PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
Doane College Lincoln campus
The Doane College degree programs for nontraditional students were developed for individuals who can benefit from a combination of college classroom learning experiences, the learning outcomes of previous formal education, and knowledge gained from work and life experiences. This style of higher education creates opportunities for people to make connections with life and work through a degree program and develops knowledge and skills for living and working with self-confidence.
Our programs are designed for a special student population, less defined by age than by a certain profile. Usually our students have been absent from involvement with formal education for some time, are employed full-time, and wish to be better educated to take advantage of promotion opportunities with a current employer or to prepare themselves for future career opportunities. They recognize the changing nature of the work environment and are concerned that their knowledge and skills may be inadequate to meet current and future demands. Many have experienced a life change, may be unsure of the future, and recognize the significant role education can play in making them more competent to manage their lives. In almost all cases, our nontraditional students are people whose full-time occupation is something other than that of student.
Our orientation to nontraditional students begins with generalizations about learners that are the heart of our traditional liberal arts and sciences college. 1) We believe in small classes, with a strong focus on student-teacher interaction. 2) We believe that people are intrinsically motivated to learn given the right conditions and encouragement, and our experience has taught us that great teachers are the key to learner motivation. 3) We believe that a college is a community, not just a place where people show up to take classes, and individuals learn best when they feel they are an important part of that community.
We are committed to the distinguished tradition of the liberal arts. We believe not only in the need for learning in classical areas of human experience, but also the need for an understanding of the coherence among them. While we build on the philosophical foundations of the small, liberal arts college, we understand that there are characteristics of nontraditional learners that are unique to that student population.
Our assumptions about nontraditional students are based on research that began with the founding in 1926 of the American Association for Adult Education and includes theories from both the fields of human development and education. In that research, we find agreement on three primary factors that differentiate nontraditional students from the more traditional population.
Mature adults have a deep psychological need to be self-directing. As human beings develop, they move along a path of increasing self-direction and have a need to take significant responsibility for managing their own lives. We seek, therefore, to create a climate of mutuality between faculty and students as partners in the activities of inquiry and discovery. This focus on collaboration is demonstrated both in our curriculum requirements and in the teaching strategies we employ.
Mature adults bring into any learning situation resources from their previous experience and education that are a rich resource for their own learning and the learning of others. They enter an educational experience with a different background of experience than that of traditional students, measured both in volume and kind. We honor the value of that experience and build on it as a resource for our program and curriculum development and the innovation of more effective teaching strategies.
Adult learners are performance-centered, problem-centered, and life-centered in their orientation to learning. They enter education with a different time perspective from that of adolescents, which in turn produces a difference in the way they view learning. To mature adults, education is a process of improving their ability to cope with the life problems, situations, and opportunities they face now.
The nontraditional student's different orientation requires a corresponding orientation to learning on the part of educators of adults. We are, therefore, primarily attuned to the existential concerns of the students we serve and work to develop learning experiences that facilitate knowledge and skills for application to those concerns.
With ongoing study of the research in adult education and our own experience, we constantly work to deliver education in ways most appropriate for the adult learner. We seek to be a part of the development of educated and competent people, with the highest competence being that of continuous, self-directed, lifelong learning.