Ask several vocational training models.

Original name Harbin

The original issue number was 2002 1 1.

The original page number is 3 ~ 6.

Classification number G5

Classification of adult education magazines

Replication cycle number 20030 1

An analysis of philosophical schools of adult education and their curriculum views

Author Jian Huang

Jian Huang College of Vocational Education and Adult Education, East China Normal University.

Philosophy is the essence of spiritual culture in any era, and adult education courses in any society and era are influenced by philosophical factors. Philosophy is the most important theoretical basis of adult education curriculum, and its influence on adult education curriculum is mainly reflected in the variety of philosophical schools of adult education. Different schools of adult education philosophy formed in a certain historical, social and cultural background have different views on adult education curriculum, which affects the core issue of adult education curriculum in practice, that is, "what kind of educational content is the most valuable" and how to organize these contents effectively.

Theoretical research on abstract topic

Keywords: adult education/philosophy/curriculum view

Upper guide bearing

China Library Classification Number: G720 Document Identification Number: A

Humanistic adult education and its curriculum view.

Humanistic adult education (also often translated as liberal arts adult education) philosophy is the longest-lasting philosophical tradition of adult education, which originated in ancient Greece. It emphasizes the value of human cultural heritage, especially the humanities, and thinks that people can effectively develop their rational power by studying the humanities. Throughout the history of western thought development, from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Kant and Hegel, great thinkers in modern times, they all spoke highly of the value of humanities in developing people's rational power.

It can be said that this philosophical trend of thought led the early development of adult education. Some adult educators believe that humanistic education expands the range of experience that adults can adapt to, and its main function is to teach adults the value of freedom and cultivate their ability to use this value. Humanistic education can also promote adults to improve their ability to participate in social affairs and make full use of their leisure time to form a perfect self-concept. R.M.Hutchins and others even think that only adults can really adapt to and be competent in humanities education, because they have enough life experience and enough time to appreciate and absorb the wisdom in human cultural heritage.

In Britain and America, the influence of humanities education on early adult education is particularly obvious. As the birthplace of adult education in the world, the traditional adult education in British universities takes liberal arts courses as the mainstream, emphasizing learning the precious heritage of human culture, thus fully developing the rational power of adults. In America, the most famous example is the great book project. From 65438 to 0947, the Big Book Foundation was established in the United States, which mainly designed various humanities education courses for adults. The purpose is to cultivate the rational thinking ability of adults, cultivate moral and aesthetic consciousness and enrich the level of spiritual life by reading classic works, which are excellent works.

As a very important philosophical school in history, humanistic adult education still has some influence today. The strong appeal of some adult educators that today's adult education curriculum should not only emphasize professionalism and professionalism, but also attach importance to the value of humanistic education is a good proof. In a society that advocates lifelong learning, liberal arts and humanities education undoubtedly plays a unique role in constantly enriching people's spiritual world and developing people's various potentials.

Progressive adult education and its curriculum view.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the progressive trend of thought represented by Dewey, a famous American educator, not only declared war on the traditional school education theory, but also had an unexpected and tremendous impact on the development of adult education curriculum. In fact, some main viewpoints of progressivism, such as emphasizing the practicality and utility of education, emphasizing the importance of experience, problem-centered curriculum design, paying attention to learners' needs, and attaching importance to establishing a new, equal and cooperative relationship between teachers and students, are of greater guiding significance to adult education courses and have far-reaching influence on adult education than school education. To sum up, the essence of progressive adult education curriculum view is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

-Progressive adult education has broken through the limitation that humanistic education only attaches importance to the study of several Confucian classic courses, and believes that education is no longer limited to formal education in schools, but should be extended to people's lives. The course content should include adult vocational education, extended education, career education, civic education and new immigrant education. In addition, progressive adult education points out that besides schools, families, workplaces, churches and communities are all places where adults can learn. At the same time, it emphasizes the problem-centered curriculum design mode, aiming at helping adults effectively solve various practical problems in work or life.

-Progressive adult education advocates that the planning, design and development of adult education courses must focus on the needs, interests and motives of adult learners, so that the courses can better meet the needs of adult learners. Based on this basic guiding ideology, progressive adult education attaches great importance to the investigation and analysis of learners' learning needs in the process of adult education curriculum development.

-Progressive adult education has broken through the traditional "rigid" learning method, emphasizing learning from experience, rather than learning from books and classic works. In their view, the rich experience of adults is a valuable learning resource. Because of this, experience and learning methods are indeed more important to adults than children. In addition, the school also puts forward that problem solving is an effective way for adults to acquire knowledge.

In the eyes of progressives, education is a process of experience reconstruction without interaction with the environment. Therefore, teachers who are at the center of traditional education are no longer the only source of knowledge in their eyes. Teachers' duty should be a complicated process of organizing, motivating, promoting and evaluating education. This brand-new concept of teacher-student relationship advocates equality and emphasizes the sharing of experience and learning, which has had a far-reaching impact in the field of adult education.

Although the trend of progressive adult education is no longer popular today, we should see its profound influence on adult education in the world, especially in the United States. It affirmed a large number of secular adult education activities carried out in various parts of society, and promoted the enrichment and integrity of adult education curriculum content; Paying attention to the needs of adult learners as the basic basis of curriculum design greatly improves the effectiveness and practicability of adult education curriculum; The curriculum design model, which takes problems as the core and aims at solving various practical problems faced by adults, has been widely used in the field of adult education. The transformation of the role of adult education and the innovation of the relationship between teachers and students have really given adult education a kind of vitality and highlighted its characteristics.

Behaviorism adult education and its curriculum view.

Among various philosophical thoughts of adult education, behaviorism adult education is a trend of thought that expresses its philosophy more from the psychological point of view. The basic propositions of behaviorist adult education curriculum view include: behavioral goal is the behavioral result that learners should achieve after completing certain learning tasks; The purpose of adult education is to help adult learners change their behavior in a certain expected direction; Teachers' duty is to provide favorable environment and stimulation to help learners change their behavior; Learning results based on behavioral goals should be able to be measured objectively.

The above viewpoints of behaviorism have had an important influence on the curriculum design of adult education. For example, the curriculum design model proposed by Taylor in 1949 has a very significant impact on the curriculum development model of adult education studied by C.O.Houle and M.Knowles, especially the wide application of competency-based curriculum model in adult vocational education and training activities around the world, which fully embodies the important value of behaviorism.

CBET (competency-based education and training) is a curriculum model aimed at cultivating adult's professional or living ability, which fully absorbs and strengthens some important ideas of behaviorism, such as learning, behavioral goals, performance evaluation and feedback. It emphasizes the learning results rather than the learning process, so the teaching effect is defined and agreed in advance, and it pays attention to evaluating the learners' learning results according to the performance standards.

Based on behaviorism, people also invented a systematic method, trying to ensure the effective implementation of the whole program in all aspects of adult education, from planning, designing and implementing teaching activities to curriculum management. In addition, with the establishment of behaviorism theory, program teaching, computer-aided teaching, contract learning and personalized teaching system have been widely used in adult teaching. Their * * * feature is to use the principle of operant conditioning to repeatedly strengthen learners' specific behaviors, so as to promote their learning and make them gradually approach the behavioral characteristics needed for learning goals. At the same time, it is emphasized that the responsibility of learning is borne by the learners themselves, and learning can be carried out at different personal rhythms.

In a word, the great influence of behaviorism on adult education is mainly manifested in curriculum development. As long as we carefully examine the various development models of contemporary adult education curriculum, its design framework reflects the viewpoint of behaviorism theory to a great extent. In addition, with the rapid development of contemporary computer and network technology, it can be expected that the contribution of behaviorism theory to the curriculum field will continue to expand. It is undoubtedly of great theoretical value to pay attention to learners' learning behavior and study learning mechanism with scientific methods.

Criticism of behaviorism mainly focuses on whether academic performance can be objectively measured by external behavior. Opponents believe that learning is a complex phenomenon, and the results of learning can be reflected in many ways. Sometimes the results are even creative and unpredictable. Learning is not always organized, sometimes it is potential and accidental. Therefore, behavioral goals are only suitable for learning courses in certain fields, such as skill training. It may not be appropriate to extend this theory to other learning situations.

Humanistic adult education and its curriculum view

Humanism and classical humanism have the same roots, but the difference is that humanism pays more attention to and emphasizes human freedom and dignity than the value of previous classic works. After the 20th century, with the continuous advancement of the industrial revolution and the rapid development of science and technology, the alienation of human beings has flooded all kinds of societies, which has made the humanistic trend of thinking concerning human self-development stand out and become an important theory to promote the development of modern education and adult education.

Influenced by this trend of thought, adult educators agree that the purpose of adult education is to make adults become individuals with dignity, adaptability to change, fully developed potential and ability to get along with others through curriculum learning. They believe that because adults have strong intrinsic learning motivation and needs and can independently carry out learning activities, the design and implementation of adult education courses should be learner-centered and adult learners should be encouraged to actively participate. Teachers are not only the transmitters of knowledge, but also the promoters, helpers and collaborators in the teaching process, thus creating favorable conditions for adults to effectively conduct self-directed learning.

In addition, the cooperation between people in groups to help individuals realize themselves has been widely used in modern adult education activities and achieved good results. Humanistic educators believe that people's learning motivation is mainly endogenous, so it is unrealistic to turn to external artificial competition to promote real learning. To this end, they have developed various forms of group learning activities, and strive to transform learners from passive participation into learning subjects who can actively experience, choose and create.

In the field of adult education, Knowles is the deep head of humanism. As one of the most influential adult educators, the theoretical framework of adult education put forward by him is deeply branded with humanistic thought. For example, Knowles put forward four basic assumptions of adult education, one of which is that adults have strong autonomy, according to which they can self-diagnose their own needs, self-evaluate their learning effects, and establish a cooperative spirit in learning; Secondly, adults are rich in experience and should be important learning resources, so adult education should encourage learners to actively participate; The third and fourth hypotheses are that adults' learning preparation is related to their development tasks in their life stages, and adult learning emphasizes immediate application. Obviously, both of these hypotheses emphasize that adult learning should pay attention to the actual needs of adults.

The continuous advancement of western political democratization and the upsurge of educational democratization in the 20th century are the main reasons for the prevalence of humanism. The development of contemporary American adult education is also deeply influenced by humanism, which accords with the cultural values of American society advocating personal development. This theory is especially favored in the field of adult education and becomes a basic concept and value, because it is more in line with the uniqueness of adult learners in all aspects (as Knowles revealed), which may be unmatched by other types of education.

To some extent, humanism developed on the basis of opposing behaviorism and played a positive role in promoting the development of adult education in the 20th century. However, in the development of contemporary adult education practice, we can find that these two thoughts have actually gradually moved from opposition to integration.

Radical adult education and its curriculum view.

The radical educational trend of thought formed in the 1970s is an ideological system that strongly resists traditional social values and school education and aims to change the conservative social structure. This theory regards education as a favorable tool for social, political and economic changes. Ilych's "school extinction theory" has aroused widespread concern and debate in the field of basic education, and P.Freire, a Brazilian adult educator, is a model of radical adult education. He firmly believes that through adult education activities, individual consciousness can be awakened, people's dominant position can be restored, and people can become the main body of creating history and culture. At the same time, through the collective action of adults, a new and humanized society can be created.

The formation of Freire's philosophical thought is deeply influenced by Marxist theory. In freire's outlook on life, everyone is the main body on the stage of life, and can fully realize and experience that they have the power to change the surrounding environment. People will encounter many problems and contradictions in various relationships with the world, and freire's adult education based on radical philosophy is to solve these social problems and contradictions.

According to personal understanding of social reality, freire thinks that human consciousness can be divided into four levels, namely, non-transfer consciousness, semi-transfer consciousness, naive transfer consciousness and critical consciousness. In freire's view, people who are in a state of unconsciousness only consider meeting their basic survival needs, and they almost completely attribute their predicament to their own destiny. However, individuals in the semi-conscious transfer society generally have the characteristics of "self-degradation". They passively accept the dominant cultural values and have a sense of self-reliance on others for survival. When people realize the reality that they are oppressed and try to get rid of it, naive transfer consciousness begins to form. People who have reached critical consciousness can thoroughly understand the dehumanized social structure and strongly criticize the ideology that supports this social structure.

Freire believes that in order to achieve real liberation, human beings must constantly transform the established social structure, and the primary goal of individuals is to realize their own humanization through a process of liberation. The most effective tools to achieve personal and social liberation are dialogue and practice. Therefore, dialogue and activities have become the basic learning strategies advocated by freire.

Freire's radicalism thought has played a positive role in promoting adult education in Brazil, especially literacy education. Brazil is an agricultural country. For a long time, the illiteracy rate has remained high and the gap between the rich and the poor is wide. Freire hopes to awaken people's consciousness and form critical consciousness through adult literacy education activities, and then take reform actions to create a humanized society. Freire strongly advocates that the content of adult literacy courses should be closely related to learners' lives. He advocates that according to the actual needs of adult learners in different regions, starting from the life situations and problems that adults care about, we should choose words and compile teaching materials according to local conditions.

In the specific teaching process, freire opposes the incremental adult teaching method, because in his view, this method infringes on the freedom and autonomy of adult learners, ignores learners' interests and needs, and only imposes the concepts and values in the curriculum on learners. He suggested adopting the method of dialogue teaching, which focuses on the discussion of problems, and both learners and teachers can ask questions. Through the discussion of real social problems, we can arouse the consciousness of adult learners, make them realize the meaning of life and the value of existence, and produce practical actions to transform and rebuild unreasonable social phenomena. In freire's view, teachers are not authoritative knowledge transmitters, but participants in equal dialogue. Teachers and students exchange ideas and discuss problems on the basis of mutual love, mutual trust and equality. Teachers and students can share experiences and broaden their horizons.

It should be noted that radical adult education represented by freire not only played a positive role in promoting the development of adult education in the process of democracy and independence in developing countries in the 1970s, but also had a certain impact on adult education and practice under other socialist backgrounds. To commemorate freire's great contribution to adult education, the Fifth World Conference on Adult Education decided to designate 1998-2008 as "paulo freire-Africa Literacy Decade".

Above, we briefly discussed the curriculum views of some major philosophical schools in the history of adult education and their influence on adult education curriculum. In fact, the profound influence of philosophy on adult education curriculum is often further reflected in the curriculum through sociology, psychology and other viewpoints. Because of this, among all the factors that affect the curriculum, the influence of philosophy on adult education curriculum is the most basic and final. Therefore, the analysis of various philosophical schools and their curriculum views is helpful for us to think about the basic laws of the development of adult education curriculum from the philosophical point of view and overcome the blindness in the practice of adult education curriculum.

refer to

[1] Ilya, merian. Translated by Gao Zhimin. Philosophical basis of adult education [M]. Vocational education press, 1990.

[2] Jian Huang. Research on adult education curriculum (200 1 doctoral thesis) [Z].