Removing the Barriers!!!!

According to Stephen Lieb, the best way to motivate adult learners is simply to enhance their reasons for enrolling and decrease the barriers. Remove the barriers…As parents, friends and spouses don’t we spend a good part of our lives trying to remove barriers or help our loved ones around them in order for them to have fulfilling lives???

I thought it complimented Knowles’s theory that as we get older the motivation to learn is internal.  Stephen Lieb states that factors influence adult’s motivation to learn.  As I read his article I thought he was describing my elements of motivation perfectly. 

For me the factors that have motivated me over the last 30 years are: friends, expectations, social relationships, achievement and boredom.  After some reflection of the class last week I realized that one very very important factor that was missing from his list.  FAMILY is the biggest motivator in my life.  It wasn’t always the most important as I went through maturity but today it absolutely is.

Knowles’s theory that motivation to learn is internal is reinforced in my mind as I reflect on what motivates me.  If you ask yourself what motivates you how many of them are internal and how many of them are external?  When you ask yourself what motivates you the most, does one stand out for you?

Orientation

Orientation is used in many different contexts.  Orientation can be used to describe: a function of the mind, choice of religion, choice of one’s sexuality, direction/location or event a program for introducing a new person to a program or school.  It is no wonder that many of my classmates; myself included, struggled this week in creating a concept map that clearly depicted our interpretation of the AL orientation concept.

Truth be told, I was 95% complete with my orientation concept map and I was unable to find the connecting that brought the concept map together.  According to Knowles’s theory adults are life, task or problem-centered in their orientation to learning.  We want to see how what we learn will apply to our life.  After revisiting Knowles’s theory it became clear that orientation was deeply intertwined with his other AL theories, self-concept, experience and motivation.  Once I embraced the idea of allowing several theories to be included creating the concept map became much easier.

This process was one that provided the opportunity for me to deeply reflect on my own learning orientation.  I created an orientation concept map based off of my Dad’s experience with lung cancer.  I discovered that yes, part of my orientation to learning is indeed problem centered.   More importantly I discovered that I am attracted to learning opportunities merely based of the fact that they relate to one of my own personal experiences.  It doesn't matter if the knowledge will allow me to deal with a problem or task in life.  I wonder if anyone else has discovered the same thing about themselves??

Looking forward to Motivation!