Psychology of Attracting New Target Groups in Adult Education

Introduction

The target groups of education—that is, education and learning of adults—are not created; we search for them in society, where they already exist in different dimensions of people’s lives: professional, social, and interest-self-actualization dimensions. We obtain target groups from the moment we find and identify them until the moment we end and evaluate a specific educational activity in a particular target group. Therefore, attracting a new target group for adult education is not a one-time or campaign-style matter. It is not enough to convince people to participate only before an educational activity; adults need to be attracted throughout the entire educational process.

If we recognize each person’s right to equal opportunity and access to education throughout life, then education professionals are directly called upon to help many adults get on the path of their own learning. Especially adults from disadvantaged groups who, for various reasons, have ended up on the margins of the education system.

First, it must be clear what is the common feature of adult education target groups (age of persons, sex, education, profession, social position, shared problem, etc.). From a psychological perspective, attracting a new target group in adult education (education and learning of adults) means the following:

• addressing individuals,
• informing individuals,
• persuading individuals in the target group.

It is desirable to attract them so they decide for education, so they attend education, and so they become motivated and activated for education and for their professional and personal development. In the process of finding answers to how to search for, identify, and attract new target groups for adult education, we rely on certain psychological premises that we formulate in the next part of the paper.

First premise - change in an individual’s knowledge

“Knowledge change is usually induced by changes in information and in an individual’s needs” (Krech - Crutchfield - Ballachey, 1968, p.55).
If a person receives new information about opportunities for education, that information can change their knowledge and thinking about their own education only if it concerns their personal educational needs. However, presenting new information is not a sufficient guarantee that a person will also accept it. Their experience and needs may prevent knowledge change. People are reached only by such information that touches their needs and motivation. At the same time, there is great individual variation among people. In relation to adult education we identify adults (according to D´hertefelt, 2000):

• with individual motivation

, who in education mainly look for an opportunity for their personal and individual development; - with social motivation , who want to learn how to function as best as possible in the social environment—whether as partners, parents, colleagues, managers, etc.—and who aspire to communicate well and have good social relationships; - with economic motivation , who want to improve their economic position, find work, get promoted, stay in employment, progress in their professional career, secure their livelihood, and so forth; - with educational motivation , who want to prepare for various forms of further education and learning.

In the target group of adult education, there can also be individuals who find themselves at an educational event due to external pressure, e.g., their employer or employment office mandated it and education was recommended without their own engagement. Among adult participants in education, where external motivation predominates, psychological barriers often act negatively in the form of disinterest, resignation, fear of education, fear of the group, anxiety about possible failure, or fears of cognitive insufficiency. These adults may consciously or unconsciously reject information about their education and personality development.

Second premise - the person of an adult

Knowledge change is dependent not only on information provided, but is also a function of the person’s characteristics. That is, the level of their cognitive abilities and the openness or closedness of their mind, their typical way of coping with obstacles in education and in meeting educational needs (Krech - Crutchfield - Ballachey, 1968, p. 68). The ability to change one’s opinion is largely influenced by how the individual handles multi-directional, unstable, and conflict situations full of surprises. Knowledge change concerns not only thinking, but “the whole person,” including their needs, goals, values, and aspirations, as well as their experiences, reactions, and psychological coping with demanding situations and stimuli from the social environment. Psychological stimuli influence the opinion about a situation and attitude toward it and often trigger psychological defense against anything that is new and unfamiliar to the person. (Ibidem, p. 73).

Let us ask: How to inform and persuade people to learn and educate themselves also in adulthood, even in old age? In this context, it is important to emphasize the effectiveness of direct, addressed information presented to adult people. This means explaining the importance of lifelong learning and learning at every age. People need to be adequately and clearly informed about what practical benefit a specific educational event brings them and what they gain through their own educational activity. It is good to know that:

• A person learns socially by observing other people. In this way they have the opportunity to avoid situations and problems in which they could personally fail through their behavior and conduct. They can learn from others’ behavior and conduct by observing from the outside a “model situation” in which other people have actually found themselves. Professionally speaking, people learn not only from their own mistakes but also by vicarious learning and reinforcement of what they have learned. They observe, perceive, identify with, or reject another person’s behavior and conduct, which influences their conscious or unconscious level of experience and motivation to behave and act. By observing others and how they are rewarded or punished for their behavior and conduct, a person forms cognitive expectations about possible future evaluation of their person, behavior, and conduct by other people. The person develops an opinion about socially expected behavior and conduct (Bandura, in Hall - Lindzey, 1997, pp.432-433).
• If a person’s behavior and conduct are rewarded (let us say their education is valued, completed retraining, interest activities, and the like), it is likely that other people will follow and imitate that behavior and conduct. This is because their successful way of life is attractive to them, including career progress, life wisdom, health, or life satisfaction. A person is imitated by others all the more the more similar they are—for example in age, social status, temperament, abilities, values, and interests.

When acquiring a target group for adult education, it is impossible to bypass generalized characteristics of adults in the educational process that must be respected:

• Adults are able to think through and regulate their own behavior in relation to educational (teaching and learning) activities. They are not merely pawns in a game of various influences and stimuli from the educational environment.
• Adults are best understood in the social context of their lives, that is, in interaction with other people.
• Adults are able to assess themselves and their potential and have a more or less clear idea of how they can function in the educational process and in educational situations.
• Adults are ready for education when they are more or less convinced that they will be personally effective in the educational process, i.e., that their expectation of the usefulness of the educational activity for their life will be fulfilled. (Bandura, in Hall - Lindzey, 1997, pp.428-430.)
  The expectation of effectiveness in one’s own learning and belief in one’s abilities influence what activities people choose, how much effort they invest, and how long their effort lasts.

It is understandable that in the stage of attracting adults for education one should strengthen their positive self-esteem regarding their role as participants in the educational event. This means pointing out participants’ successes and personal qualities and encouraging them. In this context, examples of other people can also help. A cognitive style, that is, the way of knowing, is functionally linked to a person’s emotionality. Emotions under certain conditions support motivation; under other conditions they lead adults to a loss of motivation. Persuading individuals for their education can run into varied reactions depending on personality characteristics (Grác, 1985):

• Uninfluencable person

– does not succumb to persuasion; they will not change their opinion and attitude, even under the influence of arguments. - Difficult-to-influence person – has one type of argument and may change opinion and attitude in this way under its influence: - a positive argument makes them change their negative opinion and attitude to positive, - a negative argument makes them change their positive opinion and attitude to negative. - Controversially influencable person – regardless of initial opinion and attitude, positive argumentation triggers a negative reaction and negative argumentation triggers a positive reaction. - Easily influencable person – changes opinion and attitude under the influence of arguments.

Adult participants’ self-evaluation in education relates to how their performance and outcomes in the educational process are evaluated. The participant’s status—that is, their position in the given social environment—impacts their self-evaluation. Higher standing in social groups usually leads to higher levels of their study aspirations. Lower standing of the adult participant in an educational event leads to lower levels of their study aspirations. Research has shown that a person with higher social status receives feedback from others that raises their self-evaluation. Conversely, in social disadvantage, with negative feedback from others, are persons who have ended up in disadvantaged and marginalized social groups for various reasons (unemployed, persons with disabilities, elderly, poor, and so on). Self-evaluation of people from socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups is marked more by devaluation (lower assessment) than by evaluation (higher assessment) of their person.

It is known that the self-image of a specific person affects which needs and goals are important in life. This also concerns individual educational needs and goals. It is desirable for education social workers to devote proper attention to educational activities that support self-confidence and reduce or eliminate various personal and social complexes of socially disadvantaged and socially marginalized adults.

Educational social workers can effectively help adults overcome education barriers identified by G. D´Hertefelt (2002), which we render in our own formulation of specific barrier characteristics:

• Informational barriers

: it involves overcoming the lack and unavailability of appropriate information, overcoming passivity in information seeking, and fostering interest and attention to information about education. - Situational barriers : it involves overcoming lack of time, organizing one’s daily routine, overcoming lack of resources for education, personal and family conditions, work conditions, spatial conditions, participation possibilities. - Institutional barriers : it involves overcoming inappropriate and unsuitable forms and content of education, inadequate educational activities offered, and shortcomings in organizing educational events. - Psychological barriers : it involves overcoming subjective, psychological obstacles in education, e.g., fears of educational activity, of groups, overcoming fear of failure, of reduced capacity for learning, overcoming fear of the educator’s personality, of teaching style, of disrespect toward one’s own person, of non-respect for a person’s autonomy and experiences during educational activity.

In removing psychological barriers in adult education, adult educators play an important role. According to M. Tennant (1990, p.106), they are expected to do so competently:

• Help individuals understand and accept their role as learning persons.
• Support and encourage individuals to recognize their learning style and their style of knowing.
• Use varied approaches in adult education that encourage different kinds of learning.
• Create educational environments and a social-psychological climate in the group that support creativity and difference among learners.
• Create conditions for cooperation that help individuals learn from one another.

Informing and persuading adult people in target groups is always a targeted process. Through external motivation via necessary information about education, specific people must be addressed. Information should have subjective meaning for people. This means that individuals process information uniquely and that acquiring experiences and the way information is used is also unique. People have their own information-processing strategy. This strategy concerns the selection of information, categorization of information, and interpretation of information. The strategy of individual processing and use of information is the basis for assessing reality. A person’s “personal construct” of reality (Mischel – 1973, in Nakonečný, 1999, p.112) influences the behavior and conduct of the specific person.

“Cognitive style, or learning style,” is an expression of how an individual receives, processes, organizes, and uses information. People have different and unique cognitive styles. Therefore, the individual approach in adult education and adult learning is emphasized. For that reason, it is appropriate to recall this fact:

1. Learning processes are more important than teaching methods.
2. Adults have strengths and weaknesses in learning. Thus, in learning adults we should respect their bias, difference, and uniqueness.

D. Kolb and R. Fry defined these cognitive styles in individuals (in Tennant, 1990, pp.103-104):

1. Convergent (Converger)

• practical, performs well when a straightforward answer is needed, prefers work with objects before working with people, has narrower interests, and is more oriented toward natural sciences.
• Divergent (Diverger)
• has strong imaginative abilities, sees things from different perspectives, is interested in people, has broad cultural interests, specializes in art, is oriented rather toward humanitarian issues and artistic circles.
• Assimilator (Assimilator)
• has strong abilities to create theoretical models, excellent inductive reasoning, is associated with abstract thinking, has a stronger relation to content than to people, does not incline toward practice, is attracted to basic sciences, e.g., mathematics.
• Accommodator (Accommodator)
• has practicality as a strong side, likes to take risks, performs well when one needs to adapt quickly, solves problems intuitively, turns to others for information, and is oriented toward action-oriented tasks.

Third premise - situational signals for adult education

The awakening of educational needs depends on the interests of individuals and on situations that affect adult education directly or indirectly. Effective stimuli for awakening adults’ educational needs are their personal experiences. For example, a good impression from a lecturer’s presentation, an interesting talk about education on radio or television, attendance at a high-quality educational event, innovative approaches used in educational activity, group education, creative methods of adult education, etc.

The more stimulating the educational environment, the more educational needs are awakened in people. If the educational environment is weakly stimulating, then adults have less interest in being educated and learning. Where there are few schools, few books, one can expect low interest in education among adults. (Krech - Crutchfield - Ballachey, 1968, pp.111-112.)

Awakening educational needs among adults through stimuli from the educational environment is a priority in attracting target groups for adult education. Education allows adult people to satisfy social needs and self-actualization needs, such as the need for curiosity, the need to affiliate, the need for altruism, the need for competence, the need for prestige, the need for appreciation, and the need for self-actualization.

A stimulating educational environment also triggers other human needs because it is part of the whole system of people’s environment, which consists of the natural environment, cultural environment (including social and economic environment), psychological environment (that is, the subjectively experienced environment). The educational environment consists of educating and learning adults, adult educators, and also educational institutions and educational facilities that provide educational services.

Why It Is Necessary to Engage in Attracting New Target Groups in Adult Education

Most importantly, so that many people from different social groups can avoid missed opportunities for their own personal development in life. Adults need to be prepared so that through education they are able to recognize and realize their own life tasks. In adulthood, adults are expected to achieve, according to their capabilities, psychological and social maturity (developmental maturity).
A psychologically mature person should fulfill personal development life tasks. We consider these life tasks important:

• Forming and protecting one’s personal identity, one’s individuality, and realizing life developmental tasks.
• Linking one’s personal identity with the identity of other people, communicating, creating and experiencing mutual relationships, realizing oneself in social groups.
• Creating spiritual and cultural values and material products. If creativity does not develop in life, a person risks stagnating psychologically and declining.
• Respecting the meaningfulness and orderliness of one’s own life, which leads to experiencing life satisfaction and to forming and preserving the psychological integrity of a person’s personality.

Unfulfilled life tasks of people evoke, consciously or unconsciously, their psychological and bodily problems, called psychosomatic illnesses. Unconscious doubts about the meaning of the life one has experienced, or is still experiencing, can lead people to despair and induce in them a tormented feeling of meaningless living. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to engage in attracting new target groups of adult education. We need to provide adult people with educational service that supports them in becoming psychologically and socially mature people.

In the final words of philosopher Socrates: “There is only one good, and that is knowledge, and there is only one evil, and that is ignorance.”

Author: Prof. PhDr. Mária Machalová, CSc.

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