The Cracker-Barrel Classroom: Rural Programming for Continuing Education

Adult learning and teaching are developed in this paper through the analogy of a railway system. The learning environment is the immovable parts of the railway system. The student is the train, the engineer, and the conductor. The teacher is the dispatcher. The switchmen are those significant others related to or involved in the students' activities as learners. Presented are the issues of student self-direction, faculty responsibility for the educational process, and the concomitant concerns about quality control.