From Pedagogy to Andragogy: How well are we preparing our Learners in Bangladesh?

Implementing of andragogic principles in tertiary level instruction in Bangladesh remains a problematic area as in most cases students seem unaware of the dynamism of adult learning. Students who join university continue to depend, to a large extent, on their teachers to explain everything. The researcher was able to make this observation from her own experience of tertiary level teaching in the country. This study was an exploratory one which sought to find out, from students who had recently earned their under graduate degrees, how different their tertiary level instructions were from their school instruction and whether their journey through their alma mater had prepared them to be self-directed and autonomous learners ready to take on the responsibility for their subsequent learning on themselves. The sample comprised of six students from the Department of English and a phenomenological approach was used with semi-structured interview as the data collection tool. Findings showed that students had some initial difficulty adapting to the andragogic approach to learning, but they found it a satisfying and motivating experience which had enabled them to understand the importance of self-determined and autonomous learning.