Adult Education Teachers

Designing Critical Literacy Practices

Rebecca Rogers, Mary Ann Kramer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780805862423
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000149340
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

This book examines the literacy practices of exemplary adult education teachers working within critical literacy frameworks. It provides an in-depth look at the complexity of adult literacy education through the lenses of these teachers. An understanding of this complexity helps teachers design literacy practices in classrooms on a daily basis. This is an important book for there is considerable pedagogical and political attention focused on adult literacy education at this time. As the field of adult education continues to grapple with issues of teacher professionalization/certification, it adds a much needed teacher perspective.

Appropriate as a text for adult education courses, this volume will also appeal to researchers, teacher educators, practitioners, and graduate students across the field of literacy education.

Part 1

Framework and Contexts

1

Exemplary Adult Literacy Educators

Holiday, an African American adult education teacher, copied the lyrics from the song “Stand by Me” and distributed the text to the adult education students in her classroom. She asked them to listen to the song first, without reading the words. The students listened, many of them singing along and swaying in their seats. She played the song again and asked her students to follow along with the words in their packet. The students followed with their pencils. They continued to sing along and dance in their seats. Line by line, Holiday and her students went through the song and talked about what the lyrics meant. The cultural knowledge they bring with them served as an entry point for their literacy learning.

Holiday:	What’s someone’s favorite line?
Student:	“Just swallow your pride…”
Holiday:	That’s one of my favorite ones, too. What does that line mean to you?
Student:	It means to go forward in life.

As the student talked, Holiday recorded her words on the board: “go forward in life.” Holiday asked another student what the phrase “swallow your pride” means. Drawing on real-life experience, the student responded, “When food stamps came out that was embarrassing for some people…. We had to swallow our pride and go on up in there.” Sitting in a chair, with her legs crossed, facing the student, Holiday carefully listened to her student’s experiences. She immediately stated, “That’s a great example.”

She continued to make connections with her students’ lives, encouraging them to do the same, as they gave examples of their favorite lines and what the lines meant to them. Holiday shared her favorite line in the song with the class: “My favorite line is ‘I’ll share your load if you just call….’ I like that one because you know whatever your problem is, if you are really a true friend, a true friend will be there. (Field notes, November 2003)

Holiday^* is one of the nine adult education teachers in this book accelerating her students’ literacy development within a critical framework. In this vignette, Holiday captures the complexity of adult literacy education. Drawing on materials that are relevant in her students’ lives, encouraging dialogue, and making connections between the students’ in-school and out-of-school lives are but a few of the threads we see in the tapestry of Holiday’s teaching. Holiday is an African American poet and a social worker, and brings many experiences with social activism into her adult education classroom. On any given day, you could walk into Holiday’s classroom and see a student-centered curriculum in action, one that is problem based and reflects her students’ local literacies and lives.

Adult education has deep historical roots and has always been situated between the dialectic of oppression and activism. While there is some debate about the official origins of the movement, most scholars associate the beginning of the adult education movement with the founding of national organizations of adult education between the years of 1924 and 1961. However, as early as the colonial period, adult education was seen in town meetings and legislatures, teaching the tools of liberty and government. The movement in the United States can be traced to powerful educator-activists such as Booker T. Washington, Septima Clark, Myles Horton, Joanne Robinson, Aimee Horton, Harriet Jacobs, Cora Stewart Wilson, Frank Labauch, Ruth Colvin, Sequoyah, bell hooks, John Berry Meachum, and Susan Baker King Taylor, among others. Despite this rich and complex history, we still know very little about adult education teachers or their instructional practices (Degener, 2001; Smith, 2006). This is a particular concern given that in the contemporary context of the United States, high school dropout rates average 25 percent and in urban high schools reach 60 to 70 percent (Fine, 1991). A disproportionate amount of these students are African American, many of whom have difficulty reading and writing (Bickel & Papagiannis, 1988; Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003).

The National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) reports that 43 percent of American adults have a limited ability to perform a variety of real-world literacy tasks (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.).^* Many of these adults have dropped out or, as Fine (1991) notes, have been “pushed out” of high school programs yet find their way back into adult education programs (Fine, 1991; Weis, Farrar, & Petrie, 1989). Smith (2006), in a chapter in the Review of Adult Learning and Literacy (vol. 6), asks the following question: what does the Adult Basic Education (ABE) teacher workforce look like now? Smith (2006) suggests that more research is needed to understand the characteristics of adult education teachers. Our book is a response to this call.

Our focus in this book is on exemplary adult education teachers and how they teach literacy. There are many different types of adult education teachers. Some work full-time, and others work part-time. Some teachers work in industry and are employed by adult education institutions. Others work for school-based programs or teach in informal education programs in industry. Despite the widely cited relationship between teacher preparation and student achievement (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2000), caring professionals with little formal training in educational theory and practice comprise the overwhelming population of adult educators. There seems to be little disagreement about the need for qualified and knowledgeable adult education teachers. There is, however, debate over what constitutes quality, preparedness, and effectiveness (e.g., Brookfield, 2005; Galbraith & Gilley, 1985; Sabatini, Ginsburg, & Russell, 2002; Shanahan, Meehan, & Mogge, 1994; Smith, 2006).

People are often attracted to teaching in adult education because it offers flexible work hours and relative freedom in designing instructional practices, and because they are committed to educational outcomes. Those who choose adult education as a vocation do so because they are interested in challenging social issues such as poverty, poor health and limited access to health care, environmental pollution, discrimination and racism, sexism, and classism (Baptiste, 2001). However, there are few incentives to retain and promote qualified and effective teachers such as competitive starting salaries, benefits, or tenure. Teacher preparation (whether in the form of state or college certification; background experiences in K–12 teaching; working with adults in businesses, industry, organizing; or the like), teacher retention, and ongoing professional development are important issues that impact teachers’ effectiveness and overall satisfaction with their jobs.

Most adult education teachers work part-time, without benefits and job security. Smith, Hofer, and Gillespie (2001) conducted a study with ninety-five adult literacy teachers on the quality of their working conditions. They found that of the ninety-five teachers in their study, 65 percent stated there was no teachers’ room where they could meet with colleagues. Twenty-three percent received no paid professional development time, and 32 percent received only one to twelve hours per year of paid professional development time. Of the ninety-five teachers, 65 percent had not participated in a study circle in the past year, and 79 percent had not participated in practitioner research in the past year. Smith (2006) argues for the importance of full-time, well-supported, and long-term employment which includes access to high-quality professional development. What is remarkable is that despite the lack of education credentials, the lack of professional development, and the lack of resources given to this hardworking group of educators, adult educators historically have managed to make significant social change (e.g., Clark & Brown, 1990; Nelms, 1997; Moore, 1973; Purcell-Gates & Waterman, 2000).

Given this context, we wanted to know more about the adult education teachers who have been identified as highly successful in the major Midwestern urban area of St. Louis. The intent of our inquiry was to document the beliefs and practices of highly effective Adult Education and Literacy/General Educational Development (AEL/GED) teachers. To draw on what Ladson-Billings (1994) has referred to as the “wisdom of practice” of experienced and respected teachers, we designed a survey and nomination form to solicit nominations of exemplary teachers. We used what Shulman (1987) has referred to as the process of “community nomination,” through which we asked members of the adult education community to nominate exemplary teachers. This nomination form was distributed to adult education and literacy sites in the metro St. Louis area. We conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with nine of the nominated adult education teachers and followed up with observations in their classrooms and focus group discussions. For a complete description of the research design and methodology, see appendix 1. We draw on the tacit theories of the adult education teachers and provide case studies based on thick descriptions of their beliefs and practices about literacy education.

Specifically, the research questions that guided our inquiry were as follows: what instructional beliefs and practices, specific to literacy instruction, do exemplary adult education teachers hold? How do adult education teachers understand literacy learning and development? What can the “wisdom of practice” garnered from adult education teachers tell us about teacher preparation and professional development?

THE NEW LITERACY STUDIES AND ADULT LITERACY EDUCATORS

Several decades of research demonstrate the many ways in which adults interact with literacies in multiple domains of practice— including families and communities (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Rogers, 2003; Taylor, 1983), school (e.g., Horsman, 2000; Luttrell, 1997; Purcell-Gates & Waterman, 2000), and work contexts (e.g., Goldstein, 1997; Gowen-Greenwood, 1992; Henning, 1998; Hull, 1993, 1997). Such studies have broadened the field’s understanding of the complexity of language and literacy practices and the ways in which learning occurs within communities of practices.

The New Literacy Studies (NLS) offers a framework for capturing the theoretical tenets of much of this work in adult literacy education. NLS grew out of a set of focused discussions with the New London Group in New London, Connecticut (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000b; New London Group, 1996). Recognizing the intersections of the local and global and the changing nature of the work world, the thrust of the NLS movement is away from decontextualized literacies to recognizing the historical, situated, local-global nature of literacy practices. NLS argues for understanding literacy practices not as static, isolated endeavors but as deeply situated in specific contexts, purposes, and identities that are evoked when people interact with literacies. NLS includes studies conducted across the life span—including adult education. Indeed, quite a few studies under the umbrella of NLS have focused on adult and family literacies (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Hawisher & Selfe, 2000; Jones, 2000; Pitt, 2000; Rogers, 2003; Stein & Slonimsky, 2006). Combined with the studies previously mentioned, we arrive at a broadened framework to conceptualize literacies. Such a framework includes the following assumptions (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 2000; New London Group, 1996):

• Literacies are situated, historical, and political, and are carried out for social purposes.

• Different spheres of social life (e.g., family, work, spiritual practices, and school) include different literacy practices.

• Literacy practices change to meet new social demands.

• People carry histories of participation with literacy practices with them into different domains of social practice.

• Literacies (and associated identities) are acquired through informal learning and participation in communities of practice.

• Literacy practices are simultaneously local and global in their orientation.

The NLS movement marks a departure from viewing literacy as an autonomous, neutral practice to a set of practices that are inherently ideological social practices that evoke particular types of identities. How, then, does this broadened understanding of literacy impact the teaching and learning of literacy? Educational researchers have taken up this very question—primarily in K–12 education to research the ways in which teachers can structure multiliterate classrooms (e.g., Kist, 2005; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Pahl & Rowsell, 2005, 2006; Richards & McKenna, 2003). There have been few, if any, examples of adult literacy teachers engaging with New Literacy Studies. This is unfortunate, because adult literacy teachers are uniquely positioned to contribute to the theoretical and practical development of New Literacy Studies, because their students readily bring a diversity of literacies with them into the classroom; they are at the nexus of a new work world; and their curriculum allows more flexibility to design literacy practices that build on multiple literacies.

Like all other professionals, adult education teachers have tacit knowledge about teaching and learning that they draw on in their classrooms. Tacit knowledge is often referred to as “intuition,” “common sense,” or “practice wisdom.” Tacit knowledge is a meaningful and important source of information that informs practitioners’ actions and decisions (Schon, 1983). While tacit knowledge may be difficult for teachers to talk about, it can be ascertained through talking with teachers and viewing their practice “in action.” Our role as researchers was to make sense out of how they theorize (in talk and practice) about their beliefs and practices and make such implicit theories about literacy teaching and learning explicit, using their narratives to do so.

Scholars in the New Literacy Studies suggest teachers may be seen as designers of learning processes and environments, which includes orchestrating practices and continually redesigning based on responses to curricular designs (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000a; Kress, 2000). Adult education teachers design learning environments based on their professional knowledge, which includes knowledge of content areas, learning processes, and the cultural and linguistic dynamics of the classroom. Teachers use resources or “cultural tools” that are available to them and their learners to design and ultimately redesign learning spaces (Gee, 1999/2005). There are many different available designs or cultural tools that comprise a learning environment, such as texts (both oral and written), relationships, cultural routines, language patterns, and social structures that enable and constrain certain instructional possibilities (Bowers & Flinders, 1990). Obvious interactional patterns in classrooms include observable behaviors such as turn taking, the use of space to arrange the classroom, the physical proximity of the teachers and the students, the use of materials, and the tempo of the dialogue between adults in the classroom. Less observable are the implicit cultural patterns that structure verbal and nonverbal modes of communication as well as the histories of participation that adults have with texts, topics, teachers, tests, and schools. Teachers call on explicit and implicit interactional patterns as they design learning environments. Teachers interpret the ongoing interactions in their classroom that include verbal and nonverbal cues such as the use of space (proxemics), body language (kinesics), and voice tone and intonation (prosody). Based on their assessment of the complexity of these interactions, adult education teachers design and redesign learning spaces.

Related to our belief that adult education teachers are constantly designing best practices is our understanding of the role of teachers as public intellectuals (Gramsci, 1971; hooks, 1994). Public intellectuals are those people in society who traverse boundaries of teaching and activism and do so in a way that connects theory and practice and contributes to positive social change. In the sense that adult education teachers often have their attention dually focused on individual students accelerating toward passing the GED test and on the social structures and practices that perpetuate injustice and illiteracy as one symptom in society of such injustice, we consider all adult education teachers to be working toward justice. While not all of the teachers directly link their practice to the larger political terrain, we argue that all of their practices are, indeed, rooted in wider political contexts. Gramsci (1971) referred to public intellectuals as “organic intellectuals” and believed that their job was “to organize human...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1 Framework and Contexts
• Part 2 Cases of Adult Education Teachers
• Part 3 Cases of Adult Education Teachers
• Part 4 Cases of Adult Education Teachers
• Part 5 Conclusions
• Appendix 1: Research Design and Methodology: Eliciting the “Wisdom of Practice”
• Appendix 2: Nomination Letter
• Appendix 3: Interview Protocol
• Appendix 4: Glossary of Terms and People
• Appendix 5: Adult Literacy Education Resources
• References
• Index