What is the difference between “educating people” and “helping people learn”? This classic book by Malcolm Knowles — the central figure in US adult education during the last century — explores the different sets of assumptions behind these approaches. Educators who lecture, for example, assume that their job is to transmit information to their students. Facilitators who help people learn, on the other hand, are more apt to run a workshop, using a problem-centered approach where students learn by working together to find an answer. Knowles’ research suggests that adults are self-motivated, independent learners who have a high capacity for solving problems.
Malcolm S. Knowles, Elwood F. Holton III, and Richard A. Swanson, The Adult Learner, Sixth Edition (Elsevier: Amsterdam, Boston, Heidelberg, etc., 2005), p. 252.