Androgyny is premised on at least four crucial assumptions aboutthe characteristics of adult learners that are different from theassumptions about child learners on which traditional pedagogy ispremised. A fifth was added later.
1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves fromone of being a dependent personality toward one of being aself-directed human being
2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growingreservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource forlearning.
3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness tolearn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks ofhis social roles.
4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his timeperspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledgeto immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation towardlearning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problemcentredness.
5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation tolearn is internal (Knowles 1984:12).
Prepare a 2 – 3 page paper that reflects on your personalattainment of each of these 5 assumptions. Are you there yet? Maybeyou don’t necessarily agree with one or more of the assumptions-whyor why not? And finally, can you see how you might learndifferently now than when you were in high school, for example?
