[ProfessionalDevelopment 2391] Re: Critical Thinking-Student InvolvementJanet Isserlis Janet_Isserlis at brown.eduMon Jul 21 10:32:23 EDT 2008
Steve and all Clearly I cannot speak for the state of New Hampshire or anyone in it. You seem to offer us a mixed message here much of the focus of adult learning is on what Heide Wrigley and others have called, "bringing the outside [world] in." Working with learners to find applications that are meaningful and that contextualize skills development in places beyond the classroom seems to be the point of much of our work. Having worked with many in the state of NH, I can assure you the last thing that has happened in adult education there is teachers'/practitioners' abuse of power. Presenting options, possibilities, asking learners for their input, making explicit the metacognitive and other embedded skills is not at all the same as some power-abusing call to advocacy. Janet From: Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com> Reply-To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov> Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:23:03 -0700 To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov> Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2383] Re: Critical Thinking-Student Involvement Janet, If I read the comments that I have pasted below, I cannot help but conclude that Adult Ed. in New Hampshire sees one of its functions as organizing the learners as lobbyists for more Adult Ed. Given the position of power that the teachers have over ESL and Adult Ed learners, I find this mobilization of the students is an abuse of the teacher's power and a position of conflict of interest. These teachers are, after all, employees of the government that they are encouraging their students to lobby. In any case, I come back to the point that learning does not just happen in a classroom. That is more the case today than ever in the past. Yet the education establishment clings like luddites to the classroom, and attempts to use its students in that fight. The educators are not challenging their own assumptions about how to help the largest possible number of people. Steve Students have been the leaders in hundreds of campaigns to gain additional resources for their adult education programs on the local, state and federal levels. .........A recent advocacy campaign for additional funding for adult education in New Hampshire included 4,000 contacts from students with the Governor and members of the state legislature. a comprehensive strategy that includes political literacy within the mission of the adult education program,..The tactics, strategies and skills developed by students to become successful in advocating for their adult education programs are the same that students will use to get a stop sign on the corner, an increase in the local school budget, a state law prohibiting predatory lending practices on the part of financial institutions and to influence the next state plan for adult education. Professional development for adult educators can be built around this concept of student advocacy. That includes a commitment at the state or local level to helping teachers to find or develop the materials that are needed in this area and to insure that all staff hired by local programs understand and agree to the concept of student advocacy. -- Steve Kaufmann www.lingq.com <http://www.lingq.com> 1-604-922-8514 ---------------------------------------------------- National Institute for Literacy Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Developme nt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20080721/e95f239d/attachment.html
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