If you think back about your own adult education, that is college and 
graduate school along with learning related to improving your job prospects 
or enjoying your leisure time (language classes, golf lessons, and computer 
training, for example), you probably had an instrumental goal (get a better 
or specific job, speak Spanish, lower your handicap, or be able to produce 
better looking documents, for example). However, you also had a vision of 
yourself as person with that better or specific job, as a person who is 
bilingual, as being able to consistently hit 250 yards down the middle of 
the fairway of the tee [a transformation I am still waiting for], or being 
the person other people ask for computer help). This vision of who you 
wanted to become and the instrumental benefit supported your motivation to 
sit through and pass courses that were boring, make time in your schedule 
to practice and attend training programs.

The desire to change some aspect of personal identity came up in our 
interviews with ABE and ESOL students. So programs might consider exploring 
both instrumental and transitional goals. There is no reason why these 
explorations cannot be done within the context of teaching ESOL or ABE. The 
exploration should help students articulate these goals but should also 
build self-efficacy, that is the belief that they can reach those goals. 
The ways to build self-efficacy have been identified through research and 
are explained in the Persistence report on our website. But in summary, we 
should help our students

experience success by making meaningful progress and  seeing that they are 
making progress

meet people just like them who have succeeded

receive social support from teachers, fellow students, and from members of 
their family and friendship network

and learn to overcome any negative emotional states (nervousness or anxiety 
for example) around learning.


--On Monday, July 17, 2006 8:54 PM -0400 "David J. Rosen" 
<djrosen at comcast.net> wrote:


> Posted for Andy Nash:

>

> Hi John,

>

> I was surprised and heartened to read the following in your 7/10 response

> to Marie Cora:

>

> . . .  we explored the goals of students and found that they usually

> expressed both an instrumental goal ("I want to get my GED, so I can

> get a better job" for example) and a transformational goal (I want to

> be the kind of person who has a high school education," for example).

> Many programs ask students at intake to state their goals, which is

> probably helpful. But, it might be helpful to weave the goal-setting

> process into instruction as well. . . .

>

> My sense is that the focus in programs, so far, has been on the

> instrumental goals * those that are clear, measurable, functional, etc.

> Since I'm interested in the "transformational" goals, particularly

> in the sense of helping adults see themselves as "the kind of person"

> who reads a newspaper or "the kind of person" who understands (and

> speaks up about?) the decisions that are being made about their lives,

> I've been dismayed by this trend toward the immediately practical.

>

> While I agree that goal-setting needs to be an on-going process infused

> into instruction, I don't think transformational goals are likely to be

> identified by students through an individual process. I have only seen

> individuals name the kinds of concrete items that appear on the goal

> lists being developed in many programs.  It seems to me that only when

> goal-setting is done as a group, and when students are invited to discuss

> what their concerns are, or what kind of person they want to  be, or how

> they want their lives to be different after participating in the program,

> that we'll be able to start surfacing those transformational goals. Can

> you please comment on this, and on how you saw those transformational

> goals expressed during your research?

>

> Andy Nash

> New England Literacy Resource Center/World Educaton

>

>

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John Comings, Director
National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy
Harvard Graduate School of Education
7 Appian Way
Cambridge MA 02138
(617) 496-0516, voice
(617) 495-4811, fax
(617) 335-9839, mobile
john_comings at harvard.edu
http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu