Education for life: STEAM Education for adults

Education is no longer seen as a matter concerning only children and teenagers. Human beings are capable of learning and developing new skills throughout their whole live, regardless of their age; because of this, taking adults into account as part of lifelong learning is a must.

Naturally, children and adults do not learn in the same way. To get to the core of this issue, Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913-1997), an American educator known for his studies on adult education and learning, introduced the term andragogy. Andragogy is defined as the art and science of helping adults to learn, as opposed to pedagogy, which focuses on education for children. Nowadays, the concept of andragogy is used to describe the set of teaching techniques aimed at educating adults, different to those used to educate children and teenagers.

Over the year, adults accumulate knowledge and experiences that not only influence their learning, but could also be used as important resources for their education.

Learning will be more meaningful when it is related to their experiences: adults learn when they connect the knowledge they are acquiring to their own and others’ experiences, and when they are able to focus learning on solving problems that arise in daily life and are useful for their everyday activities. For adult learners, it is very important to learn in a practical way and in a real-life context.

For these reasons, adults can also greatly benefit from the STEAM approach to education.

All STEAM areas (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) are deeply linked to real life, and promote necessary skills for everyday life, such as the ability to solve problems, to ask questions about the reasons behind things, and to be able to gather, value and make sense of information.

This means that, in the classroom, the independence of students is promoted: STEAM education aims at problem solving, where students play an active role in learning and learn by doing.

There is still plenty of space to explore the enormous potential of the STEAM approach in adult education, which is why projects like STEAM People promote STEAM values and competences for adults, no matter their age or previous experience in the field.  

It's never too late to learn!