the challenges are working with some of my other staff members who do not have experience in adult education. Their training may be in something different and it causes a disconnect between them and myself and them and the adult students. I struggle at times to advocate for the fact that our students are still adults and not children. For the future, I think most people will begin to utilize online programs more than anything. I believe there will be less in person workshops and everything will be an online program. I do not see the future of adult education continuing to be in person, no matter the field.”

 

                         Conclusions and Discussions

Please describe what you have learned from these interviews

From this interview, I have learned how important respect is. Respect for the adult students that you educate is most important. Building a general respect for one another helps build trust and makes the students more likely to listen and be educated. I also learned how diverse people’s learning styles are and how just teaching one way means that a lot of the students miss out. So diversifying your lesson plans and activities is important to reach everyone.

Please tell us whether you agree with the ideas you learned from the interview(s) or not, and why? Please cite the literature to support your ideas.

I agree with her assessment of the future of adult education. She stated that in the future of education “ there will be less in person workshops and everything will be an online program. I agree with that statement because of the way education is headed after the pandemic, I think most programs will be online. After the pandemic, I think most people found it convenient, and affordable to do most things from the comfort of their home. I think people will find online programs that do not require people to show up in person. I do however think this will compromise the efficacy of some of the programs. For example, I believe that team building would be best accomplished in person and people are more likely to learn things if the information is presented in person. I think people focus better when their environment is geared towards education.

                                     Implications

Please use examples from your work to tell us how these ideas you have learned from the interview(s) relate to your work or benefit your work, and how these ideas can benefit the practical work.

What I learned from the interviews most was the importance for adult education. Prior to this interview, I was not sure how much of a need there was for this type of education. But the type of training and workshops I learned about from this interview are actually very important. Prior to the interview, I put my own bias in my mind to where I figured most of the information was common knowledge. However I learned about how many people specifically struggle with things within their career. Specifically things like how to answer interview questions, what to wear to an interview and how to negotiate a salary offer. I am privileged to know and be around people that I can ask, however that is not the case for many people. This helps me in my practical work because my nonprofit should focus on people that need this kind of help and are underrepresented.