Studies in Adult Learning Since 1930

Abstract

IN THE twenty-five years since Thorndike wrote his Adult Learning (27) there has been an ever increasing interest in adult education until today there are over three million adults in the United States participat ing in adult education courses. Because of the rapid technological changes now taking place in our culture, knowledge quickly becomes ob solete and a process of continuing education is becoming more and more essential if an individual is to continue to function adequately in our soci ety. When the factor of rising life expectancy is added, it seems appar ent that the trend toward expanded adult education will not only continue, but should accelerate. A question arose in the minds of the present authors as to whether experimental work in the area had kept pace with the phenomenal increase in adult education. The present paper is an at tempt to answer that question by surveying the experimental work in adult learning *** which appears in the psychological abstracts from 1930 through 1953. Although some of the studies reviewed here have been discussed else where in the literature (3) (7) (9) (11) (14) (15) (16) (18) (21) we could find no really comprehensive integration of contemporary research in this area; therefore, we set out to cull the recent literature. W e soon found that there were hundreds of articles listed in the abstracts that per tained to adult learning. After organizing the available material we as sembled our combined efforts and found that we had what appeared tobe enough material to fill several complete issues of this Journal rather than merely one review article. But when we eliminated all studies which were not of an empirical nature, i. e., all essays on how to teach adults, all theoretical discourses on how adults learn, etc., less than thirty studies remained. The area of adult learning undoubtedly has the highest ' 'hypotheses to facts ' ' ratio of any in education. If anot her sphere of educational interest does exist that has a greater plethora of hypotheses along with a corresponding paucity of experimental data, the present authors are unaware of it. The studies reviewed below seemed to be primarily cone e r ned with three basic questions: Can adults learn as effectively as younger people? What effect does being away from a formal learning situation have, i. e., is there a trustiness factor operating in adult learning? If a decline in learning ability does occur in adults, does it occur equally in individ * Authors present address: Michigan State College, East Lansing, MLchu -x*Footnotes will be found at the end of this article?