Adult Literacy Curriculum Development: Core Concepts
1. Functional context theory, which maintains that interest and motivation play a crucial role in a student's ability to read and comprehend a text, is one underlying assumption that has underlined my approach to adult literacy education. The premise of functional-context theory is that all else being equal (which it never is), students will be able to read more complex texts at a given reading level that are of interest to them than those that are not, and in any event, will be more engaged in the topic matter. In creating and organizing curriculum I have drawn on the life competency Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) and the National Institute for Literacy's Equipped for the Future (EFF) frameworks as well as my own experience with a wide span of many types of materials. All of this points toward a life application curricular focus, combined with a focused attention on developing basic reading and writing skills.
In creating instructional binders, my colleagues and I took special effort to assure that they contained a wide range of topics in the areas of work, family education (especially parenting), health, civic awareness, money management, and human-interest stories. Many of these materials have been field tested and shown to be of interest to students. Many of the content-based materials have basic skills activities built in to them as well. The content and organization of the binders can always be improved, and we still may find a text book that meets the wide ranging needs and interests of our students. In the meanwhile we draw on our locally-created binders which we will improve in succeeding years or will find a textbook instead, that better meets our needs.
2. My understanding was also premised on the balanced theory of reading. The general assumption of this theory is that adults develop reading and writing skills in multiple ways. These include automatic processing skills such as the mastery of the sight sound connection (phonemic awareness) and sight word memorization, and more holistic approaches like assisted reading, reading fluent texts, and context clues. Independent decoding fluency is most thoroughly mastered when students can decode isolated sounds, syllables, and words. Nonetheless, there is no universal process of getting there, and for effective reading development, focused attention on comprehension and critical thinking is also required even as students are developing phonemic awareness competency. Therefore, technical mastery of the basic skills of reading is essential, along with the ability to draw meaning from texts and utilizing such information for one's own purposes, which is the ultimate objective of adult literacy education. We have done our best to create a format where the relationship between basic skills development and content-based knowledge is as interactive and as mutually reinforcing as possible.
3. The third assumption that underlies my binder-based approach to curriculum development is the symbolic nature of instructional materials in their role of tapping into student and tutor imagination. What is important is not always what comes across at the surface, but what instructional materials come to mean to students and tutors who use them. The search, therefore, is for "the learning that matters," as interactively defined by students and tutors in their interface with the text and each other. While this objective might be viewed as overly subjective, its partial fulfillment is experienced whenever a "learning/teaching moment" is achieved. In whatever shape it takes it is the subtle learning connection that we experience when learning is most alive that drives what we are after in adult literacy education. Instructional materials play an important symbolic role in facilitating this learning. They are an indispensable resource toward the realization of this broader an end of learning and knowledge acquisition in areas that students deem important, including utilization in real-life settings and situations outside the program.
4. A final consideration: What proves effective for one tutor or one group of students may not necessarily have the same impact with another. In this respect, materials are what the educational philosopher John Dewey refers to as "middlemen" in the stimulation of important learning. In short, materials are a resource in which their effectiveness will depend on how they are used. The materials included in the binders were selected for their potential in stimulating highly significant learning, including knowledge transference to settings beyond the tutoring environment. Other materials might do as well, but on our judgment, the materials we were able to assemble for the binders was the best collection we could put together, at this time, based on our collective experience and available texts at our disposal. Of course, improvement is always possible and desirable. Regardless as to materials used, a stimulating learning experience taps into the imagination and motivational drives of students, pushing them on toward broader knowledge acquisition and learning. Stimulating such curiosity is what, we as adult literacy educators are seeking to accomplish, utilizing the best resources we have. Instructional materials are one important resource in such facilitation. In this respect they are means and not ends.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Core Instructional Premises of Adult Literacy Education
Core Instructional Premises of Adult Literacy Education
• Learning to read and using print based texts to gain relevant knowledge and information in one's life outside the program are interrelated. Basic skill development in reading and content-based mastery knowledge, mutually reinforce each other in our program. Drawing on the language of K-12 education, the object is to teach reading across the curriculum in order to help students apply what they are learning to as many contexts of their lives as possible. Because basic reading skill development is the common denominator, that is featured prominently in the binders at every level.
• Meeting the needs of a broad range of students and tutors requires a balanced approach between structure and flexibility in instructional materials and in approaches to teaching and learning. Within certain guidelines, each group of students and their tutor needs to work out that balance for themselves. A loose curriculum construction with adequate resources built in is preferable to a tight curriculum construction in order to accommodate the range of our student and tutor needs and interests.
• The core content areas-employment, family, health, money management, civics, human interest are the primary topic areas highlighted in adult literacy resource collections and curriculum guides. They are also the topics that students and instructors have gravitated toward over for many years in many divergent programmatic contexts. It is one of my underlying assumptions to adult literacy curriculum development and instructional design.
• Instructional materials are means and not an ends. Their value is in their capacity to stimulate important and interesting knowledge and learning. The mastery of the materials in the binders as an end is only important to the extent that any lesson focuses on specific content students actually need, such as accurately filling out a job application. Short of that the materials serve as a pathway in the stimulation of learning and knowledge creation rather than having intrinsic value in their own right. Neither binders nor a book are an ends in themselves, but a means toward the end of highly effective learning.
• Accordingly, the primary goal of the instructional program is not to cover the curriculum, but to stimulate effective learning. Oftentimes focusing on fewer materials with more depth is the most effective pathway to this goal. Success, in the final analysis, is determined by what and to what extent student growth in learning how to read, how to learn, and broad content mastery has increased over some decent interval of time, typically, over a year or more.
• Learning to read and using print based texts to gain relevant knowledge and information in one's life outside the program are interrelated. Basic skill development in reading and content-based mastery knowledge, mutually reinforce each other in our program. Drawing on the language of K-12 education, the object is to teach reading across the curriculum in order to help students apply what they are learning to as many contexts of their lives as possible. Because basic reading skill development is the common denominator, that is featured prominently in the binders at every level.
• Meeting the needs of a broad range of students and tutors requires a balanced approach between structure and flexibility in instructional materials and in approaches to teaching and learning. Within certain guidelines, each group of students and their tutor needs to work out that balance for themselves. A loose curriculum construction with adequate resources built in is preferable to a tight curriculum construction in order to accommodate the range of our student and tutor needs and interests.
• The core content areas-employment, family, health, money management, civics, human interest are the primary topic areas highlighted in adult literacy resource collections and curriculum guides. They are also the topics that students and instructors have gravitated toward over for many years in many divergent programmatic contexts. It is one of my underlying assumptions to adult literacy curriculum development and instructional design.
• Instructional materials are means and not an ends. Their value is in their capacity to stimulate important and interesting knowledge and learning. The mastery of the materials in the binders as an end is only important to the extent that any lesson focuses on specific content students actually need, such as accurately filling out a job application. Short of that the materials serve as a pathway in the stimulation of learning and knowledge creation rather than having intrinsic value in their own right. Neither binders nor a book are an ends in themselves, but a means toward the end of highly effective learning.
• Accordingly, the primary goal of the instructional program is not to cover the curriculum, but to stimulate effective learning. Oftentimes focusing on fewer materials with more depth is the most effective pathway to this goal. Success, in the final analysis, is determined by what and to what extent student growth in learning how to read, how to learn, and broad content mastery has increased over some decent interval of time, typically, over a year or more.
Integrated Reading Theory (2005)
Integrated Reading Theory and the Role of Successive Approximation
A discussion between colleagues initially on the AAACE-NLA and later on the NIFL-Content Standards list points to the pragmatic usefulness of the four-part approach to reading instruction of alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension as advocated in the Partnership for Reading’s Put Reading First report. (I make a distinction between literacy and reading wherein the latter is a subset of the former—discussion for another day). In combination these components draw upon and draw out a range of analytic and synthetic skill development leading toward the acquisition of knowledge. I take no issue with Tom Sticht’s technical critique of the “components” of the reading process. If I were doing a formal research paper I would look most discriminatingly on the findings of the report and would be seeking to discern the difference between what is important, what is unimportant, and what may be inaccurate about the report. Whatever flaws there may be in this four-point definition, it does offer the important advantage of significant practical utility in discussions with volunteer tutors in explaining the various components of the balanced reading approach.
I’ve discussed some of this in various listserv notes. What I want to emphasize here is the importance of both stimulus-response behaviorist and intuitive-inferential constructivist approaches in learning to read as a both/and rather than an either/or phenomenon. As in learning anything complex, mastering the basics in this case, of how print literacy works, is indispensable. In this respect, an emphasis on the regularities of written English is a proper focus of initial instruction, while introducing the exceptions later. Otherwise, phonics can only be taught episodically based on need as it arises.
This approach very well may be effective with many learners, which strong phonemic advocates sometimes deny even as many whole language advocates tend to downplay the viability of systematic phonics for some (more than a few, I would argue). Even still, a program that focused only on phonemic instruction, or one that required phonemic mastery before moving on to other aspects of the reading process (including the utilization of whole language and balanced methodologies), would, in my estimation, be extremely short sighted. Thus, for example, a dismissive approach to sight word instruction is unwarranted, even as I grant the obvious point that sight word instruction alone is unsatisfactory. Both phonemic awareness and sight word instruction build on stimulus-response behaviorist mechanisms that draw schematically on different aspects of print language. In schematic terms, both individual sounds (and syllables) and words represent isolated chunks of information that individuals can process whole, as both are separate and real parts of print-based language mastery.
Where I think some phonemic advocates get it wrong is in viewing the phonic unit (the letter or blend) as the underlying basis for mastering written language. No doubt the written code is based on the alphabetic principle. Still, what has to be considered is the highly symbolic nature of the alphabetic principle in which there is no relationship between the sound and the meaning of what is being signified. Stimulus-response exercises can, and often do help in developing some level of automaticity without which fluent reading cannot occur. Nonetheless, this type of approach is extremely limited in itself in the development of reading, which also requires much practice in fluency at the level of instruction that is appropriate for an individual’s current reading ability. In a comprehensive reading program sight words, which can easily be incorporated at least into short term memory also facilitate automaticity in which the unit of focus here is the whole word rather than the individual sounds (mastered through segmentation and bending). It would be folly, indeed, to eliminate this approach to reading instruction, which, as I gather, some phonemic purists are arguing because sight word instruction interferes with the more “fundamental” need of mastering the sight-sound code.
The alphabetic principle, notwithstanding, I don’t think this is the way the mind works, and in this respect, Frank Smith’s discussion of schema theory should be carefully considered. One needs to make a careful distinction between the alphabetic principle without which we cannot have a written language system as we know it, and the ways in which print-based literacy is mastered. Both phonemic-based and sight word instruction contribute toward automaticity, although in different ways. In a more indirect manner, so do various scaffolding approaches to fluency (such as assisted reading methodologies) and work on comprehension and meaning-making and the role of world knowledge in facilitating the reading of texts at higher levels than “typically” accessible on based on reading levels alone as an abstract principle.
Mastery, then, requires a combination of much explicit practice and skill development focus of a variety of types (stimulus-response behaviorism) and inference-making scaffolding support in all areas of language development. Effective reading pedagogy includes phonemic awareness, but extends to fluency, vocabulary development, comprehension, meaning making, and unconscious assimilation over time, in which, in the scheme of things, learning to read is as much caught as specifically taught. How these factors apply with specific individuals is variable, though one might reasonably conclude that a balanced, or integrated perspective attuned to specific learning styles and needs, is, practically speaking, the best that we can do.
While full mastery often remains elusive, successive approximation throughout the entire leaning-teaching process has much merit as a symbolic representation of “the best that we can do” at any given time in place. Keeping students as fully engaged as possible at the nexus of their learning curves through methodologies, approaches, materials, and support systems that draw out as much as reasonably can be accomplished is the nearer term objective in an educational climate in which at some significant way learning is always happening. Throughout the effort of learning and teaching certain principles and approaches may emerge as more salient than others. However, if we move too far beyond an experimental inquiry approach we may find ourselves within the realm of dogma rather than at the cutting edge of science and practice. Solid and durable knowledge about adult reading pedagogy remains somewhat rudimentary even as we know more than a little and can come to know a great deal more.
A discussion between colleagues initially on the AAACE-NLA and later on the NIFL-Content Standards list points to the pragmatic usefulness of the four-part approach to reading instruction of alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension as advocated in the Partnership for Reading’s Put Reading First report. (I make a distinction between literacy and reading wherein the latter is a subset of the former—discussion for another day). In combination these components draw upon and draw out a range of analytic and synthetic skill development leading toward the acquisition of knowledge. I take no issue with Tom Sticht’s technical critique of the “components” of the reading process. If I were doing a formal research paper I would look most discriminatingly on the findings of the report and would be seeking to discern the difference between what is important, what is unimportant, and what may be inaccurate about the report. Whatever flaws there may be in this four-point definition, it does offer the important advantage of significant practical utility in discussions with volunteer tutors in explaining the various components of the balanced reading approach.
I’ve discussed some of this in various listserv notes. What I want to emphasize here is the importance of both stimulus-response behaviorist and intuitive-inferential constructivist approaches in learning to read as a both/and rather than an either/or phenomenon. As in learning anything complex, mastering the basics in this case, of how print literacy works, is indispensable. In this respect, an emphasis on the regularities of written English is a proper focus of initial instruction, while introducing the exceptions later. Otherwise, phonics can only be taught episodically based on need as it arises.
This approach very well may be effective with many learners, which strong phonemic advocates sometimes deny even as many whole language advocates tend to downplay the viability of systematic phonics for some (more than a few, I would argue). Even still, a program that focused only on phonemic instruction, or one that required phonemic mastery before moving on to other aspects of the reading process (including the utilization of whole language and balanced methodologies), would, in my estimation, be extremely short sighted. Thus, for example, a dismissive approach to sight word instruction is unwarranted, even as I grant the obvious point that sight word instruction alone is unsatisfactory. Both phonemic awareness and sight word instruction build on stimulus-response behaviorist mechanisms that draw schematically on different aspects of print language. In schematic terms, both individual sounds (and syllables) and words represent isolated chunks of information that individuals can process whole, as both are separate and real parts of print-based language mastery.
Where I think some phonemic advocates get it wrong is in viewing the phonic unit (the letter or blend) as the underlying basis for mastering written language. No doubt the written code is based on the alphabetic principle. Still, what has to be considered is the highly symbolic nature of the alphabetic principle in which there is no relationship between the sound and the meaning of what is being signified. Stimulus-response exercises can, and often do help in developing some level of automaticity without which fluent reading cannot occur. Nonetheless, this type of approach is extremely limited in itself in the development of reading, which also requires much practice in fluency at the level of instruction that is appropriate for an individual’s current reading ability. In a comprehensive reading program sight words, which can easily be incorporated at least into short term memory also facilitate automaticity in which the unit of focus here is the whole word rather than the individual sounds (mastered through segmentation and bending). It would be folly, indeed, to eliminate this approach to reading instruction, which, as I gather, some phonemic purists are arguing because sight word instruction interferes with the more “fundamental” need of mastering the sight-sound code.
The alphabetic principle, notwithstanding, I don’t think this is the way the mind works, and in this respect, Frank Smith’s discussion of schema theory should be carefully considered. One needs to make a careful distinction between the alphabetic principle without which we cannot have a written language system as we know it, and the ways in which print-based literacy is mastered. Both phonemic-based and sight word instruction contribute toward automaticity, although in different ways. In a more indirect manner, so do various scaffolding approaches to fluency (such as assisted reading methodologies) and work on comprehension and meaning-making and the role of world knowledge in facilitating the reading of texts at higher levels than “typically” accessible on based on reading levels alone as an abstract principle.
Mastery, then, requires a combination of much explicit practice and skill development focus of a variety of types (stimulus-response behaviorism) and inference-making scaffolding support in all areas of language development. Effective reading pedagogy includes phonemic awareness, but extends to fluency, vocabulary development, comprehension, meaning making, and unconscious assimilation over time, in which, in the scheme of things, learning to read is as much caught as specifically taught. How these factors apply with specific individuals is variable, though one might reasonably conclude that a balanced, or integrated perspective attuned to specific learning styles and needs, is, practically speaking, the best that we can do.
While full mastery often remains elusive, successive approximation throughout the entire leaning-teaching process has much merit as a symbolic representation of “the best that we can do” at any given time in place. Keeping students as fully engaged as possible at the nexus of their learning curves through methodologies, approaches, materials, and support systems that draw out as much as reasonably can be accomplished is the nearer term objective in an educational climate in which at some significant way learning is always happening. Throughout the effort of learning and teaching certain principles and approaches may emerge as more salient than others. However, if we move too far beyond an experimental inquiry approach we may find ourselves within the realm of dogma rather than at the cutting edge of science and practice. Solid and durable knowledge about adult reading pedagogy remains somewhat rudimentary even as we know more than a little and can come to know a great deal more.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Adult Education Teaching Philosophy
I've been asked to submit my teaching philosphy for a position in an adult high school diploma. I wrote an earlier one for a community college position I applied for which I posted here in July, which can be accessed here http://thecomprehensiveadulteducator.blogspot.com/2010/07/teaching-philosophy.html.
I took that initial dscription as a basis for a re-write as follows, for the high school diploam application. This is all part of my broader effort of seeking, if not to re-invent, to refine myself once again at age 63 in determing the extent and/or manner to which I can remain connected in a professional manner to the field of adult education.
_____________________________
Teaching Philosophy
I’ve drawn deeply on the work of the pragmatic philosopher John Dewey, especially from his short powerful book, Experience and Education and his more detailed Democracy and Education, both to develop my philosophy of teaching and philosophy of education. What I have drawn mostly from Dewey is a passion of probing inquiry within the context of a collaborative class dynamic and a strength-based model of teaching drawing on the knowledge that students do possess as the avenue for tapping into their areas of curiosity. These serve as pivotal entry points in the stimulation of greater learning whether teaching in adult basic education classrooms, adult high school diploma programs, or online graduate courses in adult education.
I believe it is the primary responsibility of the instructor to provide an orienting structure to any given course or class session. As a consequence I place a great deal of thought and detail into structuring a syllabus which serves as a working plan which includes scope for revision and modification throughout the course. This is a fluid process that I shape and reshape through a continuous working through of the identification of key texts, websites, and the sequencing of assignments throughout the semester until a sense of completion emerges.
I also place a good deal of attention into the up-front planning for each of the class sessions especially in the first few weeks in thinking through the content and also the instructional strategies designed to open up the materials and to encourage optimal student engagement. In the process I am seeking to bring together the course content to be covered, a deepening of my understanding of the subject matter through intense engagement, the learning needs and interests of the students, and a provisional sense of what comprises an optimal teaching/learning situation within each class session. Once in class, my primary mode of instruction becomes broadly interactive in which I might open with a question or some basic information and engage in a dialogue with students in the probing of the significance of the topic under discussion. The responses may open up the class in directions not specifically identified beforehand, in which I seek to keep the broad direction of what I am attempting to accomplish in mind based on the syllabus and the specific lesson plan for the day. Through such a process students strengthen their internalization of the content which increases both their motivation and comprehension.
In working both with emerging student understanding as well as the logic of the content itself, I usually find a way to spiral back into the main direction of the lesson plan in illuminating the significance of the class objectives for the students in which I have also gained some knowledge and appreciation as well. Throughout all this I seek to work at the higher edge level of given student potential in the process of encouraging and inspiring students to stretch further in their knowledge and in their intuitive leaps. In working with the grain of each student’s developmental process as the best possible way of advancing educational progress I am drawing on Dewey’s core concept of “growth” or optimal potential that he so clearly articulated in his timely as ever test, Democracy and Education. This learning objective, in turn, requires close attunement to the importance of scaffolding in identifying that nexus between what students can accomplish independently and what they could come to achieve with critically supportive assistance at just the right time. Stated otherwise, each class session serves as an opportunity to hone my own skills in deepening my mastery of the art and science of teaching.
I took that initial dscription as a basis for a re-write as follows, for the high school diploam application. This is all part of my broader effort of seeking, if not to re-invent, to refine myself once again at age 63 in determing the extent and/or manner to which I can remain connected in a professional manner to the field of adult education.
_____________________________
Teaching Philosophy
I’ve drawn deeply on the work of the pragmatic philosopher John Dewey, especially from his short powerful book, Experience and Education and his more detailed Democracy and Education, both to develop my philosophy of teaching and philosophy of education. What I have drawn mostly from Dewey is a passion of probing inquiry within the context of a collaborative class dynamic and a strength-based model of teaching drawing on the knowledge that students do possess as the avenue for tapping into their areas of curiosity. These serve as pivotal entry points in the stimulation of greater learning whether teaching in adult basic education classrooms, adult high school diploma programs, or online graduate courses in adult education.
I believe it is the primary responsibility of the instructor to provide an orienting structure to any given course or class session. As a consequence I place a great deal of thought and detail into structuring a syllabus which serves as a working plan which includes scope for revision and modification throughout the course. This is a fluid process that I shape and reshape through a continuous working through of the identification of key texts, websites, and the sequencing of assignments throughout the semester until a sense of completion emerges.
I also place a good deal of attention into the up-front planning for each of the class sessions especially in the first few weeks in thinking through the content and also the instructional strategies designed to open up the materials and to encourage optimal student engagement. In the process I am seeking to bring together the course content to be covered, a deepening of my understanding of the subject matter through intense engagement, the learning needs and interests of the students, and a provisional sense of what comprises an optimal teaching/learning situation within each class session. Once in class, my primary mode of instruction becomes broadly interactive in which I might open with a question or some basic information and engage in a dialogue with students in the probing of the significance of the topic under discussion. The responses may open up the class in directions not specifically identified beforehand, in which I seek to keep the broad direction of what I am attempting to accomplish in mind based on the syllabus and the specific lesson plan for the day. Through such a process students strengthen their internalization of the content which increases both their motivation and comprehension.
In working both with emerging student understanding as well as the logic of the content itself, I usually find a way to spiral back into the main direction of the lesson plan in illuminating the significance of the class objectives for the students in which I have also gained some knowledge and appreciation as well. Throughout all this I seek to work at the higher edge level of given student potential in the process of encouraging and inspiring students to stretch further in their knowledge and in their intuitive leaps. In working with the grain of each student’s developmental process as the best possible way of advancing educational progress I am drawing on Dewey’s core concept of “growth” or optimal potential that he so clearly articulated in his timely as ever test, Democracy and Education. This learning objective, in turn, requires close attunement to the importance of scaffolding in identifying that nexus between what students can accomplish independently and what they could come to achieve with critically supportive assistance at just the right time. Stated otherwise, each class session serves as an opportunity to hone my own skills in deepening my mastery of the art and science of teaching.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
A bailout for NIFL: Will Gabriel Blow His/Her Horn?
“Have we truly counted the cost of the annihilation of NIFL?” -Demetrion. No. 6.5.2009. 83.
Posted at the National Literacy Advocacy (AAACE-NLA) online discussion list on June 5, 2009.
From: George Demetrion.
A bailout for NIFL: Will Gabriel Blow His/Her Horn?
Colleagues:
I’m wondering to the full extent is the Obama administration a truly
informed supporter of adult literacy education. On the surface, and then some, the answer may be given in the affirmative. One of our constant refrains is to show us the money. And in principle that is the case. The money has been shown in terms of proposed increased in AE funding.
Moreover, and without the need for commentary here, in principle, the overarching social policy of the administration is supportive of the broad goals of adult literacy education, particularly when tied to workplace investment—though that in itself is part of the rub. For those of us who have been in the field for any length of time, know full well that there are many tangible and intangible benefits that speak to the public value of adult literacy education through a broader vision of social and cultural impact.
See: “Student Goals and Public Outcomes: The Contribution of Adult Literacy Education by George Demetrion.” ADULT BASIC EDUCATION.Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 1997, 145-164. http://library.nald.ca/research/item/346
On this, I am concerned about two matters:
The conflation of adult education with workforce investment, which as a main preoccupation is a stultifying reductionism that enticed the
Clinton-Gore administration.
The equation of evaluation with the metaphor of “efficiency” narrowly construed as reflected in the “rationale” for recommending the closing of the National Institute For Literacy.
In terms of my own sifting through this issue (and with my other posts on this matter in mind), in the scheme of things I do not believe the intended closing of NIFL as a distinct entity from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) is a good indicator given the many resource that that agency accomplished over the
last almost 20 years. The additional money for adult education in the
Obama budget is may be construed as a constructive sign as is an OVAE based on an enlightened administration, though as we know, administrations come and go and elections have consequence. My concern remains that in the name of “efficiency” the proposed NIFL elimination was based on faulty and superficial reasoning, which I attribute to benign neglect rather than to any conscious intent as a reflection of a lack of understanding due to lack of focus on our marginal, yet highly important field.
On our collective end, perhaps there had not been a sufficient effort (or imagination) to advocate not simply for more money in support of existing programs. What may have been missing on our part is the construction of some broader narratives that more fully laid out not simply a rationale, but an inspiring public vision of adult literacy education through which to construct our story. For whatever its limitations, Equipped for the Future [EFF] holds some of the most compelling seed-beds for constructing such a narrative in linking personal student goals to the valued public good in which active citizenship rather than “efficiency” could be the driving metaphor. For it is that central value that holds the EFF model together amidst the specific Role Maps and Content Standards.
In any event, the current administration’s position demonstrates an utter lack of understanding of the historical developments which unfolded over the past 20 years in the political culture of adult literacy education without which it is impossible to grasp the history and significance of NIFL. As stated, I believe it was a benign neglect based on some macro statistically driven methodology that prevented close examination from taking place. The result is that the more significant issues related to that field within the last 20 years about the value of an independent agency intentionally set up in 1990 were simply ignored.
The superficial evaluative criteria drawn upon in making the policy recommendation apparently did not take into account the reality that NIFL never received anything closely resembling the funding needed to realize its further end rhetorical vision as well as the importance of the great deal of work the agency has done I helping to empower the field through links, support of the regional literacy centers, the listservs, EFF and in other critical ways than those closer to the front lines know about in a much more detailed way than I. I have attempted to spell some of this out as well as to articulate some of the constraints in other messages.
The real issue is not whether NIFL has served as the unifying center for the field–an absurd proposition for an agency funded at $6 million per year, but, given its history, especially in the 1990s when it was not so influenced from repressive right wing control (104th Congress notwithstanding, which cast a mighty chill). The real issue is what the future could be in a revamped NIFL, if it can be freed from political interference, have some real authority and leadership capacity, and be more tightly mission focused on adult and family literacy when compared to what would be the consequences of shutting down the shop.
On this it is critical to keep in mind that the last 8 years of NIFL were in many ways lost and even in that climate, the agency did a great deal of sustaining work. This was due not only as a consequence of a political educational ideology reinforcing a vision of literacy as anything but empowering. The closely related factor was the intensive focus on children’s reading, especially when children’s learning activities have all sorts of representation well beyond the purview of NIFL.
To put it straight out, it is the “adult” in NIFL that needs to be restored along with the pioneering energies of that pivotal time period from 1990-1995 where NIFL was freest to act out of its foremost visionary impulses.
And it was that vision of adult literacy that lost much of its sharp focus during the last 8 years, and what do we make, too, of the decision to remove EFF from the NIFL agenda. I do not believe any of this was taken into account in the Obama decision to close NIFL as the policy recommendation was made at a too macro level.
Could all of the functions of NIFL be subsumed under OVAE? Perhaps and certainly the increased funds would, in principle, be helpful. Yet I issue a cautionary note on whether the spirit of NIFL (that bold experiment implemented under the administration of George H.W. Bush, empowered by Barbara Bush’s passion for family literacy and Forrest Chisman’s penetrating policy insights that gave shape to his pivotal book, Jump Start) would be lost in the accounting process. Perhaps not, but we don’t really know.
What makes consummately more sense to me is a bail out for NIFL and a structural revamping in an annual budget of perhaps $10 million and play it out for a few years. Why not give such a bold opportunity for a revamped NIFL experiment to more fully play itself out in a highly intelligent supportive political environment and see what emerges in 3-5 year. If it’s still problematic after that, there will be a more research-based framework to call the noble experiment a failure, a proposition that has far from been proven up to this point.
Based on the hypothesis that the experiment is still worth pursuing, if
the result is that such a reconstructed agency becomes a critical
instrument of field revitalization (in which results will be assessed in
part based on dollar allocation), much will have been gained. It is
state-based anarchy, I argue, to pull the plug in a precipitous manner for an agency that was intentionally developed based on a great deal of policy and program-based acumen.
Clearly, the Obama administration has the capacity to make a more intelligent decision based on a broader and deeper understanding of the issues. The non-rhetorical question I have for the field is whether we have the collective will to sound out the clarion call of concerted action to change the course set out. I believe the capacity is amongst us is if the collective will is ready to act. I’m not sure there’s any viable consensus on this among our policy leadership without which any concerted campaign would be futile.
To all, and especially the policy leadership community (cause you got the power of serious mobilization), have we truly counted the cost of the annihilation of NIFL, and, to put it frankly, what a superficial policy rationale the administration gave for the proposal to eliminate NIFL?
Finally, esteemed colleagues, are we going to be satisfied simply with the prospect of enhanced dollars for the field when one of the most innovative experiments in our field is under the severest of jeopardy? The issue is not money, but putting it in the right places.
I’m not the one to organize a national advocacy campaign on this pivotal issue; we have policy specialists who have the capacity and credibility to take that on. To be sure, the support of the National Literacy Council is duly noted and appreciated, but the clarion call awaits our trumpeters and Gabriel has not yet blown his horn. I’ve done my part in raising the issues related to the preserving and redesigning NIFL as cogently as I possibly could within the confines of pressing time commitments.
The rest, dear readers is up to the collective us.
Gabriel, the time is now or never to blow your mighty horn! And for the Gabriel’s who are listening, you know who you are.
George Demetrion
Adult literacy intellectual, visionary, and social entrepreneur
Update 12-22-10 With the demise of NIFL in the Fall of 2010 the apprehensive future has no become prologue to an "inevitable" past, though it need not have turned out that way. The cumulative results remain to be seen, but the lack of historical consciousness that engulfs the adult literacy field never ceases to underwhelm me.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, George W. Bush, adult education, adult literacy, reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Posted at the National Literacy Advocacy (AAACE-NLA) online discussion list on June 5, 2009.
From: George Demetrion.
A bailout for NIFL: Will Gabriel Blow His/Her Horn?
Colleagues:
I’m wondering to the full extent is the Obama administration a truly
informed supporter of adult literacy education. On the surface, and then some, the answer may be given in the affirmative. One of our constant refrains is to show us the money. And in principle that is the case. The money has been shown in terms of proposed increased in AE funding.
Moreover, and without the need for commentary here, in principle, the overarching social policy of the administration is supportive of the broad goals of adult literacy education, particularly when tied to workplace investment—though that in itself is part of the rub. For those of us who have been in the field for any length of time, know full well that there are many tangible and intangible benefits that speak to the public value of adult literacy education through a broader vision of social and cultural impact.
See: “Student Goals and Public Outcomes: The Contribution of Adult Literacy Education by George Demetrion.” ADULT BASIC EDUCATION.Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 1997, 145-164. http://library.nald.ca/research/item/346
On this, I am concerned about two matters:
The conflation of adult education with workforce investment, which as a main preoccupation is a stultifying reductionism that enticed the
Clinton-Gore administration.
The equation of evaluation with the metaphor of “efficiency” narrowly construed as reflected in the “rationale” for recommending the closing of the National Institute For Literacy.
In terms of my own sifting through this issue (and with my other posts on this matter in mind), in the scheme of things I do not believe the intended closing of NIFL as a distinct entity from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) is a good indicator given the many resource that that agency accomplished over the
last almost 20 years. The additional money for adult education in the
Obama budget is may be construed as a constructive sign as is an OVAE based on an enlightened administration, though as we know, administrations come and go and elections have consequence. My concern remains that in the name of “efficiency” the proposed NIFL elimination was based on faulty and superficial reasoning, which I attribute to benign neglect rather than to any conscious intent as a reflection of a lack of understanding due to lack of focus on our marginal, yet highly important field.
On our collective end, perhaps there had not been a sufficient effort (or imagination) to advocate not simply for more money in support of existing programs. What may have been missing on our part is the construction of some broader narratives that more fully laid out not simply a rationale, but an inspiring public vision of adult literacy education through which to construct our story. For whatever its limitations, Equipped for the Future [EFF] holds some of the most compelling seed-beds for constructing such a narrative in linking personal student goals to the valued public good in which active citizenship rather than “efficiency” could be the driving metaphor. For it is that central value that holds the EFF model together amidst the specific Role Maps and Content Standards.
In any event, the current administration’s position demonstrates an utter lack of understanding of the historical developments which unfolded over the past 20 years in the political culture of adult literacy education without which it is impossible to grasp the history and significance of NIFL. As stated, I believe it was a benign neglect based on some macro statistically driven methodology that prevented close examination from taking place. The result is that the more significant issues related to that field within the last 20 years about the value of an independent agency intentionally set up in 1990 were simply ignored.
The superficial evaluative criteria drawn upon in making the policy recommendation apparently did not take into account the reality that NIFL never received anything closely resembling the funding needed to realize its further end rhetorical vision as well as the importance of the great deal of work the agency has done I helping to empower the field through links, support of the regional literacy centers, the listservs, EFF and in other critical ways than those closer to the front lines know about in a much more detailed way than I. I have attempted to spell some of this out as well as to articulate some of the constraints in other messages.
The real issue is not whether NIFL has served as the unifying center for the field–an absurd proposition for an agency funded at $6 million per year, but, given its history, especially in the 1990s when it was not so influenced from repressive right wing control (104th Congress notwithstanding, which cast a mighty chill). The real issue is what the future could be in a revamped NIFL, if it can be freed from political interference, have some real authority and leadership capacity, and be more tightly mission focused on adult and family literacy when compared to what would be the consequences of shutting down the shop.
On this it is critical to keep in mind that the last 8 years of NIFL were in many ways lost and even in that climate, the agency did a great deal of sustaining work. This was due not only as a consequence of a political educational ideology reinforcing a vision of literacy as anything but empowering. The closely related factor was the intensive focus on children’s reading, especially when children’s learning activities have all sorts of representation well beyond the purview of NIFL.
To put it straight out, it is the “adult” in NIFL that needs to be restored along with the pioneering energies of that pivotal time period from 1990-1995 where NIFL was freest to act out of its foremost visionary impulses.
And it was that vision of adult literacy that lost much of its sharp focus during the last 8 years, and what do we make, too, of the decision to remove EFF from the NIFL agenda. I do not believe any of this was taken into account in the Obama decision to close NIFL as the policy recommendation was made at a too macro level.
Could all of the functions of NIFL be subsumed under OVAE? Perhaps and certainly the increased funds would, in principle, be helpful. Yet I issue a cautionary note on whether the spirit of NIFL (that bold experiment implemented under the administration of George H.W. Bush, empowered by Barbara Bush’s passion for family literacy and Forrest Chisman’s penetrating policy insights that gave shape to his pivotal book, Jump Start) would be lost in the accounting process. Perhaps not, but we don’t really know.
What makes consummately more sense to me is a bail out for NIFL and a structural revamping in an annual budget of perhaps $10 million and play it out for a few years. Why not give such a bold opportunity for a revamped NIFL experiment to more fully play itself out in a highly intelligent supportive political environment and see what emerges in 3-5 year. If it’s still problematic after that, there will be a more research-based framework to call the noble experiment a failure, a proposition that has far from been proven up to this point.
Based on the hypothesis that the experiment is still worth pursuing, if
the result is that such a reconstructed agency becomes a critical
instrument of field revitalization (in which results will be assessed in
part based on dollar allocation), much will have been gained. It is
state-based anarchy, I argue, to pull the plug in a precipitous manner for an agency that was intentionally developed based on a great deal of policy and program-based acumen.
Clearly, the Obama administration has the capacity to make a more intelligent decision based on a broader and deeper understanding of the issues. The non-rhetorical question I have for the field is whether we have the collective will to sound out the clarion call of concerted action to change the course set out. I believe the capacity is amongst us is if the collective will is ready to act. I’m not sure there’s any viable consensus on this among our policy leadership without which any concerted campaign would be futile.
To all, and especially the policy leadership community (cause you got the power of serious mobilization), have we truly counted the cost of the annihilation of NIFL, and, to put it frankly, what a superficial policy rationale the administration gave for the proposal to eliminate NIFL?
Finally, esteemed colleagues, are we going to be satisfied simply with the prospect of enhanced dollars for the field when one of the most innovative experiments in our field is under the severest of jeopardy? The issue is not money, but putting it in the right places.
I’m not the one to organize a national advocacy campaign on this pivotal issue; we have policy specialists who have the capacity and credibility to take that on. To be sure, the support of the National Literacy Council is duly noted and appreciated, but the clarion call awaits our trumpeters and Gabriel has not yet blown his horn. I’ve done my part in raising the issues related to the preserving and redesigning NIFL as cogently as I possibly could within the confines of pressing time commitments.
The rest, dear readers is up to the collective us.
Gabriel, the time is now or never to blow your mighty horn! And for the Gabriel’s who are listening, you know who you are.
George Demetrion
Adult literacy intellectual, visionary, and social entrepreneur
Update 12-22-10 With the demise of NIFL in the Fall of 2010 the apprehensive future has no become prologue to an "inevitable" past, though it need not have turned out that way. The cumulative results remain to be seen, but the lack of historical consciousness that engulfs the adult literacy field never ceases to underwhelm me.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, George W. Bush, adult education, adult literacy, reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Learning Theory: Summary Statements
Learning Theory: Grappling with the Theory/Pracice Nexus in Search of a Viable Praxis
As I read through these theoretical papers, I feel the professional academics get to dream as big as they want to, but the actual classroom teacher is the real life practitioner who takes what might be great in theory and translates what she can into her actual working situation.
This viewpoint, expressed so succinctly by one class participant in my current seminar on adult education curriculum theory, carries a great deal of resonance with others in the course as one of the critical themes that come across in the discussion posts. As one both immersed in 20+ years of daily practice as well as extensive theoretical explorations underlying adult literacy education, I also experience a good deal of angst in any effort that attempts to resolve the theory/practice tension so pervasive in educational discourse. The issue, as I see it, is less that one (theory) is idealistic and the other (practice) is realistic, since they each combine theoretical reflection and insight from the field in their various ways.
The issue as I see it is that academic theory and grounded practice have their basis in divergent discourse communities with different focused objectives, which have the capacity to converge in places, yet perhaps less often than what may be viewed as desirable from both the perspective of the theorist and the practitioner. I believe that this tension has its origins in western epistemology (how we learn) grounded in the founding texts of Plato in positing an ineradicable gap between the ideal and real, a polarity which has never stopped resonating in many conscious and unconscious ways. Given this assumption, I do not think there can be any straight-forward resolution of the theory/practice tension in contemporary educational discourse, in which, however, the dynamic relation between theory and practice offers much potential fruit for new learning for practitioners and formal theorists alike.
Bringing this closer to home, the tension between theory and practice in education would be broadly akin to that between the theoretical scientist and the engineer or the medical practitioner, whose primary purpose is that of building better bridges or practicing more effective medicine. In the process of carrying out their work, the engineer or medical profession may draw on core scientific precepts in grappling with a particular problem such as what drug (if any) to prescribe to a given patient, what dose, and for what exact purpose. Many variables about the patient’s own medical history in its potential interaction with the drug would need to be factored in. It is in working through direct application issues as indicated in the example in which the latest scientific journal article may convey to the medical practitioner that missing piece of information which may simply not be available through direct observation or dialogue with the patient, whether a new conceptual insight or a new mode of application.
In this respect the highly informed medical professional brings together information from both worlds (the scientific based journals and sound medical practice honed through years of practice). Such competency is further developed through detailed work with hundreds of patients, substantial comparative analysis of critical cases in one’s chosen sub-field, through discussions with colleagues, in attending special seminars, and in studying the academic medical journals with keen discernment in probing for relevant information, some of which may or may not be immediately germane to one’s current practice.
Thus, the highly informed medical practitioner keeps attuned to theoretical discussion and research relevant to his or her practice, though typically draws on it to work through some practitioner-based issue or problem. I say typically, because through knowledge gained in drawing on theory or research in application to a specific issue or patient, the practitioner could and sometimes does, contribute to the broader pool of knowledge of her/his field by addressing theory/research questions from the local of one’s grounded location. While such efforts are far from typical, they do point to a potentiality in the theory/practitioner continuum that could reap much value. Mediating efforts include participating on research teams or writing in a way that addresses theory/research issues in more practitioner-based publications.
In moving to our more immediate focus on adult education practice, the keen insights that we have shared on learning theory and its relevance to our own work provide a rich baseline of ideas that will need to be more thoroughly processed in the shaping up of revised and new curriculum designs in our own specific teaching contexts and integrate into the various topics we are studying. A summary of the key the key ideas raised these past three weeks include the following:
1. At some level theory matters in that ideas are incorporated into practice by definition and therefore cannot be avoided. On this assumption theory construction in some formal or informal level is part of the essential work of both the practitioner and the academic specialist and takes place all the time regardless as to our awareness as to how they are playing out in our own practice.
2. Better to be informed, therefore, of one’s implicit and explicit theoretical assumptions as they are enacted in our practice in order to better grasp, and also to modify or, as the situation may call for, even to more fundamentally alter some of the core presuppositions of our work if to do so leads to better practice.
3. Some of us have identified key theoretical breakthroughs in identifying or altering our teaching or program-based practice.
a. Some have referred to the importance of Malcolm Knowles work on the self-directed learner and the focus in adult education on practical relevance through a facilitative pedagogy, which Knowles refers to as andogogy. Knowles’ insights might be aptly viewed as a blending of humanistic philosophy and constructivist learning theory.
b. Many have referred to the importance of constructivism as central to adult education practice while realizing that in certain task-based contexts or in contexts where automaticity is crucial, other theoretical emphases may be more relevant. As pointed out in many of your postings, much of the critical work of the discerning practitioner is to deftly apply specific aspects of theoretical insights to particular pedagogical challenges which we encounter daily in our programs.
c. I have sought to bring to the fore the central role of Dewey’s concept of “growth” in providing an imaginative schema in grounding my understanding of a “middle-ground” practice which opened up a significant interpretive lens on both my daily work as a site based adult literacy program manager and formal theory construction. Dewey’s learning theory has been a central thread of progressive educational thought throughout the 20th century and has much, though largely untapped potential in enhancing adult education thought and practice.
4. Some wonder about the relevance at all of possessing formal knowledge of established learning theories in that some of the most highly competent teachers practice their craft with keen intuitive insight and a solid knowledge base honed by years of practice, with very little formal theoretical understanding of the pedagogy informing their work. On this I offer the following:
a. While there are important and potentially useful relationships between academic learning theory and best practices they are not tightly correlated. Rather, theory, like instructional materials are a resource that the savvy practitioner utilizes to better inform her or his practice. In this respect, knowledge of academic learning theory becomes relevant to the extent that it offers valuable resources and insight to effectively enhance practice in any given context. In this respect, the well grounded teacher draws on theory in a manner analogous to the skilled engineer rather than in the mode of the research scientist. In either case sound principles apply, but the one does so to further refine discussions on theory while the other does so to improve practice. Both are valuable; both are necessary. Sometimes there is nothing more practical than a good theory. Sometimes there is nothing more practical than better practice.
b. Resources gleaned from constructivist learning theory are generally more useful (a) when the important instructional work at hand is helping students to strengthen their own internal representations as knowledgeable learners, (b) when the topic matter is focused more on empathetic and critical probes into different points of view or based primarily on self-reflection and building empathetic communities of learners. Still, as pointed out, constructivism may play a significant role in providing an underlying tone in learning challenges that are primarily focused on mastering sequential tasks and developing automaticity in developing greater phonemic awareness. That is, while a task may call for a mastery of sequential steps, issues related to internal representation and motivation still may require constructivist insight in linking a particular learning style and history with a progressive mastery of a given task at hand. These are subtle matters that require a great deal of discernment in which we often learn through the inevitability of our mistakes, particularly when we utilize them as resources for further reflection and modifications of our plans.
c. Cognitivist theory as exemplified in D.M. Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction or in Sticht’s functional context theory may play a central role in helping students progressively master a series of essential learning tasks like learning about new work processes in one’s job, starting a business, developing a week’s worth of healthy recipes for one’s family, mastering the fundamentals of basic algebra, or following and applying basic rules of English grammar and punctuation. Yet, as stated above, while near term knowledge acquisition may require well laid out mental maps in order to master a given set of tasks, longer-term knowledge development may require more subtle internalization in which one’s identity as a learner become positively reconstructed as part of the ongoing process of learning new tasks and procedures.
d. Behaviorist theory may play a principle role in developing the automaticity skills in increasing basic phonemic awareness or in mastering the fundamentals of basic arithmetic where practice through repetition is the more immediate key learning objective at hand. Even still cognitive development provides an important resource in helping students to internalize the schematic framework to make sense of what they are learning in order to enable such learning to flow into the long term memory. This often leads in turn, to viewing oneself as a competent learner (constructivism) which serves an important reinforcing and legitimizing role that is essential for persistence in learning, particularly when the challenges are difficult, yet potentially in reach (Bandura).
e. Pragmatic learning theory can be central in learning challenges emerging out of some gap in felt experience in which the pivotal challenge is to progressively overcome the gap through forms of knowledge and reconstruction of the context in which the problem was situated. Loss of a job could be one such source as could encountering a radically new and uncomfortable experience like incarceration or release from prison. Constructivist precepts could help in the firming up of a revitalized identity in lending meaning and purpose to the challenging work of activating needed sequential mastery in learning some complex set of tasks required to meet the challenges of coping effectively with a new work or social environment.
f. Even still, the more fundamental challenge may be that of appropriate problem identification and progressive problem solving to which a pragmatic inquiry-mode as exemplified in Dewey’s theory of learning could open up.
5. The insights gleaned on learning theory need to be incorporated into a broader set of insights and resources drawn upon in the challenging work of developing a teacher designed curriculum focus for a given course or program. We’ve seen such interfaces in our discussions of adult education theory and in the formal literature on curriculum theory in which Bruner’s spiral model and Dirkx & Prenger’s theme-based approach are prime examples of constructivist learning theory. As we shift this upcoming week into the topic of discerning the contexts of adult education theory we’ll see additional convergences between constructivism and the notion of literacy practices as detailed in Fingeret and Drennon’s Literacy for Life: Adult Learners, New Practices http://www.amazon.com/Literacy-Life-Learners-Practices-Language/dp/0807736589. We’ll also see the connection in Sticht’s Functional Context Education which shares strong affinities with Merrill’s ID2 integration of constructivism within a complex cognitivist design.
As we move through the remainder of this course we’ll identify various interfaces between learning theory and pedagogical strategies in Weeks 9 and 10. We’ll also give consideration to the strong correlations between CASAS and Merrill and Sticht’s complex view on cognitional learning theory and the pivotal role of constructivism on EFF, yet one that incorporates significant cognitivist components. Though we will not address it in this class, the issue of the relationship between qualitative and quantitative modes of student assessment and program evaluation are very much linked to divergent views on learning theory.
6. In drawing some closing conclusions, there is much to draw on from learning theory as indicated in the many discussions we have which we have had during the past three weeks. Among other things this includes the emphasis on constructivism in adult education and gaining a better sense of its many applications as well as coming to terms with the many contexts where its utilization may be limited or even counterproductive. What also stands out is the significant work of Merrill on the second level application of instructional design (ID2) and Sticht on functional context theory, both of which seek to establish linkages between cognitivist and constructivist theories and design principles from a highly nuanced cognitivist perspective. In the process of sifting through the ID2 perspective characteristic of both Merrill and Sticht, we’ve gained a better sense of the differences as well as similarities between their viewpoint and Dirkx & Prenger’s more constructivist-oriented theme-based perspective.
What is eminently clear is that a fundamental dividing point is not over the importance of content or theme-based instruction, which Merrill and Sticht fully share with Dirkx & Prenger, as well as the other constructivist learning theorists that we have studied. The primary difference, rather, has to do with the ways in which learning and supportive teaching takes place and the ways in which emergence and pre-planning interface. While we did not give as much attention to Dewey’s pragmatic theory of learning as progressive problem solving as I would have liked, his work too, as exemplified in Democracy and Education opens some intriguing insights for fresh learning that can be gleaned through a close study of his work.
7. The challenge is to think like a practitioner-inquirer in which it is not theory in itself that is the most salient factor. Rather, it is cogent application through effective utilization of theoretical insight as a critical resource in moving our understanding and practice forward in ways that facilitate demonstrably better outcomes of a more or less enduring type within the learning and broader life projects of our students. I’ll close with a quote from with Chapter 11, “Experience and Thinking” in Democracy and Education.
An ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and verifiable significance. An experience, a very humble experience, is capable of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual content), but a theory apart from an experience cannot be definitely grasped even as theory. It tends to become a mere verbal formula, a set of catchwords used to render thinking, or genuine theorizing, unnecessary and impossible. Because of our education we use words, thinking they are ideas, to dispose of questions, the disposal being in reality simply such an obscuring of perception as prevents us from seeing any longer the difficulty (p. 144). http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter11.html
The work on learning theory has the potential of becoming increasingly viable to the extent that we are able to draw on insights discussed in the readings and among us, in applying some of what we’ve learned to our own contexts, in assessing its impact as it gets played out in our practice, and in making additional adjustments or modifications to our teaching as warranted. The value of the knowledge of learning theories for the discerning practitioner-inquirer is no more and also no less than that, in which “to ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy and suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it’s like; the undergoing becomes instruction—discovery of the connection of things” (p. 140). Through this we learn and in the process make changes in the challenging effort of creating, or at least contributing to the more desirable outcome; learning experiences for and with our students as satisfactory as possible.
It is this which Dewey refers to as “growth;” some reconstruction of the world—that small, but far from insignificant portion of it where we have some control, and where our actions and where our undergoings make a difference in our own lives and among those with whom we have some influence in our desire to build the good community through which we might define as the good school. In this effort, effective appropriation of learning theory has a humble but not insignificant role to play.
As I read through these theoretical papers, I feel the professional academics get to dream as big as they want to, but the actual classroom teacher is the real life practitioner who takes what might be great in theory and translates what she can into her actual working situation.
This viewpoint, expressed so succinctly by one class participant in my current seminar on adult education curriculum theory, carries a great deal of resonance with others in the course as one of the critical themes that come across in the discussion posts. As one both immersed in 20+ years of daily practice as well as extensive theoretical explorations underlying adult literacy education, I also experience a good deal of angst in any effort that attempts to resolve the theory/practice tension so pervasive in educational discourse. The issue, as I see it, is less that one (theory) is idealistic and the other (practice) is realistic, since they each combine theoretical reflection and insight from the field in their various ways.
The issue as I see it is that academic theory and grounded practice have their basis in divergent discourse communities with different focused objectives, which have the capacity to converge in places, yet perhaps less often than what may be viewed as desirable from both the perspective of the theorist and the practitioner. I believe that this tension has its origins in western epistemology (how we learn) grounded in the founding texts of Plato in positing an ineradicable gap between the ideal and real, a polarity which has never stopped resonating in many conscious and unconscious ways. Given this assumption, I do not think there can be any straight-forward resolution of the theory/practice tension in contemporary educational discourse, in which, however, the dynamic relation between theory and practice offers much potential fruit for new learning for practitioners and formal theorists alike.
Bringing this closer to home, the tension between theory and practice in education would be broadly akin to that between the theoretical scientist and the engineer or the medical practitioner, whose primary purpose is that of building better bridges or practicing more effective medicine. In the process of carrying out their work, the engineer or medical profession may draw on core scientific precepts in grappling with a particular problem such as what drug (if any) to prescribe to a given patient, what dose, and for what exact purpose. Many variables about the patient’s own medical history in its potential interaction with the drug would need to be factored in. It is in working through direct application issues as indicated in the example in which the latest scientific journal article may convey to the medical practitioner that missing piece of information which may simply not be available through direct observation or dialogue with the patient, whether a new conceptual insight or a new mode of application.
In this respect the highly informed medical professional brings together information from both worlds (the scientific based journals and sound medical practice honed through years of practice). Such competency is further developed through detailed work with hundreds of patients, substantial comparative analysis of critical cases in one’s chosen sub-field, through discussions with colleagues, in attending special seminars, and in studying the academic medical journals with keen discernment in probing for relevant information, some of which may or may not be immediately germane to one’s current practice.
Thus, the highly informed medical practitioner keeps attuned to theoretical discussion and research relevant to his or her practice, though typically draws on it to work through some practitioner-based issue or problem. I say typically, because through knowledge gained in drawing on theory or research in application to a specific issue or patient, the practitioner could and sometimes does, contribute to the broader pool of knowledge of her/his field by addressing theory/research questions from the local of one’s grounded location. While such efforts are far from typical, they do point to a potentiality in the theory/practitioner continuum that could reap much value. Mediating efforts include participating on research teams or writing in a way that addresses theory/research issues in more practitioner-based publications.
In moving to our more immediate focus on adult education practice, the keen insights that we have shared on learning theory and its relevance to our own work provide a rich baseline of ideas that will need to be more thoroughly processed in the shaping up of revised and new curriculum designs in our own specific teaching contexts and integrate into the various topics we are studying. A summary of the key the key ideas raised these past three weeks include the following:
1. At some level theory matters in that ideas are incorporated into practice by definition and therefore cannot be avoided. On this assumption theory construction in some formal or informal level is part of the essential work of both the practitioner and the academic specialist and takes place all the time regardless as to our awareness as to how they are playing out in our own practice.
2. Better to be informed, therefore, of one’s implicit and explicit theoretical assumptions as they are enacted in our practice in order to better grasp, and also to modify or, as the situation may call for, even to more fundamentally alter some of the core presuppositions of our work if to do so leads to better practice.
3. Some of us have identified key theoretical breakthroughs in identifying or altering our teaching or program-based practice.
a. Some have referred to the importance of Malcolm Knowles work on the self-directed learner and the focus in adult education on practical relevance through a facilitative pedagogy, which Knowles refers to as andogogy. Knowles’ insights might be aptly viewed as a blending of humanistic philosophy and constructivist learning theory.
b. Many have referred to the importance of constructivism as central to adult education practice while realizing that in certain task-based contexts or in contexts where automaticity is crucial, other theoretical emphases may be more relevant. As pointed out in many of your postings, much of the critical work of the discerning practitioner is to deftly apply specific aspects of theoretical insights to particular pedagogical challenges which we encounter daily in our programs.
c. I have sought to bring to the fore the central role of Dewey’s concept of “growth” in providing an imaginative schema in grounding my understanding of a “middle-ground” practice which opened up a significant interpretive lens on both my daily work as a site based adult literacy program manager and formal theory construction. Dewey’s learning theory has been a central thread of progressive educational thought throughout the 20th century and has much, though largely untapped potential in enhancing adult education thought and practice.
4. Some wonder about the relevance at all of possessing formal knowledge of established learning theories in that some of the most highly competent teachers practice their craft with keen intuitive insight and a solid knowledge base honed by years of practice, with very little formal theoretical understanding of the pedagogy informing their work. On this I offer the following:
a. While there are important and potentially useful relationships between academic learning theory and best practices they are not tightly correlated. Rather, theory, like instructional materials are a resource that the savvy practitioner utilizes to better inform her or his practice. In this respect, knowledge of academic learning theory becomes relevant to the extent that it offers valuable resources and insight to effectively enhance practice in any given context. In this respect, the well grounded teacher draws on theory in a manner analogous to the skilled engineer rather than in the mode of the research scientist. In either case sound principles apply, but the one does so to further refine discussions on theory while the other does so to improve practice. Both are valuable; both are necessary. Sometimes there is nothing more practical than a good theory. Sometimes there is nothing more practical than better practice.
b. Resources gleaned from constructivist learning theory are generally more useful (a) when the important instructional work at hand is helping students to strengthen their own internal representations as knowledgeable learners, (b) when the topic matter is focused more on empathetic and critical probes into different points of view or based primarily on self-reflection and building empathetic communities of learners. Still, as pointed out, constructivism may play a significant role in providing an underlying tone in learning challenges that are primarily focused on mastering sequential tasks and developing automaticity in developing greater phonemic awareness. That is, while a task may call for a mastery of sequential steps, issues related to internal representation and motivation still may require constructivist insight in linking a particular learning style and history with a progressive mastery of a given task at hand. These are subtle matters that require a great deal of discernment in which we often learn through the inevitability of our mistakes, particularly when we utilize them as resources for further reflection and modifications of our plans.
c. Cognitivist theory as exemplified in D.M. Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction or in Sticht’s functional context theory may play a central role in helping students progressively master a series of essential learning tasks like learning about new work processes in one’s job, starting a business, developing a week’s worth of healthy recipes for one’s family, mastering the fundamentals of basic algebra, or following and applying basic rules of English grammar and punctuation. Yet, as stated above, while near term knowledge acquisition may require well laid out mental maps in order to master a given set of tasks, longer-term knowledge development may require more subtle internalization in which one’s identity as a learner become positively reconstructed as part of the ongoing process of learning new tasks and procedures.
d. Behaviorist theory may play a principle role in developing the automaticity skills in increasing basic phonemic awareness or in mastering the fundamentals of basic arithmetic where practice through repetition is the more immediate key learning objective at hand. Even still cognitive development provides an important resource in helping students to internalize the schematic framework to make sense of what they are learning in order to enable such learning to flow into the long term memory. This often leads in turn, to viewing oneself as a competent learner (constructivism) which serves an important reinforcing and legitimizing role that is essential for persistence in learning, particularly when the challenges are difficult, yet potentially in reach (Bandura).
e. Pragmatic learning theory can be central in learning challenges emerging out of some gap in felt experience in which the pivotal challenge is to progressively overcome the gap through forms of knowledge and reconstruction of the context in which the problem was situated. Loss of a job could be one such source as could encountering a radically new and uncomfortable experience like incarceration or release from prison. Constructivist precepts could help in the firming up of a revitalized identity in lending meaning and purpose to the challenging work of activating needed sequential mastery in learning some complex set of tasks required to meet the challenges of coping effectively with a new work or social environment.
f. Even still, the more fundamental challenge may be that of appropriate problem identification and progressive problem solving to which a pragmatic inquiry-mode as exemplified in Dewey’s theory of learning could open up.
5. The insights gleaned on learning theory need to be incorporated into a broader set of insights and resources drawn upon in the challenging work of developing a teacher designed curriculum focus for a given course or program. We’ve seen such interfaces in our discussions of adult education theory and in the formal literature on curriculum theory in which Bruner’s spiral model and Dirkx & Prenger’s theme-based approach are prime examples of constructivist learning theory. As we shift this upcoming week into the topic of discerning the contexts of adult education theory we’ll see additional convergences between constructivism and the notion of literacy practices as detailed in Fingeret and Drennon’s Literacy for Life: Adult Learners, New Practices http://www.amazon.com/Literacy-Life-Learners-Practices-Language/dp/0807736589. We’ll also see the connection in Sticht’s Functional Context Education which shares strong affinities with Merrill’s ID2 integration of constructivism within a complex cognitivist design.
As we move through the remainder of this course we’ll identify various interfaces between learning theory and pedagogical strategies in Weeks 9 and 10. We’ll also give consideration to the strong correlations between CASAS and Merrill and Sticht’s complex view on cognitional learning theory and the pivotal role of constructivism on EFF, yet one that incorporates significant cognitivist components. Though we will not address it in this class, the issue of the relationship between qualitative and quantitative modes of student assessment and program evaluation are very much linked to divergent views on learning theory.
6. In drawing some closing conclusions, there is much to draw on from learning theory as indicated in the many discussions we have which we have had during the past three weeks. Among other things this includes the emphasis on constructivism in adult education and gaining a better sense of its many applications as well as coming to terms with the many contexts where its utilization may be limited or even counterproductive. What also stands out is the significant work of Merrill on the second level application of instructional design (ID2) and Sticht on functional context theory, both of which seek to establish linkages between cognitivist and constructivist theories and design principles from a highly nuanced cognitivist perspective. In the process of sifting through the ID2 perspective characteristic of both Merrill and Sticht, we’ve gained a better sense of the differences as well as similarities between their viewpoint and Dirkx & Prenger’s more constructivist-oriented theme-based perspective.
What is eminently clear is that a fundamental dividing point is not over the importance of content or theme-based instruction, which Merrill and Sticht fully share with Dirkx & Prenger, as well as the other constructivist learning theorists that we have studied. The primary difference, rather, has to do with the ways in which learning and supportive teaching takes place and the ways in which emergence and pre-planning interface. While we did not give as much attention to Dewey’s pragmatic theory of learning as progressive problem solving as I would have liked, his work too, as exemplified in Democracy and Education opens some intriguing insights for fresh learning that can be gleaned through a close study of his work.
7. The challenge is to think like a practitioner-inquirer in which it is not theory in itself that is the most salient factor. Rather, it is cogent application through effective utilization of theoretical insight as a critical resource in moving our understanding and practice forward in ways that facilitate demonstrably better outcomes of a more or less enduring type within the learning and broader life projects of our students. I’ll close with a quote from with Chapter 11, “Experience and Thinking” in Democracy and Education.
An ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and verifiable significance. An experience, a very humble experience, is capable of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual content), but a theory apart from an experience cannot be definitely grasped even as theory. It tends to become a mere verbal formula, a set of catchwords used to render thinking, or genuine theorizing, unnecessary and impossible. Because of our education we use words, thinking they are ideas, to dispose of questions, the disposal being in reality simply such an obscuring of perception as prevents us from seeing any longer the difficulty (p. 144). http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter11.html
The work on learning theory has the potential of becoming increasingly viable to the extent that we are able to draw on insights discussed in the readings and among us, in applying some of what we’ve learned to our own contexts, in assessing its impact as it gets played out in our practice, and in making additional adjustments or modifications to our teaching as warranted. The value of the knowledge of learning theories for the discerning practitioner-inquirer is no more and also no less than that, in which “to ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy and suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it’s like; the undergoing becomes instruction—discovery of the connection of things” (p. 140). Through this we learn and in the process make changes in the challenging effort of creating, or at least contributing to the more desirable outcome; learning experiences for and with our students as satisfactory as possible.
It is this which Dewey refers to as “growth;” some reconstruction of the world—that small, but far from insignificant portion of it where we have some control, and where our actions and where our undergoings make a difference in our own lives and among those with whom we have some influence in our desire to build the good community through which we might define as the good school. In this effort, effective appropriation of learning theory has a humble but not insignificant role to play.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults: Ch 1 Using Integerated Theme-Based Instruction with Adults
According to Dirkx and Prenger, stimulating motivation for a small group of learners poses little problem. For them it may be best just to focus on their identified learning needs, whether GED preparation or any type of direct learning that they want to take on (p. 1). What we know from our own collective experience and national statistics about drop-out rates is that a large proportion of adult students who initially enroll in adult education program leave well before attaining their goals or other sustainable learning objectives. Some students who drop out return and on second or third time around may obtain longer range goals or tangible benefits of some sustaining sort. Yet the reality remains that a much greater ratio simply cycle in and out of programs resulting in what Tom Sticht refers to as the “turbulence,” characteristic of many programs and class rooms; especially open-enrollment ones. John Strucker’s instructive rejoinder provides an important other perspective (http://www.ncsall.net/?id=1151).
Critical Perspectives of Key Adult Literacy Writers
As argued in Focus on Basics article written by Allan Quigley, the first three weeks are critical in determining whether students will remain in the program http://www.ncsall.net/?id=420. As he argues more extensively in his book Rethinking Literacy Education: The Critical Need for Practice-Based Change Practitioners, program-based institutional, along with student situational barriers such as day care, transportation, which are difficult to control for, also need to be addressed (http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Literacy-Education-Critical-Practice-Based/dp/078790287X). Clearly, curriculum is one intervening institutional factor, but it is not always the uppermost one, even as sometimes it is.
On this topic Quigley discuss relevant content-based curricula through the prisms of four central curricular prisms:
• Vocational Working Philosophy
• Liberal Working Philosophy
• Liberatory Working Philosophy
• Humanist Working Philosophy
My review essay of Rethinking Literacy Education titled, “The Pragmatic Reform Vision of B. Allan Quigley,” provides a summary of Quigley’s arguments on potential barriers (pp. 8-10) to participating in adult education programs and Quigley’s curriculum recommendations (pp. 10-14) http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/george/rethink/rethink.PDF
In Literacy for Life A Framework for Change, Hannah Fingeret and Cassndra Drennon propose a life cycle model consisting of the following stages http://store.tcpress.com/0807736589.shtml
1. Prolonged tension: Some basic life problem (e.g., dependency or unemployment) that propel individuals to seek a solution.
2. Turning point: Making the initial decision to seek adult literacy education as at least a part of the solution leading to some life-based resolution (enhancing literacy skills to become increasingly independent through gainful employment).
3. Problem-solving and seeking (advanced) educational opportunities: Students begin to build on the skills and confidence that they’ve gained from the program to begin to achieve some visible outcomes beyond the program that matter to them.
4. Changing relationships and changing practices: Relationships at home, work, and the community begin to change outside the program as a result of participating in the program (adults who become increasingly independent or set new goals and the impact of these changes on significant others)
5. Intensive continuing interaction: Increased learning and enhanced sense of efficacy within the program where students can continue to work on their skills in a “safe zone” for addressing the continuing needs of enhanced life efficacy outside of the program
On the view of the authors, an optimally effective program will facilitate student development the entirety of the life cycle of change. Curriculum is important, but so are other critical factors.
Questions to ponder
1. What are your thoughts of the viability of Fingeret and Drennon’s Life Cycle Model of adult literacy?
2. In what ways can this model be of value to you as you reflect on the challenges you face as a classroom teacher, curriculum developer, or program director or administrator?
3. Do you see any of the five turning points to be of more significant than others?
4. Which of the five are in your direct span of control as a teacher or program director or administrator?
5. What are the implications of any of these turning points being missing for the quality of adult education programming, especially on the issue of student persistence and goal attainment?
The NCSALL report by Rober Kegan, and his colleagues Toward a New Pluralism ABE/ESOL Classrooms: Teaching to Multiple Cultures of Mind Executive Summary (http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/report19a.pdf)draws out important insight on the way that students with different “cultures of the mind” learn, and what they seek to focus on in adult education settings. Specifically, Kegan identifies three “cultures of the mind” linked to Instrumental, Socializing, and Self-Authoring ways of knowing. According to Kegan and his colleagues these cultures of mind, which the authors view as typologies, play a major role in how students interpret what they are learning and its significance. Take a look first at the two page research brief: http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/brief19.pdf
Questions:
1. To what extent do you find Kegan’s pluralistic model persuasive?
2. Whether or not or the extent to which you agree with his ideal typology, to what extent have the students you’ve worked with exhibited these three “cultures of the mind?”
3. Which typology or mix most typifies the students you’ve worked with?
4. What can you draw from Kegan’s model that would be of value to you in his proposed pluralistic model?
With the Quigley, Fingeret and Drennon, and Kegan et al studies in mind, what seems evident to me is that students have a range of critical life application issues that they process in highly divergent ways that they are seeking to address through adult basic education. Programs and adult education institutions, accordingly, need to be as keenly focused on these divergences as possible. Several key factors are required:
• A supportive atmosphere where students will feel accepted and valued, and then challenged in a way that builds up their capacities and esteem
• Timely intake and appropriate placement
• Well taught classrooms with appropriate materials
• A relevant and interesting instructional program that in some significant manner addresses both basic skill enhancement and application to life contexts beyond the program though content-based subject matter that provides students greater access to those contexts
• A program well attuned to effectively working with students with a wide divergence of backgrounds, learning styles, expectations, goals and current life challenges, and self-processing psychological prisms
• Highly attuned counseling and referral services
• If at all possible, some resources to help students deal with such issues as day care, transportation, and long-term unemployment
Key Curriculum Content areas include at the least:
• Workplace literacy and career development
• Family Literacy
• Health Literacy
• Becoming a more informed consumer
• Civic Awareness
• Identifying and keeping personal goals
• Transitioning to college
• Computer literacy
• Strengthening basic skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, numeracy
A few questions related to the Dirkx and Prenger course example on nature:
• What do you make of the example cited on p. 3 of developing a course of study on nature in a corrections setting?
• Could you envision a similar application in your setting?
• Could you envision utilizing such a webpage as the National Geographic Xpeditions site with your class? (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/)? In what ways?
• What do you conclude about the comparative group study on pp. 3-4 in which the class that studied the nature theme had a 50% higher program participation rate than those took a non-thematic subject matter course?
See Tom Sticht Functional Context Education “Introduction: Making Learning Relevant to the 21st Century http://library.naldatwork.ca/item/5893. Ch 1 (intro) and Ch 6 or 7 (Case studies). Sticht makes a case similar to that of Dirkx and Prenger and Quigley on the importance of a relevant curriculum focus in enhancing motivation while engendering positive impact on general literacy aptitude. While Sticht’s early work in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the functional contexts of the military, workplace, and President Johnson’s Great Society programs, in more recent years he has broadened his focus to include any content focus, including spiritual development that particular students would find valuable. What has remained consistent with Sticht is the central argument that the development of literacy skills occurs most effectively when it is a function of content rather than an independent stand-alone in which “basic language skills” and life skills are separately taught, or that one needs to learn to read first before applying such decontextualized knowledge to concrete applied situations.
Characteristics of an Integrated Theme Based Approach
An Integrated Themed-Based (ITB) instructional approach is more than just a form of content-based instruction. As an integrated theme-based approach to instruction, it is a transdisciplinary real-world view of the curriculum in focusing life contexts outside the program (p. 5). For example, writing a business letter is not an end in itself or an “exercise” in writing, but incorporated into a broader theme of getting and keeping a worthwhile sustainable job.
ITB is a way of thinking and about developing instruction in which teachers draw objectives, concepts, and skills from all areas of desired competencies, including basic skill development (p. 5). In the ideal scenario the course or unit is developed from a general idea, theme, or domain that is relevant to a learner or group of learners. The theme must emerge from or speak to the life contexts of participating learners (see Elsa Auerbach’s Making Meaning, Making Change http://www.amazon.com/Making-Meaning-Change-Participatory-Development/dp/0937354791 especially Ch 1 where she discusses one of her core concepts, the Emergent Curriculum). According to Auerbach, the curriculum is emergent in the sense that its formulation evolves in the very process of the dynamics of class interaction as a student-centered instructional planning. Thus, the context which gives shape to its formulation is quite different from expert driven top-down curriculum design.
A discussion of the Emergent Curriculum (http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/CGIE/yule.pdf) can also be read here. This is a useful article in providing a solid overview of the concept of the emerging curriculum even though there are a few syntax problems in the essay, most likely due to the fact that the authors are not native English writers. The core assumptions undergirding the emergent curriculum are suffused throughout Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults, though a clear statement of its core principles is as not concisely articulated by the authors as it is in Auerbach’s Making Meaning Making Change.
However it specifically emerges, which can be some combination of top-down pre-planning and bottom-up refining and fine tuning, Dirkx and Prenger maintain that a curriculum should ideally be grounded in thoughtful dialogue with students. It should reflect personal, vocational, family, community, societal or other contexts and other compelling student areas of interest such as the nature course, which was a uniquely discovered interest within a given class setting. Even if specific themes are developed in advance they can be modified in response to specific student feedback once classes meet. It is still important to include basic or academic skills; however the materials will be drawn from real or real like contexts that students utilize in their actual lives and will be as contextualized as possible (p. 9).
Comment: Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults presents an idealized pedagogical format based on the integrated thematic model. One of the core issues raised about this model is the issue of where the need for concentrated skill development comes in. Specifically, what is the role of systematic practice in basic or academic skill development such as writing essays in preparation for the GED writing text or developing fluency in basic reading (decoding)? That is, are such skills best developed “naturally” while working with theme-based content as Sticht, Auerbach, and Dirkx and Prenger suggest or should basic skill work be separated out and given its own particular attention in order to facilitate systematic development? This is an important issue that has both philosophical and practical import which very much gives shape to the nature and focus of everyday classroom work. There are various ways to work through these issues which would depend in part on specific program focus, background of both the teacher and the students, and academic level of the students. For example Sticht argues that one should provide explicit and separate attention to phonemic development with students at fourth grade reading levels and below while those at higher levels would best benefit through an exclusive functional-context approach based on topics and themes of identified interests to students as well as program developers.
According to Dirkx and Prenger, the thematic approach not only differs from basic skills or academic-focused approaches that concentrate on “decontextual” skill development. The ITB approach also differs from other functional approaches which reduce “real life” application to a set of specific skills that will shift from one topic to another without broader thematic context. This issue is illustrated in many adult education textbooks in which the “life skill” scenarios are often either too generalized or stereotypical for affective application with students or are simply designed as a resource to teach basic skills in comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, or math. It also differs from approaches that focus just on a set of life skills that one may derive for example, from a list of CASAS competencies without regard for the broader contexts or learning domains in which such skills are situated. Thus, in an ITB approach, the topic of consumer awareness might also include some focus on the role of consumerism as a cultural value in contemporary society and the psychology of consumerism on the lives of participating students and their families and communities. In a fully developed ITB approach, attention to the basic skills are fully addressed in context, and the themes selected are sufficiently broad to be integrated into some meaningful life contextual framework such as that of developing a meaningful vocation rather than that of simply finding a job.
This is the ideal proposed by Dirkx and Prenger even as the authors of this text are aware that such a vision represents an aspiration toward which to strive where progress rather than perfection is the more realistic and satisfying objective at least for many programs (see Ch 8). You might consider the concluding statement of Ch 1 on p. 16 of some value in viewing the possibilities of incorporating at least greater aspects of a theme-based approach in light of the various realities of your own programmatic context. The list of statements on p. 17 in Exhibit 1.1 may also merit your attention.
It is not my intention for you to accept the pedagogical presuppositions advocated by the authors of Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults. It is my desire that you vigorously (a) grapple with the ideas presented in the text as a thinking/planning tool to work through your own curriculum development planning; (b) give studied consideration to infusing your own work with greater intentional focus on student-relevant theme-based instruction while simultaneously including sustained attention to basic and academic skill development as well, and (c) to rigorously think through how a bottom-up emergent curriculum and top-down planned curriculum focus can creatively intersect at key junctures rather than to be intrinsically viewed as oppositional.
Critical Perspectives of Key Adult Literacy Writers
As argued in Focus on Basics article written by Allan Quigley, the first three weeks are critical in determining whether students will remain in the program http://www.ncsall.net/?id=420. As he argues more extensively in his book Rethinking Literacy Education: The Critical Need for Practice-Based Change Practitioners, program-based institutional, along with student situational barriers such as day care, transportation, which are difficult to control for, also need to be addressed (http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Literacy-Education-Critical-Practice-Based/dp/078790287X). Clearly, curriculum is one intervening institutional factor, but it is not always the uppermost one, even as sometimes it is.
On this topic Quigley discuss relevant content-based curricula through the prisms of four central curricular prisms:
• Vocational Working Philosophy
• Liberal Working Philosophy
• Liberatory Working Philosophy
• Humanist Working Philosophy
My review essay of Rethinking Literacy Education titled, “The Pragmatic Reform Vision of B. Allan Quigley,” provides a summary of Quigley’s arguments on potential barriers (pp. 8-10) to participating in adult education programs and Quigley’s curriculum recommendations (pp. 10-14) http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/george/rethink/rethink.PDF
In Literacy for Life A Framework for Change, Hannah Fingeret and Cassndra Drennon propose a life cycle model consisting of the following stages http://store.tcpress.com/0807736589.shtml
1. Prolonged tension: Some basic life problem (e.g., dependency or unemployment) that propel individuals to seek a solution.
2. Turning point: Making the initial decision to seek adult literacy education as at least a part of the solution leading to some life-based resolution (enhancing literacy skills to become increasingly independent through gainful employment).
3. Problem-solving and seeking (advanced) educational opportunities: Students begin to build on the skills and confidence that they’ve gained from the program to begin to achieve some visible outcomes beyond the program that matter to them.
4. Changing relationships and changing practices: Relationships at home, work, and the community begin to change outside the program as a result of participating in the program (adults who become increasingly independent or set new goals and the impact of these changes on significant others)
5. Intensive continuing interaction: Increased learning and enhanced sense of efficacy within the program where students can continue to work on their skills in a “safe zone” for addressing the continuing needs of enhanced life efficacy outside of the program
On the view of the authors, an optimally effective program will facilitate student development the entirety of the life cycle of change. Curriculum is important, but so are other critical factors.
Questions to ponder
1. What are your thoughts of the viability of Fingeret and Drennon’s Life Cycle Model of adult literacy?
2. In what ways can this model be of value to you as you reflect on the challenges you face as a classroom teacher, curriculum developer, or program director or administrator?
3. Do you see any of the five turning points to be of more significant than others?
4. Which of the five are in your direct span of control as a teacher or program director or administrator?
5. What are the implications of any of these turning points being missing for the quality of adult education programming, especially on the issue of student persistence and goal attainment?
The NCSALL report by Rober Kegan, and his colleagues Toward a New Pluralism ABE/ESOL Classrooms: Teaching to Multiple Cultures of Mind Executive Summary (http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/report19a.pdf)draws out important insight on the way that students with different “cultures of the mind” learn, and what they seek to focus on in adult education settings. Specifically, Kegan identifies three “cultures of the mind” linked to Instrumental, Socializing, and Self-Authoring ways of knowing. According to Kegan and his colleagues these cultures of mind, which the authors view as typologies, play a major role in how students interpret what they are learning and its significance. Take a look first at the two page research brief: http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/brief19.pdf
Questions:
1. To what extent do you find Kegan’s pluralistic model persuasive?
2. Whether or not or the extent to which you agree with his ideal typology, to what extent have the students you’ve worked with exhibited these three “cultures of the mind?”
3. Which typology or mix most typifies the students you’ve worked with?
4. What can you draw from Kegan’s model that would be of value to you in his proposed pluralistic model?
With the Quigley, Fingeret and Drennon, and Kegan et al studies in mind, what seems evident to me is that students have a range of critical life application issues that they process in highly divergent ways that they are seeking to address through adult basic education. Programs and adult education institutions, accordingly, need to be as keenly focused on these divergences as possible. Several key factors are required:
• A supportive atmosphere where students will feel accepted and valued, and then challenged in a way that builds up their capacities and esteem
• Timely intake and appropriate placement
• Well taught classrooms with appropriate materials
• A relevant and interesting instructional program that in some significant manner addresses both basic skill enhancement and application to life contexts beyond the program though content-based subject matter that provides students greater access to those contexts
• A program well attuned to effectively working with students with a wide divergence of backgrounds, learning styles, expectations, goals and current life challenges, and self-processing psychological prisms
• Highly attuned counseling and referral services
• If at all possible, some resources to help students deal with such issues as day care, transportation, and long-term unemployment
Key Curriculum Content areas include at the least:
• Workplace literacy and career development
• Family Literacy
• Health Literacy
• Becoming a more informed consumer
• Civic Awareness
• Identifying and keeping personal goals
• Transitioning to college
• Computer literacy
• Strengthening basic skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, numeracy
A few questions related to the Dirkx and Prenger course example on nature:
• What do you make of the example cited on p. 3 of developing a course of study on nature in a corrections setting?
• Could you envision a similar application in your setting?
• Could you envision utilizing such a webpage as the National Geographic Xpeditions site with your class? (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/)? In what ways?
• What do you conclude about the comparative group study on pp. 3-4 in which the class that studied the nature theme had a 50% higher program participation rate than those took a non-thematic subject matter course?
See Tom Sticht Functional Context Education “Introduction: Making Learning Relevant to the 21st Century http://library.naldatwork.ca/item/5893. Ch 1 (intro) and Ch 6 or 7 (Case studies). Sticht makes a case similar to that of Dirkx and Prenger and Quigley on the importance of a relevant curriculum focus in enhancing motivation while engendering positive impact on general literacy aptitude. While Sticht’s early work in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the functional contexts of the military, workplace, and President Johnson’s Great Society programs, in more recent years he has broadened his focus to include any content focus, including spiritual development that particular students would find valuable. What has remained consistent with Sticht is the central argument that the development of literacy skills occurs most effectively when it is a function of content rather than an independent stand-alone in which “basic language skills” and life skills are separately taught, or that one needs to learn to read first before applying such decontextualized knowledge to concrete applied situations.
Characteristics of an Integrated Theme Based Approach
An Integrated Themed-Based (ITB) instructional approach is more than just a form of content-based instruction. As an integrated theme-based approach to instruction, it is a transdisciplinary real-world view of the curriculum in focusing life contexts outside the program (p. 5). For example, writing a business letter is not an end in itself or an “exercise” in writing, but incorporated into a broader theme of getting and keeping a worthwhile sustainable job.
ITB is a way of thinking and about developing instruction in which teachers draw objectives, concepts, and skills from all areas of desired competencies, including basic skill development (p. 5). In the ideal scenario the course or unit is developed from a general idea, theme, or domain that is relevant to a learner or group of learners. The theme must emerge from or speak to the life contexts of participating learners (see Elsa Auerbach’s Making Meaning, Making Change http://www.amazon.com/Making-Meaning-Change-Participatory-Development/dp/0937354791 especially Ch 1 where she discusses one of her core concepts, the Emergent Curriculum). According to Auerbach, the curriculum is emergent in the sense that its formulation evolves in the very process of the dynamics of class interaction as a student-centered instructional planning. Thus, the context which gives shape to its formulation is quite different from expert driven top-down curriculum design.
A discussion of the Emergent Curriculum (http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/CGIE/yule.pdf) can also be read here. This is a useful article in providing a solid overview of the concept of the emerging curriculum even though there are a few syntax problems in the essay, most likely due to the fact that the authors are not native English writers. The core assumptions undergirding the emergent curriculum are suffused throughout Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults, though a clear statement of its core principles is as not concisely articulated by the authors as it is in Auerbach’s Making Meaning Making Change.
However it specifically emerges, which can be some combination of top-down pre-planning and bottom-up refining and fine tuning, Dirkx and Prenger maintain that a curriculum should ideally be grounded in thoughtful dialogue with students. It should reflect personal, vocational, family, community, societal or other contexts and other compelling student areas of interest such as the nature course, which was a uniquely discovered interest within a given class setting. Even if specific themes are developed in advance they can be modified in response to specific student feedback once classes meet. It is still important to include basic or academic skills; however the materials will be drawn from real or real like contexts that students utilize in their actual lives and will be as contextualized as possible (p. 9).
Comment: Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults presents an idealized pedagogical format based on the integrated thematic model. One of the core issues raised about this model is the issue of where the need for concentrated skill development comes in. Specifically, what is the role of systematic practice in basic or academic skill development such as writing essays in preparation for the GED writing text or developing fluency in basic reading (decoding)? That is, are such skills best developed “naturally” while working with theme-based content as Sticht, Auerbach, and Dirkx and Prenger suggest or should basic skill work be separated out and given its own particular attention in order to facilitate systematic development? This is an important issue that has both philosophical and practical import which very much gives shape to the nature and focus of everyday classroom work. There are various ways to work through these issues which would depend in part on specific program focus, background of both the teacher and the students, and academic level of the students. For example Sticht argues that one should provide explicit and separate attention to phonemic development with students at fourth grade reading levels and below while those at higher levels would best benefit through an exclusive functional-context approach based on topics and themes of identified interests to students as well as program developers.
According to Dirkx and Prenger, the thematic approach not only differs from basic skills or academic-focused approaches that concentrate on “decontextual” skill development. The ITB approach also differs from other functional approaches which reduce “real life” application to a set of specific skills that will shift from one topic to another without broader thematic context. This issue is illustrated in many adult education textbooks in which the “life skill” scenarios are often either too generalized or stereotypical for affective application with students or are simply designed as a resource to teach basic skills in comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, or math. It also differs from approaches that focus just on a set of life skills that one may derive for example, from a list of CASAS competencies without regard for the broader contexts or learning domains in which such skills are situated. Thus, in an ITB approach, the topic of consumer awareness might also include some focus on the role of consumerism as a cultural value in contemporary society and the psychology of consumerism on the lives of participating students and their families and communities. In a fully developed ITB approach, attention to the basic skills are fully addressed in context, and the themes selected are sufficiently broad to be integrated into some meaningful life contextual framework such as that of developing a meaningful vocation rather than that of simply finding a job.
This is the ideal proposed by Dirkx and Prenger even as the authors of this text are aware that such a vision represents an aspiration toward which to strive where progress rather than perfection is the more realistic and satisfying objective at least for many programs (see Ch 8). You might consider the concluding statement of Ch 1 on p. 16 of some value in viewing the possibilities of incorporating at least greater aspects of a theme-based approach in light of the various realities of your own programmatic context. The list of statements on p. 17 in Exhibit 1.1 may also merit your attention.
It is not my intention for you to accept the pedagogical presuppositions advocated by the authors of Planning and Implementing Instruction for Adults. It is my desire that you vigorously (a) grapple with the ideas presented in the text as a thinking/planning tool to work through your own curriculum development planning; (b) give studied consideration to infusing your own work with greater intentional focus on student-relevant theme-based instruction while simultaneously including sustained attention to basic and academic skill development as well, and (c) to rigorously think through how a bottom-up emergent curriculum and top-down planned curriculum focus can creatively intersect at key junctures rather than to be intrinsically viewed as oppositional.
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