Andragogy in practice

Abstract

Depending on which citation is consulted, various authors present andragogy in different ways. Accordingly, it has often been difficult to ascertain both the number and content of the core assumptions of andragogy. This difficulty stems from the fact that the number of andragogical principles has grown from four to six over the years as Knowles (1989) refined his thinking. In addition, many authors still seem to prefer to use Knowles (1980) as the core citation for his andragogical assumptions, despite the fact that he updated the list twice since then. The addition of assumptions and the discrepancy in the number cited in the literature has led to some confusion.