Draft of Adult Learning Phylosophy

Vision: To create lifelong learning dedicated to improving the quality of personal, business, and community relationships.

One person can change the environment around them. A little help from everyone will change the world. I would like instigate change in people who will in turn influence others. When I became a leader I realized I wanted to change the environment according to the people I work closely with. For example, personal development plans that work on core skills like communication and feedback. It may seem selfish but if I improve my work and educate others to think critically, they too will create an influence with those at home, their friends, and community. My ideal is to educate individuals and create a ripple effect from the center out.

Purposes of Education:
Adult education in the United States should be a lifelong learning experience through work environments, community centers and neighborhood partnerships to build up relationships and drive success among citizens. A collaboration of education.

1.Every adult should have the opportunity to enroll in courses to help them become successful, maintain success and improve upon the current skills for future development.
2.Adults will accept that there is always more to learn in any situation and when given feedback it will be accepted as a means for improvement and not criticism.
3.Adults should share their best practices and knowledge with others to continue building on the ideas, improving upon them and document progress to avoid repeating history.

Idealy this is a purpose with a liberal agenda to allow all people to learn, teaching them and letting them go to see what comes of their learning. With life long learning opportunities everyone would have the chance to attend a class of interest to them when ever possible.

These goals can be reached with a commitment to yourself and others for improving the work environments and communities by offering basic courses that will create a means for improvement. Communication is important. I also believe lessons on communication are part of a core curriculum and adult education in the workplace. Provide the resources, time and money necessary to allow people to enroll in these core classes to invest in the future. We have done this by putting people in leadership roles with mentors who have experience in the role. This will help improve and build on the skills necessary for them to later develop into these roles. If they don’t have experience in the role but wish to allow them to shadow the position for some time and they can then decide whether they would like to invest the time in getting to the position.

Within adult education, adults must accept responsibility for their actions and learning. It is important to create a positive environment around you. Creating an environment of learning and admitting to shortfalls and adding to the wellbeing of the community to establish a name for yourself and build credibility with those around you. Through your humility you will always learn from other input as they will from yours.

In order to share best practices you must create an environment that is safe for sharing. The presenter must be educated in how to prepare the information for sharing and the learner must understand the objectives of the presentation. If a best practice is shared, again, the community actions comes into play where everyone can improve upon the idea presented. One example of this may be the everyday car. Someone invented the car, and everyone else improved the invention. Everyone learns in the environment and you have a collaboration of education.

I believe adult education can happen at any time, however planned activities, classes or events are most effective for learning. Specifically an employee who is hired for a role temporarily to develop in the necessary field and to ensure a proper job fit. This person is going to learn more in the role through their development and collaboration with their leader than they would reading a manual on the position. Learning could happen at any time, but because the employee is in the position they are more likely to understand and comprehend the experience.

Specifically at American Express we have had wonderful leadership who promote an open and honest environment for everyone. With great leaders comes good work ethic from each employee with a desire to improve the business. The purpose of adult education at American Express is to ultimately improve the skills and abilities of the employee to help the company succeed. Yes, somewhat of a political motive, however, A lot of companies and leadership teams have political motives through training and development for the company, and I truly believe that as I improve myself and create availability for others to do the same leaders at American Express feel the business will follow. This improvement takes place in every setting of the business. Adult learning is found in developmental roles, staff meetings, one-to-one meetings with individual direct reports, team huddles, recognition ceremonies, emails, voice mails and in the formal classroom. All create an environment of learning.

Adult learners in the my view of the workplace would go through forms of occupational and relational education in order to help them with the specifics of the job through on-the-job training and management training classes as well as developing communication skills, and other personal skills that will help with the prior trainings. Both are important to coach and teach in the business setting in order for the learner to establish their skills and balance in their experience.
Instruction in job-preparation may be more rare past the new hire instruction for systems and processes. I’m most familiar with an on-the-job training environment where meetings with leadership are frequent, there is more instructor availability because in this case the instructor is the leader or peer teaching you the ropes of the business. I believe additional classes on managerial styles, skills and even human resources requirements are all part of the HRD that would be necessary as an initiation for leadership or new people to the company but as needed.

Classes specifically around relationship building skills such as necessary conversations that must take place in the workplace, communication skills, coaching skills, classes on responsibility, growth, and leadership are all important for new leaders or prospective leaders. Without the basic skills in the business environment the learner may be great at the process of the business but may not be able to execute on the process because they are not able to create collaboration with their business partners.

The pedagogy of the classes held would be full of interaction and use of some teacher centered and more learner centered activities. In many informal learning environments the social reform perspective may be effective in leading the learner through the development and challenging them to look for current practices and improvements that could be made to improve the business. In general there will be several methods used through the curriculum to reach to the kinesthetic, visual and audio learners. Reaching out to all styles to efficiently teach all those that have enrolled and invested in their development.

There are several views that may seem conservative from the standard training perspective and requirements, and I truly believe some training must happen on a standard level to help transition into a new environment. I truly believe all training can be administered with a liberal view of training the individual and encouraging their development and letting go. With this there is an opportunity for the leader to follow up with the employee if there is a conflict in their plan, but a lot of the time, like we discussed in class, you wouldn’t fire the person that made the $1MM mistake. You would counsel them and they, in theory, become your biggest asset.