Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults » (3rd Edition)

Raymond J. Wlodkowski is professor emeritus at Regis University, Denver, and the founding executive director of the commission for Accelerated Programs. A licensed psychologist and author of numerous books, he lives in Seattle and conducts seminars for colleges and organizations throughout North America.

In the more than two decades since its original publication, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn has become the classic reference for understanding adult motivation in educational and training settings. It has remained a work of enduring value to both practitioners and students of adult learning.

New to this edition is the blending of a neuro-scientific understanding of motivation and learning with an instructional approach responsive to linguistically and culturally different adult learners. Based on the most current educational and biological research, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn addresses issues that focus on deepening learner motivation and helping adults to want to learn. In the book, Raymond J. Wlodkowski offers a clear framework and sixty practical, research-based strategies that are designed to elicit and encourage learner motivation. In addition, the book is filled with practical examples, guidelines for instructional planning, and cutting-edge ideas for assessment and transfer of learning.

The book explores the conditions that evoke student motivation and shows the ways in which teachers of adults can create learning environments that stimulate and nourish the desire to learn. Wlodkowski illuminates the characteristics of a motivating instructor—expertise, compassion, enthusiasm, cultural responsiveness, and clarity. He also analyzes four major motivating factors—inclusion, attitude, meaning, and competence—and provides suggestions on how to employ them during the instructional process. And to meet the demands of today's adult population, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn offers information on effectively teaching diverse students including low-income and English language learners.

Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn takes an interdisciplinary perspective, not only drawing on research from adult development and education but from fields that include cultural and ethnic studies, the biological and neuropsychological sciences, psychology, and literature. As in the previous edition, the ideas and methods advocated in this book are generally applicable to online learning as well as conventional classroom settings.

Booknews

A resource for teachers, trainers, and others who want to be a motivating influence on adults as learners. Wlodkowski (Regis U., Denver) points out that all motivation must come from within learners but explores factors that trigger it and ways teachers can stimulate and nourish it. The second edition is revised from the first, published over a decade since, with a motivational framework more responsive to the influence of race, ethnicity, gender, and class on adult learning. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)