The study is grounded in Malcolm Knowles’ theory of andragogy, which rests on six core assumptions about adult learners: they need to know why learning matters, they see themselves as self-directed, they bring a rich reservoir of prior experience, they are ready to learn things relevant to their life roles, they prefer problem-centered rather than subject-centered instruction, and they are driven primarily by internal motivation rather than external rewards. Because IFAE was explicitly designed under Ethiopia’s fifth Education Sector Development Program to combine mother-tongue literacy and numeracy with practical competencies in agriculture, health, governance, and savings, it appeared to be an ideal test of whether these assumptions survive contact with real, resource-constrained classrooms.

The researchers, Birhanu Dinie Minale and Mulugeta Awayehu Gugssa, worked within a constructivist paradigm, treating knowledge as socially and contextually constructed. They selected two functional centers from the woreda’s 26 IFAE sites, which together serve roughly 7,671 adult learners, and recruited 19 participants: 16 learners, two facilitators, and one Adult and Non-Formal Education expert. Data came from semi-structured interviews, two focus group discussions, and six classroom observations of 60 to 90 minutes each, all structured around Knowles’ six assumptions. Trustworthiness was strengthened through methodological triangulation, prolonged engagement, member checking with key informants, and thick description, following Lincoln and Guba’s evaluative framework for qualitative research.

The most encouraging finding concerns contextualization and the immediate application of learning. In the rural center, instruction was systematically organized around the agricultural calendar: terracing was taught in January when slopes needed reinforcing, plowing techniques in March, land preparation for irrigation in September and October, and harvest collection in November and December. The rural facilitator even taught mathematical addition using the cross sign, a culturally familiar symbol drawn from learners’ daily environment, alongside local examples such as counting plowing sessions per season. In the urban center, the facilitator anchored arithmetic in Ethiopian birr, letting learners solve real monetary transactions. Learners in both settings confirmed that such locally grounded examples made abstract content easier to understand and apply.

The evidence of immediate application extended well beyond the classroom, producing what the researchers identify as a family literacy effect. Learners reported using their new skills to work with calculators, meters, phones, and balances, to write letters to organizations, and to review their children’s exercise books, discuss school attendance with them, and even communicate with school principals. This intergenerational spillover, the study notes, echoes Paulo Freire’s conception of literacy as a transformative process and aligns with UNESCO’s work on family and intergenerational learning. Facilitators deliberately reinforced the pattern by asking learners to practice each session’s content at home and to share their experiences at the next meeting, while the woreda education office monitored practicability through quarterly observations.

Motivation, too, emerged as an ecologically produced phenomenon shaped by community embeddedness. In the rural center, facilitators collaborated with agricultural and health development agents and used trusted community institutions, including churches, to orient and recruit learners, framing education as collective livelihood improvement. Both centers also distributed material incentives such as improved seedlings, energy-efficient stoves, and health extension inputs after end-of-year evaluations. Yet focus group discussions revealed that learners’ deepest motivations were intrinsic and dignity-centered: as one participant explained, learners could now write their names and sign documents, support their children’s education, and participate more fully in community life. Learners explicitly rejected credential-oriented reasons for attending, stating they participated not to obtain government jobs but to solve life-related problems.

The starkest failure of andragogical theory concerned the principle of self-concept. Despite the assumption that adults are self-directed individuals capable of shaping their own learning, the study found that learners were systematically excluded from needs assessment and program planning. Annual, monthly, and session plans were developed by facilitators and multi-sectoral development agents, then communicated to learners at the kebele chairman’s office only after decisions had been finalized. The urban facilitator even argued that identifying learners’ needs did not require their direct participation, a stance the authors connect to Stephen Brookfield’s critique of paternalism in adult education. Learners’ only genuine area of autonomy was logistical, choosing Sundays and public holidays for instruction, which the researchers describe as symbolic rather than substantive inclusion.

The two centers diverged sharply in how they used learners’ prior experiences, and here facilitator training proved decisive. The rural facilitator, who had received structured regional training covering adult learning principles and contextualization, explicitly positioned learners as experts, asking them to explain how many plowings were needed before sowing and building lessons on their knowledge of compost preparation, animal fattening, and improved planting techniques. The urban facilitator, lacking formal preparation in adult learning, exercised tight instructional control, telling learners to listen, avoid copying answers, and compete for the best-marked exercise book. Intriguingly, urban learners still reported rich peer-to-peer exchanges about sewing, saving money, and letter writing, suggesting that experiential sharing among adults persists even when facilitation does not scaffold it.

Assessment practices reflected a similar tension between authenticity and standardization. Both centers moved beyond written testing toward performance-based evaluation tied to real livelihood outcomes, grading learners for implementing horticulture projects, constructing terraces, fattening animals, or applying health extension packages. The rural center’s community-embedded, multi-actor evaluation structure, however, lacked standardized rubrics, introducing subjectivity into judgments of competence, while the urban center’s more standardized hybrid of written examinations and practical evaluations risked reducing assessment to compliance-driven performance indicators. The authors argue that effective assessment in IFAE requires a balanced framework combining authentic, competency-based evaluation with clear rubrics, shared standards, and structured formative feedback to ensure both validity and reliability across settings.

The study’s conclusion is ultimately a policy prescription as much as an empirical finding: andragogical principles are selectively operationalized in IFAE contexts, mediated by institutional structures and facilitator preparation rather than by socio-geographic location alone. The researchers recommend institutionalizing participatory needs assessment as a mandatory and monitored component of program design, strengthening andragogically grounded professional development so that facilitation becomes theory-informed rather than merely routinized, embedding seasonal curriculum mapping into program frameworks, and reactivating the many non-functional IFAE centers in the woreda. They caution that their two-center design limits generalizability and call for longitudinal and multi-regional studies to determine whether the urban-rural divergence they observed reflects a broader systemic pattern in Ethiopian adult education. For a program serving thousands of adults striving for literacy, dignity, and better livelihoods, the message is clear: training the teacher may matter more than the setting of the school.

Subject of Research: Application of andragogical principles in Ethiopia's Integrated Functional Adult Education program

Article Title: Applications of andragogical principles in Ethiopia’s Integrated Functional Adult Education (IFAE) program

Article References: Minale, B. D., & Gugssa, M. A. (2026). Applications of andragogical principles in Ethiopia’s Integrated Functional Adult Education (IFAE) program. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 998. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02057-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02057-w

Keywords: andragogy, adult education, Ethiopia, IFAE, facilitator training, Knowles, literacy, experiential learning, rural development, educational policy, learner participation, Amhara