Adulthood as an Andragogical Category

Abstract

Semyon Vershlovsky, Ped.D., Professor in the Department of Pedagogy and Andragogy, St. Petersburg Academy for Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: sg2701@mail.ru
Address: 11–13 Lomonosova St., Saint Petersburg, 191002, Russian Federation.

The interdisciplinary notion of “adulthood”, which forms the andragogical problem field, is studied in the context of social personality development. Three components of the “adulthood” notion have been determined: psychological maturity (the whole of psychological development indicators including independence in predicting one’s own behavior and evaluating one’s own actions, as well as ability to mobilize oneself to implement one’s own decisions), social maturity (ability to make vital decisions independently based on responsibility, tolerance, understanding of life, and prosocial behavior), orientation towards humanist values (a component enhancing social and personal importance of an individual).

The study describes the major periods of adult life and crises arising on the way. Through the example of pedagogy, various types of professional development crisis have been analyzed, such as occupational adaptation crisis, routine crisis, and long experience crisis. Recommendations have been given on providing andragogical support to teachers and creating conditions for them to overcome professional crises at personality level. It has been demonstrated that one of the most important methods to overcome crises successfully and to preserve psychological health and performance in the workplace is to engage adults into the system of continuous postgraduate education, both formal andinformal, which would present prospects for their professional growth, expand the scope of their professional communication, and create opportunities to realize their non-professional interests.

With advanced trainings and informal education, teachers will be able to resist the consistent trend of “ageing” and to avoid developing stereotyped attitudes towards teaching.