Introduction
1.1 Background to the Study
Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. This often happens in the workplace, through ‘extension’ or ‘continuing education’ courses at secondary schools, at a college or university. Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers. The practice is also often referred to as ‘Training and Development’. It has also been referred to as andragogy (to distinguish it from pedagogy). A difference is made between vocational education, mostly undertaken in workplaces and frequently related to up-skilling, and non-formal adult education including learning skills or learning for personal development.
Adult learn in diverse ways and one of them is by bringing together experience with what they can see. When it comes to learning, It is believed that children learn faster that adult. Children find it easier to grap and learn because there is nothing that takes away their attention or focus from it such as thoughts, worries, etc. Learning in adulthood is completely different from learning in childhood. In other to understand adult undergraduates, we must completely, not partially, look into and understand how adults learn. In this field of study, educators who specialize in adult education are more experienced and informed.
This study of adult learning theory will make available the foundation to thoroughly examine, evaluate roles institutional policies, services and the classroom environment have in persistence. Oftentimes institutions craft out curricula and services that are in accordance with adult learning that may have an effect on whether an adult undergraduate insists on graduation. ‘’Understanding learning in adulthood is like piecing together a puzzle; there are numerous area that must be put together before the total picture surfaces” ( Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). The individual learner, the context in which the learning takes place and the learning procedures are all parts of this puzzle. Adult learning is like glue that holds together the field of study, adult education that is numerous in content, clientele, and delivery system. In recent times, a lot of studies have been done on adult learning and a good number of the adult learning cantered on intelligence declined with age.
Studies concerning adult intelligence in the early part of the century were a product of both stained methodology and stained conclusion about the loss of intelligence later in life. Such studies were done in an artificial setting and timed educational tests were used to compare young learners with older learners. We know now that intelligence is not minimized during the aging process. Apparently, a large proportion in the kennel research of the 1990s shows that the more the brain is used, the less likely cognitive function will be lost.
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