Describe and evaluate its role in understanding the psychology of adult learning of Personality - Essay Example

a greater understanding of the psychology of learning and development, as applied to educational contexts. Adult education promotes the development of adults in a variety of domains--cognitive and intellectual, social and emotional. Psychology has an important role in the field of adult education. The word Psychology originated from the two Greek words ‘psyche’ and ‘logos’ which means soul and science respectively. Psychology was the study of soul earlier. Then it was modified as study of mind and now it is the study of behavioral changes.

According to the modern psychologists, behavior includes all those activities of an individual which can be observed by any person with or without the aid of an instrument. Psychology has several branches of study. General psychology, abnormal psychology, Industrial psychology, Development psychology, Child psychology, Adult psychology, Clinical psychology, Educational psychology are some of them. It is interesting to note that adult educators have, traditionally, been interested in understanding the different “styles” or modes of learning that adults demonstrate much more so than they have been in understanding or assessing cognitive and intellectual abilities.

This has taken place despite the fact that the psychological research fails to find compelling evidence for quantitative as opposed to qualitative differences in these learning styles. There is no evidence to support some adult educators’ claims that instruction which is designed to capitalize upon an individual’s preferred manner of learning. Still, as adult educators have often pointed out, psychologists have generally been more concerned with understanding the “average” or “typical” performance of a group of learners rather than focusing on the phenomenological experience of the individual learner.

And, historically, psychologists have