Return-Path: <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i6GKJ8b27864; Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:19:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:19:08 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <s0f7ff2b.090@mailsrv21.gsu.edu> Errors-To: listowner@nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Daphne Greenberg" <alcdgg@langate.gsu.edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:2969] Announcement of new book X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise Internet Agent 6.5.1 Status: O Content-Length: 7135 Lines: 117 George Demetrion's Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy Education is scheduled for publication at Lawrence Erlbaum Associates in October. Here is a synopsis of the book: Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy Education: In Quest of a U.S. Democratic Politics of Literacy Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, October 2004 https://www.erlbaum.com/shop/tek9.asp?pg=search&mode=regular George Demetrion The book provides a historical overview of adult literacy theory, policy, practice, and research mostly from the 1990s to the present. The main focus is a descriptive analysis of three distinctive schools of literacy. The first is the Freirian-based participatory literacy movement grounded in oppositional politics grass-roots community activism. The second is the British-based New Literacy Studies that focuses on the ways in which diverse students utilize various literacy practices in their daily lives, of which the EFF project is a prime example. The third is the federal government's focus on functional literacy linked to a 45-year policy emphasis on workforce readiness. These three schools of thought, in which an overview in the first chapter is provided, lead to substantially different implications over such critical areas as curriculum, assessment and accountability, the socio-cultural role of literacy, policy, research traditions, and political culture, which are discussed throughout the 11 chapters of the book. The second chapter discusses the participatory literacy movement and includes analysis of listserv postings from a variety of practitioners making the case that the learning taking place in their programs "can't be quantified in some statistical report." The third chapter reviews the major reports of the 1980s and 1990s linking adult literacy to the needs of the postindustrial economy. These reports were both dire and utopian in pointing to challenges and opportunities of basing support for adult literacy on the need to equip undereducated workers for the "new" economy. The fourth chapter analyses federal policy trends in the 1990s, culminating in the Workforce Investment Act, The Adult Education, and Family Literacy Act, and the National Reporting System. In addition to the legislation, the chapter traces out the tightrope the state directors walked between balancing the needs of the field and being policy realistic in an increasingly conservative political climate. The fifth chapter highlights listserv postings on the NLA, largely critical of the federal legislation from several vantage points. Chapters 6-8 examine the standards movement in adult literacy education in the 1990s. The sixth chapter sifts through two major policy reports and a listserv forum discussion among major researchers and practitioners over competing definitions of outcomes and impacts in adult literacy education and appropriate means of measurement. A major unresolved issue centered on whether outcomes should be based on reading gains only, which are more easily measurable, or on the ways in which literacy impacted the lives of students at work, community, and home environments, which, requires a more complicated form of evaluation. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss different aspects of the National Institute for Literacy's Equipped for the Future project, the major standards movement in adult literacy developed through the 1990s. Highlighted in these two chapters is the pervasive tension between the educational and policy goals of EFF, particularly as EFF needed to define its standards through the prisms set up by the National Reporting System, which conflicted with fundamental principles of its educational theory. Chapter 9 examines research traditions through a juxtaposition of two major texts, Donna Mertens' Research Methods in Education and Psychology and Shavelson and Towne's Scientific Research in Education. Mertens provides an overview of three research paradigms that parallel the three schools of adult literacy identified in the earlier chapter. Her book provides a way of examining the intellectual presuppositions of those schools. The chapter also examines 4 of the 6 principles of research identified in Research Methods of Education through the prisms of each of the three research traditions highlighted in Mertens' text. Chapter 10 seeks to work through some of the conflicting views both of adult literacy education and the research traditions through a concept developed by the philosopher John Dewey in which literacy is defined as that of growth or development. A mediating approach to research is provided through an examination of Dewey's text, Logic: A Theory of Inquiry. The Deweyan contribution is viewed as an example only, of the type of mediating approach that in principle, could help to stabilize a consensual understanding of adult literacy education. The problems of achieving any such widespread agreement are also noted, given the reality, too, of the failure of the EFF project to realize such an objective, which was an important aspect of the project's early mission. Chapter 11 examines the prospects and dilemmas of formulating a coherent politics of literacy out of the fundamental precepts of the founding U.S. political tradition. In linking that 18th century tradition to the contemporary era, the book draws on the political thought of John Dewey, Robert Bellah, and John Rawls, who, in their different ways articulate a broad based liberal, civic-republican democratic political culture rooted in the founding tradition. As discussed explicitly at the end of the first chapter, the strength of such a vision depends on the quality of the interpretative dynamic in cogently mediating the historical political ethos with the problems and issues faced in the current setting. This prospect is analyzed in tense juxtaposition to the possibilities of ever achieving such a level of consensus given the ineradicable pluralism inherent within the nation as well as the enduring conflicts among the three schools of literacy described throughout the book. Even still, the book concludes with the argument that unless something like this emerges, with values grounded ultimately in political culture, it is exceedingly unlikely that the field will be able to move from its current marginalized status toward that of achieving the level of public and policy legitimacy many believe it needs for its long-term institutional flourishing. In that last chapter, it is argued that any settlement of this issue will have to be accomplished in the field of practice rather than the ground of theory even as theoretical insight can help to frame the issues. The book seeks a wide audience, including those interested in educational theory, practice, policy, research traditions, or political culture, and more fundamentally, in their intersection. Given the breadth of the topics covered as well as the broad scope of the argument, the book is also meant for those who would like to gain a useful perspective on contemporary U.S. culture, through the window of these conflicting tensions within the field of adult literacy
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