When a person decides to continue his studies beyond high school, he supposes that this new education will be similar to that of the old studies they received. The potential student plans to do what they have done before. After all, it worked then, then it should work now. This hypothesis of similarity leads many new adult students lost so far in the way they can not change their behavior, which means they will not generally end their curriculum and will not receive the desired diploma. . All of a bad hypothesis.
The cause of the differences
The reasons why secondary education and adult educations are different from two distinct differences between the two styles of education: the source and the target. When you change the source of the education process, which are the beliefs and assumptions about the student and the target of the education process, which is the level of understanding desired, it is not unreasonable that the process also changes .
Adult education begins with a very different image of the student than high school. A high school student generally lives at home, with a certain level of parent support. A high school student is also relatively free of responsibility; Very rarely, a high school student has a full-time job, a family and a household to support. And a high school student is usually very inexperienced in managing their own life. Adult students tend to live alone, with jobs and families and other responsibilities that need to be balanced with school. In short, high school students are teenagers while adult students are, good, adults.
The goal of a high school student is to provide a fundamental level of understanding of the world. The student will enter. Secondary classes are designed for a general population and better understand the skills and knowledge needed by a new adult. Adult education is designed for a much more targeted result, offering a more in-depth understanding of a particular topic. This goal means that other skills and other aspects of the student are ignored by the courses of an adult curriculum.
Implications for the student
An adult student must approach their courses with a different mental and a set of different behaviors, a high school student. The adult student receives more control over their behavior and more responsibility.
An adult student is responsible for ensuring that the work of the class is made, not the teacher. The student will be periodically recalled to work missing and coming, but the responsibility to do the work is the student, not the teacher. Many teachers will not work late or will certainly penalize. And much of the work of adult classes is done outside the class.
Classes of adult education cover more equipment over the same period. The teacher will often cover the material once or twice with the hypothesis that any student who will not understand will work outside the class to learn it and / or will visit the instructor during office hours. Although the adult can expect a repetition in the classroom, it will be much less than they lived in high school.
Adult students should practice time management to a much larger extent than high school students. This need for time management comes from the increased workload of the course and the other facets of the student’s life. Adult students are assumed to manage this time management and if they have problems, they must look for the necessary help.
Finally, adult students are responsible for their own commitment to the course. High school teachers, since the teenage nature of their students are constantly working to make the student understand to understand why something is studied. This is much less important for an adult teacher; While an adult teacher can provide a justification f