Adult education in the u
Adult education in the u.s.1). INTRODUCTION
In adult education, The concept of central learning theory is self-directed learning. He (1985) said that because the concept is so central to what adult education is all about, self-directed learning has been one of the field's high-interest topics for more than a decade (Mezirow, 1988).
Many people like researchers theorists and so on have all asked the pistons: what is self-directed learning? What kinds of people are engaged in it? How can we properly provide it to educator and learner. How can we improve learners' ability as using it?
We know that we must define the mission of education as to produce competent people who are capable of applying their knowledge under changing social and survival conditions. Adult education must be primarily concerned with providing the resources and support for self-directed inquirers.
One role of the adult education can be stated positively as helping individuals to develop the attitude that learning is lifelong process and to acquire the skills of self-directed learning. Another ultimate need of individuals is to achieve complete self-identity. A third ultimate need of individuals is to mature.
In this paper, the researcher is approaching methods to help adult learners to develop themselves with strong confidence. So it is very important to develop skills increasing adult learners through self-directness and self-efficacy.
Since Brandura��s (1997) original paper, self-efficacy theory has been applied in education settings to various grade levels (e.g., Elementary, Secondary, Post-secondary), content domains, and student ability levels.
The author will not apply self-efficacy to adult education field but to treat the relation between self-directedness and self-efficacy to improve adults�� attitude for participating education as a re-learner. The paper may treat of basic knowledge about self-efficacy and reciprocal relation between both two.
2). SELF - DIRECTEDNESS
1. SELF - DIRECTED LEARNING
A. What is Self – Directed Learning
An estimated 70 percent of adult learning is self-directed learning (Cross 1981). Self-directed learning has been described as "a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others," to diagnose their learning needs, formulate learning goals, identify resources for learning, select and implement learning strategies, and evaluate learning outcomes (Knowles 1975).
Whether or not learning is self-directed depends not on the subject matter to be learned or on the instructional methods used. Instead, self-directedness depends on who is in charge-which decides what should be learned, who should learn it, what methods and resources should be used, and how the success of the effort should be measured. To the extent the learner makes those decisions, the learning is generally considered to be self-directed.
Perhaps only degrees of self-directedness are actually possible, given the frequent necessity of maintaining institutional standards and, as Mezirow (1985) points out, the impossibility of freely choosing among objectives unless all possible objectives are known. Some writers have pointed out that Mocker and Spear's model could...
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