Education for Adult Development Level

C. D. Glickman. Supervision of Instruction-A Developmental Approach. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1990. 471 pp. $39.95 (hardcover).

To effectively present programs to adult participants in Extension, it's important to know how adults develop as they mature, and what learning style most appropriately fits each developmental stage. Adult development is the study of adult capacity to improve over time. Research on life-span transitions focuses on typical events and experiences people encounter as they age. Adults change in predictable ways according to age, individual characteristics, and demands of the environment. Glickman has found that cognitive, social, and language development don't end with adolescence or early adulthood, but continue throughout life.

Research on aging and learning has identified two categories of intelligence, one that increases during adulthood, one that decreases. These two categories of learning are "fluid" and "crystallized." Fluid learning depends on physiological and neurological capacities, while crystallized learning depends on relations between past, present, and future experiences (p. 47). These learning categories should be taken into account in planning program presentations.

In the cognitive area, the decline of the nervous system accounts for the slowing of abilities to handle instant and visual information. Older people have extensive experience and knowledge to use. An older person may not be able to respond quickly, but can relate experiences to an understanding of new problems.

Individuals experience various stages of conceptual development as they grow. Most adults develop to the stage of understanding through the authority of others and never get past this conventional reasoning stage. Thus, most education for adults is to an audience made up of people respecting authority and making decisions around that principle. Concept development is important when understanding the learning level of participants in Extension education programs.

Personality development, or ego, is broader than either of the first two areas. Stages and transitional levels move from symbiotic and impulsive to conformist levels and autonomous thinking. Personality or ego development is sometimes forgotten, and underrated as an important part of learning.

Cognition, conceptual development, and personality development should be considered when developing Extension programs. Knowing how adults develop from simplistic, concrete thinking to multi-information and abstract thinking is vital to program success.