In adult education, experience is adopted to an important educational method. But the concept of experience and the purpose of adult education are generally overlooked. The importance of experience is mainly studied in the view of methodology. So, the...
In adult education, experience is adopted to an important educational method. But the concept of experience and the purpose of adult education are generally overlooked. The importance of experience is mainly studied in the view of methodology. So, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the background of experience-based adult education and to clarify the difference of ends and contents of adult education according to the philosophical backgrounds.
The experience-based adult education is a plural concept, and the concept of experience and adult education of J. Dewey, B. F. Skinner, and P. Freire are the major philosophical thoughts of experience-based adult education. Dewey, Skinner, and Freire think that changes are the root of the world and interested in the human ability to be adapted to the changes creatively, so that they set the epistemological meaning of experience above everything else. Their concepts of experience are, however, very different in the detailed expositions, and the their philosophical suppositions of adult education based on experience do not correspond.
J. Dewey thinks experience is not an accommodation but an adaptation to changes, and also experience as knowledge becomes more important in rapidly changing world. Therefore, he supposes that adult education promotes the whole-person growth, the autonomous and creative adaptation, and the inquiry of the world as knowledge creator continuously, and the essential elements of adult education are the willingness to knowing, learning how to learn, the production of creative knowledge, and the problem solving. And he emphasizes all this processes should be democratic processes of human and society.
B. F. Skinner conceives that environment must be constructed scientifically by a far-reaching designing of culture that human would be able to shape his or her behavior effectively. Also he thinks that it is the most desirable experiential education that human shapes his behavior by the contingency or rules in the interaction of effective environment. In consequence, the key of Skinner's concept of experience and adult education is the effective behavior shaping of learner with the environment of education that can make human and cultures survive.
P. Freire thinks experience has a same meaning of daily life. He emphasizes the limits of human experience and also the experience as the basis of education that overcome the limits. Freire supposes all education should start the experience of learner, and in a moment that the learner perceives that she or he can learn, all education are possible. He also argues that in the experience-based adult education, a nation and teachers must guarantee the education of the people that have low-income and low-ability, because their guarantees of education expand the freedom of individual and solve the problem of Neo-liberalism.
To conclude, in the experience-based adult education, Dewey intends to a democratic citizen who grow to a whole-person, Skinner a effective human organism who is fully developed the excellence of individual, and Freire the conscious people who practice the critical praxis. Therefore, in the experience-based adult education that is compounded of various philosophical backgrounds, each experience-based theory and program aims at the different human and society according to the main philosophical basis.