When I was in high school, I hated how I felt in the Maths classroom – it was like I was on a train that was speeding down the tracks. Before I could wrap my head around parabolas, we were being taught about interest rates.
When I started teaching high school English, I was horrified to discover that some of my learners felt the same way in my English class as I had felt in the Maths classroom. A couple of years into my teaching career I found out why that was.
High school teachers are all too aware that time is against them: between assemblies, assessment periods, camps, and sporting fixtures you need to somehow squeeze in an entire curriculum.
So how did I do it? I put my learners on that fast-moving train and hoped I hadn’t lost them by the time they arrived at a test or end-of-year exam.
Although I tried hard to make sure my learners understood what I was teaching, I was keenly aware of the need to get everything done, to strive to get decent class averages.
The truth is, a school’s academic achievements are an important factor that helps parents and guardians decide which school is best for their children. So it’s no wonder that when the stakes are that high, teachers can feel the pressure to deliver results that will impress.
In my more overwhelmed moments, it started to feel like teaching is about imparting knowledge only so I could say that I did my job well.
When I transitioned to adult education, the first thing I noticed was how a lot of the focus is placed on the learner. It was made clear to me that adult learners invest their time to complete courses. Those who pay for the courses themselves also make a financial investment. Because they’ve made some kind of investment, all learners expect a return on that investment – knowledge and skills they can use in a tangible way to improve their prospects in life.
In other words, I was being asked to learn that when it comes to adult education, teaching is about making sure learners receive knowledge and develop useful, tangible skills.
So, how to bridge the gap between what I felt about teaching and what I was learning about it? The truth is, I’m learning new skills to do that:
As someone who became used to moving quickly from one thing to another, the process of slowing down and thinking intentionally about the content of my lessons was, and still proves to be, a very difficult skill for me to learn. I have to constantly put myself in the learner’s shoes and ask if I’ve introduced obstacles to them developing the skills they need. Am I including unnecessary terminology? Confusing explanations? Examples they won’t be able to identify with? Misleading metaphors?
The elements you include in a lesson can either be tools that equip learners to achieve greater competence or obstacles that hinder learning.
Even though I was taught about learning outcomes when I studied to be a teacher, my time in adult education has shown me how powerful they really are. Learning outcomes allow you to focus on what learners would have taken away at the end of a lesson and module – they make it possible for teachers to focus on what learners will learn, instead of on what needs to be taught.
Keeping your learning outcomes top of mind gives you clarity on how you can use the elements in each lesson to equip learners to achieve each particular outcome and develop the skills they’ve invested in learning.
That’s another important shift: in adult learning, we are much more concerned with skills development than we are with knowledge transfer. This is why each practice activity has to be so carefully considered and mapped against the learning outcomes. Each activity is a valuable opportunity for learners to apply the skill they are learning. And, the examples you include in a lesson can allow learners to discover when, where and how they might find a use for each particular skill in their day-to-day life.
This brings me to another thing I’ve learnt from my experience in adult education.
It might sound strange, but setting tests and exams was one of my favourite things about being a high school teacher. In the rare quiet of my classroom, I created comprehension tests and literature exams with ease.
One of the reasons I found setting assessments easy was because I drew on what I taught. When you’ve spent weeks leading learners through an analysis of a play, it doesn’t take long to come up with an essay topic.
What I’ve learnt from my transition to adult education, however, is that my understanding of assessments was flawed: creating assessments based on what you teach benefits the teacher, but creating assessments that focus on what has been learnt benefits the learner.
Again here is where I’ve seen the value of learning outcomes. Making sure each question in a quiz targets a particular learning outcome means I am forced to ask the question in a way that allows learners to practise that particular skill. This means learners are given the chance to continue learning with each question they answer. This is the essence of assessment-for-learning, as opposed to assessment-of-learning.
Creating quizzes is something I find challenging now because they require me to think intentionally. And the truth is, it’s harder to come up with questions when they need to serve a very specific purpose.
To start, adult learners do not always have a teacher who can answer their questions or offer reassurance. What they do have is the course you have designed. This is why thinking intentionally about your lessons and assessments is so important. Creating a space for learners to receive knowledge and acquire tangible skills gives them the agency to take control of their learning and test themselves as they go.
Secondly, so much of our lives is spent teaching and learning in some way. Even if you have no desire to move into adult education, there’s benefit in thinking about what you’re doing to help your learners learn. If you are contemplating moving from secondary education to adult education, maybe ask yourself these questions:
Even though my transition has been challenging, and learning new skills is one of the most difficult things any of us can do, I’m immensely grateful for it. Although I can’t go back in time to teach my high school students differently, I can continue taking the difficult steps to equip learners with the tools they need to develop knowledge and skills that will serve them long-term.
