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Effect of Adult Education on Adults’ Ability to Identify Assumptions in Everyday Arguments

Abstract

Adult education plays an important role in developing adults’ ability to examine information, reasoning, and arguments encountered in everyday life. Everyday arguments often contain assumptions that are not directly stated but are used to support conclusions, influence opinions, or justify particular positions. When adults are unable to recognize such assumptions, they may accept arguments without adequately examining the ideas on which the arguments are based. This study therefore seeks to examine the effect of adult education on adults’ ability to identify assumptions in everyday arguments. Adult education can provide learners with practical knowledge and skills for examining how arguments are constructed. Learning activities may involve identifying claims and conclusions, examining supporting reasons, recognizing unstated ideas, comparing statements, and discussing how assumptions influence the strength of an argument. Through guided reasoning exercises, discussions, and examples drawn from everyday communication, adults can develop greater awareness of the underlying ideas contained in different arguments. Adults’ ability to identify assumptions refers to their capacity to recognize unstated beliefs, conditions, or ideas that an argument depends upon for its conclusion to make sense. This ability requires adults to examine the relationship between reasons and conclusions and consider what must be accepted for the argument to be meaningful. Adult education is expected to improve this ability by strengthening critical thinking, logical reasoning, analytical reading, and careful examination of everyday claims. The study will adopt a suitable quantitative research design. The population will comprise selected adult learners, from whom a representative sample will be drawn. Data will be collected using a structured questionnaire and an argument-analysis assessment containing everyday arguments for participants to examine and identify their underlying assumptions. The data obtained will be analysed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistical techniques to determine the effect of adult education on adults’ ability to identify assumptions. The study is expected to establish that adults exposed to relevant adult education demonstrate improved ability to identify assumptions contained in everyday arguments compared with those with limited exposure to such education. Participants are also expected to demonstrate greater ability to examine relationships between reasons and conclusions, recognize unstated ideas, and assess arguments more carefully. These improvements may support more thoughtful reasoning when adults encounter arguments in everyday communication. The findings are expected to have implications for adult education by emphasizing the importance of practical reasoning and critical-thinking activities in adult learning programmes. Educators can use everyday conversations, advertisements, workplace discussions, public statements, and short arguments as learning materials for identifying assumptions. The study will be beneficial to adult learners, educators, community facilitators, workplace learners, and individuals who need to evaluate arguments before accepting their conclusions. The study recommends that adult education programmes should incorporate practical exercises that enable adults to identify assumptions within realistic everyday arguments. Educators should encourage learners to separate stated reasons from unstated ideas and examine how these assumptions support particular conclusions. It is concluded that adult education can improve adults’ ability to identify assumptions in everyday arguments and contribute to stronger critical reasoning and more careful evaluation of everyday claims.

Keywords: Adult education, assumptions, everyday arguments, critical thinking, logical reasoning, argument analysis, adult learners, analytical skills, reasoning skills, critical reading, claim evaluation, conclusion analysis, information evaluation, reflective thinking, argument evaluation