The impact of gender and degree on the adult educator's theoretical identity

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight a) the adult educator's necessity to take into account the broader philosophical framework that governs his thoughts and practices in the teaching process, b) the prevailing educational philosophy or philosophies in active adult educators and c) the gender's and degree's impact on educator's theoretical identity. The research tool is the questionnaire by Lorraine Zinn, "Philosophy of Adult Education" (PAEI) (Zinn, 1983). Both the PAEI and a researcher- created demographic sheet were used to describe and analyze the adult educational philosophies of active adult educators in Greece (N=399) which guide them and the factors which have impact on these "philosophies". Frequencies, means and correlation analyses were used to describe the results. The research results were shown that the prevailing educational philosophies are the humanism and the progressivism and also that gender and the scientific training of each educator do not appear to influence her/him in terms of the educational philosophy she/he adopts.