That's my rhyming way of describing how adult learning should happen in lab animal training. Many of us teach (or train) our colleagues the way we were taught as kids in the school classroom. This child-oriented teaching, or pedagogy, was content-centered rather than learner-centered. Our teachers needed to drill materials into our heads to prepare us for the eventual test. But adults are more interested in learning what they need to know and how it applies to them. This approach to education is called andragogy for adult learning, a term that was first used in the early 1800s but didn't become prominent until the middle of the 20th century, when Dr. Malcolm Knowles began his intense studies on this very important subject.

Knowles was the son of a veterinarian and pursued a career in education. He earned his PhD in 1959 at the age of 46—thus, he himself was an adult learner. Studying under the renowned psychologist Dr. Carl Rogers no doubt also shaped his thinking on how adults learn to prepare for tests. In our field, these might include examinations leading to certification from the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, the Diplomate title from the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine or the credential of certified professional IACUC administrator. Knowles published more than 230 articles and 18 books on the subject of andragogy and as a result is known as the 'father of adult learning.'

In his work The Adult Learner, The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development (Routledge, New York, 2012), Knowles described six principles of adult learning: (i) need to know: adults want to understand the reason for learning something; (ii) foundation: experience, including making mistakes, provides the basis for continued learning activities; (iii) self-concept: adults need to be responsible for their decisions on education, including planning and evaluating their instruction; (iv) readiness: adults are most interested in learning that which has immediate relevance to their work or personal lives; (v) orientation: adult learning tends to be aimed at the problem of immediate concern; (vi) motivation: adults respond better to internal versus external motivators.

Let's examine the notions of teaching and instructing versus training. Some say that teaching is broader in focus than training and is generally theoretically based, whereas training has a more specific focus and tends to favor practical application of knowledge. To apply some of Knowles' terms, as lab animal trainers, we often have purpose (motivation) in our task when we gather technicians or investigators (who have a need to know) to instruct them. Instruction, derived from the Latin word instruere, means 'to build in,' and indeed our adult students have a foundation of knowledge when they come to a training session. In sum, we are engaged in training to address issues (is it fair to say scientific problems?) within laboratory animal science.

Although this may seem intuitive—of course we want to learn what is most important to us!—as with many things in science, it needed to be academically studied and stated. The process by which adults learn has implications for human resources, teaching teachers, learning the fun stuff on our days off, and more. Does it not make you wonder how previous generations taught children and adults? What methods were used when our familiar father of lab animal science, Dr. Nathan Brewer, was in school? Was the anatomy of the guinea pig dictated to him? Or was his learning about veterinary medicine facilitated by his instructors, putting him as the learner, rather than the content itself, at the center of instruction?

Thence derives the title of this month's column. Trainers in lab animal research should facilitate the learning of their students, not dictate bullet-point by bullet-point the words of a slide presentation. Consider, as described in previous Fruits of Education columns, the readiness and motivation of those sitting in a classroom or standing around a surgical suite. Facilitate that which they need and want to learn in order to get back to work and apply their newly gained knowledge. Trainers must also facilitate the obligations of the institution, welfare concerns, regulatory mandates, etc. Recognizing all of these factors, by facilitating both the content and learner, will bring success in lab animal instruction. The concepts of adult learning—andragogy—will benefit both the humans and the animals that are involved in our very important work of biomedical research.