Such a small world. Although living in BC, Rick went to school in Wolfville, NS and is quite familar with my city of Halifax, NS. So although miles apart, chatting with him was like chatting with my neighbour across the yard.
We discovered that we share some common goals and perspectives on our lives, profession and adult education. We discussed the trends and challenges in our professions and our goal to eventually transition to teaching adults.
Both of our professions require continutal learning. For Rick's profession as a mechanic, there are regular updates to machinery, software and repair processes that are communicated to him by suppliers. It is not unheard of for him to spend evenings reading manuals or watching videos to keep himself updated. As well, formal professional development leads to "Red Seal" designation which gives the public a certain level of confidence in his knowledge and skills. For my profession of Massage Therapy, ongoing professional development is a required part of license renewal. Yet, outside of changes in legal aspectes of professional practice, other areas of professional development is at the choice and discrection of the therapist. This impacts the profession in both positive and negative ways.
The positive aspect is that therapists are free to pursue education in the direction of their interest for credit towards their continuing education hours as long as it fits within the scope of practice of the profession. The negative aspect is that nationally the core education a therapist recieves varies from school to school and province to province is not coordinated. This makes it difficult for the consumer of massage therapy to consistently know what to expect from a massage therapist. I've heard it a million times from clients; if you see one therapist for years you think this is how it is, but when you see someone else it is only then that you know what is good and what is not a good treatment. Where as with a mechanic, if the battery to the car is not installed properly, the car does not run. With massage therapy, a client could potentially recieve 1-10 treatments from different therpists for the same condition. The effectivess of the treatment depends entirely on the therapists knowledge and approach.
In teaching adults we agreed that knowledge of our individual professions is not enough. To effectively educate adults, we need to understand that adults have busy lives and their motivation behind learning must be addressed as part of the delivery process. Answering the key question of every learning opportunity - Are we meeting our learner's needs? - must be the starting point.
Adults also come to learning with both formal and informal foundational knowledge. Starting where the learner is at will both help the learner see the relevance to what they are learning and aid in implentation.
All in all, we agreed adult learning is a process, rich for both student and teacher.