Pedagogy and Andragogy

Pedagogy and Andragogy

Pedagogy basically refers to the processes and practices of teaching, or passing on knowledge and skills to others. They ways that this is done vary hugely around the world and are a product of social and cultural differences, methodological differences and developmental and psychological differences among learners.

The word itself is derived from ancient Greek and is the combination of two words, one meaning “to lead” and the other “child”. Pedagogy also gives rise to the word “pedagog”, which simply means someone who educates young people.

Given these links to the teaching of children, some people think that another word is needed to capture the art of teaching adults. And this is where the word andragogy come in, being derived from the Greek for leading adults.

As an aside, an earlier fork in the etymology of the word pedagogy also gave rise to the word pedantic.

Learning More

You might enjoy reading our posts on the ADDIE instructional design model, the Dick and Carey Instructional Design Model and the Kemp instructional design model.

There are differences between how children and adults learn, and concepts like adult learning theory are important for instructional design.

However, we also think that most people involved in educating or training people, and all the instructional models that are widely used, acknowledge that a detailed understanding of the learning audience should be obtained before designing your learning initiative.

We also have a few concerns about how effective a lot of organisational training and development programmes are, so think there is a lot of room for improvement.