Andragogy: Knowles' principles of adult learning and how to apply them

Most people can remember a training session that felt like being back at school. A presenter at the front, slides full of definitions, a quiz at the end and very little connection to the problems waiting back at their desk. The content may have been perfectly accurate. It just wasn't designed for adults.

Andragogy is the attempt to fix that. Instead of asking how to teach, it asks how adults learn, and the answer changes almost every decision in a training programme, from the first minute of a session to how its success is measured.

What is andragogy?

Andragogy is the theory and practice of helping adults learn. The term was first used by the German teacher Alexander Kapp in 1833, but it was the American educator Malcolm Knowles who made it popular from the late 1960s onwards, most notably in his book The Modern Practice of Adult Education.

Knowles started from a simple observation: adults arrive at a learning situation with experience, responsibilities and reasons of their own. Treating them as empty vessels, as traditional teaching often does with children, wastes all three. Andragogy builds on them instead.

Knowles' six principles of adult learning

Knowles described a set of assumptions about adult learners that grew over the years to six. They are better read as tendencies than rules, but together they explain why so much workplace training misses the mark.

1. The need to know

Adults want to understand why they should learn something before they invest time in it. A course that starts with "today we'll cover" loses them; one that starts with a problem they recognise has their attention.

2. Self-concept

Adults see themselves as responsible for their own decisions and resist being treated as if they weren't. They engage more when they have some say in what and how they learn.

3. The role of experience

Adults bring years of experience, which is both a resource and an obstacle. It gives new ideas something to attach to, but it also comes with habits that may need to be unlearned. Good adult training draws on that experience instead of ignoring it.

4. Readiness to learn

Adults are most ready to learn what they need for a situation they are facing now: a new role, a new tool, a difficult conversation coming up next week. The same content offered too early rarely sticks.

5. Orientation to learning

Adults learn around problems and tasks, not around subjects. "How to handle a customer who wants a discount" works better than "principles of negotiation", even if the content underneath is the same.

6. Motivation

External motivators such as promotion or pay matter, but Knowles argued that the strongest drivers for adults are internal: confidence, job satisfaction, a sense of progress. Training that makes people feel more capable earns more commitment than training that is simply compulsory.

Andragogy vs pedagogy

Knowles originally framed andragogy as the opposite of pedagogy, the art of teaching children. He later softened that view and described the two as ends of a spectrum: the same adult may need a more directed approach in a completely new field and a more self-directed one in an area they know well.

The limits of andragogy

Andragogy is widely used, but it isn't beyond criticism, and knowing its weak points makes it more useful.

The most common objection is that it describes good teaching rather than something unique to adults. Many children learn better through problems and experience, and many adults prefer clear instruction when a subject is new to them. That is exactly why Knowles himself ended up treating it as a spectrum.

A second criticism is that it assumes every adult is a confident, self-directed learner. In practice, people who have had poor experiences with education, or who are learning something entirely unfamiliar, often need more structure and support at the start, not less. Self-direction is a goal to build towards, not a starting point to assume.

How to apply andragogy to workplace training

Start with the why

Open every programme with the problem it solves, ideally in the participants' own terms. If you can't explain why the training matters to their work, that is a sign it may not be the right training.

Use real problems, not abstract topics

Build sessions around situations people actually face. A case drawn from last quarter's projects will always beat a generic textbook example. This is the same idea behind Kolb's experiential learning cycle: experience first, reflection and theory after.

Make experience part of the content

Ask participants how they handle the situation today before you introduce anything new. Their answers show you what to build on and what to challenge, and they let people learn from each other, which Bandura's social learning theory shows is one of the most powerful ways adults learn.

Give people choices

Wherever possible, let learners choose the order, pace or format. Even small choices, such as which scenario to tackle first, increase ownership.

Time it to the need

Offer training close to the moment people will use it. Manager training lands better in the first months of someone's first management role than two years before or after it. Our guide to management training and development shows how to plan for those moments.

Adjust the level of guidance

Give more structure to people who are new to a subject and more freedom to those who already know it well. The idea of pitching tasks just beyond what someone can do alone is developed in the zone of proximal development.

Andragogy in practice

Put Knowles' principles together and they describe a very specific kind of learning: problem-centred, built on experience, relevant right now and respectful of people's ability to decide. Simulations fit that description closely. Participants face a realistic situation, make their own decisions, see what happens and try again, without the consequences of getting it wrong at work. We explain the approach in our guide to training simulations.

Our catalogue includes more than 70 video games designed around these principles, available in up to 20 languages. Book your demo to see how they work.

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