Analogically, adult educational philosophy is for a teacher as cane is for the blind. This essay explains what my ‘cane’ was in the field of technical education and how it was influenced by my life experiences. This essay also describes the development of my old ‘cane’ into a new one by considering the thoughts forwarded by some educational theorists.

According to my birthplace’s history, American liberated the Philippines from Spanish colonization in 1898. From then on, the strategic position of the Philippines in Asia was used by American industrialists as bases for the manufacturing of their goods like food, communication, rubber, chemicals and petroleum, just to name a few (Roberts, 2003). I strongly believe that, among others, the presence of the American manufacturing industries had influenced the curriculum design in the field of technical education in the Philippines. The way I was taught while acquiring the Diploma of Industrial Instrumentation Technician followed a simple order. The order was lecture, practical laboratory activities, briefing and then the assessment. Learning in this way affected my teaching style, as the saying goes “teach as you have been taught”.

The educational scheme of the technical institute where I worked as an Instrumentation Instructor was based on the Instructional Systems Development (ISD) model. The ISD model has five phases as shown in figure below.

The phases are analysis, design, development and implementation. The fifth phase is evaluation, which provides feedback to the other phases (Training, Simulation and Performance Improvement Division, 2001).

Among the phases mentioned above, my involvement was heavily focused on the development and implementation. For me, translating the training objectives (from the design phase) into classroom instructions and logistics (development) would mean creating an environment which is a replica of the industry where my learners will be working in or currently working in. This environment together with my supervision as a training facilitator should be able to achieve the desired outcomes of the training. Consequently, part of the training implementation is to assess the learners’ competency on the subject matter by merely observing the change their behavior.  Moreover, all the short training courses that I attended while working as teacher or being employed as a technician were very much centered on improving one’s behavior through experience – based training scheme. Therefore, the ‘cane’ that defines my concept of teaching and learning process or I shall say my adult educational philosophy can be described by these two statements:

1. An effective technical or experience-based training program shall originate from the ISD model described above and,

2. To achieve the objectives of an experience-based curriculum is to provide the learners with the environment that will bring about improvement in their performance as a professional.

Clearly, the first statement fits the mechanistic tradition described by Newman (1993).  He stated that the steps in designing a curriculum under mechanistic tradition are conducting needs assessments or job and task analysis, setting objectives or terminal behavior, designing and conducting the training programs and finally, evaluation of the training according to the competencies showed by the trainees. Indeed, this argument approximates the ISD model cited above. Similarly, the second statement depicts one of the assumptions under behaviorist orientation enumerated by Grippin and Peters (cited in Merrian and Caffarella 1991, p.127) – “the focus of the study is the observable behavior of the learner rather than the learner’s internal thoughts”. My claim of being a behaviorist-oriented trainer and traditionally a mechanistic educator were confirmed and enhanced when I did the Zinn inventory called ‘Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory’. The result was the following: behaviorist (B) scored 35, followed by progressive (P), 33, 30 for both humanistic (H) and radical (R), and then 29 for liberal (L). Close scores between B and P did not surprise me, as Lindeman (1961 cited in Zinn, 1990:49) had said “each of us must be allowed to possess two or three philosophies at the same time, for the purpose… of saving our thoughts from deadly formality of consistency”. I agree that educators should be flexible enough to freely choose any principles from different perspectives. Those choices shall bring about the attainment of the most, if not all, of the defined educational objectives. 

Certainly, the ideas forwarded by Newman, Merrian, Caffarella and Lindeman, as well as the Zinn Inventory helped me identify my beliefs with respect to adult education in a more comprehensive way (see Appendix). This developed philosophy shall serve as my ‘cane’ for learning and teaching now and in the near future.

Appendix
Comprehensive statement of my adult educational philosophy based on
the Adult Education Philosophy Inventory:


A. The primary purpose of adult education is:
To facilitate personal development on the part of the learners’
competency and mastery of specific skills.

B. Decisions about what to include in an educational activity:
Should be on what the learners’ know and what the teacher’s believes
should know at the end of the activity.


C. Good adult educators start planning instruction:
By identifying the problems that can be solved as a result of the
instruction and asking the learners to identify what they want to learn
and how they want to learn it.


D. The learner’s feelings during the learning process:
Will probably have a great deal to do with the way they approach their
learning.


E. Evaluation of learning outcomes:
It is best accomplished when the learner encounters a problem either in
the learning setting or the real world and successfully resolves it.

F. My primary role as a teacher of adult is to:
Guide learners through learning activities with well directed feedback
and help learners identify and learn solve problems.

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