Stephen Brookfield

The father of Molly and Colin, and the husband of Kim, Stephen D. Brookfield is currently Distinguished Professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He also serves as visiting faculty in the adult education doctoral program at National-Louis University in Chicago. Prior to moving to Minnesota, he spent ten years as Professor in the Department of Higher and Adult Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he is still Adjunct Professor.

Since beginning his teaching career in 1970 Stephen has worked in England, Canada, Australia and the United States, teaching in a variety of college settings. He has written and edited nine books on adult learning, teaching and critical thinking, three of which have won the World Award for Literature in Adult Education (in 1986, 1989 and 1996). He also won the 1986 Imogene Oaks Award for Outstanding Research in Adult Education. His work has been translated into German, Finnish and Chinese.

In 1989, Brookfield was Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Technical and Adult Teacher Education in what is now the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. In 1991 he was awarded! an honorary doctor of letters degree from the Unive! rsity System of New Hampshire for his contributions to understanding adult learning. He currently serves on the editorial boards of educational journals in Britain, Canada and Australia, as well as in the United States. After 10 years as a Professor of Higher and Adult Education at Columbia University in New York, he now holds the title of Distinguished Professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The best learners...often make the worst teachers. They are, in a very real sense, perceptually challenged. They cannot imagine what it must be like to struggle to learn something that comes so naturally to them.

- Stephen Brookfield

In his work, Stephen Brookfield provides a critical examination of the claim that adult learning is a discretely separate domain having little to do with learning in childhood or adolescence.

Self- directed learning is defined by Brookfield as "the process by which adults take control of their learning, in particular how they set their own learning goals, locate appropriate resources, decide on which learning methods to use and evaluate their progress" (Tuinjman, 1995) He explains that there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding our understanding of self-direction. For example, most researchers have ignored the ! cross-cultural dimension of self-direction. Is the disposition towards self-directedness culturally learned or tied to personality? He also mentions that gender studies have criticized the ideal of the independent, self-directed learner. Other factors - the adult's previous experiences, the nature of the learning task and the political climate of the time - can also affect an adult's decision to learn in this manner. He cautions us that a "view of learning which views adult as self-contained, volitional beings scurrying around engaged individual projects is one that works against cooperative and collective impulses."

Critical reflection is a relatively new concept in the field of adult learning. It is described by Brookfield as "learning in which adults come to reflect on their self-images, change their self-concepts, quest! ion their previously internalized norms (behavioral ! and moral), and reinterpret their current and past behaviors from a new perspective..."(Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning)

Brookfield states in his article Adult Learning: An Overview: “Three trends in the study of adult learning that have emerged during the 1990's, and that promise to exercise some influence into the twenty first century, concern:

1. 
   the cross-cultural dimensions of adul! t learning
2. 
   adults' engagement in practical theorizing
3. 
   the ways in which adults learn within the systems of education (distance education, computer assisted instruction, open learning systems) that are linked to recent technological advances.

Resources

"Adult Learning: an Overview" in A. Tuijnman (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Adult Education and Training. Oxford: Pergamon Press/Elsevier Science, 1995. http://nlu.nl.edu/ace/Resources! /Documents/AdultLearning.html

"An Agenda for Adult Education" in A. Tuijnman (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Adult Education and Training. Oxford: Pergamon Press/Elsevier Science, 1995.

Brookfield, Stephen. "The Getting of Wisdom: What Critically Reflective Teaching Is and Why It's Important". Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

Champagne, Kimberly. Brookfield and Critical Reflection:Adult Learning Theory.
http://users.erols.com/bkchamp/kim/conclusion.htm#biblio

http://www.fsu.edu/~adult-ed/jenny/learning.html!

http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/aerc/2000/normanr-web.htm Has good stuff on Cranton and Brookfield

"Storming the Citadel: Reading Theory Critically" Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

"Self-Directed Learning, Political Clarity and the Critical Practice of Adult Education" Adult Education Quarterly 43/4 (Summer 1993).

Teaching Critical Reflection: http://cie.ci.swt.edu/newteacher/section3-2.htm