Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Geragogy

• Health education is designed to be age-specific.
• An individual's developmental stage significantly influences their ability to learn.
• Pedagogy, andragogy, and gerogogy are three different learning orientations.
• Health-related educational needs of learners require a developmental approach.
• Lifespan development constitutes age-related changes from birth through old age.
• A developmental task arises during a specific life period; unsuccessful achievement impairs the ability to perform tasks in subsequent periods.
• Chronological age is only a relative indicator of someone's physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development.
• Developmental stage is determined with psychologist confirmation that human growth/development is sequential, but not always age-related.

Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Geragogy

• Pedagogy is the art and science of helping children learn.
• Andragogy, coined by Knowles in 1990, describes the theory of adult learning as the art and science of helping adults learn.
• Geragogy is a term used to describe the teaching of older persons.

Andragogy

• Education within the andragogy framework is more learner-centered and less teacher-centered.
• Andragogy entails imparting knowledge on another, where the educator/adult learner dynamic is horizontal.
• The concept of andragogy has served as a useful framework in guiding instruction for patient teaching and continuing staff education.

Pedagogy

• Educational psychologists define specific behavioral patterns seen in particular phases of growth and development
• Learning throughout all of childhood is subject centered.

Geragogy

• Effective geragogy accommodates the normal physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes during the phase of growth and development.
• This allows nurses to alter how to approach both well and ill elderly individuals in terms of counseling, teaching, and establishing a therapeutic relationship.
• Disease intervention and prevention may not be recognized in older adults due to declining cognitive functioning, deficits in sensory and lower energy levels.

Developmental Stages

• Infancy: first 12 months of life
• Toddlerhood: 1-2 years of age
• Early Childhood: 3-5 years
• School Age: 6-11 years
• Adolescence: 12-19 years
• Young Adulthood: 20-40 years
• Middle Adulthood: 41-64 years
• Adulthood: 65 and above

Infancy and Toddlerhood

• Physical development is a main domain of infant and toddler development, relates to body through growth and skill, including the brain, muscles, and senses.
• Babies learn about the world by developing physical senses like sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste.
• Psychosocial development involves trust vs. mistrust, so children must work through their first dilemma of developing trust with the primary caretaker
• Toddlers must learn to balance feelings of love/hate, and how to cooperate and control willful desires, also known as Autonomy vs. shame
• Cognitive development occurs in the sensorimotor stage where learning is enhanced through sensory experiences and through environment manipulation.
• Toddlers have basic reasoning skills, understand object permanence, are beginning memory, and are developing an elementary concept of causality.

Teaching Strategies for Infancy and Toddlerhood

• Orientation to caregiver.
• Use repetition and limitation of information.
• Stimulate all the senses.
• Provide physical safety, emotional security.
• Allow play and manipulation of objects.

Early Childhood (3-5 years)

• Fine and gross motor skills become increasingly refined and coordinated so that they are able to carry out activities of daily living with greater independence.
• Children develop imaginary playmates and believe they can control events with their thoughts.
• Psychosocial development includes initiative versus guilt by placing the child in an environment where exploration, decision-making, and activity initiation is supported.
• Cognitive development is preoperational where the child continues to be egocentric and unaware of others' thoughts.
• Preschoolers are curious, think intuitively, and pose questions about almost anything.

Teaching Strategies for Early Childhood

• Provide a warm approach, build trust, and use information repetition.
• Allow manipulation of equipment.
• Briefly explain procedures.
• Provide a safe environment.
• Use positive reinforcement.
• Use play therapy with dolls and puppets to stimulate senses.

School Aged (6-11 years)

• Increased coordination of gross and fine motor abilities enables more controlled movements.
• Girls on average start experiencing prepubescent bodily changes and tend to exceed boys in physical maturation
• Industry versus inferiority in psychosocial development occurs; concept begins to establish as a member of social group larger than nuclear family.
• Family values are compared to those of the outside world.
• Concrete operations stage of cognitive development features logical thought processes and inductive/deductive reasoning.
• School-aged children are able to think more objectively, listen, and selectively question to find answers.

Teaching Strategies for School Aged Children

• Encourage independence and active participation.
• Use logical explanations.
• Establish role models.
• Utilize play therapy, group activities, diagrams, models, or pictures.

Adolescence (12-19 years)

• Physical development means growth spurts, rapid growth in height/weight, and other changes, like body odor, acne and body hair.
• Growth spurts usually happen earlier for females than males.
• The Psychosocial stage is identity versus role confusion.
• Adolescents compare their self-image with an ideal image.
• Adolescents find themselves struggling to establish their own identity, matching skills with career choices, and determining their "self."
• Cognitive development occurs with formal operations, where they are capable of abstract thought and complex logical reasoning.
• Adolescents can conceptualize and internalize ideas, understand health/illness concepts, understand the multiple causes of diseases, influence variables on health status, and health promotion/disease prevention.

Teaching Strategies for Adolescents

• Explore emotional and financial support.
• Determine goals and expectations.
• Assess stress level.
• Respect values and norms.
• Engage in teaching 1:1 without parents present.

Young Adulthood (20-40 years)

• Physical development is full height/weight, muscle, and a slight increase in body fat.
• Physiological functions peak by building muscle strength, reaction time, agility, bone density, and cardiac functioning.
• Psychosocially, intimacy versus isolation; individuals work to establish a trusting, satisfying, and permanent relationship with others.
• Young Adults strive to make a commitment in their personal, occupational, and social lives.
• Personal experiences are used to enhance or interfere with learning.
• Cognitive stage is fully developed but with maturation, knowledge is accumulated new from reservoir of formal and informal experiences.
• Young Adults remain in the formal operations stage, are able to analyze critically

Teaching Strategies for Young Adulthood

• Use problem-centered focus.
• Draw on meaningful experiences.
• Encourage active participation.
• Allow them to set their own pace.
• Organize materials.
• Recognize social roles.
• Apply new knowledge through role playing and hands-on practice.

Middle Adulthood (41-64 years)

• Physical changes involve decreased skin/muscle tone, slowed metabolism, weight gain, lessened endurance/energy, hormonal changes, and hearing/visual acuity decline.
• Psychosocial stage is generativity versus self-absorption and stagnation.
• Midlife marks a halfway-point realization, which may affect their level of achievement/success.
• Cognitive development is in the formal operations stage
• Life experiences and proven accomplishments give confidence to the teaching-learning situation.

Teaching Strategies for Middle Adulthood

• Maintain independence.
• Assess positive and negative past experiences.
• Assess potential stress caused by midlife issues.
• Provide information that coincides with life concerns and problems.

Adulthood (65 and above)

• Physical: Older persons often suffer from at least one chronic condition, and many have multiple conditions.
• Visual/auditory changes are the sensory perceptive abilities that relate most closely to learning capacity.
• Common hearing loss beginning in the late forties and fifties means is a diminished ability to discriminate high-pitched sounds.
• Psychosocial: Ego integrity versus despair is when elderly includes dealing with the reality of aging/acceptance of inevitability of death.
• Cognitive development means aging impacts the mind and body.
• Cognitive ability changes with age as permanent cellular alterations occur in the brain itself.

Teaching Strategies for Adulthood

• Involve principal caregiver.
• Encourage participation.
• Provide resources for support.
• Assess coping mechanism.
• Provide written instructions for reinforcement.
• Provide anticipatory problem-solving.