Malcolm Knowles on  Adult Learning

Four assumptions  of the characteristics of adult learners:

1. The Need to Know: Adults need to know why they are learning something, what are the benefits of learning, and what are the risks if the topic is not learned.
2. Self-concept:  As a person matures his self-concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward on of being a self-directed human being.
3. Experience:  As a person matures, he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.
4. Readiness to learn:  As a person matures, his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.
5. Orientation to learning:  As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem solving.
6. Motivation to learn:  As a person matures, the motivation to learn is internal.