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Miranda Young

William Reader

ENG 111. M18

22 January 2019

Conflicting Theories of Adult Education

All of us have attended school at one point in our lives. It was usually referred to as the

one place you did not want to go as a child, so you would often fake a cold to get out of going.

But, we eventually put those childish ways of thinking behind us and realize that getting an

education is important for our future. After we come to realize the importance of education many

of us, as adults, continue on with our journey of learning by going to college. Being a student as

an adult is more difficult than it is as a child. Adults tend to become stuck in certain ways of

thinking because it is what you have adapted to using for so many years, and it is difficult to

break these previously embedded habits, especially in the education system.

Two authors who have lent their voices to the matter of learning in adulthood are Jack

Mezirow, a sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Adult Education, who wrote “Transformative

Learning: Theory to Practice”, and Mike Rose, an educational psychologist who wrote “The

Politics of Remediation”. Both Mezirow and Rose have the common idea that adult education is

meant for growth and flourishment for the student in their articles. They both want to see adult

students become the best they can be through education, but they have differing views on how

the instructor or advisor should help the student to become successful in the education system.

Both authors have the same goal for all adult students, to succeed and grow; however, they see

this goal differently in terms of learning to become self-reliant, the amount of help the teacher

should provide, and ability to change their ways of thinking.

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The goal of adult students is to succeed, and in order to do that they must adapt to

changes that enable them to enhance their learning capabilities. Many students struggle with the

aspect of being self-reliant and depend on a teachers guidance. As a result of these struggles,

students tend to look up words or phrases, to include in their writing assignments, that seem

more sophisticated than what they would normally say instead of using their own thoughts. Rose

provides a great example of this in his article; he tutored a woman named Marita who was

accused of plagiarism because she used words and phrases from outside sources and cited them

incorrectly instead of expressing her own thoughts in her paper. “She had incorporated stretches

of old encyclopedia prose into her paper and had quoted only some of it. I couldn’t know if she

had lifted directly or paraphrased the rest, but it was formal and dated and sprinkled with high-

cultural references, just not what you’d find in freshman writing. I imagined that it had pleased

her previous teachers that she cared enough about her work to go find sources, to rely on

experts” (Rose 108). Marita had never been taught how to properly write an academic paper and

assumed the way she always writes all her papers, not using her own thoughts but instead those

of outside sources, would be good enough for this one.

In Marita’s situation Rose would dig deeper into understanding her background and why

she writes that way in order to help her correct it. Marita grew up in a bad neighborhood and

went to a tough school, and ever since she was young she was taught to keep her personal

thoughts and opinions to herself, which explains why she tends to use other sources in her

writing instead of her own voice. All of these factors contributed to the reason why she struggles

with academic writing. With this information, Rose would sit down and work out a strategy with

Marita that would enable her to incorporate her own voice in her writing, and eventually correct

the problem. Rose strongly believes in assisting students with their challenges in education to
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help them succeed; his main focus in helping with success in education and has little

involvement with anything beyond that. On the other hand, Mezirow would say that Marita is

incapable of autonomous thinking and that is what prohibits her from properly writing academic

papers. Mezirow believes that, “Thinking as an autonomous and responsible agent is essential for

full citizenship in democracy and for moral decision making in situations of rapid change”

(Mezirow 89). Autonomous thinking is the ability to have your own thoughts and conclude

information without influence from other sources of information. Mezirow would say that the

solution to Marita’s problem is for her to develop her own way of thinking on her own so she is

able to form her own perspective on different subjects and include them in her writing. This new

way of thinking will help her find her voice in academic writing and grow as an active member

of society. Mezirow feels that students should look inside their minds, with little to no help from

teachers, to find the problem for themselves and solve it; this will enable them to not only grow

as a student, but also as a person and member of society. He believes that education stretches far

beyond the classroom and will affect all areas of one's life, including your job, politics, being

involved in the community, etc. To conclude Mezirow’s point of view, changing your way of

thinking not only benefits you with your education, but also every other aspect of life.

Another common problem many adult students face is not being able to change their

ways of thinking. For example, many are unable to critically analyze their own work in order to

be able to improve it because they are stuck in the same mindset with every assignment and try

to perform the same operation for each task. Some of the biggest causes of this problem are

students using only the writing skills they already have, writing in the same manner with every

assignment because it all they know how to do, and not wanting to admit to failure when they

have done an assignment incorrectly. Rose provides another great example from his article, a
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man named James received a C- on a writing assignment that required him to critically analyze a

passage but he instead summarized it. James refused to admit that he deserved that grade and

claimed that he works hard and does all of his assignments.

Once again Rose looks further into the problem, he finds that James did not know how to

critically analyze a piece of writing and wrote his assignment based on the knowledge and skills

he already had: summarization. Rose had this to say about the situation, “Sometimes it is very

hard to get them to see that summary is not adequate, for it had been adequate so many times

before. What you have to do, then, is model step by step the kind of critical approach the paper

requires” (Rose 105). Since James is struggling with his writing assignment and using only the

skills nested years ago, Rose plans to demonstrate, for James, how to properly critically analyze

a piece of writing so he is able to do it for himself. This demonstration will open his mind to new

ways of thinking and enable him to adapt to new methods of learning as well. Now, looking at

James’ situation in another perspective, Mezirow would say that James’ problem is that he

struggles with self-reflection, which is important for flourishment in education and other aspects

of life. “Self-reflection can lead to significant personal transformations” (Mezirow 88), “We can

become critically reflective of the assumptions we or others make when we learn to solve

problems instrumental or when we are involved in communicative learning” (Mezirow 88). Or in

other words, Mezirow says being able to self-reflect on your way of thinking will allow you to

consider other perspectives and methods for problem solving, it will overall evolve your mind in

terms of thinking in the education system and out of it. In James’ case, looking into his mind and

really trying to understand how he thinks and how to adapt to new ways of thinking will be the

solution to his problem. It will allow him to properly write any writing assignment and quickly
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adapt to change when he makes errors, and it will also give him the ability to think differently

with everyday situations outside of the classroom.

In conclusion, we all have attended school at some point. We may not have liked it at

first, but after realizing its importance to our future, many of us continue on to college as adults.

As an adult student it becomes more difficult to adapt to the changes in learning because we are

so used to using a specific way of thinking that we have found best fits us personally. Two

authors who have lent their voices to the matter of learning in adulthood are, Jack Mezirow, a

sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Adult Education, who wrote “Transformative Learning:

Theory to Practice”, and Mike Rose, an educational psychologist who wrote “The Politics of

Remediation”. Both authors want to see students succeed, but have different views on certain

subjects. Such as, self-reliance, the amount of help the teacher should provide, and the ability for

students to change their ways of thinking.

Works Cited

Mezirow, Jack. “Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice.” Exploring Connections:

Learning in the 21st Century, Pearson, 2016, pp. 86-93.

Rose, Mike. “The Politics of Remediation.” Exploring Connections: Learning in the 21st

Century, Pearson, 2016, pp. 99-124.

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