Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn
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Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 iii Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults Third Edition Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 vi Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 i Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 ii Raymond J. Wlodkowski Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 iii Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults Third Edition Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 iv Copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. 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Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey- Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002. Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Chapter One epigraph from The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter by Vivian G. Paley. Copyright 1990 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wlodkowski, Raymond J. Enhancing adult motivation to learn : a comprehensive guide for teaching all adults / Raymond J. Wlodkowski. —3rd ed. p. cm. —(The Jossey-Bass higher and adult education series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7879-9520-1 (cloth) 1. Motivation in adult education. I. Title. LC5219.W53 2008 374.0019—dc22 2007049555 Printed in the United States of America third edition HB Printing 10987654321 Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 v The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series Wlodkowski ffirs 3 02/04/08 vi Wlodkowski ftoc 3 02/04/08 vii Contents Preface ix The Author xvii 1. Understanding Motivation for Adult Learners 1 2. Understanding How Aging and Culture Affect Motivation to Learn 31 3. Characteristics and Skills of a Motivating Instructor 49 4. What Motivates Adults to Learn 95 5. Establishing Inclusion among Adult Learners 125 6. Helping Adults Develop Positive Attitudes toward Learning 171 7. Enhancing Meaning in Learning Activities 225 8. Engendering Competence among Adult Learners 309 9. Building Motivational Strategies into Instructional Designs 377 Epilogue: Ethical Considerations for an Instructor of Adults 435 vii Wlodkowski ftoc 3 02/04/08 viii viii Contents Appendix: Observation Guide for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning (Adult Version) 439 Margery B. Ginsberg References 445 Name Index 483 Subject Index 491 Wlodkowski fpref 3 02/04/08 ix Preface When I wrote the last edition of this book, the question that guided its conception was, How can instructors help all adults to learn? If we consider only age, income, and ethnicity and race, we have had societal changes in the last ten years that have expanded this challenge significantly. Demographic trends and immigration have increased the diversity of adults throughout postsecondary and workforce education. More adult learners than ever before are English-language learners. The number of younger nontraditional learners and older adult learners in formal educational settings is the highest it has ever been in the history of this country. Among these learners are higher proportions of low-income students as well. Although the enrollment rates for Latino and African American adult learners in two- and four-year colleges have grown, fewer than a quarter of those who enroll complete their degrees. The increased linguistic and cultural diversity make teaching adults today more exciting than ever before. We have more to learn from each other and more ways to do it better. Our potential as instructors has evolved with greater knowledge in multicultural studies, cognitive and biological sciences, assessment practices, online learning, use of the Internet, and the opportunity to use brain-imaging technology to study learning as it happens. We continue to have a responsibility to create learning envi- ronments that sustain the integrity of all learners as they attain ix Wlodkowski fpref 3 02/04/08 x x Preface relevant educational success. I am convinced that in conjunction with educational policies that promote the common good, a pow- erful means to helping all adults learn is to go to the source, to the energy—to human motivation. All adults want to make sense of their world, to find meaning, and to be effective at what they value—this is what fuels their motivation to learn. The key to effective instruction is to evoke and encourage the natural inclina- tion in all adults, whatever their background or socialization, to be competent in matters they hold to be important. As in the last edition, the model in this book for teaching and planning instruction focuses on how to continually enhance intrinsic motivation among all learners as part of the instructional process. Dr. Margery Ginsberg and I developed the Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching in 1994. It is based on the principle that learning and motivation are inseparable from culture. For over a decade, the framework has been applied nationally and internationally with productive learning outcomes. The Third Edition of Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn is designed to be a practical and immediately usable resource for faculty, trainers, educators, and staff developers whose primary task is instructing adults in universities and community colleges, in pro- fessional and industrial settings, and in community organizations. This book will also be very useful to part-time as well as full-time faculty and administrators. As in the earlier editions, deepening learner motivation and helping adults want to learn are the major topics throughout this text. Within the last few years, the number of books about teaching adults seems to have doubled, but this is the only volume focusing on motivation as a constant positive influence during learning. In the chapters that follow, you will learn how to teach or train in ways that make the enhancement of intrinsic motivation an essential part of adult learning. Four chapters describe in detail sixty tested strategies for eliciting and encouraging learner motivation. You can Wlodkowski fpref 3 02/04/08 xi Preface xi choose the strategies that best apply to your content and learning situation. Among the important additions are insights and examples from the past nine years of application of the motivational framework and the strategies introduced in the previous edition. With appli- cations ranging from postsecondary education to communications technology, in cities from Toronto to Tokyo, ideas advocated in this book have been tried and tested. The results have not been excellent every single time. Through correspondence and on-site visits, I have learned the framework’s limitations and advan- tages and gained a more nuanced understanding of what can be accomplished when teaching is focused on strengthening intrinsic motivation during learning. What is most exciting to me about this new edition is the integration of a neuroscientific understanding of motivation and learning within an instructional model responsive to linguistically and culturally different adult learners. The research emerging from a biological perspective of learning is used to provide insight and confirm educational practices grounded in knowledge about adult education, the social sciences, and multicultural studies. We are at the beginning of a reciprocal relationship among adult education, biology, and cognitive science, and each has much to learn from the other (Fischer and others, 2007). This edition has greatly benefited from instructors who use this book as a text for their courses. Their experience and suggestions continue to guide its development. As requested, there are more practical examples and case studies to illustrate the motivational framework and its strategies. In this edition, the sections relating to feedback, self-regulation, and transfer of learning are also more substantive than in earlier editions. Any instructor who has searched for a straightforward, true-to- life, and useful book on how to enhance adult motivation for learn- ing should find this book helpful.