Progressive Education and the Adult Learner: The Lindenwood Model

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

The Journal of Continuing Higher Education

Abstract

Colleges are coming to recognize that they must serve the adult population. The challenge of educating the adult is more than economic; it is a challenge to establish pedagogical methods and even to epistemological assumptions which underlie the conventional approach to college education.

Some colleges have taken up the challenge of educating the adult as an occasion to review and revise teaching methods. Others view the adult learner with apprehension, or even disdain, and assume the adult is similar or worse off than the adolescent (perhaps more inflexible or ignorant) who needs direction, shaping, and definition offered through the authority of a teacher.

The 4th college of The Lindenwood Colleges in St. Charles, Missouri, was founded to respond specifically to the needs and desires of the adult “learner.” A learner at Lindenwood 4 is conceived as an active agent in the learning process, one who is intrinsically motivated and committed to specific learning goals before entering the college setting. A “student” (a term not generally employed at Lindenwood 4) is a more passive recipient of others' knowledge and directives.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/07377363.1981.10846665

Publication Date

1981

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