Marienau, Catherine

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DePaul University Via Sapientiae SCPS Competency-based Education Publications and Presentations DePaul University School of Continuing and Professional Studies 12-2014 Why the Adult Brain Likes PLA Catherine Marienau DePaul University, cmariena@depaul.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/snl-cbe  Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Marienau, Catherine. (December 2014). Why the adult brain likes PLA. CAEL Forum and News, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.cael.org/pdfs/2014_forum_and_news-marienau This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DePaul University School of Continuing and Professional Studies at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in SCPS Competency-based Education Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact digitalservices@depaul.edu. cael 2014 forum and NewsThroughout 2014, CAEL’s 40th Anniversary year, the Forum and News will be publishing regular articles from CAEL’s friends and partners in serving adult learners.This article is from Catherine Marienau, professor and faculty mentor at DePaul University School for New Learning, coordinator of the Master of Arts in Educating Adults program at the School for New Learning, and leadership team member of the Center to Advance Education for Adults (CAEA). Dr. Marienau has been an active member of CAEL since the early 1970s and is the co-author of Assessing Learning, 2nd ed. She frequently works with CAEL as the co-designer of PLA online certification and as a presenter for CAEL webinars and national conferences on PLA and competency-based learning.We hear a lot these days about the benefits of prior learning assessment (PLA). Reinforced by CAEL’s research , we know that adult learners who take advantage of PLA are more likely to persist to graduation and get there faster, and the college credits earned through PLA can also save adults more than spare change—for some, thousands of dollars (Klein-Collins, 2010). An educational inno-vation that saves time and money a!racts positive press and the kind of headlines our institutions like to see. We delight that PLA can have such beneficial outcomes for adult learners; no argu-ment here. Even so, let’s not let these extrinsic benefits overshadow the potential of what can happen within each person, in terms of learning, growth, and change. I would like to see learning get more headlines and show up more substantively in our rhetoric and practice—not just the learning that comes before PLA, but the learning that also derives from the PLA experience itself. We are all familiar with this tag line: “Credit is granted not for experience but for the learning derived and demonstrated from experience.” Based on my experience in the PLA world for more than 40 years—as a teacher, men-tor, and assessor in programs that have benefi!ed from CAEL’s pioneering advocacy of PLA—I think we need to do more to showcase the fact that stu-dents o"en gain new learning from the process of PLA. I, therefore, propose an additional tag line—something like: “The experience, not the learning, is what’s prior in PLA. PLA leads to new learning.” Which brings me to the title of this piece: Why the Adult Brain Likes PLA. Or, more explicitly: How PLA works with an adult learner’s brain, especially when it involves constructive, intentional guid-ance from an experienced educator or facilitator. Imagine our stored experiences as an archeo-logical site. Through painstaking excavations, archeologists find that radically different civiliza-tions have lived here at different times. Before we can hope to understand those different civi-lizations, we must examine clues, such as bone WHY THE ADULT BRAIN LIKES P"By Catherine Marienau, DePaul University School for New Learning© CAEL Forum & News, 2014 - Why the Adult Brain Likes PLA2fragments, po!ery shards, and cave drawings—all of which can then be pieced together using sub-sequent knowledge gained from various other digs, as well as the research of other archeolo-gists, to create a meaningful interpretation of past events. Consider what we educators ask adult learners to do when excavating learning from their deeply layered experience sites. Typically, we would instruct adult learners to, at minimum:?? dig around in their various sites of experience;?? identify and select clues that stand out for them (what they notice, what gets their a!ention);?? discern some themes or pa!erns among the clues;?? describe what they have learned about the earlier experiences now that they have constructed and examined these themes or pa!erns; and?? show evidence of this learning (usually some form of wri!en work that clearly articulates the process of discovery, connection, and interpretation).Many PLA programs also ask the learner to integrate relevant theories, concepts, or models; connect the learning to a specific statement of competence (competence-based) or outcomes of a given course (course-match); and/or antici-pate how to apply this learning to future situa-tions. Clearly, the notion that adults are “ge!ing credit for life and work experience” is a gross oversimplification—and couldn’t be further from the truth of good practice. In any good PLA program, students are required to identify what they have learned through an intense process of analysis, reflection, and meaning-making (Wilbur, Marienau, & Fiddler, 2008).To examine learning from experience from a more concrete (rather than analogical) brain perspective, let’s consider how learning is ulti-mately grounded in experience. To make sense of any experience (current or prior), the brain must associate any new stimuli with what it has already stored. But this storage (memory) is not a well-ordered filing cabinet of our experiences. Rather, memory is “a process that involves association and reconstruction of bits of electrochemical impulses encoded in myriad neural networks” (Taylor, Marienau, & Lamoreaux, 2015, np). The PLA process asks adult learners to sort through a web of such “memory traces,” find connections between them, and then figure out what to make of what has surfaced. Here’s the most telling point: brain scientists believe that every memory is reconstructed every time it is reactivated; the process of revisiting earlier experiences estab-lishes new connections and interpretations. To make the most of this process of new learn-ing requires intention and reflection. Educators can help with intention by providing frameworks that guide the process of potential meaning an adult learner might actualize while “reconstruct-ing” experience. Given that adults’ experiences prior to school typically aren’t designed with specific learning outcomes in mind, or according to the rules of disciplines or fields—rather, experi-ences occur from encounters with messy life situ-ations—such frameworks can offer helpful direc-tion to the learner in terms of what to reflect on when searching for college-level outcomes. To reiterate, one does not learn from experience per se; one learns from reflecting on experience. What was tacit becomes explicit:Reflection is therefore essential to meaning-making. It takes the elements of an event, the ways in which the brain has categorized and associated those experiences with what it already feels and knows, and constructs a new understanding, perhaps leading to a new way of seeing or knowing. Thus, reflection is key to the brain’s capacity to learn—building or revis-ing what was known while creating or elabo-rating new knowledge (Taylor, et al, 2015, np). Engaging in reflection is one aspect of how the brain works with regard to adults’ learning in the context of PLA. I share CAEL’s stance that opti-mal learning can occur through the PLA process. Knowing more explicitly how the brain actually learns helps us appreciate and optimize the new learning that gets affirmed, extended, and/or expanded in the PLA process through reflection on experience.© CAEL Forum & News, 2014 - Why the Adult Brain Likes PLA3ReferencesKlein-Collins, R. (2010). Fueling the race to post-secondary success: A 48-institution study of PLA adult learning standards and outcomes. Chicago: CAEL.Taylor, K., Marienau, C., & Lamoreaux, A. (2015, forthcoming). Learning to engage the adult brain. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Wilbur, G., Marienau, C., & Fiddler, M. (2012). Authenticity for assurance and accountability: Reconnecting stan-dards and qualities for PLA competence and course-based frameworks. PLA Inside Out, 1(2), 1–10.

Why the Adult Brain Likes PLA

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