Page 232 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

4. Readiness to learn is based on the developmental issues in adults’ lives. Learning should be relevant to their needs.
5. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than subject-centered, with a present-oriented focus and not a future-oriented one. Adults pursue

learning that can be applied immediately to solve a problem.
6. Adult motivation to learn comes more from internal than from external sources.

Need to Know

Before learning something new, adults must become aware of a need to know about it.7,13 They need to
understand where they are now and see a need to reach a higher level of knowledge or skill. This may, for
example, improve the quality of a client’s health and lifestyle. For employees, it may mean that they will work
more eagerly and productively.

Self-Concept

Childhood is a period of dependency. As a person matures, the self-concept changes, and the individual
becomes increasingly independent and self-directed. Eventually, people make their own decisions and manage
their lives.7,13 Once people become adults, they prefer to be independent and self-directing in learning
experiences. Any educational experience in which a person is treated as a dependent child is a threat to the
self-concept. Negative feelings may result, and resentment, resistance, or anxiety will interfere with learning.

Experience

Compared with children, adults have more experiences and different kinds of experiences that they bring to
new learning situations. This background is a resource for learning. Ignoring the adult’s quantity and quality
of experiences may be misinterpreted as a sign of rejection. Employees may have had previous work experience
that can be built upon.

A client who has had diabetes for 5 years, for example, has a wealth of experience that should be recognized
when the nutrition counselor discusses dietary changes. To ignore this prior experience and start from the
beginning may annoy, bore, or possibly antagonize the client and may place obstacles in the way of the
learning process. Teaching methods such as lectures are deemphasized in adult education in favor of more
participatory methods that tap a person’s wealth of experience, such as group discussion, problem-solving
activities, role playing, and simulation. Practical applications that apply learning to the individual’s day-to-day
life are appropriate and useful.

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