For Adults, Learning is More than Skill Development

 

Marie Cini and I wrote a piece for Medium this week about the "soul" of adult education. It's what drove both of us to the work we do with adult learners: more than providing job training (which is practical and necessary), I think we were both motivated by the possibility of helping people transform their lives and the way they relate to the world. Here is the piece. I'd love to know what you think.

Gig Workers to Consultants to Entrepreneurs

I work in higher education, focused on working adults and other nontraditional students. Most of my students have returned to school because they want to advance their careers: either move up in their organizations, or change careers, or start their own businesses. At least, that has been our traditional understanding of these “comebackers.” But in the San Francisco Bay Area, where my university is located, and increasingly around the country, more and more of our students are looking to follow a different career trajectory: to get off the gig economy treadmill.

Really, though, it’s more complicated than just getting a job. Even before the pandemic, businesses in the Bay Area were moving to a business model increasingly dependent on casual and temporary workers—contractors. Nationwide, estimates of how many workers are in the gig economy in the US range from 1% to 34% of workers, depending on how it’s measured, but the numbers generally converge around 25% of workers earning some money (primary or secondary) from gig work. 10% of Americans use the gig economy as their main source of income. According to CNBC and Bloomberg, more than half of the people working at large tech firms like Google are contractors. This means that for many gig workers (sometimes referred to as contingent labor), there are not as many full-time, permanent jobs available.

What we need to do for them, then, is to get them to think about themselves and their labor differently, and to act accordingly. What our students are looking for is more control over their work and better, more stable work conditions—even if they remain independent contractors. There is a fine line between a gig worker and a freelancer, after all. And a fine line between a freelancer and a consultant, and another between any of those and an entrepreneur. All are classified as independent contractors by the US government, unless you have incorporated yourself as a business.

I am not suggesting we just start labeling these jobs differently as a way to boost people’s self-esteem. But each of these terms—gig worker, freelancer, consultant, entrepreneur—suggests a different level of control and intentionality. And higher education can provide people with the skills and mindset to change their relationships to work and the economy as a whole. This is of much greater value for education than content-based learning, especially in a region where the economy is constantly changing—in fact, is based on the idea of constant change. 

So what would it take for a gig worker to become a consultant? For starters, a plan of action. Is the work you are doing helping you acquire skills and experience that you can leverage toward some higher goals? Do you have expertise in any area, or can you learn how to become competent in that area? Do you know how to articulate your goals and expertise to others? We can help people with all of that. We need to teach learners how to make a plan, how to follow it, and how to adjust course when necessary.

From there, if the goal is working for yourself, a consultant can become an entrepreneur. I don’t want to be reductionist or make it seem like it’s easy to make a living as an entrepreneur (I am decidedly not an entrepreneur, at least not in terms of promoting myself), but it’s a worthwhile pursuit if it means getting off the gig economy treadmill. And the skills an entrepreneur needs can be acquired. Catherine Cote of Harvard Business School Online (of course I looked there) lists six:

• Basic Finance Skills
• Networking
• Speaking confidently
• Accepting and Acting on Feedback
• Recognizing Patterns
• Maintaining a Growth Mindset

That last one, I think, is the key to all the others—if you have a growth mindset, you are open to being a lifelong learner. All of these can be taught.

Sujan Patel writing in Entrepreneur (of course I looked there too) identifies even more skills an entrepreneur should have—17 in all. The key ones he adds to the list above involve hiring, training, and managing staff; focusing on your customers; and a desire to improve your world. All of these are important, but this last one has particular relevance for me, working as I do with adult working learners. I do this work because of my desire to improve the world (in some small way), expanding access and opportunity to people who might not have seen a path forward otherwise, so it is easy to incorporate this into the curriculum and convey this to the students in my school.

This is not to say that subject-specific knowledge shouldn’t be taught. But if education is to be transformational, it has to focus on mindset, on resilience, and on adaptability. It has to help students see themselves and their relationship to the world differently. And it has to meet them in the world in which they actually live, not the static world of most textbook learning.

 

Andragogy in the Workplace

The institution where I work was founded on the principles of andragogy, articulated by Malcolm Knowles in his many writings on the subject of adult learners. According to Knowles, adults don’t learn like traditional (younger) students. Rather, adults must want to learn, and they are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their work and/or personal lives; they tend to learn by doing; and, most important, they respond better to internal motivations, rather than external ones. In other words, they are self-directed learners and they learn best when they are responsible for their own decisions on education, and are involved in the planning and evaluation of their goals and progress.

This is how we try to treat our own students, all of whom are adult or non-traditional. We have no professors: we instead have mentors, who facilitate the learning of students as they progress through their courses. These mentors don’t lecture—they moderate discussion boards, grade papers and assignments, and respond, rather than teach. Students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning—to know how they can use it, and how to figure out if they are on the right track. They are not blank slates—they bring their own experience and prior learning to any problem or topic. (We have Academic Advisors, but students are not required to consult with them at any time.)

This is a noble ideal, and one that has driven our approach for over 40 years. However, the model is not perfect. Even Knowles later acknowledged that, while adults are self-directed, no one is self-directed in every aspect of their learning, nor does everyone suddenly become self-directed and focused the day they celebrate their 21st (or 25th, or 35th) birthday. While andragogy was especially suited to those baby boomers who had some control over their own lives and careers in an ever-expanding economy, it might not work for current adult learners, who tend to be less academically prepared for higher education than previous generations, have different motivations for going back to school (more jobs require a college degree now than ever before, which means students are more likely to be driven by career goals than personal fulfillment), and whose options are restricted by the higher cost of higher ed and other pressures.

It is also possible that this model (or conceptual framework—Knowles eventually downgraded it from a theory) just doesn’t work. More and more students have expressed their unhappiness with being treated as entirely self-directed, though it is possible that the issue is with our interpretation of andragogy rather than with the principle itself. For example, if a student applies for admission and is accepted, but then doesn’t actually enroll, should you send her a note asking if she needs assistance? Or should you assume that, as a self-directed learner, that admitted student will contact you if and when she needs help? If a student wants to start out by enrolling in Advanced Calculus IV rather than enrolling in Introductory Algebra first, should you try to talk him out of it, or should you just allow the self-directed learner to do as he pleases? “Self-directed learner” starts to look a lot like “homo economicus” (rational Economic Man) after a while: an individual who will make rational decisions if provided with all of the options and left to make a choice on his or her own. As with Homo economicus, persuasion should be beside the point, and won’t make a difference anyway.

In addition to being an educator, though, I also manage a number of people in my unit at the University. At first (and still, when I can), I preferred to extend the idea of andragogy to the staff members in my office. “Sure, keep your own hours. You know what needs to be done,” and I assumed they would do it. Or “If a problem arises, you can consult with me if you think it would help you sort things out, but you’re an adult with experience in this job, capable of making your own decisions.” I expected people to rise to the opportunity, as any adult would, and to seek out their own opportunities for professional development. Because we are all lifelong learners. I’m proud of having thought of this—you have to walk the walk at an institution focused on adult learners, not just talk the talk.

But no, that doesn’t work. Some people can manage it, and even thrive under this approach—they come up with new ideas all the time, think creatively, and strive for more. But others don’t. They tell me, specifically, that they need structure, and they need specific instructions on what to do, how to do it, and when. And they come to my office or call me (though we all sit within 20 yards of each other) to tell me they have completed a task. “I filed those folders in the file cabinet.” Or “I sent you that email. It should be in your Inbox. Did you read it yet?” When encouraged to take advantage of a webinar or a workshop relevant to the work we do, they will tell me (in these exact words) that they are not interested in learning anything new—“I already know enough.”

How do you reconcile this way of thinking with the theory of andragogy? Perhaps it does fit, in that Knowles says that adults must want to learn before they can learn. And these adults don’t want to learn. But what do you do with that? How do you create a system that has room both for the ones who want to learn and those who don’t—the ones who want rigid structure and those who don’t? We talk about personalized learning systems—can you have a personalized office system?