A multitude of new and adapted problem-based pedagogical styles are being discussed within higher education to promote student learning through meaningful interactions and experiences with facilitators/teachers. Indeed, adult learning literature recommends that instructors accommodate a self-guided learning style, with greater inclusion of personally meaningful (i.e., focusing on an analysis of experience), problem-focused approaches designed to create autonomous and engaged learners (e.g., Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). With the popularization of these programs, facilitators should take the initiative to engage in ongoing learning to cultivate their competencies related to enabling problem-based learning. We propose to examine learners’ needs and preferences in their facilitator’s style by exploring instructional contexts in adult sport. In these sport contexts, coaches can be conceived both as leaders tasked with facilitating athlete learning and as learners themselves, acquiring competencies through their lived experiences with athletes (Callary, Werthner, & Trudel, 2012). These experiences have the potential of generating ideas for ongoing learning for facilitators in higher education, especially because they are often based on passion, engagement, and problem-solving in the process of coaching small groups (Callary et al., 2012). In our research exploring the lived experiences of adult swimmers with their coaches, we found that adult athletes want their coaches to foster accountability and integrity to learning; they want leaders who show competence, credibility, and passion, who are organized and flexible, and who know when, how, and to whom to give feedback. Athletes further discussed how their coach indirectly affected their personal development by creating motivating environments in which they wanted to continue to participate. Overall, our research underscores the diverse efforts of coaches to learn how to best work with their adult students’ needs and wants.
In this round table, we will share findings from our research in order to generate discussion for ongoing learning of facilitators in higher education who wish to develop competencies important to facilitating adult learners’ motivation and engagement in problem-based pedagogical experiences. We hope you will join us as we merge poignant pedagogical experiences from the sport context with perspectives on higher education, in an effort to explore how these experiences can aid facilitators’ ongoing learning.