Part 1
Deletion and Agency
1 âDoes My Experience Count?â The Role of Experiential Knowledge in the Research Writing of Postgraduate Adult Learners
Linda Cooper
Who will be given social agency is both an epistemological and political question. Whose experience of the past and whose vision of the future will be considered credible? Whose modest testimony will be allowed to contribute to a shared understanding of the nature of the world?
Michelson, 2004: 27
In this chapter, I explore the dissertation-writing experiences of a selection of adult learners completing a masterâs degree in adult education at a South African university. The masterâs programme, on which I taught, includes a coursework component followed by a research dissertation of 25,000 words. The majority of learners entering the programme have many years of practitioner experience in the field of adult education and allied fields such as community development. Since a significant proportion of students have had few opportunities for formal study, many access the programme via a process in which their âprior learningâ is recognised; they bring rich practitioner expertise and skills, having occupied positions of considerable authority within their organisations, and having developed impressive conceptual repertoires and social understanding. As Casanave (2002: 82) has argued of professionals who enrol on graduate masterâs programmes: âYears of work experience may in fact provide masters degree students with more real, as opposed to symbolic knowledge and expertise than could ever be provided in a (formal) program of study.â
It has become clear to me, over 10 years of supervising postgraduate thesis writing, that many adult learners enter this masterâs programme because they have a powerful desire to make their voices heard. In other words, they have something they want to say, and start the programme with a âready-madeâ thesis or argument, rather than (or in addition to) having pressing questions to which they are seeking answers. As Casanave notes, such masterâs students are âpositioned precariously between the status of novice and specialistâ (Casanave, 2002: 84). The questions that these students and their supervisors must grapple with are the following: What role can adult learnersâ working knowledge or professional experience play in their postgraduate research? What status should be accorded their prior experience and what risks are involved in drawing on professional experience as a source of new knowledge? What role can this experience legitimately play in the writing of the research? How should it be viewed or treated by the supervisor in terms of postgraduate pedagogy?
Questions about the role of workplace or experiential knowledge in the writing of research are not peculiar to the South African context. Internationally, trends towards lifelong learning, and pressures to widen access and increase participation in higher education, have led to increasing numbers of working adults entering postgraduate study after having gained a number of years of professional and life experience. In South Africa however, given its apartheid history, these questions hold particular significance for those adults who were previously excluded on the basis of âraceâ, class or gender, and who are currently entering postgraduate study in increasing numbers. For this reason, post-apartheid higher-education policy has foregrounded the recognition of prior learning (RPL) as a mechanism for widening access to those previously excluded, who have amassed considerable experiential knowledge.
For more radical theorists, RPL is viewed not only as a mechanism of addressing past discrimination and disadvantage, but also as a vehicle for the recognition of âknowledge from belowâ (Grossman, 1999; Michelson, 1998). It has been argued that when brought into dialogue with academic knowledge, experiential, work-based or professional knowledge has the potential to enrich the curricular, pedagogical and critical practices of the academy (Ralphs, 2009). However, little has been written about what this conversation or dialogue between prior experiential knowledge and academic knowledge involves. In this chapter, I seek to contribute to an understanding of âwhat happensâ when experiential knowledge is brought into dialogue with established academic knowledge. I do this by drawing on illustrative examples of the research-writing practices of a selection of adult learners, all of whom entered postgraduate study via RPL. First, however, I explore the following two questions: How should the relationship between adult learnersâ experiential knowledge and established academic knowledge be viewed pedagogically? To what extent should studentsâ prior experiential knowledge be drawn upon, or excluded, in the research-writing process?
Exploring the Relationship between Experience-Based and Academic Knowledge
Experiential learning theories place experience at the core of knowledge development, and have been central to adult education as a field of practice and research. Embedded in these theories is the assumption that the role of peopleâs experience in learning and knowledge production should be celebrated and legitimated (Fenwick, 2001). As noted earlier, more radical approaches to RPL see experience-based knowledge as having the potential to enrich higher-education pedagogy and theory building.
Ironically, however, experiential learning theories do not provide the conceptual tools necessary for assessing the contribution of experiential learning to academic knowledge. By stressing the essential similarity and continuity of all forms of knowledge, they offer no conceptual language with which to talk about different kinds of knowledge or the relationships between them. If it is because of its distinctiveness from academic knowledge that experiential knowledge is seen as having pedagogic and epistemological value, then we need a conceptual language that allows us to describe different forms of knowledge as well as the nature of interaction between them. In addition, experiential learning theories tend to pay little attention to power relations, and are thus unable to account for why some forms of knowledge carry significantly more power in society than others (Fenwick, 2001). This social reality has significant implications for the conventions and genres of research writing that postgraduate students are expected to acquire.
Drawing attention to the power of formal, academic knowledge, writers such as Young (2008) and Muller (2000) have argued that the only way in which access to higher education can be widened to historically excluded constituencies is by giving them epistemological access to âpowerful knowledgeâ. This requires having a keen sense of the differentiated nature of knowledge (in particular, the distinction between scientific and everyday knowledge) and an understanding that everyday or experiential knowledge can never make the same kinds of truth claims as can formal, codified knowledge (Young, 2008: chap. 3). Muller warns that if this distinction is not made clearly visible to students, they might âstub their toe[s] especially severely on the reefs of social hierarchy which are not displaced but merely removed from viewâ (Muller, 2000: 71). The implications of this position for postgraduate pedagogy are that studentsâ experiential knowledge should, as far as possible, âbe kept out ofâ research writing, as it can potentially act as a barrier to their acquisition of academic discourse. Countering this view, it is arguable that the boundary between experience-based and âschooledâ knowledge âis always already breachedâ (Walkerdine, 1988 cited in Michelson, 2004: 17, emphasis added). Furthermore, arguments in support of the differentiated nature of knowledge are often premised on a dualist view of âeverydayâ and âscientificâ knowledge, which portrays formal academic knowledge as being relatively impermeable to knowledge developments outside of specialised sites of knowledge production. The problem is that such a view of knowledge making (like experiential learning theories) is unable to account for the outcome of the interaction between different forms of knowledge.
Claims that âscientific knowledgeâ is â or should be â untainted by everyday experience have been critiqued by several critical feminist and post-modernist theorists. For example, Michelson (2004: 14) argues that the claims regarding the objectivity and universality of theory are part of âWestern, metropolitan and masculinist knowledge practicesâ that dominate conventional academic constructs of knowledge. Connell (2007) locates the origins of established social theory under colonialism, and argues that the social sciences have evolved historically via a one-way flow of information from the periphery to the metropole: while the periphery provided âraw dataâ, the metropole was where theory was built. Ideas and intellectuals from the periphery rarely shaped social theory, and forms of knowledge that did not âfitâ into established scientific genres were lost, erased and deleted. The consequence of this has been the exclusion of knowledge generated in the majority world at a serious cost to our collective knowledge archive. Connell (2007: 226) cites African philosopher, Hountinji, who argues that a sociology that is based solely on the experiences of the metropole results ânot in minor omissions but in major incompletenessâ. Connell goes on to assert that knowledge contributions from the âperipheryâ can add value to our understanding of human society because they âmultipl[y] the local sources of our thinkingâ (Connell, 2007: 207).
In the text that follows, I draw on these critiques of experiential learning theories and dualist views of knowledge in exploring the role of experiential, professional or work-based knowledge in adult learnersâ research writing. I position my argument within the traditions of post-Vygotskian and Activity Theory perspectives which, while maintaining the distinction between âscientificâ and âeverydayâ knowledge, point to the centrality of each in the process of knowledge making. In other words, while scientific concepts gradually acquire meaning through being embedded in everyday referents, âeveryday thought is given structure and order in the context of systematic scientific thoughtâ (Daniels, 2001: 53). This (more dialectical) view of knowledge making foregrounds not only the differences between forms of knowledge but also the relationships between them in the processes of research and knowledge making. The aim is not merely to find categories into which different kinds of knowledge may be âslottedâ, but rather to explore their forms of engagement and patterns of interaction.1 Such an approach values diverse ways of knowing and foregrounds the potential contribution that experiential knowledge from diverse sources can make to the knowledge archive of the academy. At the same time, it acknowledges the power of established conventions of research writing within the academy; as Blommaert (2005: 106) has noted, creative practice can only happen within certain contextual and structural constraints â within the âborderline zone of existing hegemonies. It develops within hegemonies while it attempts to alter themâ.
Methodology: From Pedagogy to Student Agency
In this section, I describe in some detail the methodological moves that I made in the process of my research for this chapter. I began with the assumption that the nature of the âengagement and patterns of interactionâ between experiential and academic knowledge are potentially shaped by three factors: (i) the nature of the knowledge/academic field; (ii) the pedagogic approach adopted by the supervisor; and (iii) studentsâ own approaches and strategies. Initially, I was most interested in exploring the second factor â postgraduate pedagogy â and in particular, the ways in which supervisors advised their students on how to deal with their experiential knowledge in the research-writing process.
I selected three students with whom I had been involved, to varying degrees, in the supervision of their dissertations.2 All three entered the university via RPL, and with considerable practitioner experience in adult education, and all had successfully completed their masterâs degrees. With the permission of the students and their supervisors, I embarked on a process of âexcavatingâ successive drafts of their theses. I focused initially on the supervisorsâ written feedback on sections of writing that drew extensively on the studentsâ professional and life experiences, and attempted to identify the pedagogic strategies that the supervisors adopted. Did they value studentsâ professional and life experience, and if so, in what way? What role did they see it playing in the making of new knowledge? What did they advise students âto doâ with their experiential knowledge in the research-writing process?
Working back through successive âlayersâ of studentsâ thesis writing, however, I found my attention increasingly drawn to the third of the factors above â namely, studentsâ strategies involving their experiential knowledge. I was struck by the desire of students to give âvoiceâ to their experiential knowledge, and by the fact that their research writing â in its early stages at least â was motivated by the fact that they had something they wished to say rather than the desire to find answers to specific questions. I became aware of the considerable agency, expressed through the adoption of various strategies, which students employed to incorporate their experience into their research writing, and to create spaces (appropriately or inappropriately according to established research-writing conventions) to give voice to their experientially formed theories and explanations. What became apparent was that certain experiences were ultimately deleted from their theses, and I sought to find out why this was so. It is the set of moves that students made in their attempts to incorporate their experiential knowledge, and to negotiate the contours between their experiential knowledge and the codes and conventions of academic research writing, that form the focus of this chapter.
Drawing on drafts of studentsâ theses, the critical feedback that they received from their supervisors and examiners, and on informal conversations with the students as well as one formal interview, I track the studentsâ struggles to establish the status their experiential knowledge had, and the risks involved in deciding where âto put itâ. The experiences of two of the students illustrate how experiential knowledge has the potential to act as a barrier to the acquisition of academic research-writing conventions. I illustrate this, not just to argue for the exclusion of such knowledge, but to emphasise the point that drawing on such knowledge in the academic research-writing process is not uncomplicated; it involves risks for both the student and the supervisor. In the case of the third student, I make a systematic examination of successive drafts of his thesis to illustrate how it is possible to creatively negotiate the inclusion of experiential knowledge into academic writing. I probe the strategies that this student adopted to find expression for his experiential knowledge, the styles and genres of writing that facilitated its expression and the extent to which he was able to draw on this knowledge to develop a research-writing voice. I explore how the student negotiated the risks involved in drawing on his experience, and highlight those strategies that he adopted which were ultimately âsuccessfulâ. I then consider the insights that inclusion of experiential knowledge contributed to his research writing, and finally, evaluate what was âlostâ through processes of deletion and exclusion of this knowledge.
Is the Experiential Voice Too Strong?
In the two examples that follow, I show how studentsâ prior work experience or professional knowledge may be a double-edged sword. For these two students, it served strongly to motivate and provide direction to their research, and facilitated deep insights and understandings; however, at times it also acted as a barrier â clouding their interpretations, clogging up their research writing, and presenting them with dilemmas about âwhere to putâ their experience.
Anna
Anna3 had no prior degree, but had the British equivalent of a postgraduate diploma. Her work experience (mainly in the United Kingdom) had spanned a period of nearly 35 years, and included development work in the field of early childhood development. She had supervised and mentored senior local-government staff, and developed training programmes for women elected to local authorities. During her long career, she had completed numerous non-degree courses in community development, as well as psychology and counselling, and had gained extensive counselling experience, including counselling skills training. She had enrolled for a masterâs in management and organisational learning at a British university, but did not complete. During the seven years prior to starting her second masterâs course, Anna had been working with South African NGOs in the area of leadership development. She enrolled for her masterâs in adult education, keen to learn more about the South African context, but also motivated by a desire to have her experiential learning and attempts at theory-building recognised.
On completing her coursework, Anna embarked on an action-research project that involved the piloting of a community leadership-development course of an unusual kind; one which...