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 


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