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AN DRAG OGY A N D M ED I C I N E NOW Thor Nissen Doctor, graduate in Clinical Pharmacology and MBA in Quality Management. He has managed to collaborate for the development of medicines in world leading pharmaceutical companies both in medical matters and in clinical research in new drugs, regulation, marketing and sales departments.
Humankind stands for its unique way of accumulating and generating knowledge and how this knowledge is transmitted through generations. As other animals do, humans learn by watching and by their own experience. But it is clear that teaching, an ever-evolving discipline, is a specialty on its own. Pedagogy is generally the term to refer to the method and practice of teaching. Yet, back in 1833, the term andragogy was introduced by the German teacher Alexander Kapp to separately deal with adult education. Since then, several andragogists have contributed to this discipline, where Malcolm Knowles, more than a century after Alexander Kapp’s contribution, was acknowledged as the father of andragogy in the United States . The Hippocratic Oath is perhaps the most widely known text upholding some
professional ethical standards oriented to the teaching, learning, and practice of medicine. It also binds the student to his teacher and the greater community of physicians, marking the early stages of medical training . So all physicians, as professionals, are adults trained by other adults. And, one way or another, they will further teach the science and practice of medicine to other adult colleagues or colleagues to be. Adults are in a situation of freedom in their learning processes and they surely learn in a different way than children do. Andragogy is a term commonly used to address these differences, although it is not the only one. As with other disciplines, different orientations may be found. Some authors, especially European, make more emphasis on the social role. Others, like Malcolm Knowles representing the American approach, focus on individual development, and have a more practical orientation . Among the principles of adult learning, self-direction could be the most distinctive one. It encompasses other principles like internal motivation, experience, usefulness, immediate applicability, and problemcentricity. According to Knowles, selfdirected learning describes a process in which the initiative is held by individuals on what, when, and how, they need to know including the way learning outcomes should be evaluated .
RESEARCH
