Literature Review of Adult Higher Education Research
Building a lifelong learning system and a learning society has become an important goal of educational reform and development in all countries of the world. At present, the development status of adult higher education in China has not completely become half of the whole education, so innovative research should be carried out both in theory and in practice. In order to solve the contradiction between the current problems in adult higher education and the needs of social development, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth investigation and analysis of the current situation of adult higher education. Although there are some differences in understanding and understanding of adult higher education in different countries, its educational forms and contents are more diverse and flexible, and its development mode and approach are worth learning and learning from.
First, the research status of adult higher education abroad
Due to the different economic and social environments in different countries, the development of adult higher education varies from country to country, but in general, the development of adult higher education in developed countries is at an advanced level in the world, especially in the United States and Britain, two old economic powers.
1. Research Status of American Adult Higher Education
As one of the most developed countries in the world, the United States has made remarkable achievements in education. For the current adult higher education system in the United States, according to his own research, Grapow summarized the characteristics of American adult higher education into three aspects: first, improving the quality is the main purpose of adult higher education; Second, education level and income level are positively related to adult education participation; The third is the initial construction of lifelong education. At the same time, he also summarized the successful experience of American adult higher education into four aspects: first, he attached great importance to the legislative work of adult higher education; Second, effectively decentralize the management of adult higher education; The third is to organize teaching based on university personality, and the fourth is to build adult lifelong education in an all-round way.
At the same time, according to his own research on the current situation of education in the United States, Enemark believes that since the 1990s, many enterprises in the United States have gradually established learning-oriented enterprises, emphasizing all-staff learning, that is, decision makers, managers and operators are actively involved in learning. Including participation in training organized by enterprises, continuing education in institutions of higher learning and other forms of education and training. Emphasize "whole-process learning", prepare while learning, plan while learning, and make progress while learning, and infiltrate learning into the whole process of all work in enterprises. Enterprises also regard training employees as an important investment. Pay attention to group learning, strengthen the development of group intelligence and cultivate team spirit. Dupont, Intel, Apple Computer, FedEx and many other American companies are actively building learning enterprises. Contemporary American adult education is no longer just a cultural enrichment activity for wealthy citizens in their leisure time, or a means for the country to implement political movements, but one of the strategic means to fully develop human resources and promote the all-round development of society and individuals. Creating a learning society and promoting individualized development is the development trend of American adult higher education in the new century.
It can be seen that the successful development of American adult higher education can not be separated from the support of society and the legal protection of relevant government departments. It is under the guidance of these relevant systems that the goal of building a learning society in the United States can be achieved.
2. The research status of adult higher education in Britain.
Pat believes that the management system of adult education in Britain has distinct characteristics of local decentralization, which leads to the different development of adult education in different regions of Britain and forms different regional adult education. At the same time, he also pointed out that the characteristics of adult education in Britain are also reflected in the quality assurance of adult education and the introduction of market mechanism into the education system.
Second, the research status of adult higher education in China
There are many shortcomings in the development of adult higher education in China, but they are mainly reflected in the incorrect motivation of adult learning, impure purpose of running a school and imperfect management system of adult higher education. Therefore, domestic scholars have also done some research on this.
1. Research on Adult Learning Motivation in Adult Higher Education
As for the determinants of adult learning motivation, according to the research of Wu He and two scholars from the School of Education of Guangdong University, they think that the most common types of adult learning motivation mainly include six aspects: learning interest, career progress, life change, social service, external expectations and social relations. They also believe that the trend factor of most adult learners today is career development. They believe that this kind of learners' participation in learning activities is mainly based on the consideration of personal career development. It usually includes obtaining employment qualification or a professional qualification, obtaining promotion and salary increase opportunities, improving work ability, increasing competitiveness, obtaining career transfer ability, and so on.
As far as adult's learning motivation is concerned, two scholars, Mo and Liu Chunjiang from the Adult Education College of Dongguan University of Technology, believe that adult's learning motivation mainly depends on vocational requirements, learning interests and expectations for the future, among which vocational requirements are the main source of adult's learning motivation. Adult education students originally had a relatively stable career, but they chose to continue their degree only to promote or increase their human capital. Therefore, the purpose of more adult students' study is to improve their professional work, improve their professional quality, increase their competitiveness and get more promotion opportunities.
To sum up, the ultimate goal of China adults to re-enter the learning hall is not to improve their knowledge in related professional fields, but mainly for higher education, which is more conducive to the promotion of their positions. The emergence of adult higher education provides a very convenient way for them to achieve this goal. The impure learning motivation of students limits the development of adult higher education to some extent.
2. Research on the concept of running adult higher education.
Hu Yongfu and Li Yan, two scholars from Sichuan Normal University, believe that the backward ideas of running adult higher education in China hinder the reform and development of adult higher education. They believe that this is mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, at present, adult higher education in China is mainly academic education, which will inevitably lead to the market situation of competing with ordinary higher education for students. In recent years, colleges and universities have been expanding enrollment, and adult higher education is at a disadvantage in the market competing with ordinary higher education students, and will eventually be eliminated by society. Secondly, China's adult higher education is mainly aimed at the students who failed in the general college entrance examination, while ignoring the flexible and diverse services for the educated at different levels. Third, the direction of running a school is single, which has obviously not adapted to the requirements of society and the times for decades, leading to its difficult development. Fourthly, with the continuous adjustment of China's economic structure, the demand for talent structure has also changed correspondingly, but the institutions that hold adult higher education have ignored this change, and the talent training structure is extremely out of harmony with the rapidly developing economy and society. All these lead to the stagnation of adult higher education and the survival in the cracks of general education.
Fang Jiayin and Shi Jing, two scholars of the Institute of Equipment Command Technology, believe that the concept of running adult higher education in China is immature and the guiding ideology is incorrect. They pointed out that many local schools in China only regard adult education as a revenue-generating channel and only care about economic benefits. Therefore, the simple scale benefit and extension expansion have become the pursuit goals of the school. Under the guidance of this idea, it is impossible for schools to invest too much in adult higher education in terms of manpower and material resources, nor will they take the road of connotative development. Enrollment, teaching, graduation and other links should give way to economic interests, whether it is conducive to the pursuit of maximum economic interests is the starting point to measure all work. This orientation eventually leads to the decline of teaching quality and affects the social credibility of adult higher education.
Gong Yi, Zhang Sulan and Li Yulong, three scholars of Mianyang Normal University, hold similar views, and think that the guiding ideology and purpose of running adult higher education in China are quite different. They pointed out that with the continuous promotion of education popularization in China, adult higher education is facing fierce competition. The adjustment of the market will inevitably lead to the diversification of the school-running system, which will inevitably put forward higher requirements for the education, teaching and management of adult higher education in China. The purpose of adult higher education is to comprehensively improve the quality of workers and serve the future economy and society. However, some school-running subjects generally lack a correct understanding of adult higher education, or think that adult higher education itself is low-level, low-quality and informal, and the scale of running schools is expanding but its status is declining, and the resources for running schools are squeezed; Or treat adult education for the purpose of one-sided pursuit of economic interests, and obtain rich profits through adult education; Or organizing adult education as a way to improve and improve employee welfare, often focusing only on income and ignoring management; Pay more attention to scale than training, and regard adult education as a sideline. Due to the incorrect concept of running a school, the lack of understanding, the obvious shift of main energy, and the lack of due attention and care for adult education, correspondence stations have been established in various places, regardless of adult enrollment conditions, and the reform consciousness is weak, and the teaching quality has seriously declined.
Based on the views of scholars, the development of adult higher education in China still cannot get rid of the influence of ordinary higher education. At the same time, influenced by economic factors, China's adult higher education tends to be profitable, ignoring the essence of running a school in order to better spread more professional knowledge to the educated. At the same time, it is a pity that even in the process of the continuous reform of the general higher education system, adult higher education still continues the traditional mode of running schools, which can't keep up with the pace of the reform of general higher education, and the concept of running schools obviously lags behind the development of the times. Therefore, although the scale of running adult higher education is constantly expanding, due to its backward school-running concept, China's adult higher education has never been able to break through the bottleneck of its development.
3. Research on the management system of adult higher education
Li Hongping, a scholar at Gansu University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that the dislocation of the management mode of adult higher education in China leads to the existence of adult higher education in name only, which is mainly reflected in the contradiction between teaching methods and the characteristics of adult learning motivation, and the disconnection between training methods and the needs of adult students. She pointed out that due to the particularity of adult students' learning, they can't adapt to the full-time teaching method of teachers, but what they need are the conditions and opportunities for autonomous learning. Teachers blindly instill in the classroom, which will make students have no chance to express and interact. This teaching mode, which is based on teachers' "teaching", has a single teaching method and focuses on imparting knowledge, which cannot arouse the enthusiasm of adult students and improve their practice and innovation ability. For adult students, the same old teaching methods will also make them feel boring, which will lead to a very high absenteeism rate of adult students. On the one hand, it affects students' normal study; On the other hand, it also reduces the enthusiasm of teachers to impart knowledge. This educational model restricts the development of adult education, and makes adult education evolve into a purely academic compensatory education, rather than a knowledge compensation and quality compensatory education. Not only that, he also believes that China's current adult higher education is largely copying the training model of ordinary colleges and universities, and adult higher education can be said to be a "replica" of ordinary higher education to a certain extent. This is mainly manifested in closure, identity and inefficiency. Colleges and universities take improving students' theoretical level and research ability as the basic orientation, while adult students need to improve their practical ability and professional level. The training mode of general higher education focuses on discipline construction, but its role in career orientation is relatively weak. The syllabus and teaching plan formulated by adult colleges and universities in accordance with the traditional training methods of ordinary colleges and universities emphasize the mastery of book knowledge, pay attention to theoretical and academic research, and lack the cultivation of operational ability. This leads to a serious disconnect between its training methods and the actual needs of the profession, making it difficult for adult higher education to guide students in their work and business, which is also an important reason why adult students attach importance to diplomas and neglect their studies.
Zhang Kefen, a scholar of the Party School of Qingdao Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, believes that the management system formed under the planned economy system still occupies a certain position after studying the management system of adult higher education in China. She pointed out that the school-running system of adult higher education, which has been formed for a long time under the planned economy since the founding of New China for several decades, has shown the characteristics of not adapting to the development of market economy in many aspects, such as educational concept and school-running mode. As an educational institution such as adult education, cadre schools and training centers, most of its predecessors belong to administrative organs. After independence, they still inevitably have the management mode of administrative organs. Although the department is small and comprehensive, it is overstaffed, and there are too many non-teaching personnel such as logistics of the party, government and army, which leads to the bad result of attaching importance to management and neglecting teaching, affecting the social reputation of adult higher education and making its development lag behind.
Cai Liping scholars from the School of Continuing Education of Fuzhou University believe that the main reason why the teaching quality of adult higher education in China cannot be guaranteed is the lack of strict supervision mechanism. China does not have a complete adult higher education law, and the existing rules and regulations are not perfect. So far, a scientific and authoritative evaluation mechanism of adult higher education has not been established, and the evaluation of the guiding ideology, teaching process management, education investment guarantee and teaching quality of adult higher education has not reached a regular and standardized level; Adult higher education lacks social supervision, administrative supervision and legal supervision. As a result, some phenomena of running schools in disorder and issuing diplomas in disorder can not be dealt with and solved in time; Education and teaching have not yet formed a competitive elimination mechanism; The social pressure to ensure the quality of running a school has not yet formed in the school-running units, and even some practices that ignore the quality of teaching have an opportunity. These phenomena encourage opportunistic and shoddy behavior in adult higher education, and dampen the enthusiasm of some school-running units in pursuing teaching quality.
To sum up, the management system of adult higher education in China is not suitable for the study of adult students. The current management system of adult higher education is more a "copy" of the management system of ordinary higher education, and it is basically limited to the teaching of theoretical knowledge, ignoring the understanding of the particularity of student groups, and trying to treat adult students and ordinary high school students in the same category. At the same time, due to the lack of external supervision mechanism, it is easier for the management system of adult higher education to continue the original teaching and management model, and it is unwilling to innovate and save costs in new fields in order to maximize teaching profits. This situation further hinders the reform of the management system of adult higher education.
4. Research on the development countermeasures of adult higher education
In view of many disadvantages in the development of adult higher education, relevant scholars have also put forward different countermeasures.
Two scholars, Mo and Liu Chunjiang, from the Adult Education College of Dongguan University of Technology, believe that the current situation of adult education, mainly academic education, should be changed to provide students with opportunities for further training. At present, the purpose of many people attending adult higher education is actually to obtain academic qualifications, so as to obtain capital in recruitment, wages and benefits, job promotion and so on. This utilitarian purpose of learning is naturally difficult to bring good learning results, and finally only a paper diploma is obtained, which violates the original intention of the development of adult higher education. Therefore, only by providing students with further training opportunities so that they can apply what they have learned can their enthusiasm be effectively improved.
Wu Zhenqiu, a scholar from the Adult Education College of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, put forward five different strategic countermeasures for those institutions that hold adult higher education, namely, promoting discipline integration, improving the level of discipline construction, vigorously cultivating teaching and research backbones, establishing a high-quality teaching staff, comprehensively implementing quality education, deepening teaching reform, vigorously cultivating generalists and applied talents, strengthening international and domestic academic exchanges, implementing open education, gradually increasing investment, and striving to improve the level of running schools.
Xing Siping and Zhai Xiaomei, two scholars from Vocational and Adult Education College of Qufu Normal University, put forward four suggestions on the countermeasures of the management system: reasonably dividing the management authority of the central and local administrative institutions of adult higher education, increasing the input and support of adult higher education, earnestly carrying out the supervision and evaluation of the teaching management of adult higher education, and improving the teaching quality of adult higher education.
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