Understanding Career Context as a Key to Best Serving Adult Students

Abstract

Professional development plays a key role in motivating many adult learners. Understanding these students’ career contexts allows for more effective program development and better student services. This article presents five broad categories of career context and provides a brief framework which educators can use to more effectively anticipate the needs of different types of adult learners. The categories presented include those in nonprofessional positions, career changers, displaced workers, those in fear of displacement, and those who are upwardly mobile within stable organizations. Each of these groups has different sets of needs that should be considered by practitioners. The categories presented are intended to help educators better understand each individual, and do not purport to create fixed, inflexible, or compressive groupings of adult learners. Understandings of career context should be integrated with other aspects of adult learner theory to optimize praxis. The observations and reflections in this article are informed by work in adult career advising at a major metropolitan university.