Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id j3DMonG26501; Wed, 13 Apr 2005 18:50:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 18:50:50 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <BAY103-F17D440353EC00771FCCC11C5340@phx.gbl> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George demetrion" <gdemetrion@msn.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2956] Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy Education X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Status: O Content-Length: 13761 Lines: 229 Andrea, Many thanks for your careful reading of the book. I appreciate the time you've taken with it and your synthesis of some of its key points. My reflections will be inserted within your remarks. Best, George Demetrion First, I need to apologize to George for not putting something out sooner: George, this is a very dense book! You say you have worked on it a long time, and I believe you. Anyone who is familiar with George's writing will already have an entree into this book. Comments: No apology needed. Book reviewing is tough work. On the complexity of the text, a judgment that is invariably in the eyes of the beholder: My objective was to be comprehensive in viewing the issue of adult literacy education through the prism of cultural politics. In that, I build on Freire's key idea of the inescapability of politics broadly defined as giving shape to educational legitimization as well as of the French social philosopher, Michel Foucault who spoke of "regimes" or discourses of truth as a product of constructed history. In short, I sought to bring to bear my own graduate training in the academic discipline of history to my adopted field of adult literacy studies to narrate a story which has a certain level of complexity that I wanted to explore in something like its fullness. Of course, all stories are partial, but that's another story. On the writing, I know, I know. On the other hand I did work hard to (a) keep sentences under 60 words, many of them shorter--my version of concise writing; (b) keep paragraphs to under 225 words; (c) to eliminate as much redundancy as possible; (d) to stay highly focused on the main idea I was seeking to bring out at any point in the book. My editor pushed me hard to keep the text as short as it is, around 300 pages Before I get to EFF, some preliminary remarks. 1) George relates a paradigm to a metaphor, a paradigm being a large shift in thinking, say from the sun going around the earth to the earth going around the sun. A metaphor would be --the industrial revolution, that is, the use of machinery in production was like a revolution in how the world changed. this metaphor could be elaborated in several ways, like the relation of industry to intimate household relations between people, the changed use of natural resources, the growth in schools of engineering, and so on. Metaphors have implications for not only what we do in the world, but for how we relate to each other, and how values change, for instance, speed becomes important in putting together car parts. Now maybe it becomes a paradigm, the words can be very close in usage. Comments: Right, I sought to blend the paradigm concept (initially applied to science) with that of social discourse theory, both of which are addressed formally with a relatively light touch (pp. 4-7), and which grounds the structure of the book. A couple of additional comments. While I do view paradigms and social discourses as boundaries of sorts; (a), I don't view such boundaries as invariably impermeable; (b) or inherently conflicting. In addition, there can be considerable border crossing among paradigms, so that in one respect, the new literacy studies might be seen as a synthesis of sorts between participatory literacy and functional literacy. Similarly, balanced reading theory could be seen as an effort at synthesis between phonemic-based and whole language reading theory. However, in neither case is the synthesis fully achieved so that one can talk, therefore, somewhat loosely of the three paradigms in each example. 2) One paradigm is the changing nature of work, from industrial to post industrial, industrial equaling machine manufacture, post industrial being an age of knowledge. These terms are actually somewhat precarious (my interpretation) but they are widely used and understood to mean changes in what jobs will require, from physical heft to mental dexterity. The SCANS report and the WIA represent governmental understanding of the changing work environment and the changing skills that people must have. The NRS is actaully a throw back, as it is constructed on paper, to an industrial standardized model. How it is constructed on paper is not how it is used in the field, however.(This is George's postpositivist research paradigm) Comments: Yes, this is a nice observation. The functional paradigm linking adult literacy to the workplace has both a utopian referent to the training needs of the postindustrial society (ch 3 of the book) and to the more pedestrian objective of "welfare reform" and getting low-income adults into any kind of employment, primarily low skill. While at least in rhetoric the WIA contains both visions, it is predominantly focused on the latter (ch 4). 3) The above paradigm crashes up against one of participatory literacy, essentially an idea of community-building through alternative assessment and programs from the bottom up. This thinking would make any return on investment person itch, with its emphasis on social inclusion as a guiding light, and the importance of achieving individual student goals. How can individual performance be judged in a standardized way that aims towards simple accountability? (This is George's emancipatory paradigm.) Comments: Yes, the conflict between these two visions is especially sharp, which resonates with Paulo Freire's founding text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. There is also a reformist dimension within the participatory literacy camp, as reflected, for example, in the views of Hanna Fingeret and Paul Jurmo in their important book, Participatory Literacy Education. There are some close parallels between this reformist aspect of the participatory literacy movement and the new literacy studies, and while there are differences, at least some of these may be more in the nature of semantics. The radical strain in participatory literacy education in the US is captured most fully in the writings of Elsa Auerbach and on the listservs in the many postings by our own Andres Muro. 4) The third paradigm draws from ethnographic studies which look at adult students as residing in cultures; to teach these students, you mentally enter their universe in order to expand their literacy practices, in their own key, as it were. (This is George's interpretive/constructivist paradigm.) Comments: Yes, other writers have pointed to this tri-partite typology, especially Silvia Scribner in her 1984 essay, "Literacy in Three Metaphors." I build on Scribner's essay in my own essay, Discerning the Contexts of Adult Literacy Education, upon which I elaborate extensively in the book. In addition to Scribner, I also draw on Juliet Merrifield and David Barton, among others, who discuss the new literacy studies, which has its origins, I believe, in literature coming out of Britain. Elsa A. also has a nice early essay on the topic, which is important for its criticism of this British-based school of thought, as she argues, in the manner in which it tends to evade the central importance of the politics of literacy. George expands on this typology through the social criticism of Giroux, for example, and from a bouquet of other researchers who emphasize in their own work a variety of methodologies which support a variety of interpretations of literacy. Comments: Yes, chapter 9, Research Traditions, seeks to link my discussion of the three typologies of adult literacy with the three typologies of educational and psychological research as identified by Donna Mertens in her important book, Research Methods in Education and Psychology. In her various postings, Catherine King alerted me to this important book, which enabled me to strengthen my argument by bringing in alternating theories of research into the general discussion. However, it is his section on EFF that drew me first, as I have never been able to understand it, though I feel sure I am in favor of it. EFF relates to the constructivist paradigm. There is a problem here which T.Sticht picked up on, and I do too. Is it very important? Probably not. The whole EFF effort strikes me as fairly daring, actually, an attempt at teaching through ethnography within the federal bureaucracy: heavy duty! The problem is that ethnography really and truly builds from the ground up, with vocabulary and concepts that have meaning for the people who use them, without prompting. EFF designers took educational Goal 6, to build literacy for the future through civics and job skills, and ran with it. The framework was pre-structured. EFF sent mailings to many sites, many people to create a reasonable sample, and constructed (with help from many it sounds like) a framework to be used to achieve three roles: worker, community member, and family member. (! You really should read this for yourself to get the full flavor of what the EFF people did.) Anyway, respondents' answers sorted themselves out into what could reasonably be called the 3 roles. Comments: EFF has a central place in my book for several reasons: (a) its role as the largest scale federally-based reform movement to date, and certainly in the last decade; (b) its attempted synthesis of the three schools of literacy as identified above; (c) its strong effort to bring in a common framework sound educational theory and practice and a consensus-based orientation to policy; (d) its implicit public philosophy which remained mostly underdeveloped. In my general argument, EFF represents the type of reform initiative that would be needed if there is going to be any serious movement from the margins to the mainstream on the basis of sound pedagogy and policy undergirded by a public philosophy stemming from the best traditions of the U.S. political culture. The latter is the focus of the last chapter, which presupposes a public philosophy of adult literacy like that proposed by EFF. That the political culture was not receptive to such reform energies speaks volumes both to the limitations of which both EFF and I have proposed, which, nonetheless, is rooted, I believe in the very best that the American experiment has to offer. Its failure is less that of EFF or anything that I am proposing, but the prospect of any idealistic vision of having any significance in shaping the politics and pedagogy of adult literacy education. Hence, the paradoxical nature of my last chapter, which, if its going to be overcome at all, has to take place in the realm of practice. A book can help point the way, or more modestly, can help to clarify issues, but decisions have to be made on the ground, and regardless of decisions selected consequences follow. The EFF people then moved beyond and unerneath the three roles, discerning in fact 4 purposes that linked them all together: 1) Access and Orientation, 2) Voice, 3) Independent Action, and 4) Bridge to the Future. As constructed, anyone, even you and me! could fit in somewhere. NIFL published this as "Equipped for the Future: A Reform Agenda." The word "customer" replaced adult student/learner. Comments: Yes, there are many dimensions to the EFF framework. My objective in chapter 7 was primarily descriptive. There's some complexity there because the building of the EFF system was a complex process, some of which I sought to capture. For this chapter, I drew heavily on Merrifield's EFF Research Report: Building the Framework, 1993-1997 as well as the "Blue Book" and the earlier EFF reports written by Sondra Stein. We (George) have Broad Areas of Responsibility and Key Activities, moving toward (generative) skills, knowledge (domains) and standards. I need examples, something to hold on to. I can't figure out what these terms mean, they become very abstract, without easy reference. Comments: Without getting into these here (the EFFers can well describe these), my objective was (a) to show something of how these dimensions evolved out of the very construction of EFF as an emerging framework; and (b) to provide some discussion of their substance. To finish up here--George segues into pluralist democracy via Dewey, Bellah, Rawls, and others. If you want to rehash and reread some of the more choice dialogues on NLA issues, you will find members of the group here--Andres Muro, and Catherine King among others. Check the index for names. Comments: In terms of political philosophy, the single most important resource in my argument are the books by Robert Bellah and his colleagues, first and foremost, The Good Society and secondarily, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. A close second is John Rawls' Political Liberalism. These texts among others, discussed in chapter 11, undergird much of the NLA discussion that Catherine King and I have led on the NLA on the significance of a principle-grounded political philsophy stemming from the political founding values of the United States Republic. This political middle ground buttresses the pedagogical middle ground I seek to highlight via John Dewey's concept of growth, in the balanced theory of reading and in a postpositivist approach to research (ch 10) and more fully in a new essay, Postpositivist Scientific Philosophy: Mediating Convergences. There's much ambiguity in this vision that I do not mask in the book, but there is also a vision there as a largely unexplored way to at least partially resolve the conflicting paradigms in adult literacy education, a largely untried way, which, in which its avoidance, is also problematic. That's it for now-- Ditto!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 31 2005 - 09:48:21 EST