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Boshier, Morstain and Smart: Houle wasn't good enough for these guys--they
had to go out and come up with an even longer list of why adults participate in
learning (there's a lot of "list comparison" that goes on in educational research, isn't
there?). They came up with six factors for participation:
Note: Think critically about this! Cross notes that Houle is classifying groups of
people and Boshier, Morstain and Smart are identifying clusters of reasons. Houle's
looking at characteristic orientations that motivate learners and Boshier, Morstain
and Smart show multiple reasons existing within the same individual. The above
from: Merriam, S. & Caffarella, R. (1991). Learning in Adulthood. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 83-86.
Brookfield: Careful with this one, this is actually my interpretation of what
Brookfield is saying. The typical adult learner is, "relatively affluent, well-educated,
white, middle-class individual" (p. 5). I take this to mean that people participate in